Life goes on

Kind of difficult to follow up from that last post. Life goes on.

After the visit with my mother, my husband arrived in Tampa for the weekend. His mother did too. We spent two days as the four of us doing some touristy stuff. Then on Monday we flew home. I won't go into those details because this blog isn't about them. Every family has dynamics and the relationships here are their own.

Life goes on. After the Florida trip we had a quiet Mother's Day weekend. Then we zoomed through the last of the school year with day trips and special school events, and all of the normal things that happen in a normal family with a school child.

This week we began Summer Day Camp. The schedule is 2 weeks of camp, then 4 weeks of OH MY GOD IT'S TOO EARLY, and then 2 more weeks of camp. THEN we will get our vacation.

To expand on the OH MY GOD IT'S TOO EARLY bit.. For four weeks, Monday-Thursday my husband is going to have to bring our daughter to school for reading help BEFORE camp starts. On Fridays they get a break and can just go to camp. My daughter likes the teacher and is looking forward to seeing her for some one on one time. My husband and I have a... EXPECTATION that these days are not going to go smoothly. Sad, but true. We are doing what we should do to help our child, but we are dreading those mornings already and they are still over a week away. It starts July 8th.

So I am working on LETTING GO because I will already be at work when they hurry out of the house, and I will not be there at all for these early morning reading sessions. I will really not be involved at all except to get myself out of the way early enough in the morning so that they can get themselves up and out of the house in time for this. Really working on my Al-Anon here. It is completely beyond my control. It is none of my business. I can't control it, etc. etc.. It all comes into play I think. Applying my Al-Anon to something so simple and yet so stressful that hasn't even happened yet.

In the meantime in case I don't write, I hope you all have a Happy 4th of July!

May you find peace today.

Breathe in... breathe out

This is one of those times that I'm caught off guard. I didn't expect this to be so hard and yet here I am. My husband and I are pulling at each other. I am constantly reminded by myself and by him to detach and let go. This time it's letting go of my husband. We have a home repair project that as I write this is probably underway at least a little bit. My husband is in charge and is doing most of the work himself. However I keep butting in. "Shouldn't you be doing this? Did you think about that....?"  and his reply "Do you trust me or not honey? I told you I can do this, now get out of my way and let me do this. You have your own list..."

and he's right of course. My job is to stay out of his way for the yesterday and today. Then tomorrow I take orders and help out as needed. Then Saturday and Sunday my job is to keep the child away from the house and entertained. I got to pick the hotel at least. :-)

Today my husband called me at work a few times and told me of the "discoveries" he was making. Added layers of work, added money to be spent at the big orange store, added time spent doing the work.

I plan to leave our house on Friday afternoon, after helping him for the day. On Monday I hope to return to a functioning home, that functions the way that it does today with all the things working. In the meantime I need to be practicing and practicing my letting go and letting god, my detaching, trust, the serenity prayer, and living one hour at a time.

Of course it doesn't end there either. On Saturday and Sunday I'll be mostly in "single parent mode" and I will be negotiating with our child what we will do, where we will spend our time, where we will eat, etc. It will be a seesaw ride of trying to keep her busy while not wearing myself out too much. She's got more energy than I do I think, and it can be hard to keep up.  :-)

It's all worth it if things go well, and if things don't go well... well I don't want to think about that yet. I just need to get through the rest of this afternoon first. This moment, here, this blog post, etc.

Image via Wikipedia

I'm back I guess

Well I did manage to post a few times last week, and then this week I've been rather quiet. I'm trying to THINK POSITIVE and sometimes that is hard so I've been reading, but keeping my mouth shut. Learning to keep my mouth shut is something that I've gone back and forth on over the years. Sometimes I don't speak up when I should, and other times I keep yabbering when I shouldn't. So I've been quiet this week on the blog.

My daughter and I survived the week without my husband, although there were a couple of days when I was pretty late for work. Her tantrums seemed to escalate as the week went on. Instead of getting used to her father being gone, she got more difficult to deal with. Of course I was getting more tired as the week went on as well, but such is motherhood. When my husband came home our daughter stuck to him like glue for a day or two, but now we are finally starting to return to normal.

A week away has taught my husband that "normal" in our house isn't really "acceptable" and I'm kind of glad for that. I feel like for too long our daughter has gotten away with unacceptable behavior. Now just to clarify, we are talking about a preschooler so I'm not talking about drug use or anything. I'm just talking about the whining and lazy behavior that we have tolerated for far too long. I have heard too many times words that grate my nerves "What do I have to do to get you stop crying?? Just tell me and I'll do it!" from my husband. This attitude has gotten us in a bad relationship with our daughter. So now he has been away, and is back, I am hopeful that some of this is finally going to change. I am tired of being the "bad guy" but I'm not afraid to do it. I'm not afraid to compromise either, and I certainly don't claim I have all the answers, but I'm glad to see improvement on his end.

So here we are. Things for both of us are rough at our jobs. Stressed out and tired parents greeting a tired and cranky preschooler at the end of the day... not happy times. I'm hoping to alleviate some of this for all of us by putting some getaway vacations on the calendar for the summer. Money is not plentiful though, so it looks like we'll be camping in a tent rather than living it up in nice hotels. Camping is work too. I hope we can still manage to find some peace. And hopefully by having those getaways on the calendar to look forward to we will all feel better.

What does any of this have to do with Al-Anon? Hmm... priorities, Keeping it Simple, One Day at a time, THINK POSITIVE, Serenity... I don't know. I'm just trying to do the best that I can one hour at a time.

Choose to Think Positive!

I was doing one of my readings this morning and it was about THINK, and I thought "oh, that's a good one! I need to do that. I need to slow down and listen more..."

Then on the way in this morning I was thinking about how excited I am for some of our plans this weekend and I know my husband is not excited. I wonder how my daughter will feel? Will I have to explain to her why her daddy is not happy? What will I say? (A lot of "what if's" in there!!!).. anyway I decided that I would say "I am choosing to be happy..."

My father told me that once when my grandmother was depressed. He said "She will be happy when she chooses to be happy, or she won't. You can't make her happy...."  It's so true. I can't make my husband happy about going to a party or doing things, but I can choose to be happy myself. (Back to working my program, and not working his, etc...).

When I got to work there were some coworkers celebrating and leaving work early. A great lead-in to a 3-day weekend. The sun is shining today, my daughter is excited about Valentine's Day, and people are choosing to be happy. A great start to my work day, and I've managed to keep my mood up all day. When I start to slip down, I put the headphones on or I get up from my desk and go for a quick walk around. Only an hour left, and it's working so far.

So my words to live by this weekend are "Choose to think positive" because there is just so much in that for me.

Happy Valentine's Day, Happy President's Day, Happy Chinese New Year.... whatever you celebrate, have fun!!