Time

Evany is going to be 7 months old in a week.

My baby is closer to being a year old than a newborn. (The first time I typed that, I wrote newbairn. What am I, Irish? She's a wee bairn...anyway) I can't believe how time flies.

She's hilarious and funny and I have no pictures to show you because my camera battery died a week ago and I can't seem to drum up the energy to charge it. The reaching and plugging that would have to happen is apparently just too much for me.

I can feel myself heading for a down swing in my mood. Or I'm just PMSing. Let's hope it that, shall we? Historically, though, I tend to have periods where I'm doing great and then periods where I do not so great. I kind of love that I just used the word period twice right after I posted about PMS. Very appropriate, no?

And this started out being about Vivi, but here we go on a rabbit trail. Time is a funny thing, how it passes. Dates are big for me, the calendar ones, that is, and just like I always get down leading up to Eli's birthday, I can feel myself getting down leading up to July. John left on July 3rd. Our wedding anniversary is July 7th. Sandwiching the 4th of July in there kind of guarantees it's going to be a rough time. All the families getting together, barbecuing and having fun. Last year I sat alone after the kids went to bed, listening to the fireworks and wondering what had happened to my life. Two days later I was having what amounted to the closest thing to a nervous breakdown I've ever had.

Now almost a year later, I'm still alive. I didn't drive off a bridge. My kids are all healthy and happy. To be honest, John and I get along better now than we did this time last year. We've learned to relate and disagree in more productive ways. We're a team for the kids, we're genuinely friends at this point, and it is what it is. Where will we be a year from now God only knows. But the point is, some things are actually better now than they were a year ago.

But then again, this year has sucked. It's been hard and heartbreaking and frustrating and I've wanted to throw in the towel more times than I can count. I've felt sorry for myself an embarrassing number of times. Saying I'm a better Christian in light of what's happened would be a lie. I'm insecure in ways I never was before. Just tonight I told John I thought that someone had a voodoo doll of me and was sticking pins in gleefully. This has been the most challenging year of my life, bar none, not even the first year after Eli died. Sometimes I'd like to post everything that bothers me on this blog, in excruciating detail, just to make myself feel better, but then I remember that I want to be a bigger person, not a vindictive one, and I'd probably only feel better for a few minutes. Because it's something I fight against all the time, there are nights I sit in front of a blinking cursor, only able to think about the things I can't say.

Overall, though, I think it's a wash between positive and negative. We're getting nowhere on the house issue. Apparently the month we applied for the HAMP modification, more people were denied than ever. It sucks. It's hard to plan, hard to know what to do. It's tiring. It's sad. I walked on a squeaky board the other day and hearing it made me remember John installing that exact piece of wood, the nights we spent scraping popcorn from the ceilings and getting more texture paint on the floors and each other than the walls and ceiling. The time I got all the way up the scaffolding and started painting our fifteen foot ceiling only to realize I am really, really afraid of heights. I don't want to leave my house.

I'm beginning to think I am just PMSing. I just watched a promo for teen mom and almost cried. Ugh.