Forgotten Post

I just discovered this post from last week that I never published.  I almost deleted it, since basically I was just complaining about life.  But then I changed my mind.  This was my reality, and even though I'm feeling a hundred times better now, it's all still valid stuff.  But I will immediately follow this post with a new one because I'm super excited about the progress I've made on my manuscript today. 

Okay, here it is: 

This has been one of those crushing, stressful sort of weeks.  I hope that something breaks this cycle soon, because there were several times my mind actually said the words "I can't do this much longer."

It's not anything specific.  It's just life.  Work is taking everything out of me.  And then Clint's schedule is plunging our lives into a mini-chaos.  It's not so much that he's periodically gone.  I can make my peace with that.  It's the unpredictability of the job.  It makes it so difficult to settle into a pattern.  For example, he left early Thursday morning (the last time I saw him was Wednesday night) to jump on a train, telling me he would be home the next night.  Well now it's Saturday, and he still hasn't come home.  In three days, I've received no phone calls from him, and exactly three texts, all of them saying something to the effect of "Sorry I missed you babe, I'll try to call you when I can."  The problem is engineering affords him zero opportunities to call (they can't use their cells while driving a train--a fact I'm sure the general public appreciates), and when he finally arrives to his destination, I'm in the middle of teaching, or it's the middle of the night.  By the time I'm available to talk, he's back on a train again.   

But even more frustrating is when he's home, he's moody.  The new job is depleting his energy, so he comes home and starts being overly-snappy with the kids, etc.  And I get it, but I still feel resentful.  Because here I've held together a happy household for two or three days, and with one fair swoop he comes in and changes the mood from relaxed and carefree to negative and tense.  

I said I wasn't going to do Builders Club again, but of course I lied, so there's that.  We had our first meeting after school on Thursday, and around 65 kids showed up, all of us packed into my small classroom equipped to hold 35 at the max.  My air conditioner has been working sporadically at best this week, so you can imagine how oppressive the temperature was with 65 bodies serving as miniature heaters.  Then, because someone upstairs likes to watch me squirm, the president of Kiwanis decided to show up during our first meeting.  If she had shown up for meeting #3 or #4, after the club was calmed down and the kids were already trained in proper meeting etiquette (like making motions and such), that would have been spectacular.  But she decided to come to the very first one.  With 65 kids, a shortage of handouts, and stinky heat.  Awesome.  

She did give me a huge hug when she left, and told me that Kiwanis really wants to support me and be involved with Builders this year, so I'm thinking the meeting wasn't as disastrous in real life as it was in my head.  She said that if I needed anything, to give her a holler.  As of yesterday, I found out that Kiwanis is going to pay for a service project that my club is doing in November, including the school bus.  I'm thrilled, because my club is broke this year.  But now I'm already up to my ears in paperwork and approvals for our upcoming events, and when you're trying to do all of this while simultaneously grading papers, planning lessons, and raising kids essentially by yourself, it's enough to make you want to curl up in the fetal position. 

I've been dreaming every night.  In one of the dreams, I was dangling from some sort of ledge.  There was someone dangling with me, and I don't know who it was but I was so happy that they were there that I knew I could hold on to that ledge forever.  In another dream, I was trying to get to my manuscript, but a black furry monster kept blocking my path.  In last night's dream, there were rabbits all over my classroom.  At least my dreams are silly, because life right now--not so much.