A Ray of Light

Well, I *hope* things are starting to get on a more even keel now. I'm feeling overwhelmed overall with everything that I need to do to get us ready to go next week, but for some reason emotionally I'm starting to feel a little bit of equilibrium after weeks of struggle. It was just like one thing after another - not being able to get hours at work, the election, the car, and, above all else, the death of my coworker which really took a lot of wind out of my sails, I would suppose even more than I would have expected. To be honest, it's painful on two different levels. First, there's the fact that you're not going to see that person again in this lifetime. That simple fact can be so hard to accept. I keep thinking about Rodney's stories and our conversations and it's just so hard to come to terms with the fact that we aren't going to have any more talks on this side. I'm slowly coming to terms with that, but it's just so sad. Then there's the other level where you realize the fragility of life and it scares me so badly. Before Thomas was born I didn't think so much about dying because I was too busy living. But now when I look at him I just want so desperately to see him grow up that I'm suddenly terrified at the thought of dying because of some random thing. When I think about Rodney's 5 year old daughter it just brings that home even stronger. Anyway, at least I'm finally at a point where I can even write this stuff down. For the last few weeks it has been a chore to write and this is the first time in quite a while that I've written just because I wanted to write and not out of obligation.
That all having been said, Emmett seems to be going through a really difficult time. Our financial situation is pretty grim right now and although I still keep hoping that we will be able to dig ourselves out one way or the other, it's hard to deal with the fact that we are in our mid-30's and still don't completely have our act together. I think part of it for him has been turning 35 this year. He's definitely not where he thought he would be at 35. There's nothing I can really say to help him, he's just really down. He came home tonight and didn't say anything at all. He talked a little bit at dinner tonight and he was just feeling so helpless and bleak. It is hard to envision how we are going to both dig ourselves out and also be able to consider buying a house when the housing prices that are already completely insane are just going up up up every day. I mean how are our lives going to change enough to be able to afford a $600K house (the approx. value of our rental) that could be as much as $1 million before Emmett finishes law school. Housing values are insane here. We've talked about moving away, but it's nearly impossible for us to agree on a place to move to. We've talked about Portland, and I'm not averse to the idea, but am concerned that the weather up there will cause my depression to flare up. Emmett is not interested in leaving the west coast again, so that limits us a lot. I still dream about spending summers in the midwest, but at this point that's a total pipe dream. The other thing for me is that even though I know that it would be much easier to move with Emmett and Tommy than it was moving all the way across the country by myself, I still don't relish the idea of starting all over again. It was just so lonely and painful. There's also that fact that we would be so far away from ALL our family. At least right now we are within a reasonable distance from Emmett's parents and even his sister Tash although she's not in SF anymore. We'll see. I guess right now just one day at a time and try to keep digging ourselves out the holes that we made for ourselves both before Thomas was born and then compounded when we both were "employment challenged" after Thomas's birth. There's quite a lot of clean up to do, but I feel optimistic. The real trick is to keep all the basics in place and then handle one additional problem at a time until you get to the bottom of the stack. Maybe that doesn't happen for months or years, but eventually you get there. One day at a time.
Ugh. Enough about all the financial garbage. We'll get through it. I'm still working on compensating for all the missing work time during our vacation. But it's funny how sometimes trying to solve those kinds of problems will lead you into something else. On Tuesday I put Thomas in daycare for the day even though I was home since we're required to put him there 2 days a week. I got to see Olga, the primary caregiver there, and have a little chat with her. That's rare because Emmett does most of the drop off and pick up and if I do get involved it's usually picking him up and by the time I get there she's gone for the day and her assistant is there. So we talked about Thomas going to preschool next year and she is still trying to convince us not to put him in preschool. Since he only goes there two days a week I can't imagine that this is because of losing the income. I do think, and have thought for a while, that she has a special place in her heart for Thomas, so that may be part of it. Her argument was that Thomas should only have one year of preschool instead of two because he is so smart and will be bored and not do well in kindergarten. I thought that was an amusing argument. She is very happy with Thomas's language skills and also gets such a kick out of his singing and dancing. She really cares for him, it's so obvious and that makes me feel good about the time that he spends there. More and more lately he's been asking to "go see Olga" and his "friends". I can't blame him - it hasn't been much fun lately being home with Mom, but it's getting better.
Anyway, I digressed as I am so prone to doing. The point was that I had decided to get serious about starting some auctions to raise some extra cash before the holidays. Having a day off without Thomas seemed like the perfect opportunity for this. Unfortunately, sometimes I think I'm cursed because my computer picked that day to completely freak out. Nothing was working and I couldn't get a single listing up ALL DAY LONG! I was beside myself with anger and frustration. Finally, that night after Thomas went to bed I got the computer working and Emmett and I worked together on taking pictures and starting the auctions. It turned out to really be a lot of fun working together on this! Emmett took the pictures, I edited them and then wrote up the postings, which was pretty easy because once you start one posting you can just repeat most of the text over and over again. Over two nights we managed to get 22 postings up and there are still lots of pictures on the camera for me to pull off and list, so hopefully I can get those done later today and then tonight Emmett and I can work together again and get some more listings done. All in all I think we will have somewhere around 100 listings. It would be great if that generates a little more money for the holidays, but I know it won't be too much because most of the items are only listed for 99 cents. What was really funny, though, was how sentimental Emmett got about selling all of Tommy's baby clothes. He kept questioning me and asking me why I wanted to sell this item or that item or he would come across something and say, "oohhh, why do you want to sell this? I remember dressing him in this..." and he would get all soft. It was adorable. He's so bluntly logical most of the time that it always surprises me just a little bit when his emotional side comes out. At one point I turned around and he was cuddling a red Gap sweatshirt that we used to dress Tommy in a lot. I just burst out laughing - it was so cute and yet so silly! I reminded him that we weren't going to have anymore children for 4+ years so it doesn't make sense to keep much if any of the clothes for that long. It was the first time I've seen him seem sort of regretful about waiting that long to have more children, so that was just a small glimmer of hope that maybe he'll change his mind. I also think he is being influenced by the idea that Thomas is not a baby anymore. He's been commenting about that a lot lately. I think that when you have a baby, for a man it's hard to want to have another one - it's just so much work! But then they become little boys and you miss when they were just babies. I have come around to being pracical enough to realize that we can't have any more children until we get more straightened out financially. We cannot live without my income and the cost of daycare for two children would completely wipe us out. I suppose I could work the evening shift which would mean only a couple of hours of daycare per day, but I'm not so desperate to have another baby that I'm willing to sacrifice our evenings home together as a family.
More good stuff - I got my car fixed! It's running like a dream, I'm so happy. I just hope it continues and that it passes the smog check because I don't have much more money to invest in it. I do need to get the rear brakes done, but the front brakes still have some life so I'm going to stretch it out for awhile so that we can put out some other fires. It's just nice to be driving a car that sounds normal and not like a hoopty. I'm also happy that it only cost $450 - it's a LOT of money, but it could have been worse and the cost of EVERYTHING out here is so incredibly high that you never know what you're going to end up with. This repair started with a $125 diagnostic fee that was NOT applied towards the cost of the repair, just to give an idea. The garage is run by a woman, I like that. She's very vivacious and, I felt, honest. But she's still running a business in SF and has to pay the bills, so maybe next time I need to take my car to the central valley or somewhere where the rents are lower. :-)
Gosh, I just have so much to do before we leave for Florida next Thursday. I can't believe it's almost Thanksgiving already! I'm going to have to deal with the broken dryer - who has time for a laundromat and even if I did, how am I going to haul all those clothes there and back - it is SOOO painful to do things like that here in the city because of the parking situation. We were falling behind on the laundry BEFORE the dryer broke - now without having had a dryer for the last 2 or 3 weeks the laundry is threatening to take over our house. We probably have 25 loads of laundry to do. It's sick that we even own that many clothes, and maybe I'm overestimating it, but there sure is a lot of it. I don't know how I would be able to drag it all down the two flights of steps in front of the house and then go to the laundromat and have to park a block away and haul 25 loads of laundry 1 block to the laundromat. THEN turn around and repeat the whole process on the way back. I think before I do that I'll have Emmett take a look at it and if he can't figure it out we should just have someone come out and fix it. It will cost more, but I don't want to deal with the laundromat OR getting a truck to bring another dryer and haul this one away. I'm going to try to call tomorrow and get an estimate, so that will let me know if I'm on the right track or not.
I am still proceeding with Thomas's application for Glenridge Cooperative Nursery school, in spite of what Olga says. I really want to give it a try. If it doesn't work for us, we'll just stop attending, but I'd really like for him to be around some kids his age and older, and even more, I'd like to be able to observe him more in a learning and socializing environment. I need to get that application in before we leave.
I also need to make sure that the Ortiz's can watch after Alex. If not, I will have to hire a petsitter.
I need to go grocery shopping - we are out of food. I cooked the last of it tonight - baked organic chicken breasts, snow peas with fried onions, and borsellini with creamy tomato sauce. It was actually a pretty good dinner and I just kind of threw it together. I'm definitely getting better at doing that - creating meals on the fly and being able to spice them up and add things so that they are tasty. I've also decided that I like baked chicken breasts better than when I simmer them in sauce on the stove. I always overcook them on the stove, whereas when I bake them I seem to get the timing better and they are a LOT juicier. I already had the borsellini - it was from Monterey Pasta Co. and I had wanted to try it out - yummy! Stuffed with 4 cheeses and spinach. Then I took some marinara and dolled it up with a bunch of paremsan cheese and some milk to make it more of a creamy tomato sauce and then sprinkled that over the pasta. It was really good!
Speaking of food-related things - more good news! I have lost 15 lbs.! I'm so excited about it! Usually when my clothes starting fitting better I know I've lost some but I overestimate it and then when I actually get on the scale I find out that I didn't lost that much and I end up disappointed. This time I found out that I'd lost 5 more pounds since my last weigh in! I am so happy! I'm now only 6 pounds away from where I was right after Tommy was born and 18 lbs away from my first pregnancy weigh in. YAY! The other thing is that I'd like to lose 43 more pounds and thats the first time I realized that my goal weight is less than 50 lbs away! 50 pounds always seems like soooo much, but now, for some reason, 43 seems much more attainable. I do need to refocus a bit when I get back from vacation and get back on an actual program. I seem to do better with that than I do with just randomly cutting back. I tried to do the carb thing again, but I started to feel sick so I decided to scrap that idea. I did get back to logging my calories every day, which may end up being the most important thing of all.
Another funny tidbit, and then I'm going to end this incredibly long (and, I must admit, pretty boring) entry. I waxed my upper lip for the first time in 6 years. I'm really trying to do what I can to look good for the the portion of our Florida trip when Emmett and I will be by ourselves. For the past several years I was tan enough that the little bit of fuzz over my upper lip didn't show that much. Well, now that I'm so white again it started to show so I decided to wax it off. I forgot that my skin reacts so violently to that. It looks like I've got some kind of hideous skin disease and would be hilarious if I weren't at work and feel so damn self-conscious. It'll go away in a few days, but has definitely cautioned me against getting too ambitious with any additional waxing. :-)
Well, if there's time I will do some recap and general family catch up. It's about 5:20am and it's been a slow night, thank God, because we just moved our office AGAIN to accomodate the remodel, so everything is in a mess and it would be a real nightmare if it was super busy.
Hope all is well,Love,Melissa