You know how you feel after Christmas and New Year’s is over?  Kind of sad, depressed, let down and empty?  (Or is that just me?)  Coming home from a vacation like the one we were on is just like that.  BUT WORSE.

I keep joking that Kile and I are ruined for other vacations now.  That our expectations of just how awesome a trip can be has made our usual vacations to visit family in San Jose and Elko that much more… well… lame.  It’s not that visiting family is lame.  But we now know what a vacation can feel like.  And visiting family, as nice as it is, is not a vacation.  It’s not activities piled on food piled on adventure.  Good, yes.  Absolutely fabulous?  Not so much.

The bad news is: that’s the sort of vacation we take.  We’re not the sort of family that can just take these fabulous family vacations once a year (or even once every five years).  It just doesn’t HAPPEN. So I just worry that we’re going to feel depressed when it comes to vacation time now.  Because, you know, driving over Donner isn’t the Disney Cruise.  Shopping at Walmart in Elko isn’t the Magic Kingdom.

SIGH.

Our longing has been so bad that Kile has been madly researching future vacations that we might (theoretically) take.  Right now leading the pack is an Alaskan cruise.  It’s fun to play “what if” but I don’t know how realistic going on one of those would be.  But, oh boy, would it be awesome.

So life here in Reno has been rather disappointing since we returned.  In large part because August sucks.

Remember the venom I used to spew forth in regards to March?  Oh, how March was loathed here.  But then Evie was born in March.  And now it’s a “good” month (I’m still keeping my eye on it though).   With the focus off of March, August has stepped into the limelight.

My dislike for August isn’t exactly new.  Just like my dislike for March wasn’t a new thing when Jackson died.  It just is.  And why?

The big reason is Kile’s work schedule.  August is a mondo month at the University.  And a mondo month for the housing department.  It means long hours, working weekends, stress and no days off.  It was a REALLY big deal that Kile was able to go on our Disney Extravaganza considering such time off in August is not usual.  It makes him crabby.  And when Kile gets crabby, I get crabby.  And when I get crabby, the kids hide.

Seriously though, it does have an impact on the household.  And I count the days until September and things can return to quasi-normal.

Also: August is the month that I had the D&E back in 2005.  I had found out that my pregnancy was kaput and was sent on a hellish roller coaster that resulted in our nightly alcohol drinking for the duration of the month, just to get through. (Though come to think of it, I think every August should have nightly alcohol drinking because that wasn’t half bad.)   It was bad, that August.

Then there was that August a couple years ago that I was on an emotional roller coaster, unsure of where the ground was.  I eventually discovered I was pregnant and that was GOOD, but the emotional fallout from that month continues to haunt me to this day.  It was bad.  Bad enough that it has changed me in some not so good ways and I’m not sure I can ever be the same person I was before.

Finally, there’s the obvious: the heat.  Not a big fan of heat in general, by the time August rolls around I HAVE HAD IT.   The days and days and days of hot, hot weather have taken their toll and I’m just plain SICK of it.  It makes me crabby to have yet another day of mid to high 90 degree temperatures.  On top of everything else, the heat causes extra stress, extra pain and extra orneriness.   For instance, right now I’m so ready for fall and fall temperatures that when we had a downright COOL day on Sunday, I almost cried with relief.

We were married in August, which is GOOD.  In my opinion, a month like this NEEDS some good stuff.  But the anniversary is in the beginning of the month and August doesn’t really start to really suck the big one until the middle to the end of the month.

So yes, our Disney trip was AWESOME this month.  And you would think that would be enough to redeem the entire month, at least for this year.  But as I see it, the Disney trip was a respite from a shitty month.  And even the trip would have been that much more awesome had it taken place in almost any other month.  And the coming home from the Disney trip has only served to ADD to the suck that is August.

Basically, I’m a rather disgruntled person and if August knew what was good for it, it’d just hurry up the next seven days and get me the heck to September already.

So the week has found me. I tried to hide, but it was hard to disguise my location when Evie kept getting me up all night long. Thankfully, I had the presence of mind to deny her milk. She didn’t NEED to nurse at 2:22 in the morning. She really WANTED to, but she didn’t NEED to. Not when she’d nursed at 11:35. And I think I got to sleep close to 1. So yeah, THANKS Evie. And she kept trying to wake up after that but I wasn’t having it.

I finally gave in at 6:30. The sun was up and shining brightly into both of our rooms (seriously, what’s the deal? When will it stop doing that so damned early?) so I couldn’t quite justify denying her. Even though I felt pretty wasted.

Thing is: I’m hanging on by a pretty thin thread these days.  Kile has asked me why and I have no answer.  I don’t know WHY.  If I knew why, then maybe I could fix it.  But its been something that has come and gone in waves.  And it’s something that has been particularly bad the last year or so.  Actually, more like two years.  My coping skills have degraded severely.  My ability to deal with stressful situations has become almost non-existant.  I’ve been a recluse, closeted and withdrawn.  I’ve had social confidence and contentment leeched out of me.  Not having MOPS this last year was a BAD THING indeed.

When Harry was two and three years old, it was different.  It was just him and me, life hadn’t slapped me around quite as much and the opportunities were more plentiful.  And, let’s face it, I wasn’t such a closeted freak.  We would go to story time at the library on Tuesdays, MOPS on Wednesdays, lunch with Kile at the University on Fridays…  I didn’t think anything of taking Harry shopping with me.  He was a great shopper, content to sit in the cart and watch the world go by.  I never felt trapped in the house with him.   And when we had our rental house, he was often very happy to play out in the backyard, be it in the snow in the winter or the dirt and grass in the summer.

Things are different now.   Before Evie was born, I had no problem leaving the house with Liam.  We didn’t do lunch with Kile anymore, and I didn’t do as much shopping, but there was MOPS and we had friends to go hang out with and I never hesitated to take Liam along on an errand if I needed to go somewhere.  But with Evie now, I don’t feel like I have that freedom.  And I do realize this is my own doing.  Many moms have no trouble wrangling together their herd to leave the house.  I just don’t have that confidence.  The notion of going to the park with both kids by myself makes my blood run cold.  What if Liam runs off (as he would surely do) while I’m dealing with Evie?  I don’t think I would have the energy to deal with it.  Shopping would be impossible since most stores I would go to only have single carts and I can’t push two carts by myself.  (I have to laugh at loud of the notion of letting Liam just walk outside the cart.  HA!)  We have no MOPS and no friends and therefore no adult interaction outside that of seeing my husband at the end of each day.   I’m hesitant to try to make any new friends since all attempts in the past have been such ginormous FAILs that I am extremely wary of putting myself out there again.

At the end of the day, it’s just easier to stay home.  To shut myself in.  And with no yard for Liam to play in (yes, still, after living here 5 years… circumstance is a bitch), he has nowhere to run off his energy.  So he gets bored and restless.  Add in some healthy jealousy of his sister, and you’ve got a recipe for chaos.  And frayed nerves.  I’m sort of depressed these days anyhow, and the chaos is directly opposed to my calm-seeking personality.  So… yeah.   By the end of the day, I’m at my wits end.  And since Evie has decided to wake up a couple times a night again (WTF, darling daughter?), I’m exhausted too.

And I know this is all my own doing, so please spare me the “quit whining and do something” speeches.  Because I know.  But at the same time, I feel caught inside a vicious circle and the way out just isn’t quite so clear.  I’m focused on just making it through the day right now.  Day by day, hour by hour.  It’s the best I can do.  And that’ll do for now.

You know, this isn’t the first time that I’ve gone back to read something I posted from my iPhone and gone, “WTF??”  Because really.   That post makes it all seem very sturm and drang and BLAH BLAH BLAH, boring and STUPID!  I think my eyes rolled reading my own post so I can only imagine how the two of you out there who are reading this reacted.

For that?  I apologize.

Yes, last week was very had.  Yes, I had a lot of crabbyness.  Yes, I let my feelings get hurt over stupid stuff that isn’t supposed to hurt my feelings.  Yes, there are times I want to high-tail it to the border just so I can have a break.  But holy cow, doesn’t everyone?  I hardly think I’m unique in that respect.  So please know that the pity party thrown in my post last night wasn’t QUITE as dramatic and pitiful as it came across.

I may be a loser, but even I have standards.

I honestly think maybe it’s the teeny screen of the iPhone that you have to type out a blog post on that makes all the stuff I post from there come out all weird and un-evenly toned.  Yep.  That’s my story and I’m stickin’ to it.

Thankfully, I don’t think the heat will get the better of me this week (yes, I do think that the heat contributed to 90% of my crabbiness… y’all need to believe me when I say I HATE THE HEAT).  Kile put our window a/c unit in the living room today and I’m currently enjoying some machine-generated coolness and am loving it more than I can express in words.

It’s not ALL bad.  Yes, I am mildly depressed.  I’m pretty much used to it by now and I think most of you are used to it too (you know, all two of you).  But like I said, BIG DEAL.  Who cares?  I don’t care.  You don’t care.  NO ONE cares.  Moving on…

It’s Sunday!  And I had a fabulous breakfast at Mimi’s Cafe this morning that may have made my toes curl.  And Evie almost choked on a honeydew melon!  It was good times, all around. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go decide whether or not I need to have something to eat right now.  This is going to require a lot of thought.

A picture from the drive-in.  Just cuz I can.

A napping girl.  Cuz she’s cute.

Yesterday was just a sad, sad day.  My mind was almost constantly on dear Maddie and her parents and aching for the loss.  Why did this hit me so hard?  I mean, there’s the obvious reason: a young girl dies tragically leaving her parents shattered.  But I also didn’t know Maddie or the Spohr’s or anyone related to them.  I just knew OF them.  And yet, I felt like a part of my heart had been torn from my body.  Every time I saw a picture of that precious little girl, my heart would re-fracture and the tears would start.

Maybe it’s because the emotions are all too familiar.  It is all too easy for me to imagine what the Spohr’s felt and are feeling.  While I absolultely do not fathom the magnitude of their loss, I have had that moment where the floor falls away, the room spins and the earth tilts off it’s axis, leaving you wondering which end is up and how the world will ever make sense ever again.  That fear that all parents have, the flash of “what if” that we experience during close calls… I have an inkling of what it feels like when all the bad stuff comes true.  The sick feeling goes on and intensifies and consumes your soul.  You either cry at the drop of a hat or cannot even muster the coherence to cry, depending on the day, the hour, the moment, the instant.

The nights are the worst.  You begin to dread going to bed.  Especially when your husband is blessed to be able to fall asleep relatively easily and deeply, leaving you laying awake, alone with the night.  That is when the pace of the day is behind you and your thoughts take over.  That is when there is nothing to distract you but the sound and feeling of your heart breaking all over again.  No one is there to hug you, listen to you, tell you it will all be all right.  Night is when the deepness and the dark and the sorrow seem to have no end.  Night is when you wonder if you will ever be whole again.

This goes on.  And on and on and on.  Days melt into weeks melt into months melt into years.  And for the rest of your life, you will always know what it feels like to have the floor fall out beneath you.  You are a member of that club, the club that NO one ever wants to join.  That no one ever should have to join.  So when you read or hear about stories that have any sort of common thread with your own, you heart fractures along those same, familiar lines yet again.

I don’t know exactly how the Spohr’s are feeling.  But I have an idea.

Ya’ll are wonderful, really you are.  I actually kinda feel bad about the last post, as though I should have turned off comments or included a disclaimer or both.  I didn’t mean for it to feel desperate or anything, just contemplative.  The bottom line is: those thoughts weren’t unusual for me and neither were they weighted.  They’re the sort of thoughts that flit through your head while you’re taking a shower on a Christmas afternoon and coming down from a stress-high.  Seriously, I limped to bed last night because I was sore all over my body.  My arms and legs were a mess of cramped up muscles that ached and burned and the best reason I can come up with is that I’ve been so tense about the holidays that yesterday when the stress finally passed, I had sore, sore muscles.  Owie!

I guess what I’m trying to say here is: I feel better today.  Shoot, I felt better almost as soon as I had posted that.  I wrote down what I’d been thinking in the shower as soon as I got out and scheduled it to post this morning so I wouldn’t have to worry about getting a post done this morning.  And I felt a lot better after I had it done, because this blog is nothing if not an outlet for my emotions.  Bless it for that.

I don’t doubt that I probably need to see a psychiatrist or any of that.  Right now, I’m a little more than reluctant to deal with doctors after that whole thyroid fiasco.  But I know it needs to be done, sooner or later.  Because I know that I MUST have some form of depression.  I must.  I’m not naive enough to think that I don’t.

Today has been a good day though.  We got out, left the house.  Ventured out into the snow and got some In n’ Out Burger and hit the stores to spend some Christmas money. I got a lot of things for the kiddos, including a booster/highchair that straps onto a kitchen chair and some snow bibs for Liam (he has been DESPERATE to go play in the snow and now he can).  I also got a sweater dress/tunic for myself and some wool yarn and more knitting needles to play with.

So don’t worry about me, okay?  Please?  If you see me start shopping around for razor blades or shotgun shells, then you can worry.  But really, I promise I’m okay.  We all get down now and then, and I’m no different.  In the meantime, the holidays are over, and all is well once more.  Let’s all breathe a sigh of relief and move on, shall we?