I Did It!!

I really did!  I thought I did it this summer, but my sneaky husband tried to slip one under the radar and I actually didn't.

I got all of the laundry done.  All laundry, save what was at the firehouse and one my people's person was at least washed when I went to bed last night.  I have one load in a basket to be folded and one each in the washer and dryer.  The girls have two baskets of laundry I will guilt my FF into putting away tonight, but our clothes and the boys' clothes are all washed, dried, folded AND put away.  No small feat.

Small feat??  Still unsure of that?? Not in this house when there are 6 people - one in football, one who changes her clothes because the clock changed, one who is so covered in grime she must go through several outfits per day  and not when your FF unknowingly undermines your attempt all summer long to get all laundry done and keep up with it.  He "took over" laundry before we moved.  While he was "doing laundry"  much of it did not get done.  By the time we were settled and I was back to feeling like I had conquered laundry, it turns out some of that "DONE laundry" he "did" when  he "took over" laundry, simply got packed in a box. This was discovered right as I went back to school. That broke my spirit and we have been playing catch up ever since.   My basement was just one big mess o' laundry.  UGH!  

Not my pile o' laundry, borrowed from another mommy/teacher blogger with some of the same issues as mine.
Not her laundry mountain either.

Last week, I made a resolve to just get it done.  And even with football banquets and varsity games, homework and playtime, Halloween parties and trick or treating, I GOT IT DONE!  Now, how long will it last??  Hopefully I can maintain and have a plan in place for when I am going to be gone.  That seems to be when we fall behind.

Now, for that sock basket I spoke of last spring...that is still waiting for him and I am not giving in on that one!

Okay, I admit it, I suck at it!

My post yesterday.  All big and bad.  Such a tough girl, I said NO to doing lunch duty.  Oooooooo! That was easily done easier to do, because it was for an adult.  Kids and k9s.  I can't say no.  Now, for the record, that does not mean that I take the kids to the Golden Arches every time they ask or buy them whatever their heart desires.  BUT, when kids hearts are truly in the right place, there is nothing I can do.  I can't say no.  I just can't.

Due to standardized testing, we had all of our classes in the afternoon yesterday.  I proposed doing a service project to really put what we are learning about social justice into action.  I thought, okay, a project for both classes to do together.  Awesome.  Yeah, how about 2 projects from each class for a total of 4 social justice projects.

Yeah, I know.  My FF rolled his eyes, too.  But hear me out and tell me if you could tell these kids no.  Remember, these are seniors.  And in my experience, they tend to be the most self-focused class in high school.  

So my first period class came up with about 20  ideas.  Some were amazing and some were pretty lame, to be honest.  They whittled it down to two.  Doing a Shanty Town for Habitat in our courtyard and making dresses for Dress a Girl Around the World.  Both AMAZING ideas.  Think of the impact!  They couldn't decide.  SO, we decided to do both.  They had true intentions of simply doing good.  Originally they were looking for ideas involving field trips that would get them out of school and yet they chose two events that will require them to give up their oh so precious time.


My next class, same idea.  They started out looking for ways to get out of class and settled on two really good ideas.  One - Stuffing our little 20 passenger school bus with Thanksgiving dinner items and delivering them to a larger Stuff the Bus event in Milwaukee.  Their second idea, not so much based in social justice, but noble none the less was to partner with Children's Hospital to see how we can help them out.  That was in still in the works.  AND both classes wanted to help with the other's projects.  Now, I just added a TON of work to my load and it is all self-inflicted.  Please feel free to remind me that it was indeed my choice.  I am a mom, I am well versed at saying NO, but willingly chose not to.

I am just going to have to say no

Saying no is something that I have SUCKED at lately.


I am finding myself buried under bailing everyone else out and it is wearing on me.  Today I am going to say no.  This weekend, I organized babysitters and RE-organzied them when they all bailed on me for a marriage retreat here at school.  I am all about helping with supporting marriages and keeping them healthy, so I was happy to do it.  Then the person who was in charge, somehow forgot they were going out of town during this event and now I found myself in charge of not only getting the babysitters, but also supervising them.  THEN I found out I was acting as hostess.  Got a welcome speech written (and it was dang good if I do say so myself).  Take B and our 5th grade neighbor to be my go-fers.  Finally get the list of kids and find that there are FIVE babies coming.  We are a high school, there are no cribs, exersaucers, etc for me to put babies in when I need my hands.  Call the parents to help out. And away we go on a Saturday night.  

When playing with my phone was
no longer working and the shrieks returned.

Get there and the first set of kids (also the last to leave) have HORRIBLE separation anxiety.  A 7 month old who won't let me put her down and either screamed or wimpered the ENTIRE three hours and her 2 year-old sister, also crying, "I want mommy, sniffle, I want daddy."  THE WHOLE TIME!!  Mine, never went through this.  5 minutes after I left, they were off playing with their friends.  Mom said (about the baby), "Yeah, I don't really put her down much."  Oh, really, I couldn't tell.  Not going to get on my soapbox about my parenting style, but I am so happy my kids had the self-confidence to be without me.  The other babies slept beautifully, thank God!  I don't know what I would have done, considering there were 40-some other kids and 5 teen-agers to  help supervise.  So, get packed up, get my two minions in the car and it is now 9:30pm, with a 4 minute drive ahead of us.

Sunday, I packed up and went 4 hours northwest for a conference.  Unknowingly leaving Daddy with 2 puking kids ( I dealt with the one who started this the night before. (Now he gets the curse of the Blue Shift - since it was indeed a Blue Shift and I was away!)  While on this trip, I find out a TON of stuff is not getting done that is supposed to be getting done and I take on some of those responsibilities for the following weekend (which also includes two birthday parties, a football practice and the Championship game) just to be sure it is done.  Come home the next night, one more puking Muppet and Daddy takes a City Owed trade so I do not have to miss school.  Get to school (with ONE non puking Muppet) and find out there is an issue with lunch coverage, they were going to ask a sub to take it.  He can barely handle a classroom, how will he  handle a lunch hour.  It is my lunch, I volunteer to take it.

Today, the same people who needed lunch coverage emailed me this AM, "we also have ________________to do today, can you cover lunch again" or something to that effect.  I am kind of tired.  My FF is the next to take on the virus that is going through the house, no surprise given all the clean-up he has done.  AND there is a football game at 8pm tonight, again 45 minutes away.  

I am going to have to say no.  Something's gotta give.

Hug your kids tight and kiss your FFs good-bye as the leave for shift.  Make sure they all know that you love them.

Good thing I am married to a firefighter

And live next door to a firefighter.  I am leaving the compound and they will have to fend for themselves.

I am gone for 24 hours for an accreditation in-service on the  other side of the state.  That means Daddy will totally be in charge.  Daddy will live Mommy's life for a a day - get baths done tonight and everyone in bed, kids up tomorrow - early, make sure that the three oldest are in uniform and that O does not wear a tutu to school.  Drive to school and back and school and back.  (I did already make meals for the next few days, so I know they won't go hungry!) I emailed our Lower Campus Secretary to see if she had a subbing job for my FF, so he could avoid another home and back to school trip and feel that he has some purpose.

Let's hope the Muppets are running the show.  And that they boys don't have to use their mad fire skills to put out the flames of a rogue science experience that did not set off Daddy's Spidey sense like it would Mommy's.  I would like to come home and sleep in my bed tomorrow night.  

Waiting for the Spirit to Move Me

I am not sure if life has overwhelmed me or if I just have writer's block.  Maybe writing about not knowing what to write will open the flood gates and I can start writing again.  Who knows.  Everything in my head is not really meant for this forum.  It needs to come out, but I am not sure this is the proper place.  And so I am struggling for ideas on what to write about.

Tomorrow we bury a Firefighter, who within weeks of retirement last week found out he had a Glioblastoma and our neighbors bury their second son in just a few weeks.  a coworker of mine just found out she has Neuromyelitis Optica, another friend of mine is going in for another follow-up mammogram tomorrow.  It just seems like I want to scream ENOUGH ALREADY! I know can pray more, but I am not really finding things that I can DO, per se.  And I don't like feeling like this.   I am not questioning my faith, been there done that.  Got the T-shirt.  I am questioning the Whys of all of this.  Not my place, I get it.  But, none-the-less I am looking for answers.  And looking for what I can actually DO!  Please send prayers for healing and guidance this way.  So many people need it.


Tonight is the opening mass for the Year of Faith that starts today in the Catholic Church.  I will be at the Cathedral tonight. Hopefully, my FF will take the three stooges with him when he picks up N from football practice.  7pm is kind of late to ask little ones to sit quietly, especially when their day starts at 5am.  That would not be fair.  I am hoping that it will center me and I can find some guidance.  The ability to lose the attitude that I am developing with all of this I am witnessing.  It will happen, I will lose the grumpiness of it all.

Hug your kids tight and kiss your firefighters.  Tell them that you love them, more than they want to hear.  Nothing is guaranteed.  Time could be limited or you could be blessed with decades.  We just don't know.

Sometimes It Seems Too Much

I am tired and I can't sleep. This has been for a while now.  My brain keeps going after I am supposed to be getting some shut eye.  I have been sleeping on the couch, because I find it easier to fall asleep watching infomercials as opposed to my continually spinning to-do list that my mind is formulating and revising at all moments in time. The night before last, I got up and made the dough, because what else do you do at 2:13am when your FF is on shift and you can't sleep.  DUH!

First 9 done, wrapped and ready to go.

Yesterday, the compound cranked out THIRTY cookie cakes for Fire PreventionWeek.  We had the two ovens going non stop, from just about the time mass let out until nearly dinner time.  Then the sirens came, directly behind us.  Two Firewives that we are, we step out on the veranda to take a look see.  And our stomachs dropped.  Now, I am new to the neighborhood, but everyone has been so welcoming.  You feel like you've known them forever.  First an engine and the med unit right behind it.  Not a good sign.  And they stayed in the house - no one came out.  Not a good sign.  The engine did not leave once the meds were on scene - not a good sign.  It seemed like they were there forever.  The BLS Vultures were in front and they left.  Not a good sign.

Much prettier at the firehouse than in my backyard.

Then mom came out, with a look I cannot describe, but is forever in grained in my mind.  It was a look of a lost soul. She lost her 21 year-old son.  He was home for the weekend.  He just helped our boys rake their lawn.  Went to his room to work on some homework and never responded to the call for dinner.  She went up to get him and she found there - blue.  Her husband called 911 while she did CPR until Med 15 got there.  What do you say?  She just got done working her boy in the eternity that it took for help to arrive. There are no words.  There was nothing we could say.  I felt helpless.  I could never be a fire fighter.  I am too much of a control freak, if there is a problem, I want to fix it.  This couldn't be fixed.  I wanted to do something and couldn't do a single thing.  Her family was there quite quickly and I was ever so grateful that they were not alone with their grief.

Worst part of this WHOLE story, as if the heartbreak was not enough of losing one son.  She just buried her older son - 24 - 2 weeks ago.  How does a mother cope with losing both her boys in less than a month?  How do we as mothers, who feel her pain and yet cannot BEGIN to imagine her pain, support her?  What do you say?  How do you help?  You can't take the pain away, it will forever be burned on her heart.  Scars heal and made fade, but they are still ALWAYS there.

So, what else is there to do, but hug your kids.  I scooped them up and hugged them tight.  I kissed them over and over.  And we dropped off the cookies to Daddy's station (why wait until Monday)- waited in the fire house kitchen with the Battalion Chief until both rigs got back.  Enjoyed the smiles on the guys' faces as they grabbed their cookies by the  slice (imagine a pizza slice) and headed off to watch some Sunday Night Football like the teenage boys I have grown to love through my classroom.  Took in the smiles on the muppets faces' as Daddy loved them in his second home.  Then swept them up and off to bed, with some more love on the way.

It was the only thing that I could do to ease the ache that I had no right to feel.  Hug my kids.  I could still do that and I felt so guilty.  I felt like I was gloating in her grief.

I got them home and  settled in and I was determined to sleep in my own bed for a change; it has probably been a month of Green shifts since I last slept there alone.  I chatted with a dear friend of mine, while I tried to make sense of the whole scene.  I finally broke down and took some Tylenol PM, just to shut my head up for one night.  I drifted off into quiet of the dark night.

Here I am at the end of the school day, still a little hung-over, in a Zombie like state from the sleep aid, but it shut my head up for a night.  One night where I did not listen to my thoughts or have an argument with the Big Guy over what is fair.  It is not my place to ask why and yet here I am once again, asking why?  My FF is home tonight and I have more cookies to deliver.  Hopefully the sleep last night gave me the reserves I need to sort out the details in my cerebral hard drive and make peace with the Big Guy. Or at least ask him to look over another grieving family

Love your kids with all your heart.  Some day they just might not be here to bug you while you are trying to get stuff done.  There is no need to wish you had enjoyed it while they were bugging you, when you can start right now.  Embrace the constant stalling "I love you, Mom-my" hugs in the robot  voice and the requests to help with dinner even though it is easier to do it without them.

Hug your kids tight and kiss your firefighters goodnight.  There are way too many uncertainties for anything else.