Life/Mom Log #9

I find myself at the intersection of trying to live my life and trying to run from it.

I'm pretty sure after spending last weekend doing pretty much nothing but laundry catch-up from working for 2 weeks straight that I've come to the conclusion that the hardest part of doing it is resisting the urge to douse it in gasoline and set it on fire.

Last week was February vacation.  Let me just say this:  School vacation when you have teenagers is a vacation for no one.  They're bored out of their mind, but every time you suggest you all do something they don't want to because they're "busy" doing nothing.  They just kind of mope around, eating everything in sight and leaving a trail of whatever they were last holding in their hands that managed to be discarded to the floor in their wake.  The trash can has become a guideline rather than a rule for disposal.  You come home from work to your house smelling like a locker room because they forgot that the shower exists - like, the entire frigging contraption at all.  It's a part of your bathroom that doesn't exist anymore.  The laundry hamper?  What the hell is that?  Long gone are the days of being entertained by the snow;  now they're just zombies with electronics glued to their faces.

Thursday afternoon, I did my usual, sit in the car and play around on social media for a minute, while I brace myself to walk through the door and find a magical mess-making tornado had visited.  Because, you know, paper towels place themselves on the floor and food magically walks itself upstairs into the children's bedrooms where it doesn't belong....  I could hear them yelling at each other from my porch when I came home from work.  As soon as I walked through the door and got a pleasant "Hello Mom" from my son and my daughter yelled "thanks", I realized that it wasn't angry yelling.  They were giving each other tips on what to do and where to find stuff  in the video game on their tablets; that they were playing against each other, from separate rooms of the house.

Deep breath.  Mentally added to the things that if I did as a kid, I'd be dead.  Get over my generational outrage that they're interacting with each other electronically.  They're getting along.  If this is how it has to happen, then so be it.

Over the past month off and on I've been battling anxiety attacks that put me in a strangle hold and won't let go.  It has been Hell.  Hopefully things are turning around, I feel much better over the past couple of days.  I think it helps to take a minute and realize what I need to get through it and just go with it.  If your body is telling you "let's lay in bed and eat ice cream and watch New Girl on Netflix until your eyes feel like they're going to fall out of your head", and that's what you need to do to reset your mind, do it.  When there are times when your mind won't stop and nothing you do will reset it, leave your environment and do something else.

I've pretty much stopped taking selfies.  I don't know why.  It almost feels like my arm is missing and it freaked me out when I realized about two weeks ago that the last selfie that I took and posted to social media was on Thanksgiving....it used to be daily.  I chopped 8 inches of my hair off in November when I went back to work.  I had to, it was breaking off and falling out in clumps.  I've missed my hair.  It's growing back in stronger though, I'm glad for the reset.  On an observational note though;  when everyone freaks out about your new hair "because they really like it!!  It looks soooo good!!", did it look that bad before?

I deleted my POF account.  This time for multiple reasons, and not the same reasons that I did it the last time.  Frankly, I'm not in the market for pointless attention.  I don't need it anymore.  There was a point where I couldn't function without it and now I find myself not wanting attention of any kind unless it's coming from someone that means something.  Someone who calls when they say they will.  Someone who's actually met me.  And maybe a little bit because I don't want attention from anyone but the one person that my brain shuts off around.  Like seriously, I mean an actual, real, live, breathing person.  Whom I sit down next to, and the world literally STOPS.  One who, when they're around, I feel calm and calamity colliding all at once.  Trying to wrap my head around that one....

If you don't have goosebumps, you should.

Anyways, more on mental health and relationships to come.  Be good to each other.  Peace out!