Cardboard House of Cards...splat

Hello Blog, it’s been so long. Oh, have I missed you. Every day as I get ready for work I have at least one great idea for a blog post, same when my head hits the pillow at night. I can’t remember any of them, but one stuck, so I am back, at least for today. 

I’ve been living in a house of complacent obliviousness for many, many months, and let me tell you,  when that house of wet cardboard comes crumbling down it’s smelly, and soggy and just a damn mess.

C1 graduated in June…doo doo doo, we skipped through the summer, not a care in the world, hanging out in the A/C, in the pool and just, in general, doing nothing. Who knew I was really just saving my strength for the most stressful, sad, and anxious year? And, jeez, it’s only been 6 months.

Because I am a failure as a parent, I waited too long to get C2 to the local community college to meet with the disability coordinator and take her placement exams, so enrollment for fall semester was out. Then my mom got really sick. I was in New York with mom for the first three weeks of school. This created issues at work, and thank God for my friends. I couldn't ask for better friends. They cooked for my family, they made lesson plans, they helped the substitute (let this act as a public apology to all of the subs my classes single handedly crushed) by ushering my badly behaved students out of the room. One even let me sleep in her bed for three weeks, let me drag her to the hospital with me at the crack ass of dawn each day and let me stay there long after her bedtime. My husband was amazing and my kids were on their best behavior. As a mom it is hard to be gone for three weeks; I often felt like I missed so much that I might as well have been gone for a year.

I think this was summer-karma, a direct payback for such a relaxing summer, don’t you?

So in the midst of trying to care for mom, find a place for mom and otherwise coordinate everything you would need to accomplish in order to move 700 miles into two months, I completely let the college thing fall by the wayside. I woke up in a panic the Friday before New Year’s. While C1 was sleeping, I enrolled her in English 085, arranged for people (Ksmooth-she’s the best kind of people) to attend classes with her on Tuesdays and Thursdays, and coordinated with C1s 6^th grade Special Education teacher to take her on Fridays (God really does put people in your path; sometimes He can hit you over the head with a gift. It was divine intervention when we ran into C1’s old teacher volunteering at mom’s facility).

Oh and C1 has a part time job too. That’s a lot of balls in the air, Lance.

It’s all too much. Not for her. For me. Well maybe for her, too, but this is my blog, so we’ll make it about me. This week was tough. C1 gave poor Ksmooth a really hard time, yelling and screaming and throwing her out of the house repeatedly (she didn’t go, thank God). The best part? When I had to leave work to get C1 because she was in the middle of a full-out meltdown, of nuclear proportions. Sigh. Haven’t done that in a while.

I’m just out of practice. I was trained so well to look for pitfalls and obstacles. My oblivious complacency has come back to bite me in the ass and now I’m covered in wet, smelly cardboard.