It's fricking NaBloPoMo. It's fricking the third of NaBloPoMo and I had this little glimmer of an inkling of an idea in the baaaaaaaack of my head that it might be a good idea for me to do this to get my ass back in the blogging saddle. But have I started? I have not. You may not have noticed what with unwellness being a mothereffing ghosttown and all.
Did you know there are actual ghosttowns in Arizona? I remember visiting one called, fittingly, Tombstone as a child. If you find the Wild West charming and fascinating and romantic rather than, oh, dusty and hot as I do... you might enjoy a visit with your cowboy-obsessed offspring someday.
Anyway, I received a check from BlogHer the other day for those ads over there and thought... "Oh, right! BLOGHER! That lovely organization that asked me to speak and recognized me for, um, writing a blog. Right! A blog! That thing I did tirelessly and consistently for, like, six years or so until I became a mom who works full-time. Right. That.... Shit."
BlogHer is here in NYC next year and I fully intend to go, provided I can find a couple hundred dollars buried in my yard or something. But what kind of blogger am I, anyway?
I am lately the same kind of blogger as I am writer. Which is.... not.
Mo' committees, mo' problems, and I am on a lot of them. Every time I get a tiny bit ahead on the most integral and necessary parts of my job, another email arrives asking me to speak at some meeting or deal with some other giant project. It is good to be recognized but.... When I asked my boss why I am on so many things, he cheerily replied, "Want something done? Ask a busy person!" Which I... am.
But I would like to blog again. I feel like a chunk of my soul is missing when I am not spewing into the ether on a regular basis. So here. Let's get caught up.
A Brief History of the Past Few Years
When we decided to have a baby, Mother-in-Law declared that she would be our nanny.
When I was newly pregnant, we bought a house. A big, expensive house that needed expensive re-doing so that we could fit everyone into it. But it was OK that it was expensive because we wouldn't have to pay for day care. Plus the market was, like, crazy, and we had just made craploads of money in two years in our condo and we felt stupidly invincible.
After we bought the house, Mother-in-Law told us she could only promise that she would stay with us a year.
We tried not to panic. We would beg and borrow money until we could sell the house and afford daycare. I secured him a spot in full time daycare near my work.
By last Spring, Mother-in-Law had changed her mind and decided to return to us after the summer. I GAVE UP THE FULL TIME DAY CARE SLOT in favor of a minimal, part-time slot. We decided to go ahead with the house sale, knowing it would take a while given the new crap market.
24 hours after she returned to us this fall, Mother-in-Law announced that she would not actually be staying for the year. She is leaving in January.
The full time daycare slot is gone, though we are hopeful that one might open up and we will get it. We are going to start working on our back-up plan in a few weeks if necessary. It will be a cobbled-together, crazy-ass plan, I am sure. There is still more money begging and borrowing being done.
We got a great offer to refinance that could allow us to stay in the house longer, though we still won't be be totally solvent and will still have to cross everything for excellent financial aid in future. But it would be a relief - we are enjoying the house and, most importantly, there is NOTHING out there we want to buy. If we could make it until GMB finishes college, we might be able to actually make money on our investment house AND buy a super nice two bedroom when we move instead of whatever-three-bedroom-we-can-find-in-our-budget-even-if-we-hate-it. Anyway, if you wouldn't mind, cross your fingers that the refi and the daycare spot all come together for us.
I should add here, in the interest of fairness, that Mother-in-Law was not TRYING to make our lives miserable. She has a complicated co/dependent relationship with Wes' dad and he is aging and perhaps declining. She feels like she needs to be there.
So besides the general panic of work and the two-week long cold/flu I have been battling and the general joy and pain of having a two year old... I have been in yet another state of limbo with house and child care all up in the air all. the. damn. time. I know that we are inordinately lucky in so many ways and I do still find lots lots lots to be grateful for (no, really, I DO!). But Not Knowing What Is Going To Happen is by far my least favorite thing. And it is our constant state of being.
But you know, frequently these days, I make giant wishes that things could be stable and easy for a little while, that we could pause and enjoy and relax, that things could just settle the fuck down already. But more and more, I am starting to believe that this IS life. Not Knowing IS the way it is. And things just keep coming at you like freaking Atari Space Invaders and the point of life is just to keep shooting at the bad guys. That sounds more violent than my previous life outlooks but there you go. I really do feel like my thirties are not going to be a settled decade for me. I have high hopes for my fifties.
