Better them than me, right?

A couple of friends of mine retook the bar exam at the beginning of this week.  I sent them a “good luck” message on Sunday night, the night they checked in to the hotel.  I can only imagine what taking it again must feel like.  I had prepared myself for it, but (thank God) never had to actually experience it.  But they spent the past three months studying for a minimum of eight hours a day, to ensure the best results possible.

I think I may forward my prayer to St. Jude to them while they await their scores.  Once again, they have to experience the longest, most agonizing waiting period.  In the meantime, I’ll keep plugging away at my place of employment.  Have I mentioned that I’m working on borrowed time?  Apparently, my boss is rethinking his decision to hire a new associate while the market continues to tank.  If I don’t radically improve my stats as resident rainmaker, my job may be in jeopardy.

Here I am, enjoying my status as a licensed attorney, gainfully employed (though for not too much more than legal aid) while my pals toil away a studying to repeat the bar.  I know it’s just a misperception — based on my current circumstances — but I have to wonder which is worse?  Making great efforts to pass an exam, one that has thwarted your goals before, or reaching the end of that rainbow, only to find out there’s no pot of gold, just a penny for your thoughts and a senior attorney telling you how wrong those thoughts are.  Ugh.

I really thought things would already be looking up — and maybe they are, but I’m just looking up from so far down that I still don’t have a good view of the top, or even a little plateau that keeps me out of this gutter.

Ah, self-pity.  Such a glorious emotion.  I guess its real value will come if I can look back on this post in two years and say, “Wow.  I guess I’ve come a long a way.” 

Long time no write (Warning: utterly depressing)

I’ve been having personal-Internet-use withdrawal symptoms lately.  In an effort to cut back on household expenses, we did away with our cable and Internet service.  My morning routine has changed drastically, and I haven’t been able to maintain any of my usual online practices.  It’s been especially frustrating as the whole experience has created an urgent need within me to write and vent, something I certainly cannot do from my office computer.

It looks like our cost-cutting efforts, though beneficial to our bottom line, aren’t going to achieve the main objective that I had: staying in our present home.  We currently have a serious cash-flow problem; more is going out than is coming in.  Mathematically, that’s an unequal equation.  Financially, that’s a recipe for disaster.  In our times of poverty, we backslid to such a point that we just cannot recover from while maintaining the status quo.  I have never been so devastated by a decision I’ve had to make as I am facing selling my house.  Everything about moving here was an achievement, and I pictured myself staying at this address until the girls graduated from college.

Needless to say, I have seen an sharp increase in my anxiety levels.  My sleep has been seriously disturbed, ranging from bouts of insomnia (not the kind that keep you from falling asleep at bedtime, but the kind that awakens you constantly during the night), to nightmares that would make Wes Craven cringe.  I actually go to bed very early, partly out of boredom, but suffer from extremely poor quality sleep.  As has been the case in the past, my body seems to take the brunt of any psychological issues I’m having.  I can’t get over a nasty cold I’ve been fostering for two weeks, and my stomach takes every opportunity to put me through the five symptoms featured in the recent Pepto Bismol commercials.  What fun.

On top of it all, despite my constant brainstorming to delay or render the sale of our home unnecessary, I am having to face the inevitable, which carries a slew of new distasteful tasks with it.  For instance, our house needs to be perfectly clean to be able to list it with a Realtor — if we want to show and sell it at least.  We need to prepare for all of the things that accompany a move: packing, transferring services, getting the new place move-in ready.  There’s more, of course, but I find it absurdly depressing to put it all into words. For a compulsive list-maker, it’s rare to find one to-do list that I can’t put down on paper.

In fact, I find my entire mood sinking fast as I even write this.  I need to clean and do laundry, as my Saturdays seem to be designated for, and try to approach this move the same way I do every distasteful chore.  It just has to be done, and putting it off would only make things worse.  The only good thing to have come from this trauma so far is that I have apparently lost three pounds.  If it continues to make me physically (and emotionally) ill, I may even meet my weight loss goal.  I guess every black, suffocating, noxious cloud has a silver lining.

Hooray for Saturday!

My almost-two-year-old woke me up this morning at 6 sharp.  So much for sleeping in on the weekend.  What was funny is that I kept doubting whether it was the weekend, worried that I needed to get in gear for school and work.  I finally checked the date on the computer to put my mind at ease.  TGIS.

Not that weekends are really mini vacations for me anyway.  I have a veritable mountain of laundry to wash, dry, fold or hang, and put away (putting away apparently is the hardest step, as clean clothes tend to camp out on the living room couch until they’re used again).  Then I must tackle the normal cleaning and tidying before I can get to the necessary scrubbing, dusting and vacuuming.  I am determined to finally get my house in a condition acceptable for outsiders to see.  Plus, we need to get our lab pup accustomed to being inside the house (but not in her kennel), and we haven’t been able to so far because of all of the tempting items to chew lying around.

After the house is clean, assuming it is even possible to get it to that state today, I need to pull out the boxes of papers and such that we’ve continually piled and hidden whenever we have to do a quick clean-up.  Undoubtedly there are scores of important documents and other things to address in there, and our “out of sight, out of mind” technique is a sure way to get in trouble with bill collectors or the like.  So, once the kitchen table is cleaned off of any existing clutter, I get to dump stacks and stacks of paper on top of it and weed through the mess.  I cannot imagine the number of trash bags we will fill today.  That would be after one of us goes to the store to buy trash bags — we pulled the last one from the box last night.

Still, I am so relieved that it is Saturday.  The above to-do list nags me incessantly during the week, occupying every other thought and driving me crazy.  My husband is finally well enough to assist, though I’m not expecting him to be the one scrubbing the shower floor.  Still, he’s plenty capable of helping out the cause today, and my goal is to reach an acceptable plateau before dinner time, so tomorrow can act as more of a day off.  I have promised the girls we’ll go to Chuck E. Cheese with another mom and her two children, and I’d like to be a bit more carefree while I’m there.  (Did you know that Chuck E. Cheese is one of the very few kids’ activity places that serves beer?  Sure, you can only have one or two in the time that you’re there since you’re in charge of your children, but it definitely helps take the edge of amidst the screaming, ringing, whirring, dinging chaos.)

It’s 7:27 a.m. and I’ve had almost 6 cups of coffee and done two loads of laundry (they’re not folded yet, but I’m working on it).  The girls are playing happily, and my hubby’s still in bed.  He does get to sleep in on the weekends.  I don’t know the secret that moms who have perpetually clean houses keep, but I’m doing my personal best without running myself ragged right now.  I know that if I approach this in a fever pitch, I’ll crap out by lunch.  I’m hoping that a slower, marathon-like pace will keep me going until completion.  Regardless of the outcome, I’m still thankful for the weekend and its slightly less harried-ness.  As far as cleaning the house goes, I’m still longing for the day when we can afford a little domestic help.  This is just not my forté.

And that’s why my life is a mess

Wouldn’t you know that I have failed to meet every single resolution I made for this week already?  The very day that I made them, my husband came down with the flu.  Suddenly, that beautiful plan was in a tailspin, and I was just trying to keep my head on.  I have confirmed with other wives that it is not just my husband that reverts to childhood when he is sick — it appears to be a thing with the male gender.  As a woman, and a mother, I know that my own illnesses still take a backseat to most of my other responsibilities.  I may get a 24-hour reprieve, but then I’m left to my own devices to maintain order among the household and children.

When my husband is sick, he goes to bed until he gets better, period.  As far as he is concerned, the world just stops turning for that time.  It seems to work; fortunately he’s not sick that often and he recovers fairly fast.  For instance, this incidence has just ended, and he will be returning to work and, hopefully, normal today.  But his downtime wreaks havoc on me, as I try to manage everything on my own.  It’s not easy to corral the kids through their routines (Ha!  What routines?) without any assistance.  On the plus side, it does make me appreciate the help he gives on any other day.

The past two mornings have been utter chaos, more than usual, and I have fallen to bed exhausted without having managed to do all of the things I prescribed for myself.  As a result, my house is even more of a mess than it normally is, we have eaten poorly and are close to running out of clean clothes to wear.  I have struggled to keep my patience and to even get out the door.  My daughter’s preschool teacher has been giving me the evil eye as we arrive a little late, and I’m actually past caring, just grateful that I got her to school at all.  Work has felt increasingly stressful, too.

In light of this week’s failures, I vow to start anew next week, but I’m glad no one’s really holding me to it.  Who knows what else will come up?  As the saying goes, it’s always something.

New week resolutions

Here it is, the dreaded Monday morning.  Fortunately, I decided to forgo the Super Bowl party last night in favor of getting some laundry done and retiring early.  Now I am well rested, and ready to tackle the new week.  I have some improvements to make over last week, which was somewhat of a bust.  I didn’t feel like it was at all productive, at work or at home, and the repercussions of that made for a guilt-ridden and depressing weekend.  So, to start the new week off right, I’ve set a few goals for myself:

1. Wake at the same time every morning
2. Have everyone finish breakfast by 7 a.m.
3. In the shower by 7:10 and out the door by 7:45
4. Snacks and lunches packed the night before
5. Back to cooking every night (the only way we’ll eat well)
6. Limit Cokes to one per day; up water intake to two bottles per day
7. At least one load of laundry per day, from start to finish, including putting it away
8. Work at work — manage other pressing issues on lunch break only
9. Set goals for work day (and meet them!)
10. Bathe girls at night (to cut down on morning chaos)
11. Everyone’s clothes laid out the night before
12. Spend 45 minutes cleaning each night, then stop
13. In bed by 10:15 p.m.

These are not great stretches to accomplish, so I’m hoping that by setting realistic goals, I’ll be able to stick with them.  Of course, this does not allow for many of the various unexpected events that crop up constantly.  I’ll just have to deal with them as they come.

In order to avoid breaking my third resolution on the first morning, I’ve got to wrap this up.  I’d like to feel a little better about myself this weekend.  If I can stick to this for a week or two, I can add a few of my more ambitious goals — like exercise.  We’ll see.