The tip of the iceberg
Things have been pretty stressful around here the past few months, not coincidentally coinciding with my dramatic decrease in LJ posts.
To recap:
* In October I got laid off and my grandmother died.
* In November a family friend, a woman my mom's age with kids almost my age, died of breast cancer. And we got bad news about a cousin, also my mom's age (i.e.: way too young), who has pretty bad Alzheimer's.
* Meanwhile hanging over all of this has been the illness of yet another family friend, the mother of my friend Brian who lives upstairs from me. She has a host of serious medical problems including, most recently, breast and brain tumors. Her condition has been up and down a lot in the past month or two.
* Then this month an online friend of mine found a lump in her breast which turned out to be cancerous. She wound up with a semi-urgent mastectomy and now is facing chemo. I find myself hit hard by this one, not least because she was still nursing her 3-year-old and was forced to wean her cold turkey on extremely little notice. I can't even type about it without getting all weepy so I'll leave it at that.
So, things have been difficult. yeah.
I have a policy of not talking about work outside of friends-locked posts. So all I'll say here is that my temporary 3-to-4-month gig is now in its second month and I'm grateful to have the income in this economy, and starting to worry a bit about what's going to happen when the contract is up. Also, the commute is definitely contributing to my stress. On the plus side, I get to sit on the subway and read for a good chunk of time every day. But on the minus side I'm constantly stressed about getting there (wherever "there" happens to be) on time.
The kids, overall, are doing fine. Isaac is loving kindergarten, although as I had feared, he's overtired and emotionally volatile, especially in the evenings. Ruthie is doing fine at daycare and starting to show some signs of toddler stubbornness/disobedience or whatever you want to call it -- ask any mom with older kids and she'll tell you that the "terrible twos" are a myth, that age 3 is really when things got "terrible." And Ruthie will be 3 in a mere two months. Hoo boy.
Anyway...so of course that's only a small portion of what's been going on around here, but I had to start somewhere. I can't even tell you how many fascinating and entertaining LJ posts I've written in my head. You would have laughed, you would have cried, you would have sprained a finger in your haste to click the "leave a comment" link. ;) Oh well.
To recap:
* In October I got laid off and my grandmother died.
* In November a family friend, a woman my mom's age with kids almost my age, died of breast cancer. And we got bad news about a cousin, also my mom's age (i.e.: way too young), who has pretty bad Alzheimer's.
* Meanwhile hanging over all of this has been the illness of yet another family friend, the mother of my friend Brian who lives upstairs from me. She has a host of serious medical problems including, most recently, breast and brain tumors. Her condition has been up and down a lot in the past month or two.
* Then this month an online friend of mine found a lump in her breast which turned out to be cancerous. She wound up with a semi-urgent mastectomy and now is facing chemo. I find myself hit hard by this one, not least because she was still nursing her 3-year-old and was forced to wean her cold turkey on extremely little notice. I can't even type about it without getting all weepy so I'll leave it at that.
So, things have been difficult. yeah.
I have a policy of not talking about work outside of friends-locked posts. So all I'll say here is that my temporary 3-to-4-month gig is now in its second month and I'm grateful to have the income in this economy, and starting to worry a bit about what's going to happen when the contract is up. Also, the commute is definitely contributing to my stress. On the plus side, I get to sit on the subway and read for a good chunk of time every day. But on the minus side I'm constantly stressed about getting there (wherever "there" happens to be) on time.
The kids, overall, are doing fine. Isaac is loving kindergarten, although as I had feared, he's overtired and emotionally volatile, especially in the evenings. Ruthie is doing fine at daycare and starting to show some signs of toddler stubbornness/disobedience or whatever you want to call it -- ask any mom with older kids and she'll tell you that the "terrible twos" are a myth, that age 3 is really when things got "terrible." And Ruthie will be 3 in a mere two months. Hoo boy.
Anyway...so of course that's only a small portion of what's been going on around here, but I had to start somewhere. I can't even tell you how many fascinating and entertaining LJ posts I've written in my head. You would have laughed, you would have cried, you would have sprained a finger in your haste to click the "leave a comment" link. ;) Oh well.