lawmummy

I have no words.

There’s no doubt that this has been a busy week at my house - what with it being my last day at b5media, Amy having a visit at Children’s Hospital, birthdays and work obligations… So I know the kids are exhausted.

That said, the complete meltdown this morning? Totally didn’t see it coming.

Amy had been up and down all morning. Crazy mood swings. But I finally got her calmed down enough to get to school. About a block away, Charlie says, “Look, Airplane! It’s flying!” I answer, “Yep, it’s an airplane, like the one that daddy will be in next week.”

Amy stops. She says, “Daddy is leaving? For Germany?”

And I say, “Yes.”

And she burst into tears. Major waterworks.

“But I don’t want him to go!”

And we chatted for a moment about how it was only for a bit, how he’d be back soon. Some semblance of peacefulness came over her and she stopped sobbing.

I was flabbergasted. Every time that Chris goes on these trips, I struggle with the kiddos. But usually, my tough spot is Katie. Never Amy. But this time, apparently that’s different.

I left her at school, little face all puffy, tiara on crooked. It was utterly heartbreaking.

The house is quiet this morning.

Katie is back at school after being home for the Jewish high holidays. Being home for the holidays is particularly stressful when you don’t celebrate said holidays… Then, you’re just home. Of course, the weather has been terrible - rainy and stormy - something for which Katie has placed the blame squarely on me.

Amy is also back at school after a quick trip yesterday to Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia to see the cardiologist. The results were positive, nothing to worry about. Her biggest fear? “Ms. Betty Anne will call my name and they will have to say ‘absent!’”

Charlie made noise about not wanting to go to school today, but walked in, backpack in hand with nary a fuss. He made a last ditched effort to leave, telling me that he was “ready to go” but I convinced him that his friends needed help putting together a railroad track. He shrugged his shoulders, said, “Well, okay” and walked off.

I walked back to the house with all kind of grand plans for the morning, none of which materialized. Oddly, I don’t really care. I have been running myself ragged over the past month or so. I needed a moment to not feel responsible for anything or anyone. I needed to drink some cold coffee (not on purpose but I was desperate for caffeine) and think.

In the midst of it all, a friend texted me, sounding like she needed to chat, so we did. For quite a bit, actually. And it was oddly therapeutic for me.

She is kind of where I had been awhile ago - my head not quite on straight, worried about money and the kids and my relationship with Chris. And although I know it sounded patronizing, I found myself uttering the words, “It will get better.” And I believed it.

Nothing is easy. And sometimes, things feel insurmountable. When you pile on thing after thing, it’s easy to get lost. And for the last year or so, I have felt very, very lost. Vulnerable. Discounted. Unappreciated. Worthless. I felt like I was just stumbling through every day and barely hanging on - some days, I wondered what would happen if I just kept driving down the highway. I wanted to get away from everything. It was a dark, miserable place to be.

And while I was feeling all of this, the bad news and the bad feelings kept piling on. My dad’s health declined at the same time that my mom’s health was also going south. My brother announced he was getting a divorce. Our move fell through. I was worried about Katie’s school. Amy’s sleep issues were getting worse. The house had a plague for five months (damn parasites). I began to hate work. Blogging and writing were no longer sources of comfort, they were chores. I had a falling out with some of my neighbors and the results were painful. I felt lonely. And resentful. And cynical. And scared.

I had no joy.

Things needed to change. Chris, often wiser than I give him credit for (and don’t you dare tell him that I said so), knew it, too. You have to, he would say, take some time off for you. I would, being the martyr, argue that I couldn’t. Really, it was that I wouldn’t. I think I was afraid of what would happen if things changed. As bad as they felt, they could always get worse, right?

But then I thought about what I was doing to my kids. I have always prided myself on being a good mom. But I wasn’t being a good mom. I was stressed and short with them. I yelled a lot. A lot. I didn’t have it in me emotionally to be the “fun mom” and physically, I was so out of shape that I had no stamina to play much.

I realized that I was exactly who I had never wanted to be: the fat, bitter mom that sat on the sidelines at everything yelling at her kids and blaming the world for everything.

And that wasn’t really me.

It just wasn’t.

And I resolved to make it stop.

The easiest change was physical. I started exercising more and eating better. I even joined Weight Watchers online. As of this morning, I weigh 33 pounds less than I did in spring. That is as much as Amy weighs. I feel better. I eat better. I’m more active. I run, I walk, I play soccer with the kids. I am not as tired as I used to be.

I look better. At my low point, I was struggling to button my size 16 jeans. This morning, my size 12 skinny jeans were drooping a bit in the back. I may be getting size 10 jeans soon. I haven’t worn a size 10 for almost 15 years.

I was so ready for a change when the weight started dropping that I wanted more. Last month, on a whim, while waiting for my kids to get their hair cut, I cut mine. All off. It’s short and sassy now, like I used to be. I love it.

But like I said, that was the easy part. It’s much harder to fix your heart and your mind.

I started with trying to eliminate some of my stresses. You know, those things that I swore that I had to do but I didn’t really. I let them go a little at a time. Last week, I let the biggest one go - my job as a Channel Editor at b5media. It was a job that I initially enjoyed. And I loved my bloggers at the Business Channel, such a great group of folks. But the job was time consuming - and not in a good way. Changes were happening at the company and I wasn’t on board with a lot of them. And the great sense of community, the one that I used to look forward to every morning? It fell apart. Mistrust and lack of respect ran deep. It was eating away at me. So I resigned. Yesterday was the first day in more than a year that I wasn’t responsible for checking my email every five seconds, I didn’t have any fires to put out, I didn’t have to figure how to spin bad news. It was officially not my problem. And it was a wonderful feeling.

I changed my workload at the office. I decided not to take any new clients for a bit, I have more than enough to keep busy. And despite that horrible feeling that I should, must, absolutely take every case that walks through my door, I have stuck to it.

And little by little, I’m trying to find my joy again.

I’ve realized through all of this, that no matter how unfair life seemed, how much it felt like everything was out of control, it was always me who allowed myself to fall apart. I made the decision that I wasn’t worth taking care of, that it was okay for people to take advantage of me, that maybe the person that told me that I got what deserved was right. That was all me. All of it.

Monday was my birthday. Every year for my birthday, Chris makes me a photo album - the coolest gift ever. This year, he had to make two. And last night, as I was looking through the books, I was terribly sad. I realized, staring at pictures, that I lost nearly a year of my life. I actually could not remember some of the events in the album - our trip to Gettysburg, for example. I have been so overwhelmed by everything that I wasn’t in the moment for literally weeks on end. And I can tell: I am not smiling in a single picture.

But not anymore. I’m focusing on my energy on getting better. I don’t want to become that bitter person who allows negativity to eat away from the inside out. I am better than that.

Does this mean that everything is perfect? Of course not. I’m far from where I need to be. But does it mean that I’m trying? Yep. I owe it to my husband and my kids to be a better person. But mostly I owe it to me.

I hope that if you find yourself in a similar situation, you hang on. It will get better. Trust me.

Let them know it’s Lawmummy time!

Corny, I know. I’m working on just a few hours’ sleep here…

But I wanted to let you know that the old feed from Lawmummy is kaput. Be sure and sign up for the new feed. You can subscribing via email, use one of the handy dandy aggregator buttons in the sidebar or click on:

Be sure and delete your old feed since, much like most of my starting roster for Fantasy Football, it’s worthless.

Que disastre.

It’s been a horrible tech week.

Sorry for the sudden disappearance… I had server traumas and then database failures.

I’m trying my hardest to recreate as much as I can. Unfortunately, a lot of the comments, tags and categories got lost… (sob) And I’m missing a few months’ of data. (sob)

I was trying to explain this to Chris… I feel like my journal just went up in flames. It’s a horrible feeling.

And so I’m tired. And this is disjointed. And I’m sorry.

Hopefully, it will be better soon.

I am not one of those girls who remembers every anniversary of every single thing in my life. I couldn’t tell you the date that I first kissed my husband, the date that we decided to get married or the date that we first went out…

But I can tell you what I was doing 10 years ago tonight. I was sitting in the floor of my dining room, no furniture, eating fried chicken from the Acme. It the was first night in our new home.

Although I can’t remember what I did last week, I can recollect every single moment of that day in September. It was ridiculously hot - a record for Philadelphia. Friends and family came to help us move our things in… At one point, I turned to my dad and told him that if Chris and I ever split up (we weren’t married then, shh!), he could have everything because I was never moving again. It was a flurry of activity all day long. And finally, at some point, everyone was gone and it was just Chris and I in our new house.

In just a few short months, I was calling it my home. I cleaned and painted and moved things around. I remember thinking that we could never fill this house, it just felt so big.

Ten years later, we often say that it feels small. We have packed our whole lives into these three floors.

This is my home.

This is where Lyle first crawled out of his box, all sneezy and whiny. He cried all night in his crate - and I stayed home from work the next day because I was worried that he was sick.

This is where Chris and I would sit out on our porch every Friday afternoon in summer while our friends popped in and out for casual happy hours.

This is where I announced each of my pregnancies. With Katie, it was on Thanksgiving. I was terribly morning sick. Both families were here for the holidays. We went around to say what we were thankful for - I said that I was thankful for the Potscrubber 600 (our dishwasher) because we’d need it with a new baby.

This is where each of my children took their first steps. And where they learned to ride bikes and scooters and to chalk on the sidewalk.

This is where I learned to love football. When the Eagles were playing the Green Bay Packers in the play-offs - and the power went out in the neighborhood - we watched as the whole neighborhood got into their cars to hear the end of the game. In a miraculous twist of fate, the Eagles won that game. And I suddenly got it, that feeling of how sports can bring you together.

This is where our firm started - upstairs, on the third floor. We saw our first ever potential client here and turned him down because he wanted us to do something that we didn’t feel comfortable doing. I spent the whole night worried that someone who just asked us to do something illegal now knew where we lived… but it was a great precedent. We made the right decision. And eventually, fortune smiled on us.

There is where my kids had their birthday parties and we had our holiday parties and potluck suppers.

This is where camera crews interviewed us for “Trading Spaces” - and I described us (yes, out loud) as “I’m a little bit country and he’s a little bit rock and roll.” And years later, this is where camera crews set up shop all day to monitor Amy’s wacky sleeping disorder for “Surviving Motherhood.”

This is where I came home empty-handed after giving birth to Katie. She was in the NICU for days and finally, they made us go home without her. I never thought a house could feel so empty.

This is where my kids got sick, fell down stairs, cracked teeth and otherwise got hurt - and eventually got better.

This is where I cried together with Chris watching the coverage of 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina.

This is where I laughed myself hoarse at stories from friends during girls’ nights on Wednesdays and at Chris’ corny jokes.

This is where I planned my first garden from scratch, where I got poison ivy from my insane neighbor, where I eagerly awaited the burst of color from tulips every spring and the crunch of dried grass under my feet in fall.

This is where my kids first played in the snow and where I first shoveled snow.

This is where I have packed away ten years’ worth of memories - both good and bad. This is home.

Oh gosh. This is just painful to watch:

Wow. Did you see this? Be sure and watch to the end.

I just couldn’t make this stuff up if I tried.

Dad sent an email clarifying that his doctor won’t actually call it “asbestosis” yet (though the 2nd opinion doctor did, apparently). He says: “But, he did make it clear, I do have asbestos in my lungs, and at some point it may develope into asbestosis. This is shown by the intensity and evidence of pleural thickening.”

So there you go. In the interest of disclosure.

When Charlie’s teacher asked me if he had experienced the stomach bug that was going around the school, I should have known…

Amy came home on Friday afternoon complaining of a stomach ache. About a half hour later, the vomiting begin. And on and on it went. I enjoyed the privilege of cleaning it up, all over the house, for hours and hours until it finally came to an end.

Until Saturday. When I began vomiting for hours and hours. And whereas Amy’s was gone in about five hours, mine felt like sticking around longer. So it did.

By Sunday, I was beat. And of course, not excited when Katie started vomiting. Mercifully, hers did not last as long and was gone by about 3am Monday. Actually, the worst trauma in her case was when I had to explain to her why she couldn’t be on the top bunk for the night. In contrast, Amy was in lucky/gloaty heaven as she climbed up the ladder…

Morning finally came and I had my first solid food since Saturday night. I even managed most of my normal walk - but couldn’t quite manage it at the end.

Lots of laundry and scrubbing today (as you can imagine) but things are almost back to normal. Chris has been complaining all day about his stomach - but so far, so good.

Maybe we’re in the clear for a bit? Maybe?