Tuesdays are my least favorite day of the week. For the past few months, I seem to be sick every Tuesday, and things seem to stress me out more than usual on Tuesdays. Pete thinks that it is partly due to my separation anxiety creeping up on me, because Tuesday is when he has to go back to work after two days at home, and I never want him to leave. It doesn't seem to be too hard to say goodbye to him on any other day, but every Tuesday there always seems to be a reason why I just wish he could stay home.
Today's reason? I want him to be here to deal with Ryan, because I don't have the energy to. The past three days have been really rough with him for some reason, an he has been on a rare rebellious streak where he is refusing to do a single thing he is told (mainly cleaning his room). Since Sunday we have grounded him from friends, TV, movies and video games, we have thrown away eight of his favorite toys, and he is now down to only two hours left to clean his room before I cancel his birthday party. It has been well over a year since we have had this kind of battle with him, and I am so over it. Five has been such a great age for him, and the past three days have done nothing but cement the fact that he is almost six, and the sweetness of five is probably going to be history very soon...and I am not ready for it at all. I'm not ready for the snottiness, the rebellion, the attitude and the behavior of the years to come. I dread it, and it makes me cry when I think about it. I will not be his best friend for much longer, and his desire to please me is already flying out the window. It breaks my heart. This is what happens when children grow, and one of the hardest parts of parenting I think. I doubt it will ever get any easier.
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I have been battling urges to throw up all day today. That is something I am very much ready to say goodbye to. I wish I knew how to get better at just accepting it and not letting it get to me...but I don't. The only productive thing I have done today was scrub the tile in our entryway, and that made me so sick that I have literally been on the couch ever since...and that was four hours ago. So I sit here in front of the TV feeling sick, lazy, useless, and stressing about all the thing I should be doing (sewing binding on K's blanket, ironing interfacing for K's blessing quilt, painting the crate upstairs, vacuuming the couch, balancing the budget, working on Ryan's photo books, and more laundry than I even want to think about). I guess it will all get done eventually...just not today.
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I am stressed about money. One of the greatest joys Pete and I have experienced since moving to Utah has been the increase in income which has allowed me to worry much less about money than I used to. Things have still been tight here and there, but it has not been overly challenging to figure out how to make ends meet while still having a little extra to play with...until the past couple weeks. Thanks to birthdays, Christmas, insurance issues, medical costs, and the list of purchases needed to prepare for the baby, things have gotten much tighter with the past couple paychecks, and it is all exaggerated by the fact that the insurance settlement case has taken a turn for the worst in the past week. We very desperately need the money from the settlement to pay off bills and buy a car and maybe help with Christmas, and we have been counting on having the money by the end of the year. But due to recent developments in the case, that hope is looking highly unlikely, and it is weighing on me heavily. Everything regarding the car accident is pretty difficult for me to deal with emotionally, and this case is just making it worse. I know that in the end all that matters is that I am alive, my injuries are healed, and that I will get my medical bills paid...but it is very hard to focus only on those facts while ignoring how much we need the money. I cry every time I think about not having a decent car to bring our baby home in. I know it shouldn't really matter - we do have a car, even if it is 18 years old, falling apart, and not really big enough for two kids, so that should be good enough. But for some reason I just feel this tremendous guilt about it, guilt about how quickly and awfully things turned for the worst last March and how those things led to us having the Mustang as our only vehicle, and guilt about the fact that it was all just supposed to be temporary. The Mustang was supposed to be temporary, the credit cards were supposed to be temporary, the bad credit was supposed to be temporary. Yet here it is, almost nine months later, and it is all still far from temporary as we continue to wait for the insurance settlement to fix everything. Considering I am not a patient person to begin with, it is very trying for me to continue to wait for something that is completely out of my control. But I must...so I guess I must also continue to pray and search for ways to ease the guilt, pay the bills, keep the car running, and just make it work.
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I will be 27 in five days. I wish I was more excited about it. I wish we had money to do something fun to celebrate, and wish even more that we had money to do something fun to celebrate Pete's birthday in two weeks. Oh well. We will be together, so I guess that is all that matters. And I am very grateful for that.
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Ryan now only has 10 minutes left to get his room clean. It is not going to happen. So I guess I get to be the mean mom and cancel his birthday party after all. Maybe I could take the money I was going to spend on that to buy Pete something for his birthday?! I guess all clouds have a silver lining somewhere, right? Even if it means my son is going to hate me? Ugh. But I have tried everything else....and I am at a loss. Parenting can really suck sometimes.
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Okay I guess I have written enough now. Here's hoping I can get off the couch now and make dinner, and hopefully tomorrow will be a better day.
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