Rough Week

This week, we finished another round of chronotherapy, trying to get sleeping at normal times (like night). No matter how you do it, shifting your sleep schedule 10 hours is always terrible. Especially when you're doing it to a couple of toddlers. There were days that we were so exhausted that even the big kids went to bed in tears. No school happened this week while we tried to work the sleep out.

I took all the kids to church by myself. Difficult is an understatement when I have one that's just starting nursery and won't go by himself and one that still won't go to primary or his class by himself. How do you juggle that?

Tim was out of town and then got back home, but he was on a different sleep schedule than we were. That was weird. He brought all the rest of our stuff from Utah, so now everything we own is in one place again. But mostly still packed because the house still needs a lot of work and who has energy for that?!

My sister was in and out of the hospital with complications from childbirth.

Monday, my parents used money from a stock sale (from stocks they forgot they had) and paid off their house. That was exciting, actually.

Also Monday, my dad was diagnosed with cancer. I tried to be reasonable about that and remind myself that it would most likely be okay (it's a fairly common kind of cancer in white men and has a high 5-year survival rate), but I cried myself to sleep.  Wednesday he had surgery, which went well. Everything looks good, but it was a traumatic few days for my whole family and still hasn't really settled down--especially since my parents were supposed to leave on a mission to Portugal in a week (and it looks like they still will--that's how well everything seems to be going on that). I don't know when that will settle down--the cancer has a high survival rate but also a fairly high recurrence rate.

Thursday, exhausted from bad sleep for a week, we finally slept dusk to dawn (instead of dawn to late afternoon, as we had been). I think it will still be a few days before we get used to it and settle down to normal life. I, for one, still feel deeply sleep deprived and therefore anxious and grouchy.

Thursday we took Daniel to the dentist with a toothache. I knew he needed work done (there is visible decay), but when you sleep all day, doing things like dentist and doctor appointments is impossible. So now that we're awake at the right hours, that's top priority. Anyway, we found out Dan needs a root canal and crown or his tooth pulled, plus at least 4 other visits to get his mouth in order. For a 4 year old, that usually amounts to a trip to the Children's Hospital to get all the work done at once when the child is asleep. Tuesday we find out more after we see a specialist.

Thursday night Tim took the three big kids to the Scouts activity. They were fishing, and Daniel caught the first and only fish of the night--which they threw back. They had a lot of fun.

We managed to get a free king sized mattress that is both newer and in better condition than the one we have been sleeping on for almost 11 years (which we got used in the first place). That meant we had to re-do our whole bedroom (which wasn't bad because we found the missing lost piece to our bed and could finally put it together right after a year). Lot of work, though.

$800 worth of checks Tim has earned didn't arrive this week like they were supposed to. I hate it when that happens. I have had to come to grips with the fact that, like most of the rest of the people my age in the nation, doing fine might have to be okay (vs living in wealth and luxury like we grew up thinking we should pursue).

Sleep deprived kids have been fighting and crying all week. Sleep deprived me hasn't been able to figure out what to do about that. Daniel, especially, has been either crying, playing wildly, or screaming at me for 6 days straight, from the time he wakes up until well after he's supposed to be asleep.

Tim had to work feverishly to get all his work done this week and still get ready for his next gig--singing at a state fair for 12 days, 4 shows a day.  We did a whole summer of fairs when Daniel was a baby, and I remember how miserable they can be. And a lot of work for what amounts to between $8 and $9 an hour. At least he's singing, but I almost told him to pass on the gig and try for temp work for $10-$12/hour where he could stay at home. The thing that stopped me? The temp agencies in town are so swamped that they won't even call Tim back or respond when he fills out the applications!

The house is hot again. It has been raining every afternoon for a month, and now it's not. So we have heat. All day. And despite our coolers working their best, it's up to 80 degrees in the house every afternoon. Makes it hard to make dinner. And when kids are hot, sleepy, grouchy, toothachy, and miserable, what do they want to do? Drape themselves all over me. Just what I want when it's hot and I'm also grouchy and tired and stressed.

We got a letter today from the home insurance people. They never inspected the house before we bought it. They've never inspected it since. They have, however, raised our premiums (and lowered our deductible) without warning or our permission several times since we signed up. So when they sent me an "anonymous" survey about how they're doing, I told them I wasn't really pleased. So what do we get now? A notice that we'll have an exterior inspection in the next 90 days and if they don't like it, they'll cancel the insurance. Never mind that the house looks mostly the same as it did when they signed us up with no inspection 5 years ago! So now I'm terrified that they'll show up and say, "Sorry. To keep your insurance with us, you have to paint the house, fix the broken window, repair the balcony that is loose, fix the flat roof, put grass in the front yard, etc." (And those things do need to be done--this house was built in 1972 and is still wearing it's original coat of paint. It's never been repainted ever.). It's not that I'm opposed to doing those things. They're on the list. For when we have the money for them. NOW is not the time for that to become a requirement.

And next week we're facing me teaching primary (subbing for Dan's class), Caleb giving a talk in primary, Daniel having a dentist appointment, me having a doctor appointment, the kids' first day of school ever (for a group homeschool run by the state, so it's free, and that gets GREAT reviews from the other homeschooling parents), and possibly me driving the kids six hours back to Nebraska so we can be with Tim. All with just pregnant me and five kids under the age of 10.

So is it any wonder that I cried when we dropped Tim off at the airport this morning?