Where Do I Begin?

I have received several emails from a few of you guys who have been concerned about my absence here, and since my Facebook page has limits to how much I can post, I figured I would give you all the reasons that I haven't been posting.  I have been more preoccupied than normal.  I have been busy with my normal anxieties -- we've already covered most of them in previous posts -- but I have been obsessed with quite a bit of family stuff as well. 

My husband's company (my feelings for them have also already been covered) has required all of the supervisors and managers to re-apply for their own jobs.  Yeah, you read that right.  They have to re-apply for the jobs that they have been doing for 5 or more years.  Not only that, but they have opened their positions up to other units within the plant that have already chosen their staff.  So, basically there are 20 people in the unit now, but they're going to trim it to 12, and not only are they competing with the 20 supervisors already IN their unit, but with any other supervisor in the plant that has already been informed that they are losing their current position.  Then the company will let them know if they still have a job sometime in June.  The whole thing is unprofessional and a good example of how to lose the best employees.  Since my husband and I really do not like Texas anyway, this latest turn of events has forced me to double my efforts of getting us back closer to "home" in North Alabama.  My hard work of trolling job boards and sending his resume off to various companies and recruiters has paid off and he has an interview in our hometown next week. 

I have also been preoccupied because my 5 year old is in the middle of her evaluation from the school system to determine whether or not she qualifies for "special needs."  I have said before that I suspected that she might be on the spectrum, but The Child Study Center (that is the Cook's Children's Medical Network facility that evaluates and makes diagnoses) keeps pushing us down the list to be evaluated because any problems that she may have are not disruptive or in any way debilitating.  Since she is starting Kindergarten next year, I am taking the free evaluation from the school system to at least give me a precursory heads up.  She is so very smart, but a good example of her different view of the world is her use of "the last day, this day, and the next day" instead of yesterday, today, and tomorrow.  During her first evaluation session, the psychologist was trying to get her to say the opposites by showing her pictures.  She would say "Look at this duck.  This duck is wet.  But this duck over here is..." and she would expect my daughter to say "Dry."  Of course, she didn't say that.  This part of her evaluation went like this:

"This duck is wet, but this other duck is..."

Not wet.

"This boy is sleeping, but this other boy is..."

Not sleeping.

"This dog is sitting, but this other dog is..."

Not sitting.  Or standing.  You could say standing, but I just say 'not sitting' because that's the truth.


The psychologist was impressed with her and although she kept telling me that she thought there was something there, she refused to give any clue as to what it might be until they had finished their full evaluation over the next few weeks.  So THAT has been weighing heavy on me.  I hope that there is nothing there, but if there is, I need to know what it is and how to deal with it -- especially before she starts school next year.

In addition to both of these issues, my body is mad at me. I have HAD been doing very well with my diet -- I am WAS down 26 pounds -- but pretty much since my birthday, I have been celebrating by pretending that I have the metabolism of a 16 year old athletic male.  (I don't by the way.)  And my workouts have consisted of carrying my ankle weights into the den with me in the morning on my way to the couch, the DVR, and the laptop and then laying them down next to the reclining handle before finally putting them on around noon.  Even then, I just walk around the house a little bit before I take them off for a nap around 3:30.  I suck at dieting.  I am still determined to lose the weight, but I am very good at convincing myself that I somehow deserve a break because of all the added stresses right now.

I need that 3:30 nap though, because at night when I should be sleeping, I cannot make my brain shut off.  I lay awake for hours thinking about my daughter, my husband's job, the possibility of finally getting what we want and moving "home", and the myriad of other things that I obsess about.  So I am tired.  All the time.  (Yawn)

And finally, I am preoccupied with the total chaos that my house had become.  A little while back, I went upstairs to the playroom and the 2 oldest kids bedroom. I spent nearly 4 hours, raking all of the crap out from behind their beds into a pile, sorting it, throwing away the broken toys, trash, and unidentifiable things, bagging and boxing up the stuff I knew they didn't play with, the stuff I was tired of tripping over, and the stuff from various kid meals that I could donate to Goodwill. I have done this at least twice a year for as long as I can remember, so you would think that the kids would catch on, or that they would be able to keep it from happening over and over again.  When I ran out of time (after more than 4 hours), there was still a huge pile in the middle of the bedroom floor. I had weeded out most of the partially eaten food (that isn't allowed upstairs, FYI), a lot of the trash, and pretty much everything that I was certain that I didn't want them to have.  I told the kids when they returned from school that they had until bedtime to finish what I had started or everything in the pile would go to the curb with the trash.  I also imposed restrictions on them as a result of this blatant disregard for the rules that their dad and I had imposed.  No Legos.  No art supplies.  No play dates.  No Nintendo DSi, Wii, or television.  They were allowed to play with their other toys and they were to read.  My mother told me that I should not use reading as a punishment, but seriously, my kids only read when I FORCE them.  It took my son (the 10 year old) 4 weeks to read a 250 page book because he had to stop and tell me how boring it was after every paragraph for the first five chapters or so until he got into the story.  Then he had to complain how this was a harsher punishment for him than it was for the older girl child because she actually LIKES to read sometimes.  And even after all of that, they still can't seem to keep their messes picked up.

So those are the main reasons that I have been so bad about getting on here.  There are other, less contributing reasons -- like my DVR has been recording shows of its own volition (whole other post there), and my attention span has been that of a squirrel on PCP, but all of the aforementioned concerns have me pretty stressed out.  The good news for you guys is that all of this stress will most likely result in me being completely pissed off by some random stranger and will result in me just snapping which will make for an excellent blog post.