A Window to Me

I am looking forward to my 3 and a half day weekend. I have a much needed hair appointment on Friday. I feel like life is getting back to normal. This holiday season has been, to say the least, stressful. I think it was the combination of my boyfriend and I combining families, moving into together into a new house at the end of October to only have to rush into Thanksgiving followed by frantically getting it together for Christmas. I don't think I've had a chance to breathe. And if I did, I sure don't remember it. Unfortunately for me, and for everyone else around me, I am burned out. When you move in with your partner you can't just waltz in and start hanging your favorite kitty cat pictures anywhere you want to. Mind you I don't have a kitty cat picture but you get my drift. If it was just me moving into another place for me, well then that's easy as pie. But when you are melding yourself with your partner it takes a little bit more thought and a lot more effort. Take for instance my little white dove that I love so much. Here she is:

She was not allowed to be on display. Actually, anytime that Brian catches a glimpse of her all I hear is "Baybieeeee...." and a grimace on his face. So she has ended up on my side of the bed on my bedside table lamp. And I am ok with that.

Here is one of his favorites that he wanted in the kitchen and at first I said nah, but they are growing on me and might eventually make their way up from the man cave. Maybe.

Compromises were made and we worked it all out, no worries. Maybe the dove and beer steins will one day meet. Seems like the moment we settled on what went where we had to tear it all down and put up Christmas decorations. Christmas to me just seems so fast anymore. Just seems like a rush to get everything done. Every year I tell myself that next year will be better, that things will go smoother and get accomplished with ease. That I will have tons and tons of time to make millions of crafts, gifts, and goodies. It's just not really not going to happen to a perfectionist procrastinator. It just isn't. I will probably always feel the pressure. I just have to learn how to deal with that holiday pressure better somehow right? Sure. It can be done. I just have to get geared up for it. And not move my whole house 3 weeks before Thanksgiving. Just to kind of pile it on a little, work has been impossible. I went back to doing payroll, which I know sounds so exciting so hold onto your seats here, because I thought that would make me feel more secure and calm knowing that I knew what I was doing from front to back. But it's only made me realize why I quit doing payroll. The deadlines will smother you. I feel I have no room to breathe. I couldn't take any time off at the holidays because of the schedule. Memories just came flooding back of when I used to be a sour, snappy person at work and yes, that was when I was doing payroll for a company about 11 years ago. I got back into payroll to escape a job that was way over my head and was flabbergasting me every day. I thought if I went back to my roots I would be safe. Safe is not necessarily good. Unless I can find something else that I feel confident in and can make some dough at, I will stay where I am until I can figure something out. I just get that dreaded feeling...don't know if you've ever had it or not...but it feels dead. That feeling that you are getting up every day to go be dead. Mentally dead and emotionally strained and fighting a rage that is growing in your belly and creeping up into your throat. On another note,

I miss my son. 

When he is not here and is with his dad I miss him so much it. Our bedtime routine goes a little something like this...We head to his room about 7:45 or 8:00 to watch a few episodes of his choosing. Either Backyardigans, Olivia, Franklin or the beginning of Madagascar or Horton Hears a Who. We get snuggled under the covers and I hold him close. I run my fingers through his hair or rub his back. We check the clock and he tells me when the big hand is close to the 6. Then, as he says, Lights Out. As soon as lights are out, he drinks a little sippy of milk and I start singing him a combination of songs I have been singing him his whole life. You Are My Sunshine, If All the Raindrops Were Lemon Drops and Gumdrops, Jesus Loves Me and Farmer in the Dell. I continue to rub his tiny little back and sing the final song, Kumbaya. Sometime during that song and one of the million lyrics I have added to it to lengthen it into oblivion, he slips off into dreamland. Sometimes I do to. I wake up and try to easily roll out of the bed and put up the bed rail guard. I slip out the door quiet as a mouse and head into the kitchen to do my final rounds of clean up. I pass back by his door and have fleeting thoughts of crawling back in the bed with him and snuggling him like the teddy bear he is. Instead, I head to my bed and anxiously await him to gently touch my hand in the middle of the night after he has found his way to me in the dark quiet night. I crawl out of my covers and carry him back to his bed, when I can resist the temptation to pull him in the bed with me and clutch him tightly, and ask him if he needs to use the potty. He holds onto me so tightly in that walk back to his room. His sleepy little body...that little boy that I know so well...that little boy that I have nursed as an infant and known since his first day of life. I place him back under the covers and I crawl in there with him sometimes to sing some more and sometimes just to let him know that I'm there. I end up slipping back out about an hour later. 

On the nights he's not here, I go to my bed and sleep.

He's not here tonight, so that's what I will be doing.

All my love sweet little boy