Christmas Eve 2009

Here it is Christmas Eve.  I've been feeling so stressed, and I've hardly been able to think about anything holiday-related.

I'm behind on all my grading, for one thing.  I've been behind all semester, and it's piled up and I haven't even been able to bring myself to look at it for days.  Of course, there's a deadline next week and I'll be thinking of all the things I could have done differently to be completely finished by now.  It's all waiting for me, and I do have to get it done.  Yuk.  I hate grading papers and calculating final grades.  Most of the time, anyway.

Then there's the whole money thing.  We have always been bad with our money, but this year it's worse than ever.  That's one of the big downsides of hubster's unemployment.  The other downside is that he's accomplishing nothing around the house.  He cooks, and he occasionally carries laundry for me or loads the dishwasher.  But there's no regular cleaning--of anything--and no project work being tackled.  Ever.  My frustration with him and his lack of job and effort is just getting worse.  It seems like we're bickering all the time, and I'm really not sure what to do to hold things together.  I know it's a phase and that we'll get through it, but I really need our relationship to be strong right now and I don't know what to do.

My health has been sucky all fall.  Sinus infections constantly, some virus and now a cough.  And I forgot to refill my GERD meds and have been feeling reflux-y all week.

I feel worn out and worn down, like I'm on a merry-go-round getting dizzy and needing to throw up.  It's not fun.

But I am also mindful of something else: I have my family, and I mostly have my health.  This year, my son plowed into a utility pole.  He could have died or been seriously injured.  He wasn't.  I am grateful for that every single day.  My husband now has a CPAP machine and I no longer have to lie awake worrying when he stops breathing.  And the past two Christmas Eve's, well, they were rough in a whole other way.  Two years ago, I was waiting on results from a biopsy to determine if I had vaginal cancer.  I didn't, and the dysplasia is gone.  Last year, I was preparing to have a major surgery that I have only recently felt recovered from.

So this year, I try to remember that it's a luxury to be able to worry about money and a husband.  I will be heading to Christmas Eve service in a couple hours, with my husband and children, not facing a major recuperation of any kind.

Blessings on us all.

full of s--t

That would be "snot" that I'm full of.  According to my prescription history on walgreens.com, I've been sick since the beginning of October.

First, I was suffering serial sinus infections.  After three courses of antibiotics, my sinus troubles improved, although they didn't completely go away.  Early this week, I started with a sore throat and then began coughing.

I feel like all I've been doing is dealing with mucous--blowing it out, hacking it up, trying not to swallow it.  No matter how much I do with medications, the neti pot, and drinking the right kinds of fluids, it's just "snot" going away.

I feel pathetic.  Ugh.

I really love the movie "True Lies."

Blogging from my phone!

great plains

Today I feel more like the Great Plains--standing in the face of winds and storms but able to endure.

feeling like the appalachians...

...old and worn down.

I'm having a rough time right now.

One of the the casualties of unemployment is what happens inside us--and I'm not just talking about the person who has lost a job.

My husband seems to have lost any inclination he had to act decently to his family.  He assumes the worst of the kids and me, he blames things on everyone, and he's generally growly.  We never know what will set him off.  This weekend it was listening to our daughter try to explain why she was upset with a teacher and became a one-hour walking-on-eggshells experience for us after we watched him yell and our daughter and get right in her face about her tone.  Today, he was looking for his military photo album.  Yes, the kids were the last ones to have it and look at it.  They should have put it back where they'd found it.  However, he never had a designated spot for it in the first place, and he's had six months when he could be going through our very messy living room, bedroom, basement, and back porch to simply organize things.  Chances are, he would have found it then.  Meanwhile, he expects us all to stop what we're doing to meet his needs, and he takes everything as a personal affront intentionally done unto him.

He is constantly cutting me off in the middle of my sentences--even if I am answering one of his questions.  So just a few minutes ago, when I was cut off again (literally, after four words) to turn the power off something for him, I sat down and tried to put my thought out of my mind.  Then when he  finally asked me what I'd been saying and I responded with a quiet "never mind," I got chewed on because he finds it frustrating that I am so easily distracted.  I just can't win.


I spend all my time at home trying to keep him calm, keep the kids quiet, and I just can't do it any more.  I can't imagine what this is like for him.  I sense that if he were to take on any project--whether it be volunteering, cleaning, or exercising--he would be required to accept that he is unemployed.  As long as he can think, "I don't want to commit to something new because I might have a job next week," everything can feel okay.  Yet he spends all day sitting on the chair in the living room--with the laptop on his lap, food in his mouth, and the tv blasting away and his anxiety.

I know he's not at his best.  This has got to be so hard for him.  I worry that he has no structure or sense of purpose to his life, but I have so many moments when I simply don't know how to be a good wife for him anymore.




As for me, I'm stressed, too.  I am having a difficult time at work--trying to get projects done under pressure and with no support, suffering a 3% paycut resulting from mandated furlough days, watching the people I work with on a daily basis get laid off, and seeing general low morale--not to mention that this is the time of the semester I always start to feel stressed anyway since it's the end of the semester.

It is beyond me how we still have our house, our car, our cable, our electricity.  Truly.  How is this possible?  I'm behind on paying every single account we have.  The grace of God has kept us in our home and minimized the sacrifices we've had to make so far.  So why can't I feel greater joy?


I'm halfway into my third course of antibiotics trying to kill this stupid sinus infection.  I have no energy, I'm sleepy all the time, I can't breathe through my nose, and I simply feel like I'm beaten down.  My immune system hasn't completely recovered from my hysterectomy, and I feel like I have nothing left inside me to fight with.

Meanwhile, we have three kids in high school.  We can't give them the things or the opportunities we would like to.  Even the money for college applications is a challenge.  I can't even imagine how it will feel next year to watch our son have to pay for college himself because of our financial troubles.

I just feel that every step I take, I'm facing my own failures--as a wife, as a mother, as a partner, as an employee, as a daughter, as a child of God, as me.

Feeling like the Appalachians does not make me majestic, magnificent, enduring, or beautiful.  It  just makes me old, worn down, feeling like I've been forgotten.

finding purpose

This has been a hard year.  It began with me recovering from a major surgery, one that forced me to think about what it means to be a woman and what my purpose has been.

For months, our finances have spun out of control as my husband has been unemployed.  Some days, it feels like my head is exploding from the phone calls, the mail, the decisions.  I just want to shut down.

Yet, every morning, I wake up and go through another day.  For months, I've been thinking about how so often, it seems that I'm going through the motions of life rather than actually living my life.  It hasn't helped any that I've been experiencing a great deal of stress at work.  I am stepping back from my administrative position and returning to full-time teaching, though, and I have to say that I'm feeling quite relieved and much more centered.

I've been struggling to have a sense of purpose for myself.  With all three kids in high school and headed toward responsible adulthood, I am no longer "Mommy."  I've been struggling to be a good wife during my husband's unemployment,  yet I've been trying to protect myself, too, so I don't disappear.

I've been wondering who I am, why I am here, what I add to the world with my presence.  I have days when it feels like my presence is irrelevant in the world--but then there are moments when I feel like I truly know why I am here on this earth.

I had one of those moments this morning.  I got an email from one of my co-workers asking if she could talk to me this afternoon.  I can't, because I'm home with weird sinus-related symtpoms and a CT scan scheduled for this afternoon.  So I replied with a "What's up?" email.  I then learned that her same-age cousin died overnight and that she just needed a friend to talk to.  I felt so touched that someone thought of me as a source of comfort.

And then I thought about the work I'm doing on HysterSisters, and how although I don't touch everyone, I do touch some.  And I think about what I did with Sidelines, and cub scouts, and brownies.

I've often wondered if something is wrong with me that I can't just pick one thing and have it be my passion in life.  I do something for a while, doing great and then doing okay and then fizzling out.  I'm starting to think that this is okay.  I can give a lot, whether I give in small amounts in many different ways throughout my life or choose to dedicate the span of my life to one thing.  I am a multiplicity, with a multiplicity of purposes, and I think I will try to live purposefully rather than to live to try to find one sense of purpose.