Hiatus

Alternate Title: The MOST stressed out I have ever been.

I hate to disappoint the one or two regular readers I have, but I am going on hiatus from the blog. Before I get into all the details about why I need to take a blog break, I'm going to review the other times during my adulthood that I have been very, very stressed. This is my last post for a while and it's going to be long. Maybe you can read a little bit more each day and then it won't seem like I'm gone.

In chronological order, the most stressed out moments of my last 10 years:

Fall 1999: I was living in a dorm and going to school in New Hampshire. I got the flu and then an infection. I was sick, far from home and stressed. Sidenote: this was when I bought all that Moonlight Path stuff that now makes me sick to smell.

Fall 2002: I had started graduate school in Colorado. Michael was finishing school in Arizona. There were 3 months that we lived in separate states. I had horrible night terrors from sleeping alone. No sleep + lots of school work= stress.

December 2003: In a span of 20 days I had to pack up our whole apartment to move back to Arizona, turn in a 23 page paper, take finals, move to Arizona, celebrate Christmas, celebrate our wedding anniversary, celebrate New Years, take comps (the comprehensive exam I needed to pass to get my degree) and start my first internship. Yikes.

August 2004: I got my Master Degree on a Friday and started work on Monday. My "office" was the corner of the special ed classroom. My first day there it was being used as a garbage pit for old science materials, desks and chairs. I cried every night for 2 weeks thinking I had made the worst mistake of my life. I met Brendan, Amy, Sandy and Kristeen in those first couple of days. They are all good friends now. They must have thought I was crazy at the time.

March 2006: Flying from Atlanta to New York on the way to Belgium. The plane caught on fire right after take-off and we had to make an emergency landing. I temporarily went blind from anxiety.

Summer 2006: Jaw surgery. Aside from my fears of complications from anaesthesia and bleeding out on the operating table I was afraid I would have facial paralysis when it was all done. Facial paralysis and a career in speech language pathology don't exactly mix.

September 5, 2007 10:30 pm: The nurse told me I was already dilated 6 cm a full 4 weeks before I was supposed to be having a baby. I went blind and deaf for about 10 minutes. Happy 28th Birthday.

September 2007- January 2008: Spencer cried all day, every day for about 15 weeks. Michael is an AWESOME dad, but he went back to work when Spencer was 2 weeks old so I was home alone with this beast of a baby for 12 hours every day.

Which brings us to now. We bought and moved into our house in May 2006- about a year before the housing market collapsed. When we bought this house we planned on staying for 4-6 years. Nice starter house. To put it bluntly, at this point we would have to stay here for 30 years and pay off the motgage to ever make a profit on it. We're essentially paying really expensive rent for a house that is now too small, because there is NO equity in this home. And there won't ever be.

We tried to do a loan modification with the mortgage company and that got us no where. So we entered the short sale process. We've known for a while that we would ultimately have to move, but in just the last week the time frame of everything has really changed. I've been really careful to not say the actual name of our city on this blog because I'm paranoid. But since we will no longer be living here I will share that we live in Maricopa. We decided that even after we left this house we would just rent in Maricopa since I had a job here and I don't want to commute for part time work.

Well, through a series of events that are not important but were VERY stressful for me, I actually now have a job in a different city. I'm not saying which one. (If you know me I'll tell you). We didn't see much of a point in staying in Maricopa if I was working somewhere else. Plus, on the same day that I found out about the job we found out that our house was bought by a different mortgage company. Since the house is no longer ours and I start work tomorrow, we're moving ASAP. We just have to find a rental.

So, I'm STRESSED OUT because I have to pack up our whole house, start a new job and find a new baby sitter for Spencer. And then, just to add to all the fun, I found out (also on the same day as the job and the house) that I have two torn ligaments in my wrist and will most likely need surgery to repair them. I go to the hand surgeon next week. How delightful. I can think of nothing better than being in a hard cast for six weeks while caring for a two year old. Unless it involves moving my entire house with already torn ligaments in my wrist. Let's also not forget that I haven't worked all summer so we're out of money. Anybody envious of my life now?

This is my beautiful house last Tuesday.

It took me over 3 years to get it to the point where I felt like nothing else needed to be done.

Welcome to my life now. What a difference 4 days makes.

I can think of about 45 unpleasant things that I would rather do than move.
And look. I had just created this cute little activity corner for Spencer.
He doesn't care anymore though because he has a step stool to play with. Guess what he's reaching for. NAILS and SCREWS. Good lord what have we become?

So, since I have to pack up my whole house (including 4 complete sets of dishes, at least 60 wine glasses and about 90 pairs of shoes), start a new job (that I will have to commute to for a few weeks), find a house to move to, find a new baby-sitter, burst out in spontaneous tears at random times and have surgery on my wrist, something's gotta give. It's gonna be the blog. And facebook. And shopping. Oh, yeah, and I still have to throw a birthday party for me and Spencer in Tucson in 3 weeks.

We hope that everything will be settled by the end of August. I won't be gone too long. I might even give some updates from time to time. But no flashback Friday or cute pictures. Except for this one of Ginger getting her head stuck between the chair and the table.
I'm also going to be contacting my Phoenix area friends to beg for help with moving once we find a place. (That means you Maryellen.) (Megan, you're off the hook because I can still count in hours how long it has been since you gave birth.) And I'm going to beg my friends who are having 30th birthday parties to please forgive me if I can no longer make it. (That's you Chelsea.)

Ahhhh! Whatever doesn't kill us makes us stronger, right?