Really rough 2019

So I have a terrible confession and its one that I am super not proud of but here it goes.  Its not a huge secret that I haven’t posted anything for an extremely long time but it’s the reason behind why I haven’t posted is my dirty little shame! The next holiday I needed to post about was actually Christmas but the reason why I haven’t posted anything is because I had my motifs all ready to go out including the card but they just didn’t get sent out. Part of my family actually visited mid January and I was going to give them the cards at that time, but I felt stupid for being so late. But the biggest reason I didn’t give them out then was because after hearing them talk about all the Christmas gifts they gave each other like refrigerators and foreign vacation trips  I felt so horrible that the only thing we could afford to give out was tatted dodads I was beyond crushed. I was completely devastated that my sister was able to give such extravagant gifts to our parents and I was going to hand them a stupid card with a stupid lil thing inside, so I didn’t even bother to give them out.

Unfortunately, this is just the beginning of my massive shame. Come Valentines day I had my motifs ready to go but I couldn’t come up with a card and I was still feeling stupid about not giving out any Christmas gifts and not even sending out any cards that I was too embarrassed to send these out.

I can carry over this same shame clear into October. I had St. Patricks, Easter, and 4^th of July motifs all ready but I just couldn’t bring myself to send them out.  I guess the good news is I have a jump on my motifs for 2020 so I guess we will have to wait and see how that turns out.

I guess partly in my defense we had a pretty horrific 2019. My daughter gave me my first blood grandbaby in April.  She was born a month early under an emergency situation. Both baby and momma did exceptionally well under the circumstances and recovered fairly quickly and were released from the hospital within a week. Both did really well for a couple months until my daughter was in a horrific car wreck with baby in the back seat. Thankfully baby was strapped into a car seat (one of the safest rated on the market) and just ended up with scratches and hopefully no long-term issues due to shaken baby. Momma however ended up with several massive deep cuts and a pelvis that got broken and fractured in several places. I have never felt so helpless in my whole life as what followed in the next couple months. I live in Washington while the rest of my family lives in Idaho and I had already taken time off work for the baby shower and the birth and visiting just the month before, so it was extremely difficult for me to travel again. Thankfully my parents are both retired and have a house where they have a room that is wheelchair accessible, so they were able to take both momma and baby in. It was a huge undertaking because moms’ milk never came in so they had to run up and down the stairs making bottles. My daughter wasn’t allowed to stand up any longer than it took to transfer from the wheelchair to the toilet and then straight back to laying down so baby had to sleep with my parents which meant that they had to get up for the night feedings. My daughter ended up completely out of commission for 4 whole months which encompasses so much like getting her and baby to doctors’ appointments, all meals for mom and baby, bathing’s, jeez the list goes on and on. My daughter also has 2 other kids/toddlers that she has raised as her own for the last 6 years and that can be figured in that mix.

I was only able to go back once during that time so add more shame, guilt, remorse pretty much every demeaning adjectives you can use to my low self-esteem. My self-esteem has always been excessively low anyway but it is pretty much rock bottom right now.

 In the midst of all this our well house floor caved in causing the filter system to sustain damage which in turn caused electrolysis in our water system which caused leaks to start forming in the copper pipes in the house which means we had water spraying out behind walls . During the appointment for the estimate the contractor ended up finding our 2000 square foot deck was attached to the house instead of being anchored to a beam and that all the snow that we had during winter was so heavy that it had begun to pull  the deck away from the house which means it started pulling the house down the hill with it. Insurance got involved which covered replacing the deck and the damage to the house but not the plumbing. So while the work on the deck was going on we took on the task of replacing all the copper pipes throughout our entire 3000 square foot, 2 story house.  

We hired someone to do the plumbing and plumbers are in such high demand that they can pretty much name their own price…translation...freaking expensive and hard to come by. Since the plumbing was so hideously expensive, we took on the task of cutting out and redoing the sheet rock throughout the whole house. What a nightmare mess, I am quite certain we will be finding sheet rock dust till the end of time, I will be looking at the crappy job we did and kicking myself for not trying harder but at least we still aren’t done with all the rooms yet. The deck took the entire summer, April till mid-September so we didn’t get to enjoy it at all.

Quite a few of us suffer with major panic/anxiety attacks and severe depression and the accident has exacerbated them.  Several of our family members went through some very emotional stuff this past year. Its never easy to see the ones you love go through pain and heart ache and it was a very tough year for both.

Work has been extremely difficult on lots of levels. My boss is a very challenging person to work for. He is a very “this 5 minute” kind of person, he doesn’t much think beyond the exact moment he is in, he doesn’t think how  his actions or words from this minute will effect the next 5 minutes. He wants it all and he wants it right this second. He changes his mind and his direction so drastically and so often that it is very difficult to keep up. He has decided to expand the business into several different directions, like taking on general construction, doing pedestrian door and gates and doing commercial as well as residential work. So this translates into all of us learning  completely new things while trying to keep up with our already overwhelming loads of work.

I am sorry, I just realized I have been rambling on and on and whining when I should be very thankful that I even have a roof over my head, a job that pays the bills and a growing family that is fairly healthy . So I will quit ranting and call this a long enough post for now. Hopefully I will have time to post more soon. We have been working pretty much every single day for the last several months trying to get caught up on finances so we don't have much free time now days.