Weekday Fun

A few of my favorite things:

Not having to work

Spontaneity

Son Volt

I was scheduled to work 7 out of 8 nights -  Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, off Monday to rest,  then Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday.  On Monday night, I worked on Statistics all night long.  Seriously, a few of the kids were already up by the time I finally crawled into bed on Tuesday morning.  It is not hard; it is just really time-consuming.  There are lots of steps to every problem.  To help pass the time along while I studied through the night, I listened to music.  I got stuck on Son Volt, which is a band I listened to constantly 10-12 years ago.  It just makes me feel good.  I love Jay Farrar’s voice.  Just out of curiosity, I looked them up to see if they still play shows.  Low and behold, they were playing Wednesday night in Chattanooga.  I had an overtime day and our census was low, so I knew there was a good chance I would get called off either Wednesday or Thursday.  I told myself if it happened to be Wednesday, I’d find a babysitter and beg Matt to take me to the show.  I got the call around 5:00 on Wednesday evening.  I called my parents, and they were happy to keep the kids.  I’m sure they were pretty shocked, because if I ever need them to babysit, I line it up weeks in advance.  This is the first non-emergency spur of the moment babysitting request I can ever remember making.  But they seemed pleased to be able to do their part to allow me to have a little fun.  Matt grudgingly agreed, and we were on our way.

The show was good.  Their new stuff is much twangier than their old stuff, but it was good.  It made me feel nostalgic.  And most of all, it was nice to get out and do something fun on a call-off night when otherwise I’d just stay up late watching movies.

That’s about all we had going on this week.  We had overnight company a couple of nights, and Bonnie went to White Water one day with her friend Andrea.  Matt took the kids to a magic show at the library one day.   I worked 12 hours Thursday night and had a 3-hour cardiac class at 8:00am Friday morning, so I was actually clocked in for 16 hours!  I slept until almost 8:00 last night, so my weekend was late getting started.  After the kids went to bed last night, I poured a glass of wine and sat in the hammock chair on the upstairs porch listening to music for hours.  The solitude was beautiful.  Today I slept late, took my second Statistics test, and then went for a run/walk/bike ride with the family.

Here are a few pics and a video.  If you choose to watch the video, you’ll see a man in the front row in a pink shirt.  I am an avid people watcher, and that guy is the one we made fun of the whole time.  We’re not nice people.  

         Our view from the balcony

Well dang.  Something went wrong with my upload.  I'll try to fix it.  But for now, here's a cleaner version without the creepy guy bopping along. 

Home Alone

 I have always thought that it is important for spouses to have a hobby or interest outside the home and to get away for a while every now and then and do their own thing.  When Matt was in high school, he played role playing games like Dungeons & Dragons.  By the time I met him, he no longer played.  A few years ago, he decided to revisit that hobby.  He got together some buddies, and they scheduled a game.  Since that time, he has played pretty consistently.  He has an off-and-on game with some local friends.  He has a group of guys who come over with their kids and the men and kids play a family-friendly game every few weeks.  And he has two games that he plays online in Google hangouts.   There was a game convention in Ohio last week, and they all decided to meet there.  He drove up on Wednesday with our friend Dustin (who plays in both the local group and one of the online games), and they met the other guys in their group.  He had a great time.  He got back Sunday night.  He brought the kids all a new mini, and he brought me a few White Castle burgers.

That means that the kids and I were on our own for a while.  I scheduled myself to be off 8 days in a row to minimize the need for babysitters.  On Thursday afternoon, April and her kids came to hang out with us and spend the night.  We had planned on going swimming in the evening, but we put it off because of the weather.  While the kids played in the house together, April and I hung out on the front porch with our wine while the rain showers and thunderstorms came and went.  The kids were all asleep by midnight or so, but we stayed up until 5:00 am.  It was crazy and fun.  We always have a blast together.   I laughed and stumbled my way up the stairs and fell into bed in my clothes.  The fun ended promptly at 7:00 am when all the kids were bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and LOUD.  We finally got it together and made it to the pool around noon on Friday.  We swam all afternoon, and then Cate came home and spent Friday night with us.

On Saturday, we cleaned up our messy house and the kids went to Grandma’s while I got some Statistics done.  I took my first online test.  In the evening, my kids came home and my old friends Bridget & Matt came over for a while.  We had a fun visit.

On Sunday, I took all the kids to mass, and then we went to eat at my in-laws like always.  In the afternoon, I came home and cooked broccoli casserole and sweet potatoes and we went to my parents’ house for Father’s Day dinner and swimming.  Matt got home around 8:00.  He came over there and ate with us, and then we came home. 

Matt had a great trip, and I am happy for him.  I also had a blast, so I’m happy for me too.  I was a little nervous about him being gone because he takes care of most of the domestic stuff these days, but all was fine.  The house stayed clean, and nobody starved to death, and we actually had a pretty good time.

 

Giant beetle I caught  on the porch Friday night.  Homemade entertainment.

 Dad's Day tribute:  Me & my sweet Daddy on Christmas 1980 after he fixed my Skating Kimberly doll's leg that I broke off trying to make her do a split.

 

 A Home Depot gift card for the Father-in-law and a mustache mug made by a local potter and licorice candy for Papa.  My Dad, me, and all my kids love licorice. 

 Matt's goodies.  The kids have been watching the Messing with Sasquatch videos and wanted to get him Jack's Links beef jerky. 

  For me!  Much better than Krystal.   :-)

I Win the Bread

So the previous blog post was really just to give some insight into the issues I’m facing at work.  Everybody has stress.  I remember taking an overload of college classes and working 30 hours a week at the age of 20.  It was stressful.  I recall being a part-time college employee with one child, and life seemed stressful.  I once was a stay-at-home mom of three, and guess what?  Life was stressful.

I think it’s just who I am.  I over-schedule myself.  I make a much bigger deal out of little things than I should.  Last-minute changes in plans throw me into a tailspin.  I am easily irritated, often insecure, socially awkward, and jealous of everyone.  All of these things cause me stress.

There is one particular stress that I face now that is all new to me.  I am a breadwinner.   It is a stress unlike any I have felt before.  Failure is not an option.  I sometimes worry about my safety and health just because the physical act of me going to work is how my family survives.  That is a lot of responsibility.

So here is how I became a breadwinner.  Back in 2008-2009, I was in my second year of homeschooling Bonnie.  The boys were both in half-day preschool , and Rosemary was a toddler.  Matt went to work everyday at a big fabric engineering company as a drafter.  Every day when he got home, he unloaded how much he hated his job.  It was monotonous, meaningless, and bureaucratic.  It made him want to vomit.  After he unloaded, I let the tears flow about what a horrible day I had teaching Bonnie…. the whining, the crying, the backtalk (and Bonnie was pretty bad, too).  It was miserable.  I maintained that no matter how terrible his job was, at least he got out of the house and got to see adults 5 days a week. Then one day Matt said, “I don’t see what is so horrible.  I would love to homeschool the kids. Your life seems perfect to me.”  I offered to trade, and that was that.  We agreed that we would put the kids in public school for two years, he would support me through nursing school, and then I would support the family financially while he taught the kids.  And that is exactly what we did.    

I am happy with our arrangement and so is Matt.  The biggest issue we face is actual or perceived criticism from certain family members.  It is a nontraditional arrangement, and some people just can’t wrap their brains around it.  I have even found myself feeling insecure about it at times, but it is usually because the person I am talking to is a coworker who knows about how much money I make and he or she can’t believe I could possibly support a family on what we make.  They have a spouse who makes as much money or more than they do, and it is barely enough to fund their vacations and semi-annual wardrobe.  See, there is the feeling inadequate thing... and the jealousy thing. 

Since I don’t know anyone in a similar situation to talk to about this, I have searched for a bulletin board or online support group, but I’ve had no luck in finding one.  There are boards for single moms, but I am not a single mom.  I don’t have the stresses of a single mom.  Nor do I have a disabled spouse or a deadbeat spouse.  Our arrangement is completely voluntary.  Matt does the lion’s share of the housework and basically pampers me and makes my life as easy as possible.  I don’t want anyone to ever think he doesn’t pull his weight.  Homeschooling kids is a full-time job if you are doing it right. 

Even though I signed up for it and continue it willingly, supporting a family is stressful.  Sometimes the weight of the responsibility overwhelms me.  Sometimes I wonder if females are equipped to carry such a load. 

I do alright.  I make as much as Matt did when he was the sole supporter of the family.  But like I said, I put a lot of pressure on myself.  I don’t want to just scrape by.  I want to make enough to get ahead in life.  I don’t want to be poor forever.  All this was brought to a head by today being payday and bill paying day, and I had to make a sizeable transfer from our savings account to cover everything.  It left me feeling panicky and inadequate, and with the recent changes at work, I also have a feeling of helplessness.   Hopefully when I finish school, some wonderful opportunity will come my way and I’ll start to feel better about the job I’m doing. 

Wind of Change

Thank you all so much for all the blog love!  I really considered that I was doing this for myself, but if reconnecting with and growing closer to people happens as a result, that is all the better, right?

This week has been a rough one.  I do pretty well with working night shift in general, but every now and then, I have a week of not being able to fall asleep and stay asleep during the day.  This was one of those weeks.  I slept all day on Monday and got called off, and that threw me off.  And there are some changes going on at work that are causing me stress, and stress causes insomnia.

Change is the only constant in life.  The ability to embrace change instead of fearing it is important, but I’m a bit slow in warming up to some of these. I love what I do, and I have always loved the company I work for.  They have always put patient care first and made their employees feel valued.  Having said that, I am going to unload a ton of negative feelings.  But remember, I love my job.  I really do.  

We recently found out that there will be no employee raises this year.  I have been amazed that during this recession our company has been able to give raises to all employees every single year up to this point.  I have known plenty of people who have been laid off, furloughed, forced to retire early, or taken across the board cuts in pay in recent years.  So the fact that this happened is disappointing, but not at all surprising.  I really blame the economy in general more than the company I work for.

The first issue is that our payroll has been contracted out.  When I first started working there, it was shocking to me to see people rip open their paychecks as soon as they were delivered.  I had not seen people do that since I was a teenager with a summer job.  It seemed so unprofessional to me.  I soon learned why they did it.  With all the different pay designations, bonuses, and shift differentials, it is easy for a mistake to be made.  The good thing was that getting it fixed was as easy as a phone call to your supervisor.  Now it is difficult to fix.  One side effect of this outsourcing is when overtime pay kicks in.  We have always gotten overtime after working 36 hours.  So if you take an extra shift, it is a full 12 hours at time and a half pay.  Starting July 1^st, we won’t get paid overtime until we work 40 hours because "the new company doesn't do it that way".

Another negative change is that a new “central staffing” department is having to approve our work schedules.  Making my own schedule is an important reason I chose this job.  When I started, I didn’t have to work weekends at all.  I am now required to work one weekend per schedule.  We sign up for 3 nights a week, and if we opt to add a fourth night, we receive on-call pay.  If they call us in, we get overtime rate, plus on-call pay, plus bonus bucks.  It ends up being a significant amount.  If they don’t need us, we still get the on-call pay just for being available.  Now with central staffing, they are changing on-call days to “overtime” days so they can call you off without having to pay on-call pay.  

Another new development is that the resource nurse is calling to reevaluate staffing ratios every 4 hours.  On other units, nurses can have 5-8 patients.  It is easier to anticipate needs halfway through a shift.  In critical care, the optimal ratio is two patients per nurse.  We have to send two critical care nurses to all code blue, rapid response, and code medic calls.  That can leave the unit down by 2 nurses for an extended time.  And there are often “all-hands-on-deck” situations within our own unit.  Having bare bones staffing can be dangerous.  Several nights this week, they sent a nurse home at 11pm to achieve “optimal staffing”, and then we ended up getting several admissions and being tripled up and stressed to the hilt before the shift was over.  It has been awful.

All of these small changes add up to making employees feel devalued.  Morale is at an all-time low, and several of my coworkers are looking for other jobs.  With school starting for me soon, I wasn’t going to be able to work a lot of overtime anyway, but the negativity of all the other changes is weighing on me.  No one is happy, and the negativity is contagious. 

NYC Bound!

I love to travel.  I love the planning, the travel itself, and the reliving it again and again through pictures and memories.  It is exhilarating to me.  As much as I love it, it would seem that I have been a lot of places, but that is just not true.  Money is an issue.  Babysitting is an issue.  A husband with travel anxiety is an issue.  I want to see the world, but it is hard.

And I want to inspire my children to see the world.  They have only been a handful of places.  None of them have ever flown.  Because of the huge expense of six plane tickets, the logistics of getting 4 children through the airport, and the possibility that one child would freak out and it would spread to the others, I thought it would be best to take them on trips separately.  The 13^th birthday seemed like an excellent time.  Bonnie is old enough and mature enough to be safe and behave properly and young enough to still have fun with a parent.

I have been planning this birthday gift for months now.  It has been a hard secret to keep.  We are taking a 3-day/2-night trip to New York City.  Just Bonnie and me.  On one hand I’m terrified because I am going to a place I have never been and I am solely in charge of the safety and well-being of a child.  On the other hand, being terrified is not a good excuse to stick your head in the sand and refuse to live an adventurous life.  We’ll be fine.

For her gift, I got her an I heart NY t-shirt, a Frommer’s 2013 guide to NYC, and I printed out the plane tickets with our names on them.  I wrapped them all in the same box in that order.  When she saw the tickets, she screamed and ran and hugged me.  It was a sweet moment.  That was the video that got erased yesterday that broke my heart.

The only thing I have done is booked the flights and ground transport to and from the hotel.  Because planning trips is so much fun for me, I am going to let her help every step of the way.  We aren't going until early October when the weather will be a little cooler, so we have plenty of time.  We looked at hotels tonight online. 

As expected, we’ve had a bit of jealousy, especially from Luke.  The odd thing is that I think of all our children, he will enjoy traveling the least.  He is a homebody.  He hates for Matt and me to go on vacation because when he is staying with his grandparents, he misses his home.  He even gets an upset stomach before leaving home for a day or two. 

Before we decided to go ahead with the trip, we assured ourselves that unless a catastrophic event occurs between now and then, we will plan a special trip for each of our children for their 13^th birthdays.  It is sometimes frustrating to anticipate that at the moment one child is happiest, the others will be jealous.  On one hand I think, “Suck it up. That is life”.   But even more than them sucking it up and accepting that life is not always equal, I want them to learn to be truly happy for each other.  That is a big life lesson to learn, and it not only helps you act graciously, it gives you inner peace and joy. 

Here are some photos of Sunday.

               June 1st is National Doughnut Day.  Bonnie gets doughnuts instead of a cake.

What Life is Like Now

I am a full-time RN in the intensive care unit at a local hospital.  I work night shift, either 3 or 4 shifts each week.  The honeymoon is definitely over, but all-in-all, I have to admit it is not a bad job.  I enjoy feeling like my work is important.   While I sleep my days away, Matt teaches the kids.  We are at the end of the second year of homeschooling.  Bonnie is completing the 7^th grade.  Will is finishing up his 5^th grade year, and Luke is finishing 4^th.  Rosemary just graduated from Covenant Preschool and we have decided to homeschool her next year.  

We are still attending mass at Saint Mary’s in Rome.  I just turned in my notice that I will not be continuing as a parent volunteer in the nursery after this month.  Part of the reason is that I am registered for school this summer.  I am taking an online Statistics class from GHC, and I will be starting my BSN program at West Georgia this Fall.  If all goes as planned, I’ll graduate next May.  Both boys are still involved in Boy Scouts, and Matt will be the Webelo leader next year.  Bonnie has been taking piano for several years now, and she just found out that her teacher, Miss Meredith, is moving away.  Now she will have to find a new teacher, and she isn’t happy about that.  

This last month has been a whirlwind of celebration.  Rosemary turned 6 on May 14^th.  My sister-in-law, Lisa, is expecting a baby in July, so April, Cristine, and I gave her a baby shower on May 17th.  Roey graduated from kindergarten on May 22^nd.  All the kids played in the indoor soccer league at First Baptist and just had their last games.  Matt turned 40 on May 29^th, and we had a party for him on the 31^st.  It was a medieval/fantasy themed party.  We dressed up in costumes and had a great time.  Sometimes I feel like the only time we make any effort around the house in when we are having company.  Things got nice and clean, and we are still enjoying the benefits from that.  Bonnie turned 13 on June 1^st.  Her BFF, Andrea, spent the night that night, and she went to church, Sunday dinner, and swimming at Mom & Dad’s with us the next day.  Also of note is that Uncle Rick died on May 28^th.  He had been sick for quite a while and was on hospice.  He was staying with Granny, but he went to the hospital on Monday afternoon and died early Tuesday morning.  That has been very tough on my family. 

So that’s it.  We’re up to speed.

 Roey's graduation

 Bonnie and Andrea getting silly with chocolate

 April and me dressed in our medieval finery

I'm back

The first blog post I wrote was on MySpace.  Because there was no way to filter which of my friends could see my posts, I started another blog on Blogger.  As a stay-at-home mom without much time to talk to family and friends in real life, the blog filled a need I had to scream out frustrations and joys to the world.  My following was small, and I liked it that way.  I blogged my way through nursing school, and then life became so busy that I stopped trying to keep it up.  I saw adults on a daily basis, and I no longer needed that outlet to let off steam.  I set all my posts to private and let it sit for a couple of years.  The few times I have gone back to it for reference, I have read things I had completely forgotten about.  Forgotten experiences, forgotten feelings, words of wisdom from my friends that I had forgotten about.

Earlier today, my husband mentioned something that happened about 6 months ago.  I didn’t remember it.  A few days ago I watched a movie that he swears we had seen before.  I had no memory of it.  This evening as Matt was putting my running playlist on my iPod Touch, he inadvertently overrode everything on my current iPod with the settings and data from my old iPod.  Everything since Christmas was gone.  I use the notes function as a sort of daily journal.  It was gone.  All of my photos and videos were gone, including a video of Bonnie opening her birthday gift yesterday which I had every intention of keeping forever.  I went out on the porch and cried.  Although I maintain that most people would be a bit upset, and rightfully so, I think my emotion was extreme.  Why did that affect me so dramatically?   It’s because those memories are gone forever.  I have a very poor memory.  I remember very little from my past.  The things I remember are random and small.  Those few memories are strong, but I know there are thousands upon thousands of things I have forgotten.  I rely heavily on photos, my writings, and the stories of other people to help me remember things.  My mind is like the sand on the beach.  As the waves come ashore, memories are lost forever.  I have decided to start a new blog to be my virtual memory.   It is not really to entertain anyone.  It is just my daily journal, and I’ll let the people I love come along for the ride if they want to.  

It is still Chocolate Stashes.  As I thought five years ago, the one constant of my adult life is a secret stash of chocolate in the house.  And I still have one.

If you find me, comment to let me know you’re here.