I Need To Tell You Something

So...life is weird.

I have lived my entire life taking being healthy for granted.

I've only been seeing a doctor for the last 3 years, and that's been mostly for well visits and when they ask if I have concerns, I'm always baffled by the question and my answer is no. I'm just there because I think I'm supposed to go get checkups. It's part of adulting right?

But, last August my life got turned upside down and I've been reeling trying to find my new normal.

I haven't said anything to the world at large, and wasn't going to, until I made a new facebook friend recently. She's in my online support group and lives in Denver. She was diagnosed recently and found the support group and facebook friend requested people and I accepted. I normally wouldn't accept a facebook friend like that, I am very choosy because I share so much online, but I did. As her friend I could see that she was sharing her diagnosis with everyone she knew and sharing information to educate people on her disease. It was fascinating and she received very supportive responses. Why wasn't I doing that?

I realized that it was because I was still in a place where I was hoping it wasn't true. Because it's a diagnosis with no test to confirm and because it could also be several other, less forever type, things, I did not accept it. I still have secret hopes that everyone is wrong and it all turns out to be something insanely simple and fixable. (Guess they're not so secret hopes now) Even awful, but fixable would be preferable. I found myself praying that they'd find a tumor or growth or something on any of the hundred blood tests, ct scans, mri's etc... Now that is a weird headspace to find yourself in. It's not healthy. I think owning the diagnosis and moving forward is probably the healthier option. I'm glad I had someone to show me that.

In the process of all this I shut down. I kept bailing on plans. I only saw people on good days so no one knew I had bad days. I stopped exercising for fear it would trigger something. I tried soooo many different meds and diets and treatments to see if they would help and they all had weird side effects that weren't just for me to deal with, my whole family was stuck with the monster I had become. Unreliable, unpredictable, lazy, whiny. Let me tell you, I wasn't anyone's ray of sunshine.

Which brings me to now and to what I have to say. I have been diagnosed with Atypical Trigeminal Neuralgia. Typing that felt like the announcement in AA that each person gives before they speak. Anyways, moving on. This is a chronic facial pain condition, and mine is primarily on my left side. All the tests have come back clear which means I don't have anything scarier than this, but also means that doctors don't know what is causing this. It's a disease usually reserved for older people and there is no cure. There are anti-seizure medication options that all come with significant side effects and that do not work long term. There are several brain surgery options as well, but they are usually reserved for visible nerve compressions, which I do not have. Sooo, lots of great options right? I have come to understand what it's like to want to do something and be physically incapable of it. I am thankful that my moments like that are fleeting. I feel so awful for those that are stuck in that condition permanently and I am in awe of what they accomplish with those kinds of limitations.

This last week I have finally had my first almost pain free days since this started in August 2018. They have been glorious. They have also made me see how much I've lost and given up in the last 6 months. It's left me contemplative, remorseful and reinvigorated to do better and be better. At least as long as the meds work. My current meds make me stupid, dizzy, short tempered and cause rapid weight gain, aren't those some fun side effects? I'm learning how to deal with them so I only feel ridiculous some of the time now. I don't actually know if they're working, if my amazing physical therapist has pushed a magic button, or if I am in remission, which is something this disease can swing you in and out of at will. But whatever is happening, I'll take it.

Not really looking for thoughts and prayers or even for support, just wanted to possibly provide my world with some understanding of whatever this monster is. I can't imagine how worried you've been about my recent scarf fetishes, my sudden need for glasses or the fact that you never see me and I often don't answer texts anymore. I have not been myself. The monster that I will henceforth refer to as Scarfy has been a real bitch to deal with. I apologize for the crassness, but it was the only word that felt right for the situation.

I feel remiss if I don't mention that my family has been pretty great through this. They now cook all the meals. They have figured out how to exist without me on the days where I can't speak or be around people. They proudly stand next to me as I swath myself in scarves and hide my face from the world with never a hint of embarassment. They bring me hot drinks and heating pads and give me space when I act scary. They have all educated themselves on the disease and know it's okay to let me know if I'm behaving weird or something looks off since I am not the best judge of anything anymore. The listen to audiobooks when I can't read aloud. We all work on figuring out solutions together.

As I'm rereading this I realize it sounds like I'm dying, and I'm not. I'm figuring out my new reality and even on bad days this crap is usually only a few hours of the day. I still manage to get out and have fun and function. I'm getting past the ptsd of constantly worrying that everything I do might be a trigger and getting too scared to do anything. I am going to be in charge of Scarfy and stop letting him be in charge of me. When in doubt, I bring an actual scarf everywhere I go, so I'm covered. You see what I did there? Ha. See, I'm still laughing too. Sometimes. And I have a really cute pill case now, so fun new acccessories are always a positive right?

That's it. That's all for now. I have overshared for today. It's a whiny post, I'm clearly still working on that part. I'll leave you with some informational links in case you want to know more about this ridiculous excuse for a disease and also a few ridiculous pics that I take to document when I can't make facial expressions or when even wind hurts me so I have to wear whatever mask I can devise. Question: Do you have to be Muslim to wear a hijab, because I really feel like that could be my perfect solution... I'll file that idea as research for later.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8F8yflGHTTk&feature=youtu.be&fbclid=IwAR10f_QznbG-DzQoyS4tCr951l--4lsUvknaP5Bfd-14p1paqvoOFBXZqpw

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MDaMsJz8Rp4

Nosy Nellie #2 - Food

It's time to talk about it. It surrounds us all the time. Some of us can't stop thinking about it. We love it, we hate it, we have to have it to survive.

Food.

I wrote that one of the things on my list of stuff that overwhelms me was cooking. My stepsister had a similar comment about making dinner that everyone will eat being an overwhelming thing. 

So, I thought about it. And it overwhelmed me. Surprise, surprise.

I have multiple issues with food. I am a picky eater, like a really picky eater. You probably don't want to invite me to dinner, and I completely understand. I don't want my kids to be picky and I could write a whole other blog post on how I'm trying to accomplish that, but I probably won't. I'd call it Inside the Picky Eaters Head.

I don't particularly enjoy cooking meals. It's a lot of prep, focus and clean up and I could be playing a game on my phone or reading a book instead. It's kind of thankless, and not like thankless but worth it, like cleaning your shower is. Like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich could have got the job done quicker and with less mess, sort of thankless. And finally, there's the whole meal planning, grocery shopping and healthy aspects. It's like, enough already, we get it. Food is exhausting.

To all of you foodies out there, I applaud you, and I'm officially jealous. Also, hats off to the cooking network (is that what it's called?) because that sometimes manages to inspire me. Other times it shames me. To people who love food and all that it involves, this post is not for you.

Let's break this down into the parts that overwhelm me and how I'm overcoming it.

Step One: Meal Planning



I have figured this one out! I am a genius!! Seriously, it's been like over a year now of being able to make meals that people eat. I'll hold for the applause.

The List

Here's part one of my secret: the list.
It has been an incredibly simple, yet effective, tool. I sat my family down, and we didn't get back up, until everyone had thought of at least two meals that they really liked. We talked about the suggestions, and any meals that were liked by more than half the family made it on the list. This served us well for over a year and then I introduced the Better and Homes and Garden cookbook as well. Any child looking to get creative or wanting to try something new has been welcome to find a recipe to follow in here.

We are a large family so we ended up with a lot of ideas, smaller families may need to think of more things that they each like to make this plan work. My husband, and sometimes me too, tries to eat keto, so most of our dinners have at least a version of them that can be keto. We used to just follow this and I would have a basic grocery list each week and just look at this list on the side of our fridge for inspiration as to what to cook.

As you can see, my adorable days of the week menu has been very useful as a list maker, not so much as a weekly planner. Plans for that are in the works. I suck at updating stuff on the regular though. I'm a one and done sort of planner it would seem.

Part two of my secret: the people.Nowadays, everyone has a day to cook in our house except for me. Because A. I don't want to and B. I have to help almost everyone else. It's been this way for months, and my husband only realized that I don't have a day assigned to cook this past week. It was a fun moment. I smiled. I don't actually hate cooking, but I don't love it, and my health has made me wildly unpredictable and unreliable, so my personal chef plan was born.

Every two weeks we sit down and I make everyone tell me two meals they'll be cooking. We look at the calendar to see if anyone is getting a free pass due to scheduled activities etc... and the kids eat leftovers, or make your own dinners, on my husband and my date night once a week. And so, a plan is made and people are fed.

Step Two: Grocery Shopping

Shout out to my best friend and her wife for finally getting me to try the whole online grocery ordering thing! As they think of things during the week, they put them in their Walmart Grocery App cart and then on the weekend they go and pick up the order without ever having to go in the store. It's a real time saver for them. Inspiring right? So organized and so simple.

But... I love the store. I love most any kind of shopping. I have been against trying the online ordering because then I wouldn't go in the store. I'm glad I caved. For me it's a huge money saver when I am not wandering through and finding other items that I'm sure I "need." That being said, I've only used the online pickup thingamajig once. But I did love it. I should do it more. Be like my best friend on this one. Trust me.

Meanwhile at our house, my family tells our Echo Dot to put items on the list as we run out of them. Ain't technology grand? My entire family cooks now, so I consult the meal plan that I make them sit down and creat and then I hunt through our kitchen to ascertain what items will be needed and also consult Alexa for the staples that we may need. Next, I should type the items into the grocery store app and schedule a pickup and go to Costco for the rest because I'm too cheap to pay them to deliver. Instead, I usually end up going to three stores, on different days, to get everything and end up buying a lot of extra things along the way. I'm obviously still a work in progress in this area. I need to get out more so that grocery shopping stops seeming so appealing. Food for thought.

Step Three: Cooking

This is my favorite, because I don't do it. Sort of. I have a 6 and a 7 year old as two of my personal chefs, so they rely heavily on me as their sous chef. It was a bit of a struggle at first, but my kids have all really leaned in to the cooking requirement, and even seem to take pride in what they come up with. Sometimes I take pictures of it because I'm so gall darned proud that I've found a way to not be the cook.

My husband does Sundays, it's our big family dinner night and he does his own shopping and planning. Baby has Mondays, New Girl has Tuesdays, Wednesday is date night, Moe has Thursdays, Curly has Fridays and Larry has Saturdays. Everyone has a night of the week when they don't have a lot else going on so that it doesn't feel overwhelming.
Obviously this system doesn't work if your kids are in a million activities or if you love to cook and this would kill your greatest joy, but everyone needs to find their own stride. Making my kids participate has made them aware of how to cook, how to plan, to think of others, and it ensures that everyone likes dinner at least once a week (although sometimes it's not the one they cooked!)

Step Four: Clean Up

Someone who didn't cook is required to clean up each night, I pass the task out at random and based off if heavy dishes were used that could be broken by small people. Curly has been assigned to dishes for the year so he does those once everything is cleaned up from dinner. This is done as a bare minimum sort of chore by my kids so my kitchen is usually still a mess after dinner. I don't usually wipe down counters and thoroughly clean til the next morning, or at least once every few days. In this area I could really step up my game. I'm just now realizing as I type this. Light bulb.

And...that's it. Everyone is involved and invested. This minimizes the complaining by 1000% and hopefully gives my kids some skills they could use as adults. And again, it means I don't have to cook, so everyone is happy in the end, right? It works for us. And now you know, you Nosy Nellie.

Overwhelmed and Unprepared - Nosy Nellie #1

Let's just get this out of the way right off the bat. No, I have not posted in quite awhile. Yes, I have reasons. Are we good now? Let's move on.

A friend texted me today wondering what to do when feeling overwhelmed as a wife, woman, mom etc.. and also how I managed with my whole household of kids. She is a very close friend, so I know she knows I really don't manage most of the time, but it's sweet that she added that to make me feel good.

I thought about this conundrum of feeling overwhelmed all the time and yet always ending up unprepared for what comes next. I reassured her that I am in the same boat, but also shared a few ideas that have helped me in the past. As I did this, a blog mini-series was born into my mind and I quickly threw down the clean laundry I was folding and rushed to the computer to get the thoughts out before they disappeared into the abyss that is my future. (In my mind I sang the new Frozen song, "Into the Unknown" as I wrote this line. I'm telling you so you're not alone.)

So without further ado I present to you the Nosy Nellie series (apologies to my cousin, I promise this doesn't refer to you, I just needed the alliteration because well...it's alliteration.) Each Nosy Nellie post will focus on something in my life that overwhelms me or something from your life that overwhelms you (if you write a note in my comments, and I read it, and I have anything to offer on the subject. So basically, we'll see how that works out.) Complete with unaltered photos, I'll allow you to be nosy and peak into my life (heck you can even see my medicine cabinet if you really want to) as I share brutally honest info on what works and what doesn't for me and my family of 5 kids, 2 extra adults and a zoo full of furry animals. I say brutally honest, because I have gotten some comments (and considered some blog posts) on how nothing phases me, or how easy I make things seem and other lovely things that people say that make me want to shake them physically back into reality. I do not have it all together, but I do have the ability to keep moving on with my life and to find the bright side. It's fun that it means I can sometimes bamboozle (fun word alert) my adoring public into thinking that means I've got it all together. Sorry men (and by men I mean my Dad, because he may be the only male who reads this blog) but this series will be rather mom world centric, although I'm open to hearing your male struggles as well.

Without further ado (there's been enough of that already) let's brainstorm together and get our whine on!

My first suggestion to my friend was to make a list of what feels so overwhelming. I find that this allows me to let some things go and chill out a bit and also allows me to make plans, that I won't follow through with, for the rest. I blame it on parenting, nothing works for more than a few months. After that your pesky kids catch on and then you've got to think of new ways to wade through the chaos.

Here's a recent list for me:

- kids bedroom floors are never picked up
- main floor of house is never clean enough for guests to come unexpectedly
- i hate cooking
- i hate putting away laundry
- if it wasn't for me all our animals would be dead
- the garage, just so much about the garage
- doctors appts
- the unending piles of paperwork
- finding time for me stuff

I'll give this a day or two to see if  I get any facebook, texts, or comment responses of topics you'd all like to tackle. Depending on what I hear and how overwhelmed I feel :) we'll jump right in to what's going on. As promised, here's a first photo (it's altered though, because b&w seemed cooler in the moment) of my overwhelmed face and a pile of ridiculousness next to my computer that I haven't fixed for the past week.

Aloha Internet, I'm Baaaaaaaaack!

Sleuthing

You guys, I am so on it!

I have a herd of wily, inventively deceptive people living under the same roof as me that think they can pull the wool over my eyes. But when it comes to moms, we always know.

**DO NOT share stories of all the stuff you got away with as a kid!**

I said don't.

I'm not listening.

Lalalalalalalalalala.

I can't hear you.

Let me have this.

Tonite I received an email from my web protection software thanking me for my feedback. My feedback read, "will you give me a password to unblock k9 i forgot mine and my email was hacked and stolen help plz" Sounds just like me right? The kid who wrote this is not winning at life right now.

Sleuthing is becoming my main activity as a parent these days.  It's all day long, following clues, sniffing out perpetrators, and unearthing my findings, Hercule Poirot style, with a long winded explanation and pointed J'accuse! Did they not get the memo that I'm the "cool mom" they can talk to and never have to hide stuff from?

Really, it's exhausting and I wish they'd just stop already. After tonites debacle I calmly explained that they weren't going to win this war on the technology battlefront. I'm not afraid to say it, I'm smarter than them. With the power of google and mom brains combined I've unearthed incognito web searches, secret chat room conversations, and the likes of which I will not sully this blog with descriptions of. All in the past few months. And this is not new, it just recently became more pervasive. And yet they keep trying. Points for perseverance I guess? Plus, they always seem to forget, I have an ace up my sleeve because my dearly devoted brilliant husband writes programs for computers! Anything google can't explain to me, he can. My resources are limitless. Still, they persisted.

It's not just in the ever evolving technology world that I'm called upon to utilize my Miss Marple like attention to detail. I frequently find myself running down the dirty details of who didn't flush, who ate the last tortilla and who let the dog out. I take it all on headfirst, filled with the vim and vigor that only the righteous can attain. I'm thinking of either starting to sport a monocle or buying a spy glass, can't decide which is more becoming... But it's time to let the world know that I may very well be the next Sherlock Holmes.

They say you should play brain games to keep your mind young. At they rate they're putting me through this, my mind will NEVER EVER age. Or it's completely gone already, time will tell.

this image was copied from https://pixabay.com/en/deceive-deception-lies-1299043/

p.s. Mostly unrelated but you should probably know that the collective noun for a group of bears is a sleuth. I couldn't use that title and not share my fun fact. Mod Ohana has me knee deep in fun animal facts these days :)

Marching to the top of laundry mountain

I always hear people refer to their "mountain of laundry" and it makes me think of the Backyardigans song "Dragon Mountain." This is the link in case you're hard up for entertainment: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vsH6QN_JJT4
I'm a bit of a Backyardigans geek and I turn lots of my life into parodies of their songs. File that under things you probably didn't need/want to know about me.

Anyways... back to laundry mountain. It's insurmountable. It somehow manages to grow no matter how many loads you do. It'd a never ending enigma that can ruin you every time you're forced to look at it or deal with it. It's literally days and days of your life gone as you slave away at it.

Taken from https://i.pinimg.com/originals/3e/91/81/3e91812f4f0ecd35ef78895bae433d14.jpg

Or so I thought.

I used to have a laundry day every week where I'd do as much as I could, be overwhelmed by the idea of putting it all away and then try to forget about it til the next week. Then, I created a laundry system that consisted of 6 laundry sorters in my laundry room, several laundry baskets for transporting clean laundry and 2 laundry bins upstairs to collect dirty clothes. I switched to it several years ago and it took my laundry problem from insurmountable to merely never ending. I thought I had it mastered, as much as you could master laundry. Every day I (or one of my kids) put a load into the washer, moved a load into the dryer, and took the load in the dryer out to be folded and put away. With this method, the laundry stayed contained to the sorters(mostly) so it was organized chaos, and though the laundry wasn't always put away, we weren't completely running out of anything. I slowly started to realize that when I felt the need to buy clothes I should do the laundry first and see if I really needed it or if it was just out of sight, out of mind. Basically, my laundry routine started to have very adult like tendencies. Good stuff right?

Wrong.

I'm going to write another post about how I discovered the solution to the great laundry conundrum, but in a nutshell, it was "less clothes equals less laundry." I read this over and over in facebook posts during the past year as I was waging my personal battle with minimalism. A lot of times the post came with questions and doubters saying that you wear the same amount of clothes so your amount of laundry doesn't change if you have less clothes, you just have to do laundry more often. I sort of agreed with this for the first few months and laundry wasn't even on my minimalism radar yet. As  I reached the halfway point in my year of minimalism, I was really starting to see change in my life, and things were getting easier, so I started to think about other stuff that needed to be minimalized. Laundry kept appearing as a passing thought, but not a legitimate concern, after all I had it under control right?

Then we reached the last part of the year and decided that we were going to move and sell our house. All the last little minimalizing things that had been gnawing away at the back of my brain now had to be confronted immediately. All year I had been getting rid of clothes bit by bit, for both myself and my kids, but I hadn't really seen much difference. So, I made my most brutal cuts yet. My kids all had to go down to what would fit in a suitcase and I had to make my clothes not just fit in my closet but look nice (i.e. have some space or room to grow, like in a magazine picture.) The initial difference was remarkable. We quickly got better about putting our clothes away because there was more room to do so, it wasn't a stressful jigsaw puzzle of how to make it all fit. I found myself more excited than ever to pick out outfits because I could see them all (and I have always had a bit of a love affair with my clothes.)

The real amazement has happened in the last 2 months. We can't have laundry piles, filled laundry baskets in our rooms or even 6 completely filled laundry sorters in the laundry room. Although it is contained, it doesn't look (or sometimes smell) nice when people are viewing our home. We kept up our schedule of the once a day laundry cycle 6 days a week (Tuesday is my moms day to do her laundry) and quickly found that we were only needing 3 or 4 of the laundry sorters at a time. A laundry basket broke and we were down to two for folding and transporting clean laundry. We've found that we now actually need only one. Amazing how that works when you put the laundry away immediately. It's reached a point where now, even with washing our bedding, curtains etc... weekly (we have allergy issues that require this) we run out of laundry to do in just 4 or 5 days and have to search for something to wash. As all of our clothes now spend more time living in our closets and drawers, and less of their life living in our laundry room, we're carefully continuing to cull and if we want something new to come in, something old goes out.

It's an amazingly freeing thing to be out from under the spell of the laundry beast. It really came down to a little organization, a little follow through, and a lot less clothes. We're not doing capsule wardrobes, or flylady schedules or anything fancy. I never even read the actual Allie Cassaza blogs on laundry, just the comments about it that less clothes equals less laundry.

Who would have guessed.

Taken from http://www.thecoersfamily.com/family-closet/

P.S. In case you want the nitty gritty details:

15 minutes: It is Curly's chore to switch the laundry everyday and bring me the basket of clean clothes. He empties the upstairs laundry bins once a week when he's run out of downstairs laundry to do.

20 minutes: I fold them and put away the adult clothes and household laundry (towels etc..)

10 minutes: Each kid (even the 4 year old) takes their pile (if they have one) and puts it away.

First Post Since September?!?!?!

Wow!

A friend asked me today if I'd been blogging about what I've been up to lately and I responded, "Not in a month or two, but lots of thoughts brewing."

These words were swimming in my head and just wouldn't drown out so I had to log in and check when I last posted. It was September. September?!?!

It only took me a moment of looking at my blog post listings to see why.

I've been living a secret life.

There, I said it. Now you know. I am your real life Clark Kent.

I wish. It's nothing as glamorous as saving the world in my very own lycra one piece that I'm mysteriously always wearing under my clothes without anyone noticing. (you guys, the chafing would be unreal!!) I do look good in fake glasses though so that means I can't rule out my life going in this direction in the future.

The reality of my secret life can be seen as soon as you view my blog post listings. It is filled with Draft notifications. That is a true to life depiction of the word that practically shouted at me when I opened up my blog website today. Each of those drafts represents a secret. A story I needed to tell but didn't feel that I had permission to. It's so messy how our lives get all entwined with others.

Ewww, am I right. I may live on an island, but I am not one. My island is overflowing, in good and bad ways. I still haven't figured out how to share without the fear of what these people will think and feel about my words.

So, before I begin to tell you about where my life is now (and there's so much to say!), I feel that I need to fill you in on where my life has been this past year. It's a little dark and unfunny at times, but thank you sweet Lord Jesus for helping me make light of everything.

Here goes. **sound of bandaid ripping off** This is a small selection of last years secrets. Some I can share in their entirety, some are going to get a very broad overview. I spoke to the people involved to determine what level of sharing was acceptable and this is what we came up with together.

Draft - Living With A Child That You Can't Help - March 2017

Everyday you wake up and wonder, will today be a good day or a bad day?

You mentally go over your schedule and plan an out for every activity just in case you need it.

You tread lightly as you wake them or check with them for the first time that day. You don't want to be the one who sets them off. You pray every day that you can be their safe space.

Every grunt, sigh or groan they utter is immediately analyzed. Was it a normal teenage sigh? Was that groan the beginning of an anger shit storm? Does that grunt you heard from the other room mean they're hurting themselves or someone else?

As the day rolls along you get caught up in it and feel you can breathe more normally. You look around your house or your family and feel that familiar love, joy or contentment. Then you realize you can't see him. You mentally retrace to when you last saw them. You're racing through your brain in an uncontrollable frenzy, while on the outside maintaining the best semblance of calm that you can, as you quick step through the house looking for them. Sometimes they just got caught up reading in the bathroom, sometimes their hiding under covers and cowering, scared of themselves.

Every time they don't feel well you question whether they're faking, whether it's the meds or whether it's a common cold. You doubt yourself and feel you can't provide the care a mother's supposed to give her child. Whatever you choose will be the wrong choice. You're supposed to be 2 steps ahead but you always fail to see what's right around the corner.

Something triggers them and you search frantically for the source so you can protect them from it. Sometimes there is no source other than the paranoia in their own brain. Sometimes you're the source. It all feels insurmountable.

You watch them spiral and struggle to give them space as they grasp and fight to regain control. They ask to take a bath. Your first thought is yes! What a great way to calm down and feel better. As they head into the bathroom though you quietly put your ear to the door and hover. They saw a movie today where a kid tried to drown himself in a bathtub. Are they trying to copycat? You casually call out, "how's it going in there?" and try to hide the tremor in your voice.

You read another book, join another online support group and comb the internet one more time looking for answers, quick fixes, commiseration, understanding. You never find quite what you need.

It's their story to tell, not yours. You can't describe your struggle without theirs. When you finally confide, it's usually met with well intended judgement. People say it's typical teenage behavior, that they're manipulating you or that they just don't see it, your child seems fine to them.  

It all feels so alone but you go to bed with hope. Today they fought against it and won. They're still around to fight another day. Maybe tomorrow will be the day they find a magical cure or God performs a miracle. You turn off the light and climb into bed. Some nights you unburden your worries and fears on your partner, other nights you avoid it because you see the pain it causes. You will your mind to calm down and rest. You get up one last time to check in on them. They look peaceful and calm in their sleep and you feel like a crazy person. Maybe your just imagining it all. Seeing them calm helps your mind get the message to chill out and you drift off to sleep amazed at the ebb and flow of emotion that comes with each day in the life of a child with a mental illness.

**When talking with the child from this story about the possibility of sharing, he initially said no way. We talked more and decided that for now I need to leave his stories as drafts until they are resolved. Only then can I share in the hopes that maybe it will help others with similar struggles. I assured him that's its mostly my side of the story. He says he never wants to read these posts. We both may have cried, but I cannot confirm this, reputations may be at stake if I do.

This post is from when he first started self-harming. It was a very scary period. We sought help and through a powerful mix of God, support, medication and therapy things have gotten a lot better. He gets up everyday and fights through the negative thoughts that he can't control and strives to be the amazing brother, son and friend that we all know and love. Our relationship has grown so much closer through this process, that's something I'll always have mental illness to thank for. Other than that it kind of sucks.

Draft - 1st day of foster care - May 2017

I'm sitting and watching my sons swim during my first truly free moment of our first day providing temporary guardianship for a girl that I flew across the United States to get.

I've spent the first 1/2 of practice glancing at my son's occasionally as I put most of my focus into googling 1st time foster care. I read a lot of good suggestions and one that stuck was, document everything.

That brings me to now and writing this blog that I will never post. These unposted blogs help me get out feelings that I can't share or remember things that get lost in my turbulent life.

This girl is amazing. The journey of bringing her to my family was a turbulent one. She's an incredibly bright girl who seems to love everyone and everything. She has an infectious laugh and a very healthy dose of curiosity.

That being said, there are things that I'll be praying over and working on with her. She's incredibly independent. I mean that in an unsafe way. She doesn't stay with me when we're walking and she wanders the house alone and gets what she wants. She doesn't seem to have a concept of asking for things and being in a group.

When you correct her she tends to go completely blank faced or sometimes (especially if she's tired) you'll see her whole body shake or she'll whimper. She is going to need an extra kind tone and lots of reminders.

She says whatever is on her mind, and it's often inappropriate or unknowingly unkind. She is extremely appreciative of anything we give her and willingly shares everything. 

She is insistent on trying to call our littlest monster her sister and on reminding me that her mom is far away.

We're so thrilled to have her here and excited to get to know her better and learn how we can best help her in her journey.

**She's been living with us for almost 8 months now. Our agreement is to keep her for a year and then she goes back to her mom as long as all the conditions have been met. It's been a crazy rollercoaster adding a new person into our family and living everyday with the temporariness of it all. We'll know soon what is next for her. Her mom is doing well and trying hard. She is torn between 2 families that she loves and we are torn between wanting to keep her with us and wanting her to be with her mom who loves her dearly. Its a messy messy thing. I always thought I wanted to adopt or foster, but this whole situation has changed me. I find that I struggle daily to make sure I love her as much as my other children, treat them all fairly and to give her what she needs rather than what she wants. This has been a secret that you know if you're around us because you get to meet her, but not one for the world at large. The story is too big, the reasons are too long, and once again, it's not just my story to tell.

Draft - Downward Spiral - May 2018

Much like the Trump presidency, I feel I am witnessing the beginning of another downward spiral.

We've had 3 almost blissful weeks. You couldn't ruffle the kids feathers if you tried. He zoomed through months worth of schoolwork in days. He happily participated, planned and attended activities. He started wanting to make plans with friends. He got his first ever state swim time.

Then today he was up way to early. I knew it meant he hadn't slept well, but I tried to ignore it. We went to the gym and he had no goals. I saw him muddle through his workout and worried that he seemed off.

Throughout the day he checked in with me, notes of panic in his voice and eyes, double and triple checking what we were doing, at what times. Rehashing plans and seemingly grasping for control. I told myself I was overreacting.

He begged to go to the store with me. Now I know he was probably having one of his panic attacks where he needs an adult. At the time I couldn't figure out why he suddenly needed to go to Costco. My son, the finder, couldn't find basic groceries or figure out where we were in the store. It was like he was in a daze. I've never seen him like that. Ever.

Later his friends came over and I watched him withdraw. He tried to take a bath while they were still at our house in an attempt to escape. Long bathroom breaks, grunting replies and grinding teeth should have made things clear, but still I pushed him.

It's the end of the school year. He has days left to finish up schoolwork and get everything turned in. He hid schoolwork from me and knowingly failed tests, sure signs that things aren't well with him. By the time my husband made it home I was sure. I asked him to talk to our son, I was getting yelled at every time I tried. My husband didn't get it. He talked to him and played a game with him. The quality one on one time calmed our son but it didn't change the underlying unrest.

Finally, it's 10pm and he's crying and saying  he doesn't know what's wrong. Everything feels fuzzy and he can't concentrate. He agrees to email his counselor after I promise he doesn't have to go to school if things are still bad tomorrow.

But here's the thing, what if things are still bad tomorrow? I'm not sure I can handle another one of his spirals.  I'm now responsible for 4 other children and it's not fair how this affects them. I don't have an action plan. I don't know who to call or what to do. I don't know if it was just a bad day or the beginning of his next downward spiral. I'm terrified of tomorrow and finding out. I'm going to feel awful either way. I can't imagine how he feels. I just want him to be okay. He didn't ask for this. He doesn't deserve this. He needs a chance to just be a kid.

**This got scarier before it got better. He started hearing voices and getting extremely paranoid. We ended up changing his medication and everything improved. The thing that had helped save him months before was tearing him up. This one has been a big hurdle to get over. It's left him feeling crazy, his words, not mine. We all try to explain that medication did this to him, not his brain, not the disease, but it's left him feeling not in control and that's made him more guarded. There have been a lot of good months and he's made it through the bad ones like the champion that he is. But, it's hard to share. It's a big looming secret that doesn't have a lot of funny to it. I'm glad we've come to an agreement about ways that I can share, it feels like a weight off my shoulders.

Draft - It's not going how I thought it would go - all of 2017

**This one was all about my mom. She's been living with my family for almost 2 years now and I almost never say a word about her in the blogging world. There's a million funny stories and a million frustrating ones revolving around having her here with us. But, I still remain worried that she'll take something that I say wrong, we have very different senses of humor. For now these stories will remain drafts, until one day she reads them and okays them or she dies and I write it all as a memoir and pray that she can laugh about it all in heaven. For now just know that living with my mom is not going how I thought that it would go. She had another stroke this past summer and I was reminded that that is why she is here. So that we're close by during these emergency situations. She recovered amazingly well, the only side affect was a reminder to me that I need and want to keep her close by no matter what. That being said, she is ready for some independence and so am I. We are actively looking for housing for her where she can remain nearby but we can all gain a little space and perspective. I think it will make us all appreciate each other more. If not, than we're not very good people.

Draft - Health woes have me like whoa! - September through December 2017

** This was not the actual title, there were just a bunch of unfinished blog posts relating to my health. After my moms stroke, her doctor told me that my sisters and I needed to go get checked for a hereditary lipid disorder. The disorder lies at the heart of my moms medical problems and there was a chance that we might have it. It's a silent disease, you don't see the symptoms of plugged arteries, strokes and other problems until it's too late to fix them. I called my sisters and told them to get checked. I did not get checked. It took me several months to work up the courage to even make the appointment and then I had to wait almost 4 weeks before I went. It was agonizing and I had myself convinced that I was dying. As it turns out, I ended up finding a great doctor who was very kind to me as she explained that I was extremely overweight and ordered a million blood tests to check for the disorder. The results came in and the numbers weren't good. She instructed me to make some big lifestyle changes and to get rechecked in 3 months to see what the changes had done to the numbers. I thought she had explained that we wouldn't know if I had high numbers because I was fat or because of the disorder. I went back to see her 2 months later for something unrelated and discovered that I technically had the disorder whether I was fat or not. I was not prepared for this. I still had another month to go until I could recheck my numbers. I fell into a mental black hole as I tried to reassure myself that I wouldn't have strokes in my 50's, that I'd be able to walk and hike with my grandkids. My powers of persuasion were not strong. But...the lifestyle changes worked wonders. I dropped over 400 points off my triglyceride levels. They are still way too high, but I got into a respectable range for someone with the disorder. It means the lifestyle changes are going to be permanent and I'll have to get checked regularly, but I'm down 30lbs from when this all started and I am confident that I am doing everything I can to be as healthy as I can be, I hope it's enough, but worrying won't change anything. My family, especially my husband, have been insanely supportive as I've changed how we eat, the time I need to exercise, and on us all focusing on living healthier. I t just felt like a woe is me blog post every time I tried to say something so I never finished my thoughts or clicked post as the story unfolded last year.

Draft - The Big Move - September through December 2017

** Once again, this subject never warranted fully written posts because you can tell the internet world things until you've handled it all in the real world. People get very touchy about this stuff. Last year, my husband and I began entertaining the idea of moving from the island that we've lived together on for the last 17 years. We've talked about moving A LOT over the course of our marriage, but there are always insurmountable hurdles of one type or another that keep us here. This time was different. Everything kept coming up roses no matter how much we tried to find weeds. And so that brings us to the last, but not least secret, we are moving to Colorado Springs, Colorado in May 2018. There will be lots more to come on this subject but for now it feels good to get it out in the open. It was too many months of whispering behind closed doors and worrying about the sadness of the wonderful people that we're leaving behind. Now it's a new year with a new focus on the greatest adventure our family has yet to experience, moving across the country as a family of 7 with a dog, a mom and a sister in tow. Life is good.

Tears

It starts like the slow drip of a faucet. Every once in awhile you wipe away the wetness discreetly. Maybe it's allergies. Something in your eye perhaps? You start to sniffle. What is going on?

You soon find yourself covertly wiping at your eyes and making the skin at the edges raw in a fierce attempt to hold the water back, to not let anyone see. It's too obvious to hide at this point, so now you agonize over what to say. Do you lie and say you got makeup in your eye? You mentally debate if you brought tissues and if you can slyly search your purse for them.

Here's the worst part about it, you really have no idea why the tears are there. It's embarrassingly ridiculous. That about sums up my life sometimes.

I never used to cry. I was one tough cookie. Funerals, sad movies, pain, nothing could touch me. My nickname should have been Stoic. Then I had kids and something inside me was unleashed. My faucet was permanently broken.

But the leak is very situational. I still rarely cry at standard issue crying moments. Nope, instead I make things weird. You see, I've always struggled with authority. Police, doctors, dentists, teachers, they're a bit hard for me to summon the strength to talk to. But...being so Stoic, I can generally muster up the courage, put on my brave face and push through when the need arises.

Now, there's nothing left to muster and no face brave enough, I'm just a mess. I walk into the parent teacher conference with a running mental mantra, "Stay calm, don't cry." Doesn't matter if the news is good, bad or inconsequential, the tears will flow and I'll be trying to say it's fine whilst looking like my dog just died.

Lord help the policeman that pulls me over. Again, doesn't matter if it's a sobriety checkpoint (I don't drink, so no worries there) or if I was speeding. I'm instantly flustered, constantly bumbling and moments away from full on waterworks. Needless to say, I have never received a ticket, maybe in this instance the tears work in my favor?

The dentist moments are extra ridiculous for two reasons. One, I can't wipe the tears because there are a million hands and contraptions all around my face, blocking me from erasing the evidence of my silent stream of shame. Two, it really freaks out the dentist because they think they're hurting me. I probably have really weird notes in my file about my crying problem, but they still always have to check, because, I mean, what if they were hurting me?

Finally, the doctors office. I just left there. I saw a doctor for the first time and there were clearly no notes in my file to indicate my tearitis conditions. I could feel them trying to burst out before I got into the exam room. As we sat and talked I tried a hundred different things to occupy my mind and body in the hopes that I could trick myself into staying calm. I almost did it. The first 20 minutes it wasn't more than a leaky faucet, I could have blamed it on my makeup easily. But as soon as she was ready to finish the appointment I could no longer hold it in. I made a beeline for the worlds scratchiest paper towels from the medical dispenser on the wall. Then it was awkward. She couldn't leave me like that and I couldn't explain. I recomposed myself as best as I could and hightailed it out of there. On the way home I berated my addled brain for doing this to me and tried to make myself sob to get it all out. Apparently that's not how it works and the body has a seemingly endless supply of tears.

So now you know. I worry about how flawless I come across on a daily basis. I mean, my seeming perfection might make you feel bad about yourself right? So sharing this is my way of bringing things back down to earth. Don't worry, I have a lot more weird stuff that we haven't even begun to broach yet. The time will come. Anybody else out there have a weird struggle like this?