My Most Wonderful Neighbor

Evelyn is one of my best friends. She makes a mean potato salad, always remembers that I love butter cookies at Christmas, has a candy dish perpetually filled with chocolates, and lets me hide at her house when things here get to be too much.

In return, I happily fetch her mail with mine, tuck her newspaper in the front door each morning, weed the flower beds, mow her lawn, and my son takes out her trash.

Why? She's 92 years old. Her mind is sharp, but her body is frail. She has taken several falls in the past year, one semi-serious. She can't lift her left arm higher than her shoulder, and she recently had a bout with bladder cancer.

We were talking yesterday and she told me that her daughter's friends think it's time for her to be "forced" into assisted living or moving in with one of her daughters. I must admit, I'd feel safer if she'd allow us to rearrange her furniture so that her bedroom was on the first floor, but she refuses any and all offers that hint at her failing independence.

I don't know who is right, but I know that I'm not arguing with a woman who has been around since houses had no running water or electricity, fed her children from the vegetable garden in her yard, makes her own clothes, and got a cardinal tattooed on her ankle for her 90th birthday.

Stress Anyone?

I want to start my blog again, I'm feeling inspired, I make time, I sit down, I decide my first post will be about stress. I have plenty of it these days, surely it would be a great place to start my therapeutic blogging. And guess what? I've got nothing. I sat staring at the screen for 10 minutes. I kept checking Facebook to see if anyone else has a life more interesting than this blank screen.

Then it hits me:

I'm newly separated, handling the daily parenting of two snarky children, working, studying, cooking, cleaning, and mowing the lawn by myself for the first time in 10 years and I'll be honest -- I'm terrified.

It is an amicable separation, there were no broken dishes, no Waiting to Exhale car fire scene. We just decided to step away from a sad and lonely marriage and focus on being parents. We hope to be friends some day.

Quite honestly, I'm not sure I'm ready for that. I'm a bit bipolar and the Mom in me is at odds with the Woman in me. To keep the upheaval at a minimum, he moved out, letting the kids and I stay in the home we've had for 9 years. He took the vast majority of our debt with him, so that I could afford to stay here. When my car needed repairs I was unable to afford, he drove right over and handed me his credit card. For these reasons, I know that we are going to be fine. Friends, Parents, Adults. And the Mom in me is grateful.

The Woman in me is not so happy. I am thirty-mumble years old. Not old, not young. I have two children, 16 & 8. Not babies, but not leaving the nest anytime soon. I am overweight. Not obese, but not skinny. I feel torn like this all day long.

Richard Carlson said, "Stress is nothing more than a socially acceptable form of mental illness."

This is never more true than when I look in the mirror. That chick is unbalanced.

Writer's Block

I'd like to claim it was Writer's Block that stalled my blog two years ago, but I think perhaps it was a bit of this and some of that. I start many things with the best of intentions and then sadly watch them drift away.

My children are 16 & 8 now, I'm still overweight, and I'm recently separated from my husband of nearly 9 years.

I think getting back to writing will be therapeutic. Nothing specific, and probably not every day, just whatever and whenever I am feeling inspired.

Speaking of inspired (nice transition, Kel!) I have been reading the blogs of two of my favorite women and have them to thank for this.

For now though, I must get ready for work, for I am no longer a Stay at Home. I hope to see you all soon. And often.