Feeling Lost and Hopeless

It's been a while since I decided to write.  I have not been able to put anything into words that seems to fit.  But today was a breaking point for me.  I cried for hours, and to the point that my husband thought he should leave work to come home and be with me.  So what got me here?

There are just so many unknowns in the world right now.  I am such a planner that this is so dang hard for me to wrap my head around.  You can't plan literally anything right now.  My 6 year old will ask me when the parks will open?  I don't know.  Will the swimming pool open this year?  I don't know.  When can I go back to karate?  I don't know.  When can I go back to school?  I don't know.  I hope you are seeing the pattern here.  

Then there are the worries.  Right now, both myself and my husband are still working and I am very thankful for that.  He goes to work everyday, while I work from home.  I however work in the healthcare industry and everyday that this pandemic continues, puts a strain on the companies finances.  I am always worrying about if/when I may lose my job.  Then there's always the worries that the media is portraying.  Will we run out of food?  Will there be a meat shortage soon?  Both my husband and daughter are on immune suppressant medicines which puts them in a high risk category.  But beyond that, my daughter is supposed to have her annual CT scan this month to see if she is still cancer free.  That will not happen.  It will be postponed for months.  So if her sarcoma, which is an aggressive form of cancer, returns we will not know for months.  Big worry.

What's next? Ahh yes, the hatred in the world right now.  Everybody seems to have lost any concept of understanding and compassion that they may have once had.  People have lost the ability to see that it is ok to have differing opinions.  What is best for one person, is not what is best for someone else.  And if you disagree, you are called selfish and wished upon to catch the virus.  I myself was told I was selfish this week for mourning my old way of life by someone I considered a good friend.  Wow.  I didn't know that I wasn't allowed to feel sadness anymore.

The absolute hardest part for me is the constant feeling of being a failure.  Last week, I worked 50 hours from home  along with homeschooling my 6 year old, and trying to keep up with the house, her karate classes, our 2 dogs, ordering our groceries online only to pick up the order and be missing 1 item needed for 4 different meals.  I see others on social media posting about how great this family time is and how much they are loving it, and I have to admit...I DO NOT.  This is the hardest thing I have ever attempted in my whole life.  But if you dare share those feelings with anyone, you are put down.  How selfish of me to be tired.  I should be thankful I still have a job.  How selfish of me to have a hard time homeschooling my daughter.  I should be thankful for this time I get to spend with her.  Well guess what folks??  I do enjoy the time with her and I am thankful for my job.  That does NOT make it any easier.  Also, I cannot just change my feelings.  I cannot just make myself happy.  Don't people understand if it were that easy, everyone would do it?

Today was the day I finally had the thought that maybe my family would be better off without me.  Do you have any idea what that feels like?  I cry all the time.  Not because I want to.  Because I can't help it.  I feel so very hopeless.  Instead of hiding with these feelings, I shared them with my husband.  And now I am sharing them here.  I know I am not alone in feeling this way right now.  And if you are feeling this way, you are not alone either.  We can continue to fight together.  I will not give up.  I may believe that my daughters deserve better than me...however I do not want to hurt them.  And I know me being gone would hurt them.  I will continue to get up everyday and fight the good fight.  I will continue to teach my daughter karate.  I will continue to do the best I can at my job while working remotely.  I will continue to be open with my husband about my feelings.  

What I hope to convey with this is that you really have no idea where someone is in their life.  If you have nothing but hateful things to say, walk away.  Your words may be the one thing that pushes someone over the edge.  This is a very hard time for everybody.  Show love and compassion.  Just be kind friends.  We are all that we have here on this Earth.

Face Masks Made from Crafts

This is a very crazy time in our world.  We are on what feels like day 20000 of quarantine but is realistically like day 22.  Face masks are very hard to come across and obtain.  Having 2 people in our house with compromised immune systems, I knew I would have to get a little creative.

I started searching my house for what materials I could use to make masks for my family members.  I am 99% sure I threw away the extra elastic I had...what a tragedy right now.  So what could I use?  I have a few paid or leftover leggings that I have not sold.  Nice, stretchy material.  Seems like a good fit.  I also had a few old headbands that I used to use to make baby skirts from tulle.  I am not sure what made me hold onto them this long but hey, it works for me now.  I have seen that the best masks utilize some kind of filter.  I have seen a lot of folks using coffee filters.  Sadly, we don't drink coffee in this house.  What I do have however, is tulle from said skirts above.  Yep that could work for a filter.

I need to reiterate that these are just for our family.  I am not encouraging anyone to wear these and think that they replace better, store bought masks.  This is just a mom, trying to get resourceful for my tribe.

I started by just cutting a piece of material from the leg of the leggings.  I cut it all the way through, so both front and back.  Then I sewed the bottom of it together to create a pouch along the top.

I then cut a headband so that I had one long piece instead of a circular piece.  I measured it to my daughters head, cut and sewed it to the side of the legging material to the headband, pinching the sides together to make a tighter fit.  Last, I sewed the edges of the top pouch, just to make it a little smaller.  I cut some of the tulle and put it inside the pouch as a filter.  This can be easily changed out after an outing. Is it perfect? No, but it will work for our purposes.  Get craft mama's and look around your house.  You never know what you may be able to make.

Day 8 of Social Distancing

Well, here we are on day 8 of social distancing.  What exactly does this mean?  It means you are supposed to basically stay home unless it is necessary to leave.  When you do leave, you are asked to maintain a 3 foot distance between you and anybody else.  School are closed for a month (depending on what part of Michigan you live in).  Everything is cancelled and closed. No restaurants to eat at, no movie theaters to go relax, no gym to burn off some steam.  Even retailers are closing that do not sell groceries. 

Thankfully, I am able to perform my job at home so here I sit with my 6 year old, trying to find a balance of work, schooling, and basically staying alive.  Derek is still working.  He works in a warehouse with less than 10 people and he is washing regularly so I feel somewhat safe about it.  They aren't offering them not to work and we would not survive without both incomes for very long. 

Kayla will be home from school this weekend for the indefinite future.  It will be nice to have an extra set of hands around but also scary.  That will be 2 people in the house with compromised immune systems.  I wish I could just put them in bubbles.  Poor Kayla's 21st birthday is coming up.  How fun will that be to spend it at home with her parents, locked in with nowhere to go?  No shopping with that birthday money because nothing is open.  I can only make her what we can find in the stores for a birthday meal.  It's a bad time for birthdays all around.

I ran to the store yesterday and bought a deck of cards (I can't believe we didn't already have one), UNO, and some paint kits.  We have lots of games and books.  We have game systems and ipads.  What else are you guys using to entertain your children?  It's a rainy day today so I am looking for any and all ideas.  Take care and be safe out there.

Pandemic of 2020

This is by far the craziest time that I can remember in all of my 38 years so far.  The fear of this virus is taking over and people are starting to panic.  What does this look like to your family?

Both my older daughter Kayla and my husband Derek have compromised immune systems due to the medications that they are on.  This is a terrifying time for them.  Kayla goes to the University of Michigan, which has went to online format only for the rest of this semester.  However, she is an RA in a dorm so she is not allowed to leave or it is seen as forfeiting her job.  She also works at the University of Michigan hospital in the gift shop. She is literally around thousands of people each day.  Unfortunately, if she forfeits her RA position, she would lose her room and possible her housing benefits that have already been paid and we would need to cover that cost.  We simply do not have that kind of money.  That is why she is an RA in the first place.  I advised her to try and stay isolated in her room as much as possible and wash, wash, wash those hands.

Poor Kinley is only 6 years old and is so scared and upset over this whole thing.  Their little minds cannot comprehend what is going on.  All she knows is that her karate tournament which she has worked so hard for is cancelled, her friends birthday party she was looking forward to is cancelled, school is cancelled for the next 3 weeks during reading month which is such a fun time.  She has seen the chaos at the stores and is worried we will run out of food.  She is scared she will bring home germs to her dad and he could die because "he isn't healthy already".  The Easter egg hunts are already being cancelled.  Literally every fun activity is being cancelled.  How can we expect children to understand and just accept it?  More than half of the adults I see are having a hard time accepting it and everyone seems to be in a state of shock. 

Most of us have never lived through anything quite like this.  Something that is just crippling not just our country, but most of the world.  There are so very many moving parts to this problem. How can families that were barely making ends meet, now provide breakfast and lunch for these children that may have been getting it for free at school?  How can they continue to work if their kids do not have school for at least the next 3 weeks?  Who will take care of the kids?  Even if they find some place, can they afford it?  What about all of the folks who are out of work due to events being cancelled so they have no income coming in?  What will they do?  All of these unanswered questions are by far the scariest part of this whole pandemic.

The only things that we can for sure do right now is wash your hands to help stop the spread. Stay home as much as possible. Be kind to others as everyone is beyond stressed. Share items that you may have an abundance of that are in high demand.  Offer to help ease the childcare burden for a friend if you are able.  This is the time to show exactly what you are made of and truly make a difference.  And above all, hold your loved ones a little tighter today as we do not know what tomorrow will bring.

Are Play Dates Not a Thing Anymore

Now I know that there is a great big old age gap between my children, but I swear it feels like I am raising them in an entirely different world.  Do kids not have friends anymore?  Do playdates and sleepovers still exist?

When Kayla was young, I swear she had friends over or was at a friends house pretty much every weekend.  Kinley on the other hand has not been invited to a single sleepover or playdate.  Now there have been talks of a sleepover with a friend but the official invite just never came.  We did have this same friend to our house for a sleepover in September.  Now before you say it, yes they are a little young and yes, trust me, I realize times have changed.  However, the heartbreak I feel when Kinley looks and me and says she wishes she had friends to play with is just terrible.  We have tried many, many groups and activities like swimming, pom, gymnastics, girl scouts, karate, bowling, all to just name a few from the last year and a half.  None of these have resulted in friends.  None of Derek or I's friends have children her age.  So I ask you, is this how it is now?  Is this just reality of childhood these days?  She is so desperate that the other day, we heard kids playing outside, and she ran out to ask if she could join, despite her shyness and never having seen these kids before.  She was so excited and has not stopped talking about the experience, which I apparently really took for granted as a child and when Kayla was a child.  For those wondering, I believe these children are moving in a few houses down but cannot confirm that since this was the first and only time we have seen or heard them.

How do your kids make friends?  Where did they meet them?  Are they your friends children?  I need more ideas on how to find her friends that are convenient enough that she can sustain.  Let's be honest, friends that live too far away, may not be able to be sustained at this young age.  And we don't need a ton (although we would welcome it).  I would definitely take quality over quantity here.  I just need to know where to start.

Working Full time

Sometimes being a full-time working mom is hard...really hard.  Does anyone feel me on this?? You are being pulled in every direction by every person.  There's always a deadline to meet, a project to make, an appointment to be scheduled.

We live in Michigan so the weather is very unpredictable and well, it's winter.  The last 2 days have been snow days for my 6 year old.  We don't have backup care (helloooooo village, where are you??). We do have a camp that we use in situations like this sometimes but even they were not open as they didn't have enough kids to operate.  So what do you do??  One parent has to stay home.  I mean a 6 year old can't exactly fend for themselves for 8 plus hours.  I am a salaried colleague with the slight option to work from home occassionally.  My husband is an hourly employee who had already put in 8 hours of overtime which he would lose if he called in.  So of course, I am the option to stay home.  Now mind you, I work in the accounting field (loosely) so the end of the month is one of the busiest times for me.  Again though, what choice do we have?

I guess I am just frustrated that we have no other options.  I want to be reliable at work, but I also HAVE (and want) to be reliable for my child.  It's a very tough balance, especially when you are the breadwinner of the family.  How do you keep both ends happy and satisfied?  Please, let me hear how you all do it.  Maybe you have a suggestion that I haven't thought of.

How to fit it all in

Do you ever have those days, or even weeks, when you just have so much to do that you have no idea how it will all get done??  Today is one of those days with the potential of it being one of those weeks.

Kinley has just been obsessed with cooking lately so when the school offered a cooking concoction class, we knew we wanted to sign her up.  Mind you, we signed up in December when we had no idea what our schedule would look like at this time.  She also has a karate tournament this weekend which means amped up classes this weekend to prepare.  She wants to compete in board breaking which she has done all of 2 times in her life.  Once at her first competition and once in a class a few days before said competition.  So clearly she needs all the practice she can get.

So this morning, it was Monday morning as usual, except for yesterday was daylight savings so we are all a little tired and off of our game today.  Kinley will have her cooking class which is supposed to go until 5:35, and board breaking class starts at 5:30.  So Derek will go to the karate school to save our seats, while I pick Kinley up from cooking class 15 minutes early, so she can change clothes in the car.  Thankfully they asked them to bring a snack so we sent a lunchable to hold her over.  She has board breaking class from 5:30-6:30 and then weapons class from 6:30-7.  Yeah, I forgot to fill you in on how she just learned the ending to her weapons routine and has to compete with it THIS Saturday.  Then it will be home for official dinner, reading, and bed by 8.

As parents, why do we do this to ourselves and to our kids??  We feel stressed.  They feel stressed.  But when I asked her if there was something she was willing to skip, there was not.  She really wanted to participate in each thing.  It's a great life lesson for her I suppose.  Some days just suck and are hard, but they are all for a greater purpose.