What a crazy, hectic, but amazing time in my life. Never in a million years would I have dreamed of the negative feelings I dealt with for so many months. Not to mention, the crazy mood swings and emotional roller coaster! The restless, useless, and withdrawn feelings that are so alien to me overall, were part of everyday for nearly a year. A brief conversation with a very intelligent woman, recognizing the emotional and mental patterns, and finding an organic approach to level everything off; this was just the path I needed! While I still have to be very mindful of my internal thoughts, and external influence...it's almost a 100% turn around. Finding solid ground when you are dealing with a massive hormone imbalance can be difficult, but the desire to do so, is half the battle. Having people in your life you can trust, people you can talk to on a real level, and having a solid friendship in your partner will help you find your way. Even though this blog is going to touch on so many different topics today, this first paragraph is one that is resonating with me a lot. After nearly a year long struggle with emotions, unexplained anger, and zero tolerance for anything; I have found my solid foundation again.
As is with most, our lives here are rarely dull and boring! The last week of July, my husband took a week's vacation to work on our house. We took on a huge project this year. I don't think we were truly ready for all it entailed! Anyway, in a week's time, we got our new addition laid out, poles/concrete set, floor system in, walls up, rafters in, and sheathing on the exterior walls and roof. Plus, I started working outside of home again(more on this later!). We are known for starting a project, and blowing through it like there's no tomorrow. We built our covered deck and ramp over the course of 3 days, we remodeled our kitchen(including moving electric lines, eliminating gas lines, and putting in new insulation) over about 3 days. Our project this, due to a lot of issues through the Winter, included a whole house remodel, new furnace, new roof, new siding, and the addition. We had originally planned to do one or two rooms at a time, but didn't account for feeling like we were living in a barn this past Winter. With leaky windows, leaky roof, two rooms that ran about 10-15 degrees cooler than the rest of the house, the cost of propane going extremely high, and no room to move....we knew we had to do something. Adding 5 years on to our original mortgage(which is now 12 yrs instead of 7), we took off on this "adventure." Needless to say, not too much has gone as planned. There have been a large amount of issues we didn't know about, a few issues we did but took longer and were more costly than planned, and of course, Mother Nature has not cooperated much. We hope to everything completed before Christmas, but there are only so many hours in a day and our other schedules and plans have to be filtered in too.
I started back to college in March. This was a huge feat for me. An area of study that I really hadn't touched on much. While I am a Certified Natural Health Consultant, I took on Medical Transcription Editing this time. Anyone who truly knows me, knows my life revolves around my family and our home. I knew I wanted to do some kind of work to earn a little extra income for the things we wanted but didn't want to take out of our regular budget. I also, refuse to completely uproot our lives by having a job that someone else tells me what my time is worth. So, by studying MTE, I would have the best of both worlds. I could make the extra money, and still be at home with my family. I hope to have this schooling completed this month. I planned to have it done already, but I am doing what I can around everything else. I took on a job outside of home, that would allow me a little time from home, a little extra income, and I had always enjoyed. A little local bar & grill, became my "fun" job. About 14 hours a week, to be out among adults. While I really do enjoy that type of business, I forgot what dealing with people was like! I am mentally at a stage that it's easy for me to laugh off stupidity, but also to expect respect. I won't allow anyone to treat me as a door mat, or play childish games. Fortunately, this local place is small and there aren't many times of overwhelming business. It's steady, the people are almost all over 40, and I was lucky enough to find another boss that stood behind his employees. I am enjoying it so far, and it's helped relieve some of my own lack of confidence in myself.
With all the craziness around our home, it's the time of year that we add in a full school schedule for the kids too. Normally, the kids school year round, so we are able to take breaks as we need to. We actually took June and July off from any organized schooling this year. I say organized simply because, the kids still have things they learn without structure. They read every day, they have educational movies they watch, each of them has educational websites that they work on, even on their own, and each of them have an area of interest that they like to research and learn about. We are getting set to jump back into our structured learning environment and it's such a developmental year for both of them. One will be working on 8th grade work and the other on Kindergarten/1st grade work. Of all the years for me to decide to go back to work, this really should not have been the one! It's a little overwhelming for me trying to get at least, their first month planned out. I did finally get that done pretty much done yesterday, aside from the daily/weekly schedule. So, hopefully, between their school schedule and mine, and my work schedule, we can get all things accomplish in a reasonable amount of time. We'll see what the 1st of September brings as to what we need to adjust.
As with every year, August through December are really crazy busy. We have school schedules, the oldest one's birthday, hunting seasons, Thanksgiving, Christmas Open House, Christmas, my birthday, and New Year's over the course of 4 short months. This year we have my schooling, my job, the remodeling, 4-H, and my 40th thrown in too. Our oldest has gotten into Blacksmithing as a trade, so we have those meetings thrown in, in September too. While I love to have things to do, I am looking forward to finishing some projects so we can just have some down time! :) Some of our plans this Summer, have changed or been eliminated, so that has kind of caused a little friction in some areas, but overall...it's a good thing. For me, keeping up with the house, laundry, the kids, my school work, their school work, my job, my business, and helping with the remodeling has me feeling beside myself. My husband is working, remodeling when he can, and hunting when he can. We both work hard to make sure everything runs as smoothly as it can. Even though we get frustrated when things don't go as planned, we are moving forward, even if the steps are very small. I get frustrated very quickly when I don't "SEE" progress. It causes some tension between us when I am trying to push moving forward, and I come across as nagging or bitching. For me, it's all about goals. I set my own goals...many are pretty lofty, but I attempt with every ounce of my being, to accomplish them. I have extremely high expectations of myself, and I expect them of others too. So, I have to remind myself, regularly, that everyone else has their goals and they do differ from mine, but they are not slighting my goals, but following their own. Sometimes, that is a hard pill to swallow. ;) I am an overall difficult person to live with and deal with...I know this.
So, as I venture into the next 26 days of this month, I have high expectations. I also know that not everything will get accomplished, even though I will break my back trying. I know that in just 26 days, the insanity of Fall/Winter begins for us. Something going every weekend, and several days through the week, from September through the 1st of January. Having found a firm foundation again, is helping to ease the stress. I know that I will get overwhelmed at times, I always do, but I also know that I have surrounded myself with great people, positive people, like minded people, and those that give me too much stress are being pushed out of my life.
"I may not have the best of everything, but everything I do have is the best for me!"
~Sal
No comments:
Post a Comment