I have been off my site for months now due to everything that has been happening in my life, however I do feel the need to put something new up.  This is it.  Whatever this is.  I’m waiting for my big girls to get home from school and just wanted to do something, anything to get things moving forward again.  I’ve had so much going on since November or whenever all this chaos started and I’ve had so many things I wanted to write about, but didn’t have the time.  Hopefully now I will be able to begin to refocus on the positive and carry on.

Cheers,

Dear God,

Please guide me through this time in my life and give me the strength and tools I need to support my family always.  Please let this streak end soon and with no further damage.  Please alleviate the stress on my husband and provide him with tools for coping with his stress.  Please insulate myself, my husband and all of our children from the depression and illness of others in our presence.

Dear Archangel Michael,

Please protect me, my husband and all of our children now and always and in particular at any time when we may be in more danger than usual.

Thank you, thank you, thank you

Love,

My oldest friend in the world is preparing to welcome her first baby any day now.  She’s not due for a couple more weeks, but it looks like baby may come early.  I received a text message from her last night telling me this and I instantly felt a flash of what it was like to welcome my first baby.

My pregnancies have all been very easy physically, but emotionally I find it challenging because my first pregnancy was incredibly traumatic.  At the end of almost 41 weeks of pregnancy and 21 hours of labour I was given the most amazingly beautiful gift I could never have imagined.  My eldest daughter.  She was perfect, thank God!  I was so scared that something might be wrong with her because of everything we had gone through while I was pregnant with her.  When I first saw her, held her and knew she was safe and sound I cried and cried as though I may never stop.  I was so relieved!  And so deeply and irreversibly in love.

I could never have dreamed up someone so perfect.  Only God could do that.  I knew before she was born that I would love her.  I loved her the second I knew I was expecting her.  I just never knew what true, pure love was until I met her.  It rushed through me and over me and swept me away and I’ve loved her the same every second since then.  It’s a love so immediate and powerful it takes your breath away.  It’s absolute purity and you only know it once you know it.  Until that little body is wrapped in your arms you can only imagine it.  The reality of it is extraordinary.

She changed me.  She changed my life.  Thank God…again!  She made me a better person and a stronger person.  I made choices I wasn’t sure I could make, but I made them for her.  I made them so that she could be proud of me and look up to me and learn good things from me.  I made those choices and I stood by them and we made it through.  Things changed for the better because I was able to do what was right for her even before she was born.

From about 20 weeks into my pregnancy with her, I was so ready for her to be born.  I was so excited to meet her and start getting to know her.  She was my constant companion from conception until she was 20 months old and I went back to work part time.  She is one of the four most amazing people I’ve been lucky enough to meet.  I am honoured and blessed to be the mother of my four children.  I would do anything for them.  I am in constant awe of the love I have for them.  I had no idea it was possible to love someone, or a whole bunch of someones so intensely.  When I had my second daughter I felt like a traitor.  I felt like I was betraying my first and taking my time and attention away from her.  I loved her so much that I wasn’t sure if I could love the next one the same way.  And then she was born…and I grew an entirely new heart that belonged only to her.  The love is so strong and everlasting and perfect.  I now have four complete hearts, each with one of their names on it.  Just for them, always for them.  For who they are, each of them different and yet all so similar.  Sweet, funny, smart, gorgeous, caring….

It’s a journey.  It’s heavenly.  I am so excited for my dear, dear friend to finally have this experience for herself.  I wish you the most love.  The love of your life.

xoxoxo

My mother-in-law is coming to live in my house.  I have tried to keep most of my thoughts about my relationship and certain issues off this blog, but it’s beginning to get to me and I need to get rid of it.

My husband has been feeling sorry for his mother for some time now as she is regularly telling him she hasn’t eaten in days because she can’t afford to buy food.  She does have two jobs as well as a third income source.  The problem is that her rent is too high.  She is unwilling to find accommodations that she can reasonably afford.  So she has effectively manipulated her son into taking her in.  Talk about kicking a guy when he’s down.  She has seen him struggle this year and the effect that his accident has had on his relationships with his other family members and she’s used it to suit her own needs.

You well know, if you’ve read this blog before, that I haven’t worked much this year which means no money.  With my husband being on disability that makes things tight.  He has now been switched to long term disability which cuts our monthly income even further.  In light of this, I returned to work part-time on Monday of this week.  Please do not get the wrong impression and think for a moment that I don’t want to work.  I do want to work, I like earning money and I enjoy using my skills.  What I don’t want is to be away from my kids.  I have had lots of time with my older girls, they are in school and doing well.  My twins are my babies, my last babies and I really wanted this one last year with them (greedily, I’m sure) before sending them to daycare part-time.  When you’re on your last kid(s) you realize how quickly they grow up and move on.  They are only small for a little while and then they’re not.

So, back to this issue of my mother-in-law.  I feel that this move is putting my family in jeopardy.  I personally believe that she has no intention of finding work once she moves in here.  I feel that she thinks that she is going to move in here and I will go out to work so she can stay home and raise my kids for me.  She will be living on easy street.  They both will.  I will go work and earn a few bucks while they stay home and hang out together.  Then when I get home at the end of the day I will have the privilege of cleaning the house, doing the laundry, feeding the kids and the rest of us and making sure that our home is stocked for all of our needs.  I have reason to believe this will happen because even without her being here it is happening.  I know this is a problem with my husband, not her.  I get that.  The problem is that I think it is going to get worse.

I feel resentment building already and anger.  A whole freakin’ lot of anger.  I have expressed my concerns to my husband.  He is oblivious.  He sees me as the problem.  I’m being too hard on her.  I’m kicking her out the door.  He sees her as extra income to the family and free babysitting so he and I can get out together and get a break sometimes.  Well, I looked into the extra income thing today and he is not fully informed.  The reality is is that she is going to cost us money.  Period.  Bottom line.  Money that we don’t have…sorry did I already mention that?  I would rather pay for a babysitter and keep my sanity and my family intact than invite this woman into my home and watch my marriage implode.

I’ve recently begun doing yoga whenever I get a chance.  Almost never, because if he’s here I’m not allowed to work out.  I’ve never really gotten into yoga.  I find it hard to go slow like that when I’m “working out”, but it is a great work out and I do feel it afterwards.  I also find I am craving reading my books by Caroline Myss and Doreen Virtue.  I’m craving a spiritual connection so I don’t move too far into fear and anxiety.  I feel like I have no choice but to turn inward so that I don’t go right off the fucking deep end and lose my shit completely.

Just a small addition to my “crazytown” post.   That same day after blabbing away incoherently into this blog I had a small success with my twins.

Anyone who’s ever tried to brush a two year old’s teeth knows that many of them don’t really like it. I thought I had finally ended up with a couple of kids that didn’t mind it.  Until my son got sick.  He ended up, a little while ago, with an infection which caused his mouth to become very inflamed, his gums were red, swollen and bleeding and he was completely miserable.  Poor little guy!  He was so uncomfortable.  He and his sister ordinarily loved getting their teeth brushed.  I think it made them feel big like their older sisters.  🙂  Anyhoo, during his illness we didn’t push the teeth brushing too hard so he had a chance to heal.  Once he was better, both he and his sister became obstinate.  I believe he was just afraid it would hurt and she had decided that she was going to brush her own teeth now.  Yay…another fun battle!!!!  I Love being a parent and I say that with no sarcasm whatsoever.  For real.

So, the other night, I was getting the little monkeys ready for bed, bums were changed, pajamies were on and it was time to brush their teeth.  I really wasn’t in the mood to drag them to the bathroom and pin them down to do so, so I thought “eh, I’ll just brush them here”.  “Here” happened to be on the livingroom floor in front of the movie they were watching.  And guess what…magic happened.  They laid there and let me brush their teeth to my hearts content.  No fighting, no screaming, no crying!   Amazing!!!!  I was happy, they were happy and their freakin’ teeth were clean before bed!  Hallelujah!

Now we brush our teeth on the livingroom floor and they love it.  It is only temporary until they either want to go brush their teeth in the bathroom or mommy decides they no longer have a choice and it’s time to get back to normal.  For now though, it’s working like a dream and we are all thrilled.

I used to have my shit together.  I used to be pretty effective at getting things done.  I used to think I had a pretty decent handle on my life.  Now…I’m not so sure.  Now I seem to always feel quite anxious.  I often feel like I can’t get anything done at all.  I don’t even know what it is I want to get done.  I feel like I’ve got chains wrapped tightly around my torso holding my arms down by my sides and squeezing me until I hunch over, defeated.  I can’t stand feeling like this!  I will admit to throwing myself the odd pity party, I think that’s pretty common, but they generally only last a day or two.  Feeling low and heavy and weighed down all the time isn’t something I’m that familiar with and I absolutely hate feeling like that/this.  I wish I could figure out what it is that is bothering me.  I can’t even do that!  It seems these days that my mind is always spinning, jumping from one thought to the next and not really going anywhere.  I am confused at this helpless, desperate feeling.  I’ve been through periods in my life where things have been so much worse than they are now and I’ve gotten through it all pretty well.  I won’t lie and say that I’ve never felt depressed or beaten in the past, but it seems like I was still able to function and move forward and move through it.  This is just bizarre.  There is nothing wrong with my life.  The stress of my husband’s accident is pretty well over.  We’re used to it now.  He’s healthy and healing and things will go back to the way they were eventually.  We just kind of have to wait it out at this point.  All the kids are happy and healthy and doing well.  My mom’s health is stable, although not great.  I am still able to work, however that doesn’t seem to be happening.  I don’t know what is going on.  Something just isn’t working in me and I can’t figure out what it is.

I have a feeling that this post is going to be a mess, all over the place and maybe not very coherent.  Currently the story of my life!  One of the thoughts that I had yesterday is that I think I actually have faith in the way that life occurs.  Finally!  I used to feel a deathly fear of not having enough money to take care of my family and my responsibilities.  I still get uneasy (as you may have noticed :)), but then there is another part of me that is like – whatever.  It will work itself out.  So far we’ve been able to get by just fine.  There is no reason for me to think that things will not improve.  So that little bit of fear seems to have subsided.  Awesome!  I guess that means that whatever it is I am going through right now is just another phase I need to pass through.  That when I come out the other side I will be better off than when I started.   Okey dokey!

Then, I think about the things I have to teach my kids.  It could be anything.  And it’s a friggin’ nightmare.  It’s a nightmare because of the duality of life.  There is never only one side to a story, never only one perspective, never only one absolute right way.  Well thanks for that!  Way to make it impossible to give your kids a straight answer and never look like a hypocrite.  This morning my eldest broke a nail file.  Not a big deal right?!  Ya, but she lied about it.  Pissed me right off.  I couldn’t have cared less about the nail file.  I do however, care that she lied.  Does the seven year old really think that she’s smarter than me already?  Is she so afraid that she’ll get in trouble over something so small that it’s worth lying about?  Really!  That’s what she said it was.  I’ve told her a million times not to lie. She knows that when she tells the truth she almost never gets in trouble.  Still she lies.  What do you do?!  She lives in family where one parent is one way and the other parent is almost the exact opposite.  What is she going to learn?  I don’t know.  Probably that there is way more grey out there than black and white.

I don’t know what the hell I am doing.  I am doing the best I can.  I am teaching my children the best way I can right now.  I hope to become a better parent.  I hope that when my kids are grown they don’t look at me and think I was a total asshole.  I teach them right from wrong to the best of my ability.  I am trying to teach them to be independent people who think for themselves and march to their own beat.  I advise them to come to me and speak to me when they are angry with me or disagree with my opinion or decision.  I also teach them that there are times, when it’s a matter of safety, that they just have to do as I say.  If I piss you off, tell me later.  We can always talk about it and I can either come to see your point of view or you can understand my motivation for doing whatever it is that I have done.  Of course, my kids are still little, but I want them to always know that it is safe for them to talk to me and disagree with me. Hopefully, over time, they will come to trust me and see that it is ok to tell me things and that by telling me they have a way of getting help or working out a problem or whatever.  I just hope that they will let me help them if I can and support them if I can’t help them.

One thing I wonder about is the people who seem to have it all figured out.  They know everything.  Their answer is always the right one, they never have a bad day or a bad mood.  Their advice to their kids is always spot on and they are oh so willing to give you advice as to how to train your children.  Or the spiritually advanced who are in their last incarnation and almost done with this journey. Looking down their noses because you might just be beginning your journey of self-discovery.  Is that true?  Is that your real life or are you just completely full of shit?  I don’t know.  Maybe I will figure it out one day or maybe I just won’t care.  Right now, it’s just one of the things I wonder about.

Welcome to Crazytown people….my new current address.

Thank you.

For everything.

It is all a gift…

recognized or not.

Yesterday was a very stressful day…again!  lol  I know, I can’t help it.  My husband is off on disability so things have gotten a bit tight and every time we have to really focus on finances I become a complete mess…for a while.  I was speaking to one of my very best friends on the phone and I asked her to pull a card for me.  For those of you who do not quite understand what I mean by that, I will explain.  I believe in angels (a lot!) and God and manifestation, etc.  I have decks and decks of angel cards and crystal jewelery which I wear and use to meditate with (when I can, even if only for a moment as I am doing housework) and I ask archangels for help daily.  I also thank them daily for their help and for all the blessings in my life.  So one of the cards that my dear friend pulled for me was “Forgive yourself” and I have decided that that’s not such a bad idea.  I have decided that in order to live the life I want to live, forgiveness is likely going to play a big part in helping me achieve that.   In addition to itemizing some of the things I am going to work towards forgiving myself for, I am going to issue a public apology for some of my past behaviour.  I am not the same person today as I was 5, 10 or 15 years ago and of course, there are people who I have mistreated, who I continue to think of and given the opportunity to see  face to face would gladly seize the chance to apologize to them directly.

I will start with the apologies.

This one is to a girl who I ended up crossing paths with due to a high school boyfriend.  This may seem very silly to everyone who reads this, but this girl was, I believe, a very sweet girl, a good girl, who would never do anyone any harm. I think that’s why I’ve never forgotten her.  It’s crazy because we never met personally. The only contact we ever had was a phone call and catching a glimpse of each other across a room once.  Long story short, my “boyfriend” and I had broken up and were (I thought) working at getting back together.  As it happened, just as I thought things were going well, I left for a holiday for two weeks.  When I came back, everything had changed, he was as cold as ice and it looked like getting back together wasn’t exactly going to happen.  We kept hooking up, but all was not peachy.  A little while later I happened to find out it was because he had a new girlfriend.  Shocker!  Ya, I know.  So 17 year old me was terribly hurt and incredibly pissed.  I took it upon myself one night after way too many cocktails to call this sweet girl and tell her all about her shitty boyfriend.  That’s what I feel bad about.  I didn’t lie to her about anything at all.  I do think though, that it probably wasn’t up to me to tell her he was a shit.  I’m pretty sure she would have found out eventually, like I did. She (I am certain) was/is a complete sweetheart and the truth can be painful.  I am sorry that I made that phone call and told her everything I did.  Going back I would never have done anything to cause her any pain.  To Grace, I apologize.

The other girl I would apologize to, I used to work with.  She was another absolute sweetheart.  We worked together for a while and we were friends.  Again, I acted poorly.  I had worked at this company for quite a while and I had had to fight for every ounce of credit I got there.  It was tough place to work at times, I was very young and I probably had an enormous chip on my shoulder.  This girl came in (through me) and she was good at the job and as sweet as pie and everyone loved her.  Looking back with my (almost) 37 year old eyes I can see and admit that I was jealous.  I was jealous that she didn’t have to struggle to earn respect the way that I had had to.  I felt like I was being replaced and it made me very insecure.  The result of that was that I ended up being unfriendly to someone who had become a friend.  She probably never knew what the hell happened.  What do you think when you’ve never done anything to someone and that person turns into a total B**** for no reason at all?  To Danielle, I apologize.

There are a couple of other apologies I will offer, however, they are to my mother and brother and will be their own posts altogether.  I will leave them for another time.

On to my list of things I promise to forgive myself for.

I forgive myself for being jealous at times.  I absolutely despise that feeling.  I’ve been lucky to not experience it a ton, but don’t like experiencing it at all.

I forgive myself for drinking too much in my twenties and making bad decisions.

I forgive myself for the things that happened in my life because of my bad decisions.

I forgive myself for feeling a truckload of shame for my decisions and poor choices.

I forgive myself for not being kinder and gentler to myself over the years.

I forgive myself for my most recent failures as a breadwinner.

I’m pretty sure there are a million other things I could add to this list, but I don’t want to overwhelm myself.  haha  The only thing I can do is to work towards forgiveness for myself and vow to do better going forward.

Yesterday I was a complete and total wreck!  The cause of this state was financial anxiety regarding my current debt.  The debt isn’t too bad, however because I haven’t worked very much this year it causes me a lot of stress.  I have had a job since I was 11 years old.  I’ve always worked and always paid my own way.  This year has been a bit different and I struggle with it constantly.  I do still have a job – sort of.  I am self-employed in the financial services industry and I work from home while I am raising my 7, 5 and two 2 year olds.  It was fairly easy to work from home with the older kids when they were small.  They went to daycare part time (2 days a week) and they are very independent.  They always knew the rules when mommy was working and they followed them.  Working from home with two year old twins is a completely different ball game.  Because I took it a little easier at the beginning of the year I didn’t do very much which didn’t give them much opportunity to learn how things work when mommy is working.  Unfortunately for me, my husband was hurt before I was able to get much work done ie. make much money for the year and I haven’t worked since he has been home.  The entire situation is strange to me because even the potential for work that has come along hasn’t turned into anything tangible – which almost never happens!  It rocks me to my core to be so dependent and so vulnerable and to not be providing for my family.

I am so blessed in my life, by my children and husband, my health, my sweet little dog, etc.  I could go on and on.  My husband and I look at each other and tell each other all the time how lucky we are.  I am grateful.  I try very hard to stay in the moment and enjoy every second of my time with this family we’ve created.  Yesterday though, because of the stress I was feeling, I felt like a total failure.  Some days it just seems like nothing I am doing is right or good enough.  I feel like I can’t succeed at anything I am trying to do.  I want to work and provide for my family, but I have lost all interest in my work this year.  I don’t know if I want to do it anymore.  When I do work, I love it. I am passionate about it and I care deeply about the people I work with.  When I’m not working, I feel dread at having to find another way to source business.  Truth be told, I hate trying to find business.  Doing it part time from home with no childcare has definitely hindered my networking abilities, not that they’re strong anyway.  lol  I hate networking.  I feel like a total fraud.  For me I would rather get to know someone because I am genuinely interested in getting to know them and seeing what common ground we have than creating a false friendship based solely on what we can do for each other.  I would love for my friends to send referrals to me because they know how capable I am and how hard I work for the people I represent.  I know that is naive, but it’s how I feel.  I guess it tells me and the world quite clearly that I likely am not cut out for self-employment.  Hopefully I am wrong and I get my mojo back soon.  I have to do something!  I can’t go on like this for much longer.

I got home to my kids this morning after my first night away from them since my twins were born almost two years ago.  They were left with a close family member who I consider a very good friend and who has one grown child.  I have four small(ish) children who require a fair bit of care.  Keeping up with them and the house is a matter of constant motion which I think I handle reasonably well.  Admittedly, I think we arrived home earlier than expected.   As much fun as we had yesterday, we really missed them so we got up early and drove the 3 hours back home before noon.  My twins take their nap at around 10:30 every day.  Since this is their only nap (most days) I like it to be a good one and if the timing gets too far off track it can create chaos in their day.  Add to that, that this is the first time I have left them and you can imagine that when we arrived home, fully expecting them to be asleep still and they weren’t that the rest of the day hasn’t been exactly stellar.  So we get here and I hear my little guy’s cry “Daaa” through the front window.  I happily turn to my husband and say “The babies are up”…we come into the house and I say to our friend “They didn’t sleep long”.  To which she replies, “I haven’t put them down yet. I thought I would feed them lunch and then put them down.”

So my question to this, asked only in my mind a couple of hours later, after my daughter went hysterical when I tried to put them down for their missed nap, was “what makes you think that your way is better than the way we have always done things?”  Why would you change the routine on two two year olds when they are, for the first time, experiencing their parents being away for the night?  Let’s put this a little more into perspective for all who do not know the exact dynamics.  The woman who was watching my kids has one child who is a couple of years younger than I am.  She also comes from a large family of mostly women who all helped each other raise their kids.  I come from a family where I was raised mostly alone.  My sibling who is closest in age to me is 8 years older, the rest don’t really count since I’ve never had a relationship with them anyway.  My husband and I moved away from most of our family so we are pretty much on our own when it comes to raising this family we have created.  Raising a family of four little ones with little outside help encourages you to have certain ways of doing things because otherwise life would be a nightmare.  I don’t really enjoy living in a mess all of the time, nor do I enjoy temper tantrums.  So I have certain things that get done certain ways and some things, like naps, even have to happen around certain times.

I have to say that I do love my friend dearly.  There is no one else in our lives who would have offered to do this for us.  There is no one else in our lives (at this point) that we would ever ask to do this for us.

I guess part of the point I am struggling to make is that not everyone is the same…Thank God…every kid is different and every parent is different.  What works for you in your household, with your family may be quite different than what works for me and my family in our household.  When I am at a friend’s home for the night I aim to leave the place the way I found it or better, ie. if the dinner dishes weren’t done last night and I happen to be up first, I will do them.  I will make the bed as close to the way I found it as possible.  If you happen to wash your sheets after every use, then I apologize that you now need to take the whole thing apart, but you knew that when you invited me to stay the night.  If you don’t wash the sheets after every use, then hopefully I’ve helped make your day a little easier by cleaning up after myself.

Why is it too much to ask that when someone is in my home that they try to adapt to the way things are done here?  Especially when you’ve spent an enormous amount of time here and been entertained at length?  I’m not asking you to do things my way in your home.  I am asking you to respect the way I do things in my home and make an effort.  If you happen to put the dishes away, maybe put them where they actually go, rather than where you think they should go.  If you don’t like their current location or are unsure of their location, the counter works for me and I can do it when I get to it.  Not a problem! 🙂

This is how I feel about parenting styles.  Please feel free to do your own thing with your own kids.  That really is your business until it becomes someone else’s business in a negative way.  I see the differences in the way I do things with my kids from the way my friends do things with their kids.  They are all pretty decent kids who I believe have a solid chance of growing into pretty decent adults.  Whether I happen to agree with every step taken on that particular path is irrelevant.  The only thing that matters is that they get there.  I gave up on mommy groups because quite frankly I found them a little creepy.  Most of the “mommies” are in some kind of weird competition.  I found the first-time “militant” moms the most repellant.  Is it because they are my opposite or my mirror?  I don’t know.  I don’t consider myself someone who is completely rigid because I can see validity in many styles and points of view and I am quite willing to re-examine my own point of view if I find it no longer works, suits me or I learn new information that changes things.  I don’t believe that because I believe something to be true when I am 20, single and living it up that I will still believe the same thing by the time I’m 25, cohabitating and living a completely different lifestyle.  It also means that what worked for my first kid might not apply to my second, third or fourth.  Or it may apply to all of them.

Why can’t we be more flexible and less judgmental?  Why do we take it so personally the way someone else parents?  Why are we offended by parenting styles that differ from our own?  Just because it’s different doesn’t automatically make us wrong.  Differences of opinion and style should be a welcome resource to all parents.  Please stop judging me.  Period.  Don’t judge my parenting.  It’s none of your business.  Please don’t go out of your way to make my day miserable because you think your way is better.  And I will do the same for you.  I promise!