Yes, it has been quite some time since I’ve been proactively writing on this blog. No, I really don’t have a good excuse. 
Life just gets in the way sometimes, ya know? It has been complicated recently and there have been major changes in my life, some that haven’t been easy to take. It seems like things are settling down now though.
I’m no longer at St. Lukes. I accepted a position as a Personal Assistant for a family that lives somewhat near me (20 minutes away when it takes 30 minutes just to get to town, closer to an hour to get anywhere IN town). I started that job mid-October. To be honest, I was dreading it. It was a decision I didn’t want to have to make and it took me about a month to actually make it. It threw everything into turmoil for me. I did like my job at St. Lukes, I liked making a difference and I loved my co-workers. I ended up crying my eyes out every time I even thought of leaving. I went back and forth, made up my mind, and then changed it…and this happened sometimes several times a day. To make matters worse, when I finally got the balls to announce it to my boss, she really wanted me to stay and offered several compromises to try to make it work, but the bottom line was, I’d lose a lot of pay to work the hours that I needed to work.
At the new job, I am able to drive the kids down to the bus, wait until they are on it (safely, thereby hopefully preventing more bratty neighbor problems), then go to work, leave work at 4, and the kids usually beat me home by about 5 minutes.
I wasn’t looking forward to it at all, it wasn’t what I wanted to be doing. But, after I finally got started and began to settle in, I grew to like it more and more. Andraya is the lady I work for and she’s very into healthy foods, they eat ALL organic and she makes basically everything from scratch, 3 meals a day. Ok…I make 3 meals a day from scratch for them, haha! Anyway, we have similar views on many things, including vaccination and health care. Michael is her husband and he runs a home based business. They have 2 children, Jaedyn is 3 and Joshua turns 2 next month, and one more on the way. She’s due in January. She plans to have a home birth, if all goes as planned.
I basically help the family any way I can, from meal planning and prep, cooking and cleaning, helping with the kids, helping Michael in his office, running errands and I’ll be assisting him in parts of his business soon too. I run errands usually once a week, including their grocery shopping and other things.
It still has its moments, the kids like to test me, but we’re getting along well and so far, it has worked out pretty well and it sure is nice to be home at a decent hour.
I’m learning to cook healthier, I’ve shared the product of that with some of you and hope to share with more. Don’t worry, I’m not about ‘converting’ you, but I do want to help show people that you can eat healthier and have it taste really good. I know it is not possible for most of us (myself included) to eat completely organic, because it is so much more expensive, but I am trying to move more towards more whole, less processed foods. I’ve acquired several great recipes already and I may start to share them on here. If you need help finding ingredients, just let me know!
What else is going on….Clayton got kicked off the bus last week, for a week, for inappropriate language, so I made him use the opportunity to catch up on homework that he hasn’t been turning in, as well as some chores around the house. I think he was glad to go back to school! His grades are slowly coming up, as I try to stay on top of keeping homework in. The school has a new program to track it all online.
Elizabeth’s grades are very good, she’s on the honor roll. She’s having a friend come for a sleepover this weekend, something we haven’t done in a while (unless you count family friends coming to stay).
Gabe has some areas he needs to work on, he’s trying to get out of doing homework too, so I have to stay on him to get it done. They are all growing up though, and quickly!
We have a storm blowing in tonight, so the fire is going, the lights are flickering and I’m going to save this right now, just in case!
Ok, whew!
Now, you are probably wondering why I’ve entitled this “Self Evaluation”. Here comes the revealing, self analysis part, so if you are one of those people who doesn’t want to talk about feelings…you’ve probably read all you want to read at this point.
I had to sit down and think about WHY I don’t write when things get into an uproar. I can write about anything else, why am I simply unable to sit down and put down in words, when I’m not feeling ok? Because, that is really what it amounts to for me. For the last several months, I haven’t been ok. I was (am still am in some ways) overwhelmed, sad, upset, even a little angry. Life goes on, and in the scheme of things, nothing was really seriously wrong though. I have to admit that the job was a major portion of it, I was upset at having to be forced to do something that I didn’t want to do, because I knew it was the right thing to do.
Lots of people that I know think I’m a strong person. I really don’t think I am. I cry way too easily, I get frustrated. I slack off way too much. I’m not the kind of parent that I want to be, heck, I’m not even the kind of PERSON that I want to be. I think it is because of that that I simply cannot admit that I’m in over my head, that things aren’t good at the moment. I don’t want to disappoint those people who think I’ve beaten the odds, even when I don’t think I beat the odds at all! I don’t want anyone to know that I really am miserable. So yeah…after the fact, I am admitting that I was downright miserable, I was hurting, I was in a bad place.
Hopefully I’m on the upswing now though. Things seem to have settled down, stabilized a bit. Work is going well. I still have to get firewood and winter is on top of us already, I still have to get a 4wd vehicle or I won’t be going anywhere. I have faith though and I know those things will work themselves out.
So there you have it! As Paul Harvey used to say…the REST of the story.
