Maybe it’s back to school blues… maybe it’s more than that. Although, I’m not depressed, I don’t think. I’m just a little tired or a lot tired, maybe. I can barely stay up past ten and I’m having a tough time dragging myself out of bed before 8 whereas typically I’m up by 7am or earlier. Certainly Rowan has longer days now that she’s in the first grade. It’s just that somehow I didn’t take into account that her longer days meant longer days for me. Which sounds ridiculous, I know, until you consider that once I’m done with lessons I have to turn around and start working for S.O.

Last night I ended up making dinner after 8pm – enchiladas. Easy, but it does take some maneuvering. I was wiped out after rolling two trays full and went to bed without eating. I can certainly afford to miss a meal or two… so I’m not complaining about that. But, S.O. is complaining that I’m “edgy” and “snappy.”

I get it, we’re both burning it at both ends and one of us doesn’t really get paid while the other one is still looking down the barrel of a pay cut. And, while I’m aware I have a lot to be grateful for (jesus, can’t I just express myself without feeling guilty for it?) house, income, etc. I’m worn out, I’m missing whatever it is that is supposed to recharge my batteries.

I’ve been told I need to take care of myself more. I’m afraid beyond a shower and painting my own toenails, possibly reading a book – that I have no idea how to do this anymore. Maybe I really never did. I’ve never been the “get my nails done and have a pedicure” kind of gal. I’ve had one massage my entire life and it’s been two years since I’ve had a pedicure of any sort. I take bubble baths in the winter, but can hardly bring myself to do that in the summer when it’s so damn hot around here all the time.

As wrong as it is, I occasionally look to S.O. to maybe make some attempt to sweep me off my feet. Maybe a “here, let me take you out for dinner…” and maybe open the door or that sort of thing. Don’t get me wrong, we do that on occasion, but it’s more like “wow, glad we got work finished up, why don’t I buy you a beer.” Which I do appreciate, but it does make me feel more like a co-worker and a whole lot less like a wife.

Blah, maybe I’m just really in need of a three day weekend. I just hope this one doesn’t end up being more work than it’s worth.

Most of the summer, especially the last few weeks of summer break I began a daily prayer, “Please God, grant me patience. I suck in that department and Rowan requires A LOT of it. Please…”

It’s the end of the first week and I’m doing less tongue biting and silent counting than I was last year. First week… I know. Except I have zero patience so any improvement at all is HUGE in my book.

I wish I had the same patience for Rowan’s “teacher” – she is very sweet. BUT! She is so technologically impaired that it appears she doesn’t even read her emails completely. My inbox currently has about 10 emails from her in the last 24 hours that are sent to all the parents at once and most are repeats of the same information ie. how to log in, how to record attendance, etc. It’s obvious that she’s technologically impaired and is leading a bunch of other equally or worse impaired people.

Not to toot my own horn – but I am not one of them and I have little patience for being at the mercy of someone who is.

Monday I had issues logging into an online course. I got them handled with the tech support but was stupid enough to drop her an email just to make sure that it wasn’t an issue that EVERYONE was having.

Tech support got back to me within 20 minutes and everything was fine. Rowan completed a couple of lessons and we moved on with our day.

Now here we are on Wednesday her “teacher” is just now getting back to me and instead of reading her emails – I sent a follow up right after tech support got back to me letting her know that all was taken care of and it was fine, she went to her administrator had a new account set up for Rowan and removed the old account AND ALL OF ROWAN’S PROGRESS.

I’m livid. LIVID. LIVID.

So I sent another email explaining that we didn’t need the new account but since we were obviously stuck with it to PLEASE PLEASE DO NOT CHANGE ANYTHING ELSE.

It’s been 20 minutes since I’ve gotten a repeat email of something stupid and in the realm of “see this? Click here” complete with pictures – so I’m betting I’m going to get an email tomorrow where she has fucked the accounts up all over again.

I can’t think of a nice way to say – “never mind, it’s cool – I’ve got this, please don’t fuck with my shit again.”

Oh dear God. I’m running around trying to be SuperWoman and a super woman… I am not. Seriously.

It’s only Tuesday and I swear it feels like Thursday. I don’t know how my kids (minus the youngest) are even functioning.

S.O. tries to take Deirdre to school in his work truck as often as possible. He made it yesterday, the first day of school, but not today since he had a meeting. That meant I had to take Deirdre which, in turn, meant waking Rowan up early which is NEVER a good thing. In a desperate move I pulled her out of bed, stood her up on her feet and made sure she was standing and ran out of the room to handle something else. Deirdre tried not to laugh as Rowan promptly marched into the wall while trying to walk out of the room.

While S.O.’s work load has tripled Princess Twatface is MIA (becoming her usual M.O. these days) making full-time pay for not even part-time work. Which, I wouldn’t give a rat’s ass about because if you can work out a sweet deal like that because daddy owns the company then good for you. Although, in the dad department mine kicks some total ass because he wouldn’t begin to tolerate that bullshit from either of his daughters.

Although, my dad also has a tendency to go overboard in that department and at one point wanted me to work for him but the requirements were that I had to CALL him Mr. [insert my maiden name here] which I looked at him and said, “Dude, I am pregnant with your THIRD grandchild. If you fuck with me I will call you Mr.ASSHOLE and insist all the other employees do so as well… you don’t want me calling you “dad” at work that’s cool, but let’s stop with the delusions of grandeur.” He backed down because I had become known as the “crazy, pregnant chick” around the office where I often stopped in to help out and manage websites and email, etc. for FREE.

But, I digress. Apologies.

I wouldn’t care about Princess Twatface’s sweet-ass deal except it doubles my husband’s work load. She can do 30% of her work AT HOME – but if she decides to call in sick (or whatever she wants to call it) she doesn’t do SHIT and it gets dumped in S.O.’s lap entirely.

She had my cousin call in sick for her last night. Yup. Meanwhile she’s on Facebook eliciting sympathy with numerous status updates of how deathly ill she is. She probably should have thought twice before asking someone to put her out of her misery – she clearly doesn’t remember I’m on her FB friend list.

Anyway, Julien’s first two days of college seemed to both inspire him and completely wear him out. He’s enthusiastic which is great but he also hasn’t cleaned his room, not so great.

Deirdre is up to her eyelids in advanced classes and working on the school paper… she’ll be in a coma by the weekend. Her bedroom is a nightmare and she’s barely managing to get through her chores (which are few I might add) after school. In fact, I think she missed most of them yesterday.

Rowan is slowly and I mean S-L-O-W-L-Y creeping back into school. Thank goodness she doesn’t have to start officially until THIS Monday but it would appear that my dreams of being a week ahead are dying a slow and agonizing death right before my very eyes. We completed one math lesson yesterday just in time to run to a bookstore to meet with her teacher (in our homeschool I am known as a lowly learning coach – she still has a teacher we meet with quarterly or some such nonsense) by the time we came home Rowan was super grumpy and starting to fall asleep. Today we have managed a phonics lesson… I don’t know what will happen to either of us when she realizes that she is back to a full school schedule with 5 subjects daily and an hour of Spanish.

Add in laundry, maintaining the house, OH and that pesky little thing known as our business and I just wasted waaaaay too much time writing this post.

Julien and Scarlet have gone to San Diego until Saturday. Saturday my dad is coming over to help rip the patio off the house. Yes, we’ll rebuild it and no, I am not quite sure when. I’m hoping my dad rides in with a miracle in the back of his truck but I doubt it. We’ll see… In the meantime S.O. and I have some ideas on improvements and tweaks to make it more friendly so perhaps patio 2.0 will be a total win and all this will have been for some kick-ass goodness.

S.O. and I have had more orders this month than we have had all year combined. If this continues a pay cut won’t even be a blip on the radar… mostly.

What I’m working on right now is gratitude, if you can’t tell. “By the skin of our teeth…” S.O. and I often say, just as we were about to lose it all a saving grace comes through and yanks us back. I’d like to think that we’re being taught to have faith. That maybe that’s the answer to the whole “this life sucks” problem. Faith as small as a mustard seed… I’ve got a little more than that and I’m grateful for it. So many things have taken a radical turn and gone right when it was practically assured it was all going to go very wrong. And, that gratitude thing, when you look at your most used tags in your post stats… well, let’s just say that I’d like to start seeing “happy” and “thankful” show up in that list.

Deirdre and I have been doing some school shopping online. I had nearly forgotten that school starts in just a couple of weeks. Between homeschooling, high school, and college my back to school expenses have been reduced dramatically. It’s nice and I’m thankful. Sure, in the long run teenagers are more expensive, but I can get by with doing a little now so there are some nice, fresh things to enjoy as school starts back in and then do a little more as the weather cools off.

I’ve slept pretty well the last couple of nights. Last night S.O. and I settled in and enjoyed Memphis Beat both of us laughing out loud and pretty hard at several different parts… “What we have here… is a ghost plane.”

S.O. just rolled in fresh from the gym still wearing his athletic shorts, t-shirt, and sunglasses. Today I’m super grateful to see my husband come through the door and to find him so steamy attractive.

and I’m happy to hear my girls giggling in the floor a few feet away from me. I’m grateful all my children are happy and healthy.

and I’m so happy to be going on 4 weeks without anti-depressants as of this Sunday.

It’s not perfect but life is good.

Mother guilt. It’s awful.

Deirdre wanted to go to a friend’s house today. I actually said no.

She’s had a pretty busy summer. Summer school, a trip to Hurricane Harbor water park, trip to Magic Mountain, she’s been to more movies in the last month than I have been to in the last 6 years. So much so that she is actually blogging movie reviews now. She’s been to summer plays, spent nights at friend’s houses and so on and so forth. I mean… the girl has been super busy. That doesn’t count having friends and her boyfriend over for bbqs and dinners here.

So today she wanted to go to a friend’s house and I said no. Some chores didn’t get done over the weekend, there are things we need to do around here. Julien is out placing job applications and running an errand or two for me. I’ve got an order for our business to take care of, not to mention some etsy listings to place and a website I’m working on for a friend. I might need an extra hand on deck.

Still, I feel guilty. I rarely tell her no, I rarely ever do not let her go do whatever it is she is wanting to do.

Then there is the S.O. thing, they finally lost the big contract. He doesn’t know if/when a pay cut is coming but chances are it’s inevitable. Right now I’m trying to see if a whole lot of “little things” will add up to a decent thing. You know… not putting all your eggs in one basket kind of thing. I don’t want to stress and give this more energy than it deserves.