Weakness is my Strength

I have zero time management skills. ZERO. As I am typing this at 3 a.m., it's a pretty obvious fact. Oh, plus I am LAZY. So the issue of needing at least the framework of a schedule and real work in the time management area is so very much at the top of my list of goals. BUT...
The first little snippet of advice was to find your strengths and let those be your guide in how you manage your time. Unfortunately, I have no strengths. I have a household to run and the only strength I have is weakness. I am weak weak weak. Emotionally, physically, spiritually weak. In every aspect, I do the bare minimum. Bills are paid, we have food, and sometimes we have clean underwear. My daughter is alive and clean. My husband doesn't completely hate me. My eyebrows are actually plucked. But I didn't shower today. Or do dishes.
Okay, what did I do right? Um... I did give Keiren and Josie a bath. Yeah. That's about it. I am so lame, it's not even funny.

Silent, Screaming Breakdown

With Billy & Kevin driving back from Cali right now, rushing to a birthday promise, I had to take all the sanity I had left not to go into pissy-pants mode on the phone. And I really didn't have much sanity left. But now it's gone. Maybe not.
I could feel the angry, teary, green-eyed demon trying to sneak out in my voice, but I reeled her in, thank God. I don't think he noticed, but I did. Oooh, that was hard. Then, when I got off the phone, I went in the kitchen, grabbed my Diet Coke and then picked up three pumpkin cookies... and set them down. That was pretty impressive since I HELLA wanted to just go into an eating frenzy. OH WHY must I deal with stress by eating??? Right now, slowly sipping on my soda, I'm not even really hungry. And dinner's coming up, as soon as Bee wakes up. Those cookies would have served no purpose. I had a snack. Now I'm going to have dinner. The cookie inbetweeners just would've soothed me down from the jealously spike. Good Lord, I am a mess.
I am so deep in this ugly identity crisis I don't even know which way is up. I have no drive to do my actual job; I've really tried this week, but I think I'm just spinning my wheels.

Worse. Poorer. Sickness.

The negative side of the vows are pummeling us yet again.
I'm losing my mind.
We're taking a pay cut to the max.
Billy probably has celiac disease.
After the maddening visit to the doctor yesterday that left us with far more questions than answers, Kevin called to say he lost his job.
With everything going on, I really can't take anymore. I really can't. I cried halfway home and prayed my heart out. I. Just. Can't.
I'm not a good mom. I'm not a good wife. I'm not a good homemaker. I'm not good at anything and I feel so alone. And trapped.
I wish I had had a clue back in the day and actually done some spontaneous stuff while I still could. Now I can't. We wasted so many opportunities and it's all my fault. Good thing we took the lifestyle sabbatical or I'd really hate myself for wasting the beginning of us.

Lackadaisical Has Nothing to Do With Daisies

I have reached a level of laziness that is unforgivable. I don't ever want to do anything. Ever. I've been at this stay-at-home mom business for darn near 2.5 years... quite honestly the longest I've stayed with a job ever. Yet, I still have trouble viewing it as a job. This. Is. A. Job. This is my job.
Sometimes, I get the gumption to really get it together and keep it together. But then I just let it all go. I've let Bee run the show for so long, she doesn't understand she's not the boss. We all let her boss us around. It's ugly. And wrong.
I've done this wrong from the very beginning. I think... I think I need to make a job description or something. Just without structure, without deadlines, without interaction with others... I have zero drive. Does that sound like I should go back to work? Billy thinks so. He thinks it would do me a world of good. I just don't know. I honestly think I would be miserable. And Bee would be miserable too. *sigh*
That's it. Enough is TOO MUCH!

Quarter-Life Crisis

I'm feeling... lost. Not... unhappy. Just without identity... or maybe just distanced from life.
I feel like everything is going on around me but I'm not part of it. Hmmm. Even that's not it.
Maybe it's just that everything's going too fast. And my past, such a small blip of history, is haunting me in dreams. Again.
Yup. The Limbo of Youth. I think others around me have similar pits in their stomachs but we just don't talk about it. We just march on without really knowing what's next.
Just came back from Disneyland. Bee's first visit. It was wonderful! But now I have post trip blues mixed with more of the thoughts of the march of time. Ridiculous but true. Bleh.

Grief & Sleepovers

I am numbing out on the winding road of grief management as of late. I literally feel numb, almost lethargic. My energy is zapped and I have completely let the house go to pot. The ugly realizations of mortality and the steady, quick march of time zoom through my mind often and just as often put me into a state of panic. I have no control over how fast a life goes by. I've been watching the Twilight Zone a lot and just the fact that the young, vibrant actors of the 60s are now either old or dead gets me depressed, irritable, pissed. Maybe I should stop watching it... but when that show was in its last season, Grandpa was my age! A young parent just back from war. My dad was born that year. Not so long ago yet still a lifetime. How quickly we age without even realizing it is painful once you do notice that it's happening or has already happened.
Right now I'm sitting in my old room at my parents' house for quite possibly the last time. Billy is putting in his notice tomorrow and that could mean he's coming home immediately or he's in it for another two weeks-30 days. It's been an absolutely crazy year but this has become the new normal. We'll have to learn how to be us again in a normal setting. Weird but true. I really resented this situation at first but now it's almost peaceful... It doesn't seem like home at all. This is quite a revelation to me. I've lived in this house as a high-schooler and I've lived in this house in the interim when we sold our house then off and on when we were on sabbatical then when our current house was being built. We lived here when Billy went to PA for a week and I cried myself to sleep every night. I stayed here when he went on his first business trip ever when he started working at Highland Manor when Bee was a newborn. I cried for a day. Now he's been away so much and been on a myriad business trips it seems silly that I was ever that distraught to sleep without him. It will be strange to have him home all the time. And that in itself is disconcerting.

The Beauty of Zero

Four months ahead of schedule, our credit card debt is no more. It feels like this post should be full of exclamation points and "squee"s and "woot"s and happy dances in general. This is a HUGE feat and accomplishment as well as a giant burden lifted. But I can't get over the fact that this year we brought in an excess of $25770.77 that went to debt. That is SO much money. And it's gone. It's zeroed us out to where we always should have been. Every stupid purchase, mis-paid medical bill, commuter gas fill-up, furniture or baby stuff shopping spree, Christmas gift that we couldn't afford, yay debt moment... PAID OFF. PAID OFF! We have exorbitant student loans and a seriously misguided second mortgage sitting us deeply in the negative to the tune of about $36,000 but these types of debt are not as ugly. It feels weird. The light at the end of the tunnel was really just a brief reprieve from the darkness of debt but we're soaking in the sunshine and basking in the glow of being damn near half way out of the depth of our debt.
As we reached the end of our credit card debt journey, we found out that Grandpa has/had $56000 in credit card debt. This is about double what his life insurance is worth. As this is a community property state, Grandma is in a predicament. Sitting here in our mid-twenties with more debt than life insurance, I'm feeling a strong pull to get our affairs in order. It seems too practical, too depressing, and almost like I'm beckoning for something bad to happen. But what if something did? I don't want to be financially screwed if my life got turned upside down.