Check-In and Photos

I haven't posted in awhile again because things have been really rough for us. I keep reminding myself that there are people out there with children who will never become independent. There are people with children who are deathly ill. There are people who are fleeing their home for their safety with the knowledge that they or their children may not survive the journey. I try to keep things in perspective and remind myself that the challenges we've been dealing with lately with our son aren't that difficult. But it's hard to keep the proper perspective when one is struggling so much.

We did finally have a productive meeting with the school because the principal stepped in and took over the situation. The assistant principal wasn't doing a very good job of managing the issues and communication between home and school, so I'm very grateful that we have some real help from the school now. It certainly hasn't solved every problem, but it has at least lessened the stress of feeling like we were essentially battling the school and teachers. Now if we could just figure out how to get some relief at home, then we'd really be in better shape.

I have to admit that emotionally I'm pretty raw these days. I love my son fiercely, but I'm having a hard time enjoying his company, which leads to terrible guilt. This parenting thing is tough stuff!

One good thing is that I'm still really enjoying the job I started in November. Now that my employee has returned from maternity leave I'm also feeling some level of satisfaction that I'm getting some planned things accomplished also. So although I leave home many mornings feeling pretty low, being at work helps me to feel better most of the time. I'm also trying to spend as much time as possible outside because I know myself well enough at this point to know what a balm nature is for me. The other day my mom told me I needed a spa day and I responded with, "I'd rather go for a hike."

We had a nice snow last night that covered the ground and trees beautifully, and left the roads slightly damp. That's really the best kind. I grabbed this quick photo as the sun was coming up.

This morning we also had a lovely moon over the mountains. I'm happy to report that I finally figured out why I hadn't been able to get a good shot of the moon previously; I wasn't setting the shutter speed fast enough. Now the next challenge will be to take two different exposures and then combine them with a masking layer in Photoshop so that I can show the moon and the rest of the sky/trees.

These two pictures are from my phone camera and they're not great since I took them from the parking lot when I got to work this morning. However, they do show the moon going down over the mountains and the wind and snow on the high peaks. I was wishing that I was headed up there for the day instead of in to the office, even though I enjoy it I'd still rather be hiking.

One other piece of good news is that I'm back on track for losing weight. I don't know if it will last and I'll have any real success, based on everything that's happened over the last few years. But I'm feeling motivated right now and am really going to work to keep it up so I can feel healthier and more comfortable. I really started to want to lose weight again the last time I had to trim my toenails and it was uncomfortable. Please send your good thoughts my way that I'll be able to keep that up!

Destination Unknown

Does anyone else have Ruby Soho by Rancid stuck in their head after reading that title?

I'm feeling pretty adrift these days, and uncertain as to where I'm going or how I'm going to get there. I feel a little bit like Alice only there's no Cheshire Cat to point my way. I know where I want to go, I want to be able to parent my son and raise him to be a good, productive, happy person. But I really don't know how to get there.

“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?'

'That depends a good deal on where you want to get to,' said the Cat.

'I don't much care where -' said Alice.

'Then it doesn't matter which way you go,' said the Cat.

'- so long as I get SOMEWHERE,' Alice added as an explanation.

'Oh, you're sure to do that,' said the Cat, 'if you only walk long enough.”

I used to be the mother who couldn't fathom how other mothers could send their children to daycare when they had a day off from work. If I ever had any extra time you could bet I was spending it with my children. They were my joy, my light, and I had to spend too much time away from them as it was. Now I've reached a point where I'm grateful for any time I can get a break. Thursday night my mom offered to take my son to gymnastics and out to dinner. I can't tell you how happy I was to have an evening with just my husband and daughter. Everything was incredibly relaxed and easy.

I did manage a few walks this week, and there has been some beautiful scenery around here. Something for which I'm very grateful these days.

Clouds at sunset on Wednesday evening.

Sun on the grass on Thursday evening.

Reflection in the stagnant water on Thursday evening.

Fog and trees on Saturday morning.

Fog where we normally have a view of mountains on Saturday morning.

I'm hoping to find some way to turn on corner soon and start to feel better. Then I'll feel more like writing when I might have something positive to say.

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.

Sunrise Before the Snow

The sunrise was gorgeous this morning. We've got a storm moving in and we're supposed to get anywhere from one inch of snow...to over a foot with strong winds and blizzard conditions. If you ever wonder why meteorology is so imprecise, I recommend reading The Signal and the Noise by Nate Silver. At any rate, we'll see what tomorrow night brings!

Have a great weekend out there!

Slow Down

I really enjoy the album Our Darkest Days by the band Ignite. There is a song on that album titled Slow Down and one of the chorus lines is, "When the day is through all I want to do is slow down." This is kind of my theme for this post, or at least, I'm trying to make it so. Things have been terribly crazy lately in my life, and I haven't had the time or energy to post on the blog. I've been trying to make some choices where I can to slow myself down. Next Monday I should get some relief at work when the woman who will be reporting to me returns from maternity leave. I'm hoping that once she gets back and we're splitting the workload that I will have some energy left over to focus on my personal life once again.

My son's transition back to school after winter break was...bumpy. That has added another layer of complication to our already full lives as he's currently suspended from the bus. So we've had to rearrange schedules in order to get him to and from school each day. Luckily my current job is close enough that I can work from home in the mornings, drop him off, and still be at the office at a reasonable time. We're in the process of searching for a new counselor to try and get some additional help; as much for our parenting tool belts as for our son.

I've been using what little free-time I've been able to find to really catch up on my reading, especially the pile of physical books that have been sitting on my nightstand. I just finished reading The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August by Claire North. I had picked this one out to read last summer and just hadn't ever gotten to it. It was a very interesting and unique story and I would highly recommend it. I think I'm going to try to finish The Story of Edgar Sawtelle next, although I did start that one previously and am almost halfway through, it's been a bit of a slog. But it's supposed to really take off soon I've been told!

I've also been trying to focus more on my photography, but in a different way. I learned how to take photos on a SLR camera, notice there is no D in front of that. But in the rush of my busy life, I'd become somewhat dependent on the automatic settings in my current DSLR camera. I would often use the aperture priority mode, but I was allowing the camera to pick some of the settings for me so I could quickly take the photos that I wanted to use. I decided that wasn't providing me with the control and satisfaction that I wanted, so I've slowed down and starting shooting only in manual mode again. Not every image is turning out exactly as I'd like, but it's quickly coming back to me and it's just more fun.

I took a couple of pictures that didn't turn out great, so I played with the Topaz plug-in that I have for Lightroom to turn the photos into "paintings".

This picture was of the moon getting ready to go down behind the mountains while surrounded by clouds. I didn't use a fast enough shutter speed to capture the detail on the moon, but the other elements showed up nicely so turned it into a black and white painting.

This picture is of the last light of the sunset one evening. I didn't get the focus as crisp as I would have liked, so I turned this one into a "watercolor" that ended up sort of looking like stained glass.

Frosty

I realize that for many people, frost isn't a big deal. But here in Denver, we rarely have the kind of frost that covers the trees. Last night we had a frozen fog, and this morning when it was 12 degrees outside, everything was covered in a layer of white. It was absolutely stunning.

Last night's frozen fog.

Frost on a tree right before sunrise this morning.

The field behind the college near our house.

Another shot of the field behind the college.

 

Bright blue morning sky behind a tree dressed in white this morning.

I just had to share a few photos of our lovely, rare frosty morning!

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.