Stress

Stress in life never really goes away. I get that. I also get that I need to have ways to effectively deal with that stress. Right now, my way is going to be writing it down to get it out.

We’ll start with Handsome. Handsome has strabismus. We first noticed it right before he turned three years old. It was occasional and not very severe. His right eye would turn in when he would watch TV, ride in the car, or when he was overly tired. The doctor begrudgingly gave us glasses, said we could patch when it was bothering him, and said to come back regularly to make sure it didn’t get any worse.

Around October of 2011, it got worse. Handsome started to cry saying he saw “two mommies” and hitting his eye to try to make it work. We took him to the doctor and they declared that he needed surgery. Also the doctor noticed that now it was not only his right eye turning in, but sometimes his left eye would do the same. So his surgery has been scheduled for two weeks from now. They will detach the inner eye muscles from both eyes and then reattach them. It should take about an hour and then he will be in recovery. I’m still unclear how both eyes are supposed to work immediately after he wakes up and unclear on how I’m supposed to keep my four year old from rubbing his eyes.

Surgery, here we come.

Then there is DH. He graduated from nursing school last May and has been searching for a job ever since. He finally found a job that he is really looking forward to and he starts in March. This is wonderful for so many reasons which I’m sure you can figure out, but then there’s the scheduling. Both of us working full time with no childcare for two kids. Yay time management! Yeah. He will have three 12 hour working days and I’ll likely have four 10 hour working days. I may be able to work before he goes in on a couple days in order to stretch my four days to five, but that’s unlikely. So, that means I’ll get three days that I can spend exclusively with my kids. So, when exactly will I see DH? That is unclear.

New job, here we come.

Then there is my job. There is always something. This time I’m on my last promotion cycle – if I pass. If I don’t pass, then this could potentially go on forever. It’s a lot of extra stress and work and it ends a week after DH starts work. Fabulous.

New promotion, here we come – hopefully.

Dear Junior. He’s a handful. He is a smart, stubborn, strong willed, logical child. That translates into A LOT of work for the rest of us. He can NOT be distracted. If he wants that glass of water, then darn-it-all, he wants that glass of water. Favorite stuffed animal means nothing, cars mean nothing, alarm going off means nothing, removal to the next room means nothing, “no” means nothing, and I’m sure even losing a limb would mean nothing. He is on a mission for that glass of water and nothing will get in his way. It’s that way for everything. We just got back from visiting my parents and that was a whole new batch of things that he could get into. While he was there he managed to accidentally throw a rock into Handsome’s head, leaving Handsome with a huge knot in his head and us having to put ice on it to get the swelling to come down. Junior is very good at screaming as loud as he possibly can and flailing his arms and legs around.

I must say though that Junior is amazing. He sings every song he can remember. His favorite is Barbara Ann (Beach Boys) and he is absolutely adorable when he sings it. He knows all the hand motions for the Itsy Bitsy Spider and Little Bunny Fufu. His language is growing by the day. He gives the best hugs and kisses and has the cutest scrunchy face when he smiles and laughs.

Growing patience, here we come.

At the breaking point

Seriously, I'm at the breaking point. I am beyond stressed and it is wearing me down. I feel like all the pressure is on me. My husband is wonderful, my son is wonderful, my friends are great, my family is even great right now, and yet I am not doing well. I feel so much pressure from work and leaving home to go to work. I am at the point where I'm so stressed that I can hardly think straight anymore.

In college I had one semester that I just gave up. I dropped everything except Mythology cause that class was like going to storytelling twice a week. The only thing that saved me was leaving for a semester to work. After that semester I was able to de-stress and come back and bear it until I graduated. Then I escaped to the Peace Corps.

Now I'm working in a desk job and I'm miserable. I keep trying to dodge that fact. I like the people that I work with and I like the flexibility of my job, but it's just not the place for me. I don't fit here. In all honesty I am in completely the wrong career. Yes, I have the logic mind of an engineer and I can do all of this, but I don't fit this mold. I want to be at home with my boy.

Can I make it for at least three and a half more years? It seems like forever. I have to work so that my family has money to put food on the table. My husband can't work until he graduates and even then I don't know how much he'll make. I may have to continue working even then.

Maybe I should get my master's in education. I feel like I'd be able to make more of a difference there. I was once told by a career testing person that I should never be a teacher. She did all these tests on me and then sat me down to tell me what I should be when I grow up - I was 17. Before she said anything else, she said, "Never be a teacher." She said I was too much of a perfectionist for it. She also told me that I should never be an engineer. ... Hmm. ... She told me that my ideal job would be something along the lines of being a Pediatrician. She said I should choose something to do with working with children because she thought I had "that" personality. She also mentioned something about being a surgeon for children or infants. My response, "No thank you." So basically she wanted me to be a doctor for children. Great, but I can't go through that much education. Being a doctor means memorizing a lot and I'm not good with memorization. If you want me to reason through something or apply a mathematical formula, I'm all about that, but memorization? No. The only test I ever cheated on in school was in elementary school where we had a timed multiplication test. I just couldn't memorize my multiplication table. I still don't have that thing memorized. I have a minor in mathematics and a degree in electrical engineering and I still count on my fingers for small multiplication questions.

So what do I do with my life? Do I waste away at my current job? For now I have to. There has to be something better than this.

I feel a breakdown coming on.