OMG!
I should have realized when things were going well, I was keeping up with everything, meeting deadlines and meetings and getting a full night's sleep that things were just too good to be true.
And I was right.
Post-Thanksgiving chaos and turmoil has arrived bearing its full fledged plumage.
This morning I awoke at the usual 5.30 am to get Em out of bed and opened my eyes again at. . . .
8.00 am.
The time when I am usually, breakfasted, dressed, lunch made, blog completed, dogs out for their morning ablutions. . . .
And I am just crawling out of bed.
I drove Em to school in her car because there was no way I was jumping from the passenger side to the driver's side wearing my zebra stripped pj bottoms, my too big red sleep shirt and my slippers.
One day there will be an accident when I am wandering around in such apparel.
The law of averages will make it so.
From that moment, the day has been nothing more than me rushing to catch up.
Because at 5.30 I was supposed to stay and up and finish marking the interviews for my advanced qualitative class.
Instead, as has been the pattern, I was marking them in every spare second I had.
I haven't looked at email since Friday.
And frankly, I'm afraid to.
Yesterday was given over to much needed sleep, making a beef stew big enough to last for at least three meals and marking in every spare second the day provided.
I even ignored the house phone and my cell phone in an effort to take a much needed time out.
Because I have a shit load of stuff to do before Friday.
Funding applications and revised course proposals due tomorrow.
Assignments marked, only to be replaced with a brand new pile.
And another pile tomorrow.
And another pile Thursday.
Marking will be the themed event for this coming weekend.
As it was this weekend, except for one notable exception.
Work deadlines, assignments begging to be marked, children with issues. . .all of that is temporarily tossed to the wayside to take my mum out Sunday afternoon.
The Big Potato for our weekly veggies.
And then coffee at the mall.
I was somewhat reluctant to take Mum out given her present physical state.
She fell last Tuesday after she'd had her disorientating medications and managed to bang herself up good.
As she said on Sunday, "I was taught that if you're going to do something, do it well."
And she did.
And this was after three days.
What was the most upsetting for me during our time out were the number of people who would look at Mum and then look at me in shock and horror.
Typically I don't really care what people think of me.
But to even think that for a minute I would ever, in this or any other lifetime hit my mother??????????
Well that just brings out the less convivial side of my personality.
As some people found out.
Other than having to set a few people straight, we had a lovely afternoon together.
And you can see why I burst into tears in the nursing home dining room when I went for dinner Saturday evening.
No one wants to see their mother injured.
And I made her promise me that she'd ask for help when going to the bathroom post-meds.
Saturday evening finally arrives, I am home in my jammies, papers in front of me to mark whilst I sit in my favourite chair, curtains concealing me from the outside world when my cell phone rings.
Mistakenly, I answered it.
To an hysterical Meredyth on the other end, exhausted from only a few hours sleep the entire weekend, getting ready for her 11.30 pm shift at the bar, and whose toilet had overflowed.
Which proved to be the straw that broke the camel's back.
Causing the exhaustion-caused hysterics.
I did what any mother would do.
Grabbed Stephen, the plunger and a clean towel because she used all her towels to sop up the toilet water resting on her floor, and she was in need of a clean one.
And off we went to fix the toilet, clean the floor and provide a listening ear to her hysterics.
By the time we left, she was fine.
When she arrived for dinner last night, she was fine.
But for her hysterics the Saturday before, she was given a time out.
Yes.
Meredyth crawled into Frankie's crate, to see if she could.
And she thought I wasn't going to take a picture.
Or three.
Poor Frankie.
He didn't know what to do.
So he whined.
His default dealing-with-strange-and-stressful-things tactic.
The kids have adopted this stance, too.
I may need more crates.
Stephen and I have come up with our own dealing with stress tactic.
We've decided to not be held hostage by the earlier and earlier darkness.
A couple of weeks ago we purchased a light attached to an elasticized band that wraps around Stephen's head in order to provide enough light to keep me from falling over or wild critters from attacking us.
Meaning we now head to the experimental farm after dark for a nightly sojourn with the dogs.
We've come to realize, however, that I need my own head light.
Stephen walks faster than I do.
And he has a tendency to sweep the light behind us, leaving me stranded in the dark with no idea where to put my foot next.
So I'll be getting my own head light and looking like a tool be damned.
That light facilitating the after dark walks may be the only thing holding my ever crumbling sanity faintly together.
Title Lyric: Bruises by Chairlift
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