Whiney post

January pushed me over my sanity cliff. I often tell my friends to go ahead and vent, it makes you more real, welcome to the human condition, I have those days all the time... but then I don't write about my hard times on the blog myself! I just write the good times, knowing that time will pass and negative days will be forgotten. In the course of a lifetime what does one stressful month matter anyway?  We just keep going, there's no other option. Well its February now and I'm in a better place, so I feel lucid enough to write about January stresses. If you don't want to hear about it you can skip this post.

I set myself up for it, last year January was a very calm stress-free month after a very crazy December, so I kept telling myself, "One of these days I'll just get to kick back and recover because its January!" But that day never happened, so resentment started to build. I felt like a heart beat, only resting in between beats, aka at night while sleeping. FIRSTLY, I hate the cold. Going outside is painful for me and even in the house is uncomfortably cold, and not having much sunshine to fuel my body with vitamin D affects me negatively. Secondly, for whatever reason, (stress cold age?) my monthly cycle was particularly vicious on me, giving me lovely mood swings ranging from anxious, to enraged to depressed to happy throughout the month. Thirdly, my client load almost doubled from December, which I had to keep reminding myself that was a good thing, that I love my job, and I'm here to serve and help, but even if all that is true it is still a time sucker and can be mentally draining. Fourthly, my parents were trying like crazy to get their basement finished for my elderly grandma to move in with them, and so every spare time I could get I would go visit them and clean or work on the basement, which was only 3 half days mind you, but I wanted to contribute to that endeavor and felt like I wasn't able to do anything to help. Fifthly, my husband's brother Chad has been battling cancer and got severe pneumonia and complications to that for 3 weeks, so we were praying fasting stressing and worrying about Chad, and spent a few days helping there which you read about in the last post. Sixthly, gym meet season, Weston only had 2 gym meets but they take almost the entire day to get through and he has had extra classes/clinics this month to attend as well, so more time sucking. Seventhly, sickness. My kids have all had coughs runny noses headaches and congestion all month. Savanna got a cough on new years day and she is still coughing, she told me today that she thinks its even worse than ever. I can't seem to find a spare hour anywhere to take her to the doctor unless I check her out of school, and I've been praying like crazy her body will just fight it off, I'm certain its bronchitis, or was, and Jared and I are both sick and tired of hearing her cough all night. I came down with a sinus infection this past week myself and just kept going to work like nothing was wrong, I hate to take sick days and cancel appointments, but maybe it would have been better than trying to analyze with half functioning brain.  Eighthly, Jared has been abnormally busy at work for a January, this is supposed to be his slow month but he has been working 6 days a week ALL month. Again, that is a good thing, he is doing great business and I don't want to complain about that, but the poor guy only got to attempt ice fishing once the whole month and got skunked, and it was almost too cold to even enjoy the trip. Ninethly, the kids are struggling for some reason to keep up on homework and assignments, probably because helping them with that sort of thing has been the last thing on my priority list lately, so I keep getting little progress report alerts saying Savanna has a D in this class, Weston got a 30% on this assignment, Fiora is missing this, Savanna is missing that, and every time I say "Oh well! Guess they will learn if they fail!" because I have no space to fit in you-are-failing-as-a parent-supporting-your-kids-academics into my already overflowing psyche.  Tenthly, I was called as the ward choir director last week, a calling to which I have already served 4 years in a previous ward and which I have struggled to feel my efforts are really doing much for the greater good of building the kingdom.  I guess the Lord wants me to change that attitude by giving me another go at it. At least I have lots of good ideas from being int he Orem Chorale for 1 year and 1/2.

So I have been tempted to say GOOD RIDDANCE JANUARY, but then I remember that all my problems are "first world problems," are really no big deal, and I get a nice side order of guilt to go with my ungrateful attitude. So I will write a list of 10 things that January blessed us with.
1. No financial stress
2. Our children have no disabilities/chronic illnesses/trauma
3. A healthy marital relationship
4. No addictions to overcome
5. Warm house,
6. Running vehicles,
7. Good food clean water every day
8. A month break from church calling
9. Progress on my parent's basement
10. Chad's recovery from pneumonia