I know, I know, I said that I was getting back on track, but here we are. I’ve mentioned a few times that I recently had some surgery. It hasn’t been the worst of recoveries, but it has had its bumps. I ended up in the ER 2 weeks after surgery because I had a strange episode that they suspect was a TIA (mini-stroke). The jury is still out and they are still running tests 2 weeks later. I’m about over the waiting and the string of doctor’s appointments that I’ve been through as they try to determine the cause of the episode. The time I have spent at appointments over the last 2 weeks has really dug into the time I have to get things done as well as what little “personal” time I actually have. I’m still not allowed to do any real exercise which is cramping my style. It’s also a little nerve wracking to still be waiting, but that is LIFE.
As of Monday, I am 4 weeks post-op and I actually feel great. I am definitely not back to “normal”, but I feel like a real live human being again. I have been really looking forward to playing catch-up and getting some posts scheduled, but then “life” happened again. Last Friday, my friend from downstairs wanted to grab a coffee. I should have been writing Saturday’s blog post, but truthfully, I was TIRED and coffee with a good friend sounded infinitely more appealing. So we had coffee and chatted for the better part of 2 hours. It was so refreshing and I am all the better for it. LIFE.
Saturday, my husband took our daughter on a “date”. They explored the Library of Congress and went to lunch. They really needed the time together and ended up having a great day. That left me to plan a day with our son. I was expecting him to say that he just wanted to stay home and watch a movie, which is what he normally wants to do on the weekends. My thought process was, “great, we will be at home, I can get stuff done.” For the first time ever, he requested to go shopping. Our son is autistic so the mall is literally hell on Earth for him for a million reasons. (I’m not going to talk about autism much on the blog because it isn’t my story to tell. We are still working on the concept of consent and I refuse to tell his story without his permission.) He really wanted to go to the LEGO store and I told him that we also needed to shop for some Spring clothes for him as long as we were going to the mall. He agreed and we planned our attack to include lunch. Never have we had a day of shopping that ended in anything less than everyone’s frustration. In an effort to avoid the seemingly inevitable meltdown, we followed our plan to the letter and were in and out in under 2 hours including lunch. We hit all of our scheduled stops and even made an additional stop at Haagen Dazs. In the car on the way home, he said it was “the best day” and I almost cried. LIFE.
Last week, our son asked to stay home from school on Thursday to take a mental health day. I couldn’t make it happen that day; I needed to do the grocery shopping, a lot of it. And I had a much needed lunch date with my husband scheduled. I told him that he could pick a day the following week and he could stay home and we would just relax. Today is that day. I have so many other things that I need to be doing. I am trying to work my way through the weekend’s mountain of laundry, I need to be packing for our trip to Texas coming up this weekend, I need to be sorting winter clothes out of the kids’ closets and deciding what they will outgrow before next winter, I need to be sending e-mails, I need to be scheduling blog posts, the list goes on and on. BUT, so far today, I’ve stayed in my pajamas way longer than I normally would on a weekday, snuggled with my last baby who will soon be too old to want that, watched a movie in the middle of the day, eaten mac&cheese from a box, found myself looking forward to my daughter needing a mental health day, and not really cared too much about anything else that was on my to-do list. LIFE.
I have always told my kids that they can come to me when they just feel like they need a break. Our mental health is just as important as our physical health and there is nothing that is more important to me than our family’s well-being. That doesn’t mean that we are always happy or that everyone gets what they want/need immediately, but it does mean that we say “no” sometimes and we don’t live in a constant state of frenzy or stress. Our last few weeks have definitely been more high stress than usual and if a day off is what is required today, that is LIFE.
Sometimes life does get in the way. Plans need to change, priorities need be shifted, but sometimes the LIFE that gets in the way isn’t a bad thing at all.
This Traveling Circus 