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