September update (154.6)

Barely squeezing in an update for this month, since it's the 30th. Work has finally slowed down so I'm taking a break & sharing some info with you. 

This was an insane month.  Really an insane two months.  I started working overtime August 11 (voluntarily). Any week I worked a Saturday, I'd put in 4-6 hours of OT.  Some weeks I'd also work for Mark, so there were weeks I'd work almost 50 hours.  

The work for Mark is minimal--I create the meeting summary letters that are mailed to his fee-based clients; there's a template & I fill in the data and summarize his notes into a letter format. He is doing everything else.  So I don't have to do much for him anymore.  I wouldn't have to do this, but I want to help & it's the ONE thing I can do for him. When I don't work OT, it's not a big deal to spend a few hours every other weekend doing these. 

Anyway, since our Fall quarter started 9/22, OT is DONE. Back to a normal 40 hour week.  But it all caught up to me this past weekend.  

I had a mini breakdown Saturday. Too many things undone, too many responsibilities on my shoulders on a daily basis, too many inadequacies as a mother and wife weighing me down. So I cried on the bathroom floor for a while and spent most of Sunday in a funk.  

I worked all day Monday and a couple hours last night for Mark, and I'm OK today, although the responsibilities and inadequacies are all still there.  I just don't feel like I need to curl up in a ball at the moment. 

I did see my therapist, Julie, last Monday, 9/22.  We talked about what's happened over the past 2 years since I'd seen her last (a LOT), about how to parent Luke (who I've been having issues with), how to parent a teenage girl, about my marriage. I see her again at the end of October (that's the earliest she can see me).  We'll be talking about my breakdown, for sure.  

Mark and I are also seeing a marriage counselor. We had one appointment in early Sept and we see him again on Oct 6. He's the same therapist we saw 15 years ago before we had kids; he's semi-retired, we are lucky we found him!

We had a huge fight--huge--back in August. I won't go into details, but Mark was angrier than I've ever seen him, ever (he has always had anger issues--anger, the emotion that evolves from fear).  His anger during the fight was astounding to both of us, mostly to him. What scared us into deciding to go to counseling was he dissolved into a puddle of uncontrollable tears by the end of the fight. And because neither of us could hear the other's point of view no matter how hard we tried, we knew it was time to bring in a third party.  

Seriously, after the year we've had, I should think we'd need marriage counseling.  We probably should have gone before now.  But as our therapist said, we're "highly skilled," so we've been handling things pretty well ourselves through all these changes.  But we've reached our limit and we need help. 

Oct 4 is my 2 year OA anniversary of abstinence.  No desserts and no binges for 2 years.  Unfortunately I haven't been working my program.  I'm a 3 stepper right now, which I'm not proud of.  This past year has been nothing but keeping my head above water and maintaining the status quo--no room for personal growth.  

On the flip side of that-- I went through a major life change and didn't gain 50 pounds.  So I haven't done my 4th step yet.  I still went to meetings, I maintained relationships, I got out of bed everyday, and I didn't need sugar to get me through the day.  I guess I shouldn't beat myself up too badly. 

As far as the kids go....

Luke is on Harry Potter, book 3.  It's so cool to see my 3rd grader read real books.  In his high ability class (which meets once a day at school), he does advance math worksheets once a week at home, and my goodness, the math that child does in his head.  Blows my mind. He's got A's in all his regular class subjects. Yet the little guy is immature in so many ways. We have to be really careful with making sure when he eats & sleeps, because he will melt down if we get it wrong even a little bit (ADHD kid on meds & also highly sensitive).  Julie gave me a book to read to help me with him, which I've started but haven't gotten far. The Conscious Parent by Dr. Shefali Tsabary (she's an "Oprah doctor").  He'll be 9 in November.  Part of me thinks it's OK that he's immature, since he's a boy and he's my youngest.....which is likely part of the problem, eh? 

Sophie is doing amazingly well.  In 7th grade honors classes, working hard for her As. She's self motivated, I don't have to ask her to do anything with her homework.  She's in a play that opens Oct 10th (Legend of Sleepy Hollow) then goes straight into the next play, Peter Pan.  What's really cool is that Peter Pan opens exactly one year after her surgery.  She'll be on stage on the one year anniversary that she was in a hospital bed.  We meet with the surgeon the Monday before the play opens.  Hopefully he'll tell her at that appointment she can finally touch her toes!

One last fun note.  We are all watching Dr Who.  Sophie started watching it this summer.  I started watching with her in late summer, the episodes with Matt Smith (love him!) and then when I would watch TV when the kids were asleep (so I wouldn't watch shows ahead of them), I started at season 1.  I'm still with David Tenant in my "catch up" watching, and I haven't yet finished Matt Smith (I think I have 6 episodes left with him, boo hoo!).  Sophie was home sick yesterday and just finished Matt Smith and is now watching the new episodes we have on the DVR.  We are total Whovians now.  

I even bought her some Dr Who socks on Amazon.  Great story--the 5 pack of ankle socks have a pair that say "bow ties are cool" except they are misspelled and say "bow ties abe cool."  Nice one BBC!  I didn't read the reviews, doh!  She is so clever, though.  She picked out the red threads on the bottom of the "B" so it looks like an "R." We just have to stitch in some white thread to stop it from making a hole. 

I need to get some work done now.  See ya next month.  :)