Quiet time

I know you all have been missing my blog, and I've been missing blogging. I've been missing most things that used to be normal to me. I used to have a routine. My hubby worked, the kids went to school, and I kept the house running. I paid the bills, cleaned, and drove all the kids wherever they needed to go. I was lucky that I didn't have to work outside the home. Working inside the home was enough!

A couple of months ago when my husband was temporarily laid off from his job and took a lower paying job in the meantime, I went back to work part time to help make up the difference. I was only going to be working while the kids were in school so that home life would be only minimally impacted. All that changed when he got hurt. Now I have one more person depending on me to drive him around. Now I am the main wage earner in the house. This last week I have worked six days in a row, leaving me little time for blogging or anything else.

The whole family has been affected by my husbands injury. As my husband is recovering he is stuck at home unable to drive. It's so hard for him to go from being the provider and protector of the family to depending on me to drive him where he needs to go. He stays home and cleans the house while I go out and work. He is now the one at home with the kids in the afternoon doing homework and dinner with the kids. For kids who need a very structured environment like mine, just the change from mom's style to dad's is proving to be disruptive. Add to that the fact that they are worried about dad's health and recovery and we've had a rough couple of weeks. The kids have been acting out and I think to some extent the hubby and I have been too.

Today I had a day off. Some of my friends had planned to throw me a little party for my birthday, but all I wanted to do was be alone. Not just alone in the sense of not wanting to be around a group of friends, but completely alone. I felt so guilty for not even wanting my husband or kids around, but just to be completely and totally alone. What I came to realize is that in this last couple of weeks, I've lost my alone time. Before all this happened I had a lot of quiet time. I used to have the whole day while the kids were at school to myself. Sure I had plenty of laundry and cleaning to do, but I could think while I was doing it. Even after I started working part time, my husband would work so late into the evening, I had several hours after the kids went to bed all to myself. I now work all day during the hours I used to spend at home alone and I've been working so much that I come home exhausted and go to bed early instead of staying up until midnight like I used to.

I know that in a few more weeks my husband will be recovered enough to go back to work, and in time we will either go back to our old routine or settle into a new slightly different one, but today I learned that in the meantime, I need to find some way to get my alone time. It appears to be vital to my mental well being. Tonight I stayed up late. I spent some time reviewing my finances, something I have had little time to focus on in the last week and has been causing me a great deal of stress. I usually balance my checkbook every couple of days and know my bank balance within $10 at any given time, so not being able to enter my receipts for a week made me nutty. After getting that done, I decided to tend to my blog. I'm glad I did.

This week I'm going to try harder to do these little things for me. The hubby has three physical therapy appointments this week. I'm going to spend that time reading. I started reading a new book at his last appointment called "You mean I'm not lazy, stupid or crazy" it's about adults with ADD. So far it looks pretty interesting.