There's Gold in Them Thar Hills!

Whew, this last week was crazy! I went to a conference in Chicago, and realized that I was so busy this time that I didn't take one photo the whole time I was there. I left home before 5 AM on Monday only to find that the travel company for my work hadn't booked a ticket, even though I got a confirmation. Luckily there was still space on the flight so I was able to get to Chicago. But I forgot to have any caffeine at all that day (yeah, I'm addicted), and got the worst headache that made me totally nauseated and ended up missing the opening session of the conference since I was in bed at the hotel. There were over 7,000 people at this conference, which is a bit much for this introvert. So by the time I got home on Thursday, well, actually early Friday since my flight was delayed leaving O'hare, I was SO done with people. Luckily a quiet couple sat next to me on the flight home.

We've also been really busy lately with my daughter's activities since it's marching band season, and she's doing theater tech, on top of her increasingly more demanding class load. We spent all day Saturday at a marching band competition, then Sunday we made it up to the mountains to see the colors. We were probably one week late for the prime colors, but we still had some nice views of the golden aspen trees.

The Real Storm

Last weekend I wrote about the potential snow storm that was being predicted. We were told to expect anywhere from one inch to one foot. The storm came a day later than expected, but we did end up with a foot of snow and a snow day on Tuesday. Which means the rest of my family had the day off, and I had to work from home...while they were all around.

But the real storm has been in our house. My son has been going through some really bad times lately. We've been dealing with school suspensions, bus suspensions, teachers who are at the end of the their tether, and a very discordant home. My husband has been handling it remarkably well, but my stress level has been astronomical and I've had some really dark moments of the soul. And of course I'm sick now.

I'm honestly feeling pretty hopeless these days. We have tried everything we know how to do. I can't even begin to name all of the books we've read and different methods and techniques we've tried. Plus my husband has been teaching for about 20 years and I have a degree in psychology and ran a before and after school program for several years; so we're not people with no clue how to handle children. We met with a new therapist last week and are reading yet another book and trying something new again. My husband is convinced it's the right thing to do, but since this past week has been one of the worst ever for our family, I'm not as solidly on-board. Although I do understand that sometimes things have to get worse before they get better, so I'm trying to stick with it and see if it works out in the end.

I don't even want to be at home right now, except that I do want to be with my daughter. That is actually where many of the negative feelings are coming from. We've only got 3 1/2 years left with her, and I don't think she gets nearly the attention she deserves because we're almost 100% focused on her brother these days. For whatever reason, he's being particularly horrible to her so it's a bizarre feeling when my maternal instinct to protect her is being turned against my own son.

Luckily my employee returned from maternity leave, so work is better. I still haven't been able to focus on the projects that I need to complete at work because the cloud-based software we use introduced several bugs into the system when they applied their weekly service patch last weekend. So that's been a bit of cluster, but once the system is back up this morning I'm hoping to find that those problems are fixed, and keeping my fingers crossed that they didn't introduce any new problems with last night's patch. But despite all of this, work has been my refuge this week. Which makes me sad and grateful at the same time.

So the upshot of all of this is that I had hoped to start posting more once my employee was back at work and things calmed down a little bit. But the issues we've been having at home have resulted in me being in such a dark place that I wasn't able to write anything that could be shared with anyone else. Here's to hoping that this week will be better.

My Brain Hurts

I'm still really enjoying my new job, and I'm still totally consumed by everything going on there and at home. I'm counting down the days until my co-worker returns from maternity leave and I can (hopefully) focus on a more select number of things. Right now my days are flying by between trying to work on the projects that are ultimately my job, and fixing all of the urgent issues that arise each day that will go back to my employee when she returns from leave.

We've been very busy at home also. We had a wedding to attend on New Year's Day, for a young woman who my husband taught in fourth grade, and yes, I'm feeling kind of old these days. It was so much fun though as we were there with several of our friends and their children. I just wish it had started earlier than 6:30 at night, because after being up late on New Year's Eve, I just didn't have much stamina the next evening.

The kids started back to school this week and that's been a challenging transition. They're tired because they had allowed themselves to get on a later sleeping schedule, so they're kind of grumpy and emotional this week. But it'll pass...until spring break anyway.

I don't even have very many photos to share right now, just a couple that I've managed to take recently.

Moon and star this morning on my way to work.

From an evening walk with my husband the other night.

Quick walk at lunch time yesterday. There are some nice views around my office.

That's really all there is for the check-in right now. I'm mentally exhausted every day when I get home, so I've been doing a great deal of reading out of real books to give my eyes a rest from screens. I'm still hopeful that come February I'll have a little more time and energy to post more regularly.

Firsts

Today was a day of firsts. We got our first snow of the season here in Denver, and I think it was more than was originally expected at about 6 inches.

It was also the first day of my new job. This is the first job I've started in about 16 years where I didn't second guess my decision. There are about 6 people in the office who I worked with two jobs ago, and it felt almost like coming home. I think this is going to be a much better fit for me professionally.

Now I'm getting ready to go to sleep for the night. It was a good day, but it was also an exhausting day and I didn't sleep all that well because of nerves. Luckily there is a wonderful winter wind howling tonight which should lull me to sleep (and melt all the snow).

Check In Part 1: The Good News

I have a pretty large check-in this weekend, so I thought I'd do it in two parts and start with the good news and the positive things happening in my life.

I was offered and accepted a new job. I will be just a couple of miles from home so I'll be home with my son in the morning before he heads off for school. I had to take a small pay cut, but not as large as I had anticipated, so that was really good news. I'm going back into the restaurant industry which is where I "grew up" professionally and am better value-aligned. Giving my notice wasn't very much fun, but my boss handled the conversation very well so it worked out alright.

Yesterday I went with my husband, mom, and in-laws to watch my daughter's high school marching band perform in the state quarter-finals. Her school made the cut for the quarter-finals for the first time in 17 years. The kids thought it was pretty cool to march at CSU's stadium.

My son's middle school hosts an annual 5K called the Spooknology for Technology race. They raise money for technology for the school with the race. My daughter was never interested in doing it, but my son wanted to so this morning while it was still quite chilly he and I headed out for the race. It warmed up rather quickly and ended up being a lovely morning to be out walking and jogging.

We took the kids out to the pumpkin patch and the Halloween store today. My daughter wouldn't get out of the car while we were picking pumpkins because of our solution to the muddy fields due to the rain we had earlier this week. We put plastic grocery bags on our feet, which did look ridiculous, but we were the only people not scraping our shoes back at the car.

Tonight my husband and I are going to see Crimson Peak at the theater. I'm super excited to get to see what is supposed to be a beautiful (if predictable) horror movie, and have a date night with my husband. The pictures below are from a walk I took yesterday afternoon with my husband. The image quality isn't great since these are all with my phone camera. It's just about time for a new phone, and camera quality is going to be a deciding factor in the model I choose.

That's the good news, and I'm glad I wrote it out because there's actually lots of good stuff going on. Tomorrow I'll write about the not-so-good stuff that's been happening of late.

In a Mood

I'm...in pretty bad shape these days. My emotional state is extremely raw and fragile right now. Things aren't going at all well with my son. Work has been extremely busy and stressful. But rather than write a dumping post (other than this small opening), I decided to share some nice autumn and Halloween photos.

My son decorated the front yard, and with the leaves it looks sort of cool.

We also got some of our indoor decorations up. These are my favorites.

My son and I went for a walk this past Sunday afternoon and I was able to get a couple of nice fall shots of the creek behind our house.

Our tree and our neighbor's tree have just about hit their prime colors for the season, and have littered our yard with beautiful colors.

It rained all night last night, so today the leaves were kissed with raindrops.

Deep Breaths

I really wanted this week to go better, and overall I've done a better job of managing my emotional responses. Work is starting to get slightly less overwhelming as we've gone through most of our firsts since the "co-worker who didn't leave process documentation" quit. Home has still been pretty challenging. My son still isn't doing what he's supposed to do at school, and yesterday he didn't forget to take his medication, he threw it away. This isn't good because a) he needs the medication (clearly); and b) it's really expensive. I'm sitting here holding my head and shaking it.

Our IT department asked me to be a guinea pig because I was told my name came up as "someone who was fairly technologically savvy and had a high tolerance for IT disruption." Thanks...? I now have a thin desktop machine and only remote into the server, I don't work on my machine any longer at all. I think in the long run this setup will work better, but it didn't work so well at home this morning. I got a new laptop yesterday with a 10-key on the side. The screen resolution was awful (and couldn't be adjusted, which I've never run into before) and it wouldn't recognize my other monitor. I know this is a first-world problem, but I really can't work on just one monitor any longer. So I gave up on that and just used my personal laptop. Which worked fine, until our internet went down. So I packed up and headed downtown into the office. I brought my old work laptop back home tonight, our ISP is back up, and everything worked just fine this evening. Which is good, I desperately needed a win.

The one thing that's providing me some comfort right now and helping me not to get too angry is a quote I read in the October Dreams II book (which I finished this week.) It's attributed to Harlan Ellison, but I'm not finding it on the internet. I did find a Carl Sagan quote which conveys the same message in more formal language, but I still like this one in a story by Nicole Cushing.

"The universe is neither benign or malign. It doesn't know you're here, kid."

I know some people, like my mother, would be mortified to know that I'm comforted by that thought. But I think we all need to make our way through this life in the way that works best for us. Knowing that there's no reason to be angry, and no one to be angry at, makes me feel better. So I'm going with it.

Here's to a smooth ending to this week, and a brighter beginning to next week. I sure could use it!

I got to take a walk with my husband tonight and did enjoy this beautiful view.

Challenges

a.k.a. "What a Week!: Round 2"

Unbelievably (at least to the me from last weekend), this week was more challenging and difficult than last week. Last week at work when I was figuring out how to do the job of the recently departed co-worker, at least I knew what we needed to do. This week we found that there weren't even any notes left on what needed to get done. So not only did I have to figure out how to do the work to train someone else, I had to figure out what the work even was.

My son promised his teachers he would just do what he needed to do this week and see how he felt at the end of week. The only successful day was Monday, then it was downhill from there; worse than last week. But I do see a light at the end of this tunnel. We're almost through with new work that my former co-worker used to do, so that really should start to level off. We talked to my son and realized that he had been forgetting to take his medicine. Well, "forgetting" might not be the correct word here. He said his alarm to take the medicine was going off at an inconvenient time so he was ignoring it. So we reset the alarm and bought him a weekly pill container so we can make sure he's taking his medicine.

We knew that the transition to middle school was going to be tough, but I don't think we were fully prepared for exactly how tough it was going to be. The part I was the most worried about, him being home alone in the morning, has proven to be the most problematic issue. But I'm hoping that a solution will present itself soon. I may have some news soon and will keep you all posted.

Emotionally it's been a tough week. I've spent so much time feeling overwhelmed and frustrated, that I eventually hit my factory reset and my default emotional response of anger was triggered. Yesterday I was dealing with impotent and useless rage which made me physically ill. Today it turned into much more productive anger. I know that sounds like an oxymoron, but my whole life I've experienced this particular type of anger which gives me strength and helps me to focus and accomplish things. My parents used to set it off on purpose when I was younger and needed to get something done.

I am working to make some lemonade out of these lemons. While I've been crazy-busy at work and somewhat...okay, maybe it's more accurate to say extremely, frustrated at times, I've proven to myself that I can persevere and figure things out. While my son's behaviors have been exceedingly frustrating, my husband and I are learning a great deal and finding new tools for our parenting tool belts. I intend to make next week a better week, one way or another.

The moon and Venus this morning.

What a Week!

I realize that I haven't gotten a post up all week. This past week was...challenging; both at work and at home. It wasn't bad, it just maxed me out. A coworker who was exceedingly difficult to work with recently quit. While I'm actually pretty glad that she's gone because I think it will lessen the drama that we've had to deal with at work, the first week without her there was a bit stressful. I'm absorbing a big part of what she did, and her training was rushed, and the notes are full of holes, so taking care of those tasks was basically trial and error. The bigger problem is the things that I'm not taking on, which I've also had to figure out so I could train the people who are taking them on. The other issue was the three major errors that I discovered last week that had to be cleaned up; such a fabulous parting gift! In the meantime I also had all of my own work to do. This past week at work flew by though, and I was never bored.

Then at home we've been dealing with school issues. For my daughter she's just incredibly busy in advanced classes and with marching band, but is still doing really well. I feel bad that she's always got so much on her plate though. I had actually planned on getting a post up yesterday afternoon because I thought I'd have time. My daughter's school band does really well in parade marching because they're really good at the technical marching and playing. But the competitions are different and seem to be more about art, which I guess isn't her school's strong suit. They hadn't made finals in the competitions since anyone who is currently in the band has been there. So we figured we'd go watch the show (which was hosted by my high school alma mater) in the morning and then head home for the afternoon. But lo and behold, they made finals yesterday. It was really exciting for the kids, and derailed our Saturday evening plans. I did manage a walk in the foothills where the stadium is located in between times because it was such a nice, cool day.

Marching around their heart in their "Story of the Heart" show.

Low clouds over the foothills near the stadium.

The path up the back side of the hill.

My son is having a different experience at school. I returned to my desk from a meeting Friday morning to find a message from the school that my son's teachers would be meeting with him in the afternoon. Luckily both my husband and I were able to attend so we could try to figure out how we can help. One of his teachers said that if she could grade him on his contributions to discussions he'd be doing wonderfully because he really contributes and sees things differently than the other students. The problem is that she has to grade him on the work he turns in, which he's not putting any effort into at the moment. Another teacher showed us a paper where my son had actually written "idk" as the answer. My head just about exploded on that one. So now we're doing research on how to help kids internalize motivation. I'm definitely earning my parental stripes with this kiddo.

We're finally having some sustained cool weather here, and I'm loving it. It feels like autumn and the nights are finally becoming more conducive to sleeping. I'm hoping this coming week will be a little calmer. Work is still going to be busy, but hopefully it will start to level off soon. My daughter still has several evening events and another marching band competition next Saturday, though now I feel like we have a better idea what to expect. My son did his homework this weekend, and promised his favorite teacher that he would just do his work this coming week whether he felt like it or not to see how much smoother things will go for him. So maybe I'll have some time this week to get a couple of posts up, and maybe I won't be quite so maxed out. But I guess only time will tell.

The red leaves in one of my neighbor's trees.

My Clerks Moment

If you've ever seen the movie Clerks (and if you haven't, and you have a slightly dark sense of humor, watch it now), you're familiar with the character Dante and his constant refrain of, "I'm not even supposed to be here today." That's how I'm feeling today. Our internet is down at home. I'm hoping it's just the router which is easy to replace, and not the line to the house, which would be a huge deal to fix/replace. We had this happen once before when our neighbor was digging a hole for a new fence post and cut the line. So fingers crossed that our router just died! At any rate, I'm supposed to be working from home today, but obviously that's not a possibility without internet. I feel rather whiny complaining about lack of internet access when I know there are people in the world who don't have access to clean water. But the reality is that in our house, internet is another utility just like water and electricity, and lots of things become problematic without that access.

I got to the bus stop this morning and par for the course with the way things have been going recently, the bus was late. Last night we went to pick up my new truck, which we had left at the dealership while I was out of town so they could repaint the hood since it was scratched when we bought it. They just buffed the area (again, they already tried that once before) and still didn't fix it, even though they had it for five days. I also got a notice from the city that our water will be disconnected if I don't pay our bill. The bill I've already paid (on time), so now I have to call and figure out what happened with that. My son who has already failed to turn in his math homework twice before (and school's only been in session a little over a week) forgot to bring his homework home again last night. My husband has already been in discussions with the teacher about the type of homework she's sending home and what she told the kids about the types of algorithms they can use to solve the problems. I just want to crawl back into bed right now and pull the covers over my head.

None of these things are very big deals, and taken one at a time I wouldn't even be fazed. But right now with everything piling up, I'm struggling to keep a positive attitude. It didn't help that upon returning to work yesterday I got to marinate in the stress everyone is experiencing here right now with the state of our industry in general and our company in particular. Needless to say, I wish I was back on the farm right now! There was no internet there either, but I expected it there.

I was able to get a couple of the pictures off my camera from our trip to share today though.

This picture is of my mom, my grandma, and me. It's a little blurry, my cousin took it and unfortunately didn't hold the camera completely still. But you can see all of us. (Neither my grandma nor my mom color their hair; I hope I get that gene!)

The soybean field behind my grandma's yard.

The barn and bin at my aunt's house, which is the same house where my grandma was born and grew up.

The sunset one evening.

My grandma's old sheep house.

This map shows how close my grandma lives to my uncle and two of my aunts (my mom's other sister lives in Colorado near us).