The latest WordPress update broke the shit out of my old theme, carefully modified and nitpicked from ages ago. Alas. Temp stuff until finals are over. Or at least, until I decide that I need sufficient distraction. I don’t think my grades can get much worse anyway.

One of my favorite times of day is when both kidlets are sleeping. And you peek in and see their restful little faces and bundled up fists. And you can get things accomplished! Like Javascript homework! Dishes! Or… catching up on TV shows. Whatever best balances the mind, body, and soul.

Tonight I’m thinking The Chicago Code and some yoga stretches. Dishes, laundry, and homework tomorrow.

It’s a weird feeling putting a house back together after you’ve moved. We hadn’t sold our home when we left to go live with Andy in October, so after I lost my job it seemed our only choice was to move back. Paying rent and a mortgage on one income is impossible. It had been a tight six months even with me working.

So now I’m back and going to be doing the “stay at home mom” thing for a while. I hope to take the remaining classes and get my degree finished up, sell this house, and move back south. I guess we’ll see what happens.

It’s funny how everything kind of spiraled when he left. I’ve been catching up with people here and it’s like a huge series of tragedies. It’s almost funny. He ended up being shipped off on our wedding anniversary. The very next day, the transmission goes out in my car when I’m trying to drive home from work. A coworker was able to give me a lift home and then our Ford warranty handled everything else

Side note: if you are buying a used car and are able to purchase a dealership warranty (Ford, GM, Honda, Toyota, etc), it can be worth it. Do NOT buy warranties through other parties! I worked at a repair shop and believe me, those companies will try to weasle and co-pay you out of everything. If you are getting one, make sure it covers your transmission and engine. If not, don’t bother. Your money would be better spent sitting in a savings account.

Anyhow. At the end of March due to new government legislation on mortgage brokerages [which was based on a biased survey and mostly pounded through by big banks to get rid of individual brokerages], my job was gone.

I’ve never been let go before. I’ve always been the one to leave a job on my own terms. It was a weird meeting. At first I didn’t even realize what he was trying to say. I just thought it was about the new reforms and how we’d have to do things a little different. I can be obtuse at times. Especially because I never imagined that I’d lose my job. It was never one of those things I worried about before.

Picking up my pictures off my desk and walking out to my car was kind of surreal. It was like, now what. The job market down there is a disaster and it was like everything I’ve been worrying about for the past ten months starting breakdancing in my brain and… Well, I had myself a nice cry on the drive home.

I think the worst part of it all was opening the door and seeing Jas and Cody smiling at me and come running over all excited because Mama is home early! Yay, what luck is this! It broke my heart thinking about how hard things were going to be and all the what ifs and worst case scenarios. Everything I do is for them. And it kind of felt like I failed.

After talking to Andy, I started breaking ties down there and getting ready to leave. We planned on driving both cars up to this house and leaving one here, taking with us things we didn’t want in the moving truck. My hydrangea hedge, my rose and several other houseplants, paintings and framed pictures, swords and things. We filled up Andy’s car.

Unfortunately as we were driving across the bridge dividing Illinois and Kentucky, we were involved in a four car collision. A car had stalled on the left lane in the middle of the bridge. The truck driving in front of me braked and swerved into the right line to avoid hitting it. I was able to brake and stop without hitting it but in the process got rearended by Andy’s car which got rearended by a pickup truck which got rearended by another pickup truck. Thankfully the kids were in the car with me because Andy’s car was totalled. The force that the pickup truck hit it slammed the trunk into the backseat. Vakker took a trip in the ambulance because of her neck [whiplash] and I ended up with both dogs in my car as well as the kids and everything we had packed in as well.

It was at 10:30pm and I completely panicked because I didn’t know whether we should drive back to the rental or drive forward to this house in Illinois. Either way we had a several hour drive. Thankfully we have some relatives that lived within an hour and were on their way immediately to come help me. I was so relieved. I don’t even have words. I want to send them fruitbaskets and write sonnets because I felt so overwhelmed by everything. My sister had been rushed to some foreign hospital, my husbands car was totalled and being dragged away to some tow company that I had to track down to even get their phone number, and our car was filled with similarly traumatised creatures.

Fucking miserable night.

The relatives picked up both dogs and the kidlets in the hospital parking lot so I could go in and check on my sister, then we went back and stayed at their house for the rest of the morning. We then drove the rest of the way to Illinois, fueled mostly by the remnants of adrenaline and then exhaustion. I had to stop a bunch of times and just rest my head on a pillow on the steering wheel for a few minutes. What normally would have taken about four hours took nearly eight. When we got in town, everyone said we looked like zombies.

I still kind of feel like one. Going through the motions.

After unloading the things we had in my car [mostly our massive library which filled the trunk and a few lucky pictures], we drove all the way back down to pack up the house and drive all the fucking way back. Thankfully my mom and father-in-law helped with the packing and driving because I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to do on my own. And then on the night we show up at our house with the moving truck, it is raining raining raining.

So that’s how things have been recently. Crazy, scary, soul testing, and challenging. I still have a bunch of boxes to unpack but I feel a lot lighter being back in this house. I really do love it, down to all the wood trim and our beautiful sun room. I wish we could find someone willing to purchase and cherish it too. That’s my goal for this next year. Get this house sparkling and in someone else’s possession!

But even with everything that has happened, it has really opened my eyes to the love and tenderness that my family feels for me. I always try to handle things on my own and when I asked for help, people did. Mostly. Some of my relatives are hero’s now. And if they ever need my help, you can bet they’ll get my full support. I can move mountains when I want to.

Wow. I was definitely supposed to have written an essay and been in bed more than an hour ago. BUT! I was being productive, sort of. I made a fun Stream of Consciousness page that feeds in posts from my tumblr and twitter for easy reading. I find it exciting. =D I wanted to avoid some sidebar situation so now they have their own page and space.

I was also updating my about page but I cannot for the life of me remember what my fourth category was going to be and it is driving me crazy. I know that it is web related because I had ideas planned for making images but now that thought has scampered off and dammit all that is what I get for planning website updates late at night and then sleeping on them. Anytime I sleep on an idea, it drifts away.

Okay, bed time. Except that I have to take out the trash. Urgh…. Responsibilities. They never end. I’d say that I’ll sleep in this weekend but my children are wired to only sleep in when they need to get up early in the morning. Otherwise at 6am their bright cheery little faces are chirping out noises and words, looking completely baffled at the thought of getting an extra hour or two of sleep. Friggin early birds.