August 13, 2015
Day 800
I am convinced that there is no job harder than that of
single parenting. I have just HAD
it. I cannot do this another
moment. I get almost incensed these days
when I hear married friends whine that they are, "doing the single mother
thing" while their husband is out of town/watching football/working
late. No, they're not. I am doing the single mother
thing! I am all alone. I have nobody to call for back-up. I have nobody to suggest I go take a half
hour and decompress. I have nobody to
tell my kids, "Hey - you don't talk
to your mom like that!" I don't
have anybody to hold my hand in the waiting room while my child is getting
x-rayed or operated on. I don't have
anyone to assure me that yes, our child is acting like Satan's spawn, but
really, they're going to be ok someday - bail money isn't going to be
necessary. I don't even have an ex
spouse to drop my kids off with for the weekend. Because, while being a divorced parent is,
I'm sure, difficult, it's not the same as being alone.
It's all me, all the time.
And I am tired.
And they are all going to bed early tonight.
So I can do this all over again tomorrow.
And the next day.
And the next.
************************
Things that make me crabby (besides my children):
I saw the chiropractor Wed. for my monthly adjustment. I haven't decided if I am going to stay with
this guy or not. He's the replacement
for the other dr. that just left the practice in Pville. The other dr. was gentle and often I felt
like he wasn't getting "deep" enough in his treatments. But he kept me going and I no longer suffer
the back pain I used to have trouble with.
This new guy is rougher. I think
he's helping because the complaints I go in with seem to disappear within a day
or two of treatment. But he about kills
me there in the office. I get a little
nervous, too, because I have met people who suffered strokes after chiropractic
adjustments. It may be a rare occurrence,
but it has happened. So, we were talking
Wed. about my ongoing sciatica and the dr said, "Well, the exercises will
treat the pain pacifically where it starts."
What?
Pacifically? As in, I'd like to pacifically send you back
to junior high English class?
A friend sent me a meme today on Facebook and said it
reminded her of me. It's a badge meant
to look like one a police officer might wear and it reads, "Grammar Police
- to correct and serve."
She might know me.
A little bit.
**************************
And while I'm talking about things that make me
crabby...I'm getting it all out of my system right up front. In a few moments I will stop writing, get the
kids to bed, and then will suddenly find that my mindset has adjusted quite
magnificently.
I went to the bank today with a deposit for myself, a
check to deposit for David, and another check to cash for him. The check he wanted cashed was his payment
from the city for his work with the water system - checks he's been receiving
every month for over a year now.
The teller tells me, while peering into my van, "We
can't cash this unless the person the check is made out to is physically with
you." What?! I don't know that David has EVER been with me
when I take care of these I pointed out
to her that my name is on his savings account and furthermore, he is minor
child and I have complete control over his money. She conferred with someone else and came back
and said, "Sorry!" She
wasn't. I told her to give the check
back to me.
I sat, fuming for a moment, while I waited for them to
get done with my own deposit. And then
when they handed me my money, I gave them the check back and said, "This
is absolutely ridiculous, particularly given that you have had no problem in
the past cashing these checks without my child present. If you won't do it, then what you're going to
do is deposit this into his savings account, and then withdraw the money back
out for me." I wasn't mean, but I
was very firm. They took the check and
in less than five minutes, I had his cash.
They never did ask me to fill out a deposit and withdrawal slip, so I'm
pretty sure they just went ahead and cashed it like I had asked them to in the
beginning.
Is it widowhood that is making me grumpy or is that the
older I get, the less patience I have for foolishness?
If I'm this cheerful at 44, what kind of joybringer will
I be at 84?
******************************'
Yesterday I happened to look out the window and saw
Lizzie bouncing a tennis ball off the side of the neighbor's steel
building. I went outside and asked her
if that was something she ought to be doing.
She shrugged and replied, "I don't know." Then, she added, "I assume, by the look
on your face, that the answer is, 'no'!"
I had to swallow laughter right then. I think I am creating a mini-me!
Which, most days, is not a good thing. She might turn out kind of scary by
adulthood.
**************************
I spent most of today in my van, which I really don't
mind. Normally, my sciatic nerve starts
to bother me after an hour or so of driving, but it was pretty minimal today,
probably, thanks to my chiropractor with a very poor grasp of English. We had to leave at 7:15 to take Ben to Pella
(this was after he had already awakened me at 5 - "I can't sleep, Mom!
(which means, I guess, I shouldn't, either).
And then I drove an hour from there up to Urbandale to drop the Littles
off at the Merritts. Baby Titus has
changed so much in just a month. He's
now 3 months old and he's getting his "black" hair (tight curls) and
his face has thinned out. Such
sweetness...
And then I ran some errands, including the bank. I did the girls' hair early this morning and
decided I could not live another single day without their hair stuff organized
in a better fashion. So that meant
finding new baskets and then when I got home, forty minutes after finishing shopping, I had to clean out a cupboard to
make room for the baskets. And then from
there, I decide today needed to be the day that I figured out a solution to my
Tupperware problem, which until today, was just a minor concern that I
ruminated on briefly from time to time.
The concern: Tupperware has taken over my life. Well, a couple of cupboards, anyway. When I rearranged the girls' hair stuff
(which looks really cool now) I had to remove two bins of container lids. It was never a good set-up anyway. There were so many lids and they were so
crammed together in the bins, which were hard to get to anyway, that I almost
always used foil for a lid instead.
I've actually been mulling this situation over for a
little while. I've toyed with the idea
of throwing out every single container I have and starting over from
scratch. But it would only be a matter
of time until I had the same problem again.
And I'd be poorer on top of it. A
few months ago I saw a tv commercial for storage containers that come with
hinged lids that can never get lost - until they break off, I suppose, when
some kid decides that it doesn't matter that the food is above the top of the
container. They're going to make that
lid go on, no matter what! And how well
would they store?
I had exactly one hour in which I needed to eat lunch
before going to pick up Ben from Pella.
I had just pulled every single storage container out of the cupboard and
had all the lids strewn across the floor.
The only nice thing is that no children were around.
Whatcha doing, Mom?
Why do you have all this stuff on the floor?
Oh, you're throwing that away? Can I have it, please, please, please?
And so on.
I jumped on Pinterest to see if I could find any handy
storage ideas. There weren't too
many. The only one that remotely
appealed to me was storing the lids in a dishdrainer that you keep in the
cupboard. But, knowing my kids, their
patience for inserting the lids into the slots would last all of two days.
Then, the lids would end up placed on top of the drainer. Plus, I would need a pretty wide cupboard to
put a dishdrainer into and I don't have that.
What I ultimately ended up doing was finding lids for the
containers I do have and I threw away every single mateless piece. I put the lids on, stacked the containers by
categories, Large, Medium, and Small.
We'll see how long that lasts.
I discovered that all my good containers are gone, save
maybe two. The rest are the disposable
stuff. Maybe I need to buy some more,
anyway. But for now, we'll see how this
goes. For today, my currently insatiable
need to organize is satisfied.
I started painting the mudroom door this afternoon, once
I had retrieved the kids from the Merritts.
I really didn't have plans to paint that door. But I ordered a new rug for the floor. And I couldn't find a solid brown runner long
enough for the room. So I ordered a
printed one. It looks nice.
It has these leaves in the print that are a kind of a muted aqua color,
which is pretty, although definitely not one of my decorating colors. But they're the color that jump out. And so, for a few days, I debated. The mud room connects the deck to the
kitchen. The deck has red
furniture. My kitchen is yellow and red. Can I
put aqua and brown in my mudroom?
Would that look odd?
And then I decided.
I don't care.
I like the aqua color.
So, I'm repainting the door white and the long oval trim around the
glass will be aqua. And I'm slowly
collecting these dark brown baskets from Target to hide the stuff on the
shelves. And I bought three hooks last
week that David helped me hang. I got
these three little chalkboard signs for $1.67 each at Hobby Lobby and on each
one I wrote the name of one of my Littles.
And that is where they will hang their backpack and their coat when they
come home from school every day.
And my house will stay organized.
Which is what I need right now because the rest of my
life feels so unorganized.
*******************************
I can't shut the mudroom door like I normally do because
of the painting. So all night long I've
been shooing the cat away. She has
always been fascinated by paint, for some reason. Seriously.
Every single time I have a painting project going on she is right there
in the thick of it, getting paint on her fur and paws, which is the last thing
I want because then it gets all over the carpet and furniture. She's worse than a two year old.
Just now I took Sam down to bed and there was Bella,
lying on the floor right next to the paint tray. She lazily looked at me, swished her tail,
and gave me this insolent, "Just try to tell me, 'no'" look through
lowered brows. I give up. I took Sam down, tucked him, came up, and the
cat was gone.
She made her point.
************************
So, when I was a kid, my parents had this friend who was
really into eschatology. I have a very
clear memory of him at our house, telling my parents, earnestly, that while he
didn't know the year, he was convinced the rapture would be happening in a
September - sometime. That caught my
interest although I remember my parents just smiled and my dad reminded this
guy about the New Testament verse that says that even Jesus doesn't know when
He's coming back - only God does. I've
never forgotten that.
Since then I've read a couple of articles that give reference to this same
verse but also argue that God promised us "signs" of his return and
that those signs are upon us in a very real way.
About a year or so ago I read an article by someone whose
credentials I have no idea about. This
person asserted that there will be no presidential election in 2016, which
seems ludicrous. I don't even remember
why they were claiming this - if it was some, "dream" or if they are
part of the charasmatic movement and believe they've been given some divine
revelation or what. I don't know. It's just one of those things that I didn't give
a lot of credence to, but stuck it in the back of my mind, nonetheless. That's where a lot of stuff ends up,
actually.
And now the politicians are out in full force and I live
near Des Moines so all the presidential wanna-be's are hanging out at every
coffee shop and high school gymnasium trying to convince me and other Iowans
why we should elect them.
We live through this cycle every four years. But this year, it just feels different
and I have no idea why.
By the way, I am finding that I really, really like
Donald Trump. Ted Cruz is still my man,
but if it came down to electing Trump or Hilary, I'm going for the Donald. I am finding it so laughable the way the
media is just wetting themselves and trying to twist his words into insults
against women, Mexicans, and puppies. I
love his outspokenness and willingness to say what normal people are all
thinking. But anyway...
And then the hair on the back of my neck rose up last
week when I heard Obama making a (joking) comment that he wouldn't be against
the idea of serving a third term in office.
And I suddenly recalled that article I read.
And then I read another article this week and the author
was pretty bold in saying that the rapture is probably going to occur in Sept.
due to a number of factors - economic ones, something to do with blood moons,
and 7 year cycles and all kinds of things I can't begin to understand. One part of my mind was flashing back to my
junior and senior years of high school when a little booklet entitled, "88
Reasons Christ will return in '88" was circling around. And then the next year out came, "89
Reasons Christ will return in '89" (I'm guessing #89 was, "Because He
didn't return in '88"). And we all
laughed and graduated from high school and went to college and got married and
made babies. But I'm also remembering a
man standing in my living room telling my parents that Jesus will come back in
the month of September sometime.
And then there's the whole Planned Parenthood thing with
the awful, horrible videos that have been released this summer. I haven't commented on them yet because I
haven't had the words to express the horror these videos have made me
feel. How can I explain how I literally
feel like vomiting when I listened to the audio of one where the PP employee
was guiding her undercover guests through the "refuse" room of dead
babies and she found one and laughed and said, "Oh, look - it's a
boy!"
I know abortion has happened since the beginning of
mankind but it's been legal in this country for 42 years. How long will God allow a nation to continue
to exist whose soil runs red with the blood of millions of murdered
infants? And while the murders continue,
the media gives only scant mention of the proof the videos declare while
spending their time fawning over a former Olympian who has the
"courage" to dress and act like the woman he will never be and
decrying the cruelty of shooting one lion to death.
And then today I'm talking to Jenn as I try to coax
Lizzie out of the tree she has climbed in their backyard with her bio
brother. They're up so high that the
limbs are shaking but I'm not really concerned because Jenn is telling me that
her in-laws have begun stocking up on water and soup and toilet paper because
they, too, are convinced, that something's coming. But Jenn says, "But isn't Jesus supposed
to come back before the Tribulation?"
I nod and she goes on to say that she can't believe He would make us
suffer then with a lack of toilet paper.
I laugh and Lizzie slides down the tree trunk and I think
that Jesus's return is probably a long ways off yet and someday I will probably
still get to hold this little girl's babies in my arms before I meet Him.
But I don't know, really.
I'm watching. And
I'm waiting.
*********************************
I have a widowed aquaintence on Facebook. She is a fellow Christian that I met in one
of my FB widows group. Her husband
drowned 4 summers ago when they were tubing while on a out-of-state family
vacation. All five of their children
were quite young when it happened - the youngest still just a little baby.
This widow has made the tremendously scary decision to
uproot her kids from the only home
they've ever known, take them from their Christian school, quit her nursing
job, and move across the country to be closer to family. She hashtags all her status updates lately
with, "#choosingtothrive" *
* I don't quite "get" hashtagging,
although David has attempted to explain it to me. I thought it was just a Twitter thing, which
I'm not on, but he said a lot of people add it to Facebook statuses, too, just
for emphasis of the point they've already made. I guess if I were to hashtag
I'd probably say, #tryingto survivebutnotsuceedingverywell
That's really striking a chord with me.
Choosing to thrive
I remember a year and a half ago a local widow friend
took me for my first pedicure and lunch and she made the comment that in time,
I would figure out, "what you want the rest of your life to look
like." I have never, ever forgotten
those words, even though I haven't figured out what I want the rest of my life
to look like yet.
They go right along with choosing to thrive.
It's a choice, which I know I've blogged about
before. But I suppose I have to remind
myself again and again on this journey.
It's choosing on Day 800 to get up and do Day 801
tomorrow. It's choosing to believe that
God will enable me to parent these kids well, even when I'm all alone. Which, I know I'm not really, even though it
sure feels like it a lot. It's taking family trips even though backing out of
my driveway scares me. It's taking a
chunk of the insurance money to finish my house because having a nice home
makes me feel better and quells worry.
It's spritzing on perfume even though I'm the only person who
appreciates it anymore. It's sitting
down to supper as a family even though it's a lot quicker and easier to feed
them from the stove. It's smiling for
family pictures and hanging them on the wall even though every time I look at
them I get a lump in my throat because of who is no longer in the picture. It's making sure my kids have everything they
need, except for a father, whom they need desperately, but I can't give them
that. It's making difficult decisions to
remove some people from our lives because their influence is no longer benefial
or healthy to our family. It's bearing the outrage this decision causes. It's taking
these kids to church three times a week when I don't always want to, when I
think there is nothing that can be said that make me feel better. And a lot of times I'm right. But it's knowing the kids need to be
there anyway and I probably do, too.
Choosing to thrive means I am not going to sit in this
black hole forever. I'm going to stand
up and do what needs to be done.
Because, I am the mom.
And because, this is my job. Now, it is also my calling.
And I'm going to keep choosing to thrive for the
rest of my life - or until Jesus comes back for us.
Even if it doesn't happen this September.
.
You amaze me, dear friend. I'm struggling with anxiety and stress and I have a husband who supports me in raising my kiddos. ONLY God can carry you through this. Your life is a testimony. You are, of course, amazing. But being a single mom to 6 kids is probably more than any one person can do well, without Jesus Christ carrying them and you. Love you and admire you, Sarah!
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