Is it over yet?

Winter just keeps dragging on and on and on and honestly, it's wearing me out :(

The snowpants
The winter coats
The boots
The cold
The salt on my carpet
The de-frosting of the car every morning
The scarves
The mitts
The hats

UGH! It's just all such a friggin bother - really!

Yearning for the days of sunshine, shorts, cute little skirts, t-shirts, sandals and most importantly ONLY TAKING A MINUTE TO GET READY TO LEAVE THE HOUSE!!!!!!

Yes snow - you are very pretty and crisp and clean. But you can fuck off now :)

Feeling Better

Ok - so yeah, still having the same mid-life crisis but I am feeling much more in tune with my thoughts now. Thank freaking God!

We got through a YIKES moment last week. Little Miss M had an ear infection. I know, regular working moms have to deal with their kids being sick too - and have to figure out.... do I call in sick? does hubby call in sick? do we find someone who can watch Little Miss M? do I call in the next stranger I see walking down the street and see if they want to make $20?

Before I decided to go back to work, these things were easy. Ok, dd is sick? Well then I don't do laundry today. Now it's Oh shit - NOW what do I do?

MY problem is - I am a wee bit of a control freak. I know, hard to believe but it's true. They say the first step is admitting your problem right? Well, I feel like I NEED to be at work or things won't get done right - and I feel like I NEED to be the one taking care of my sick child because no one can take care of her like I can - essentially I make these things bigger than they need to be.

Thankfully Little Miss M is feeling much better :) Half of her class is out with the flu, so I'm just waiting to see if she catches that too.... UGH Everyone keep your fingers crossed for me that she stays healthy - ok?

Back at It!

It's time to start putting my thoughts back on paper.... ok well it's not paper but you get the idea.
I think I'm having a mid-life crisis.
I'm 38 years old and wondering what I want to be when I grow up. Is that wrong? I feel at the moment like I'm spinning my wheels and getting no where - but that I don't have a specific destination where I'm trying to get.
UGH
I really don't have anything to complain about - my kids are amazing, my husband and I just shared our 13th wedding anniversary, I have a job that (for the most part) I like and a home business that I've been doing for 4 1/2 years (struggling sometimes, rocking it out other times). We have a roof over our heads, food on our table and less than 10 years left on our mortgage.

So why do I feel like I'm lost?

At one point in my life I was driven. Too driven, my mom used to tell me. I loved it! I was stressed and driven and HAPPY! I don't want the stress back, but I do miss the drive.

I'm not getting any younger - my 6 year old DD likes to remind me of that quite often, just the other day she asked me if there were dinosaurs around when I was little *gasp*

To force myself to start blogging on a more frequent basis - I am putting my blog link on the Yummy Mummy Club list www.yummymummyclub.com and hopefully this will help me here! LOL Comments would help too - please? Any suggestions on where to go in life would be GREATLY appreciated ;)

The Passing of Life

I've been watching my MIL die.

MIL was diagnosed with lung cancer in October last year and was doing relatively ok until about a month ago. The Monday after the May 2-4 long weekend actually. All of a sudden she didn't want to get out of bed. For a couple of days. Then she started talking about crazy stuff, not knowing who people were, talking to people who weren't there, etc.

I started spending as much time as I could there. MIL wants to die at home - her son lives with her, he's 25. I think she expected that once she needed taking care of that it wouldn't be long, so dying at home seemed like the right thing to do. She never would have expected to last this long, I'm sure.

I'm spent. I'm there daily - an almost hour long drive each way - and I drop the kids at school, go - stay all day and leave in time to rush home to pick up the kids. It feels selfish of me to say this - but I don't know how much more I can take. I've been changing adult diapers, sponge bathing her, comforting her when she doesn't know what's going on..... I've been watching her chest when she stops breathing - waiting to see if it goes up again. I'm emotionally fucked up I think.

The case workers that come in occasionally say that all that there is left to wait for is the "death rattle". Death Rattle - what an awful term, isn't it? I'm TERRIFIED of hearing the death rattle, but I want this suffering ended for her. I love her so much, but this isn't her any longer. Her breathing is shallow - her fingers and toes and face have started to change to a greyish purple colour - she doesn't wake up much and when she does, just kind of stares off into space for a moment before closing her eyes again.

MIL was not just a mother. She was one of my closest friends for a very long time. MIL is my oldest daughters favourite person in the whole wide world - and this is going to devastate her, it already has. I've had calls from the school saying she's broken down in tears. So during the day, I am being strong for MIL. In the evening I'm being strong for DD. I don't know how much more strength I have - perhaps I'm not as strong as I thought I was. Don't get me wrong, she was still MIL and still did MIL things that pissed me off, but all in all - she was (is?) the best MIL I could have asked for.

My MIL was my rock when my own mother passed away. Who's going to be my rock when she goes? I'm TRYING to be her rock now. When her son won't check the diaper or clean her "private area" I am there. When she complains of things hurting I'm there. My SIL and I have begged for her to be put in a hospice so that there are professionals there all the time but her son won't do it. So we sit, I hold her hand, I watch her fade away to nothing.

And it hit me hard tonight. And I don't know now if I have the strength to go back. I don't want to be there when she passes, and I'm terrified that I will be there alone when it happens. I'm fucking terrified of that.

A week's worth of nothingness...

So we ended up NOT going to Ontario Place on Monday because of the weather forecast - we decided to wait until Tuesday. So up we get, bright and early on Tuesday morning - fight some traffic on the way into Toronto and get to Ontario Place at 10 am for opening time. Had a great time! Kids loved it! Then.... at around 2:15 the heavens opened up and it POURED! Not a nice drizzle to cool us off - no no, couldn't do that - we're talking the kind of pour where if you're out from under a roof for more than 3 seconds you are DRENCHED. That's right - I said 3 seconds, not 30 seconds, not 3 minutes - yeah, it was raining that hard.

Now Ontario Place has a great thing in place where if it rains for an hour or longer continuously you get a return trip for free. So DH and I huddled under an overhang with the kids contemplating - do we stay or do we go (ooooh I love that song). After talking for a few more minutes, we just decided to leave. Yup, I'm quite sure that it did rain for longer than an hour, and kudos to those who held it out and waited for their free passes. Me? I wasn't going to do another drive into Toronto - and the passes were only good for this season, which essentially means we'd have to go again in the next two weeks before school starts. Kids have swimming lessons every day in those 2 weeks and well, I just don't want to go back HA HA

Are you Freaking Kidding Me?

Monday we are supposed to go to Ontario Place to celebrate Coco's birthday. I take a look at the weather network today and guess what - Freaking Thunderstorms forecasted for Monday. What the hell? The day we were supposed to go to African Lion Safari it was thunderstorming, so we had to reschedule. Now the day we've planned SINCE THE BEGINNING OF THE SUMMER to go to Ontario Place, it's supposed to thunderstorm.

Ugh!

I really hope that it changes. It's only Saturday and when are they ever right two days out? LOL Yeah, I know - it's gonna thunderstorm. Put my big girl panties on and deal with it. AAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHH

On the plus side, someone called the Inn that I work at yesterday saying they are the manager for a "star" and that "star" may want to stay at the Inn tonight. They were calling back today to book if they decided to go for it. I told the girls to tell them that the "star" can get a free stay if they are Brad Pitt or George Clooney and they were willing to sleep in the front lounge so that I could stare at them all night HA HA!!!!!!!!!! I have no idea who it is, so I'll update tomorrow if it ends up being something worth sharing ;)

T'was a great day!

We went to African Lion Safari yesterday and had no rain! WOO HOOOOOOO

The kids really enjoyed it - no fighting, no complaining, just a nice easy - go with the flow kind of day at the Safari. Verrrrry nice.

We're having Coco's birthday party on Sunday - I have to clean my house, either today or tomorrow because I have an Epicure Party Friday evening and then I'm working nights Friday night and Saturday night - and well, I just can't count on DH and the kids cleaning the house on the weekend while I sleep. Why is it that I hate cleaning sooooooooooo much? I love the house when it's clean and smells all nice and fresh and everything - I just hate what it takes to get the house to that point. I wish I was one of those people who just cleans constantly, cleans every day so that it was just a matter of freshening things up instead of having to do a deep clean every time some occasion is coming or I was expecting visitors.....

I mean, my house isn't DIRTY, it's just far from clean. HA HA It's so cluttered! There are 'piles' of things everywhere and that drives me nuts.

I wonder how much a maid would cost?