I'm So Stressed I'm Laughing

Hey y’all,

WHAT A MORNING. Seriously. And boy what a weekend. My last post was about handling feelings of anxiousness and just our overall emotions in times of trouble. You know why I wrote such a post? You guessed it. Because I’ve been struggling. Since I started having babies, but also over this weekend.

We spent Saturday afternoon watching the Iron Bowl at my in-laws’ house because we’re rival teams and War Eagle. 😉 Since Jacob was off for Thanksgiving last Thursday, he had to make it up on Saturday. He met us at his mom’s when he got off of work that afternoon and caught the second half of the game (hardly worth watching, but I digress). My mother-in-law insisted on keeping both kids over night so we wouldn’t have to make the drive back out after breakfast in the morning – she usually gets the kids all day on Sundays to get some time in with them and to let Jacob and I have a break and some time to ourselves. Yes, I have extremely generous family, I am well aware. <3

It would be Mason’s first night away from me; and needless to say I was super anxious about it, but was grateful for such a night and Sunday of possibilities. (At around ten that night I went to the bathroom on the kids’ end of the house and shouted, “I CAN BE AS LOUD AS I WANT AND USE THIS MORE CONVENIENT BATHROOM BECAUSE THERE ARE NO SLEEPING CHILDREN” It was grand.)

Jacob and his mom worked together to get me out of her home without babies in tow and since we had driven separately, I followed Jacob the fifteen minutes back home.

Roughly two minutes from the house, I ran something over. It was firm and smelled like a skunk? but didn’t feel serious and we made it home just fine. I pulled into the garage and got out of my car and there was coolant pouring everywhere and I had some kind of hose dragging the ground. Lovely.

Jacob only stood there in shock for a minute before sliding under the front of my car. He tugged on a plastic piece and even more liquid spilled out of my engine area.

He spent Sunday (his only day off for the weekend) under the hood of my car, only to declare grimly that my radiator was pretty much totaled and probably so was my AC condenser. It took him about an hour to finally decide that he would, indeed, order the part and make the repair himself. (For anyone who doesn’t know, Volvos are evidently a pain in the butt and unnecessarily difficult for mechanics. And Jacob absolutely hates working on cars.) Then he told me that his truck hasn’t been wanting to start all week. He gets it there, but with much effort. It needs a fuel pump, he informs me now. A roughly $300 part now on top of a $200 part for my radiator. And my car isn’t going anywhere until we can find one and he can find the time to install it. We both turn to the Mustang – the fancy car that we’re making payments on that’s been sitting in the garage because we have kids now and it has no battery so it can’t move anyway. And it’s Christmas and this happened last year and I need to run to Sam’s Club desperately to spend $100 on diapers. Talk about depressing. Talk about feeling all kinds of anxiety.

Fast forward to Monday morning. I slept great and therefore woke up super motivated to tackle my to-do list – or at least, the half I got to write down before getting interrupted.

• ·         Ride Skye at 6am – check
• ·         Get bucked off Skye at 6:30 – check
• ·         Make coffee for husband before jumping into shower and (finally) shaving – check, check
• ·         Begin work on Christmas letter while kids are sleeping and actually DRINK COFFEE WHILE IT’S HOT – check and check. I even added a drop or two of peppermint as a trial run on it’s energetic and festively tasty qualities. Boy am I glad I did…

The rest of the morning proceeded as follows:

• ·         Begin breakfast for children and realize that I have no cash to pay the farrier who texted me late the night before asking if I was available for him to come work on the horses.
• ·         Dash around like a mad woman, getting children dressed and in the truck after finishing half their breakfast so that we can get to the bank and back before the farrier shows up. Praying the truck actually starts.
• ·         Get to the bank thirty minutes too early. Kids are hungry. I’m hungry. Farrier texts and asks to push the time back to an hour later. I agree gratefully.
• ·         Go back home and finish breakfast. Begin laundry and start unloading dishwasher only to answer a call from Mom to tell me they have a stomach bug we may have picked up and my brother had a car accident. Spend time in tear-filled prayer thanking the Lord that he’s ok.
• ·         Swoop not-hungry kids back into the truck to go back to the bank and praying again that the truck will start at least one more time.
• ·         Get home, kids scatter to play, I start on the kitchen again only for the farrier to show up ten seconds later.
• ·         Drag play pen out into unexpectedly cold morning so Mason can play in the sun. Look for scattered articles of clothing so we can all go and hold horses for the farrier. While we’re outside, I realize the cat escaped into the attic while we were dragging out our 9ft Christmas tree last night. So now it looks like Christmas threw up in my front room with a half-fluffed 9fter, and the cat is screaming from the eaves of the house. The kids want inside, then they want outside, then they want inside….etc.
• ·         Pay the farrier, put the kids on toy cars in the house, go upstairs to rescue “starving” cat. That took a solid 15 minutes.
• ·         Serve lunch and start again on kitchen only to have a gentleman knock on my door from the pipeline company asking if they could use our driveway to get to the pipeline on our property to do some work. YES, JUST LET ME CLEAN MY KITCHEN.
• ·         I have lunch because I’m feeling queasy. Listen to my “potty trained” toddler strum on my guitar and sing a song about how she’s pooped in her pants instead of on the potty. Fix that situation and scrape my bowl into a leftovers container for later.
• ·         FINISH the kitchen, gosh dang it, while the cat tells me how she never thought she would see the light of day again and she still thinks she’ll never see a crumb of food for the rest of her life. Calm down.
• ·         Start another load of laundry. Answer a call from a grandmother. Feed the dang cat who runs in, grabs two bites, then takes a bath between my feet. Seriously?
• ·         Try to practice Christmas carols on the piano. End up reading to my kids instead.
• ·         Serve a snack because oops lunch was early.
• ·         NAPS.

And here we are, gosh a’mighty. My phone has been going off with texts while I type this post; and roughly ten minutes ago the mail lady came roaring up the driveway, laying on her horn right outside Katie Jo’s window…

I’m diffusing my bedtime blend from last night and it’s helping me feel less frayed. This mama needs a cup of tea and a nap. I can’t wait to get a hug from my husband later.