Barely controlled choas

That's what my life feels like, right now. Like I'm juggling, and just managing to catch the balls, or possibly occasionally dropping one and having to snag it on the bounce back. I'll throw this out there right now, into the vast space of the Internet, that if I've let someone down over the past couple of months, I'm sorry. Very sorry.

Let me explain.

First, the family emergency. In June my Mom was hospitalized. She spent something like 10 weeks (my Dad knows exactly) in the ICU. She received an organ transplant mid-August. Her life is no longer in immediate danger, but it still recuperating in hospital (she was bed-ridden for almost all of her time in the ICU, so rehab is going to take awhile). We hope she'll be transferred to a hospital more local to where my parents live soon.

I still hope to write a couple more details posts about this experience, not because I want to air my family drama, but because I want to provide some education about my Mom's health concerns. Mainly, her illness and its cause, and the importance of being an organ donor.

While my Mom was in hospital, Andrew and I continued to house hunt. After viewing 35+ houses, we settled on a semi-detached in the East Ward of Kitchener. It isn't perfect (is that even possible?), but the main and top floors have been recently, and nicely renovated (the house was built in 1850), and it's in the neighbourhood we wanted. We took possession on July 30th, and have been slowly putting the house together, made more difficult by trying to reacquaint ourselves with friends, and by the fact that we've essentially had 1-day weekends all summer since we lose a day to visit my Mom most weekends. We're also slowly tackling some larger house issues (the roof needs to be redone, the foundation needs to be looked at for a small seepage problem, etc).

If moving and sick family members weren't enough, we've also somehow found ourselves involved in the possible expansion of a small business, and a start-up. These are two different ventures, involving entirely different people and different ideas. I can't talk too much about either of these at the moment, other than to say I'm excited to be involved in both, but hope to blog about them in the future.

And have I mentioned lately that I have a 10.5 month older daughter who is constantly on the go? She crawls like a speed demon, and can cover the length of our main floor in the blink of an eye (especially if she's chasing after Tabitha). We don't think unassisted walking is far off at this point, which means I'm going to be running after Ruth pretty soon. How time flies.

I've been wondering for sometime if life will ever not feel this way--like we're juggling chaos. I hope that it's due to the events of this summer that we're feeling extra crushed, and eventually the stress will dial back a few degrees. We'll see, I suppose.

Ciao,

Andrea

How my life is really unglamourous

Have you ever read or heard that Facebook is bad for your self-esteem?

I have.

Think about it. What do most people post about on Facebook? Probably their: TOTALLY AWESOME VACATIONS! THE AMAZINGLY DELICIOUS MEAL FROM LAST NIGHT! THE SUPER HARDCORE WORKOUT FROM THIS MORNING! etc, etc.

Right? Right?

I'll admit, I'm totally guilty of this too. I post vacation pictures, pictures of the cakes I decorated, me doing aerials, and what is probably the most annoying habit: I post pictures of my adorable daughter (she's really cute, it's hard not to inundate my Facebook feed with pictures of Ruth everyday).

Why do we do this? Ostensibly, it's to share, right? Share pictures with friends and family who aren't local. Share good and bad experiences with vacation locations/businesses/restaurants. Share our successes, and share our failures. Share our feelings, both positive and negative.

But maybe, just maybe, we also share to make ourselves feel better.

I'm not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. Facebook is a great communication tool. I'd never know about friends struggling with depressions/anxiety, physical illness, crappy jobs, job loss, etc. if they didn't post things on Facebook. And I want to know. The last thing I want to do is make an inappropriate joke or comment to someone (which isn't to say that I wouldn't do that due to my extreme Darcy-pants), but knowing will make it slightly less likely that it would happen.

Obviously I've used this blog and Facebook to describe some of my recent family stresses (they're still ongoing, by the way). I wanted to let people know that something crappy was happening in my life, and writing the posts that I did was the easiest way to do so. It also provided me some cathartic release. Perhaps the less formal avenue of a cyber community makes it easier for people to share difficult things?

So, the shares I'm really referring to here are the boastful posts. The vacations, the fancy food, the *cough, cough* aerials videos. Let me say again, I am NOT without guilt. I don't post my pictures to intentionally make others feel bad, and I'm sure others don't post their pictures to make me feel bad, but I do. I desperately want to have cool worldly travels, do amazing aerial tricks, and have the cutest baby. But I can't, and I don't, and trying to find positive things to say about your awesomesauceness is dragging me down.

This is why Facebook is terrible for the self-esteem. We post the awesomest pictures of our lives, which makes the rest of us in our turn to feel like our everyday sucks.

I'm not asking anyone to stop posting pictures exemplifying their badassitude in life, I'm mostly trying to remind myself that people tend to share only the smallest, best portions of their lives, and in between those moments they still have to do laundry, get groceries, and brush their teeth. And, unless you're Chuck Norris, you probably do those things in a pretty boring, everyday manner.

So, I'm planning an experiment. For the next week or so, I'm going to post ordinary pictures. Pictures that show what my current life on mat leave is like. I'll try to limit the posts to less than 5 a day, and none of Ruth being cute. Feel free to comment or not, feel free to post your own in response to mine. Feel free to ignore me completely.

It's your life. and this is mine.

Ciao,

Andrea