Tag Archives: stress

the three-hour tour

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A couple of days ago when I wrote that post about anxiety (and y’all are awesome for the comments there, seriously, thank you), I was driving home from work and still feeling pretty jittery and stressed out.

Then my cell phone rang, and I saw that it was my OB’s office. That’s never a good sign, is it?

So I answered (yes, sometimes I talk on my cell phone while I’m driving, they haven’t passed a law here saying that I can’t yet, so shut it), and the nurse informed me that I failed my glucose test last week. Like, spectacularly. I believe she said that the typical blood sugar is supposed to be 65-80 and mine was like 145 or something. So, yeah, that’s pretty bad. Even though I’m mostly blaming it on the fact that they scheduled my test at 2 p.m., so it was right after lunch, and it just so happened that I’d gone to Waffle House for lunch that day. (I didn’t have anything with syrup on it – just eggs, bacon & toast – but it was probably still too carb-heavy.)

Anyway, the fact that I failed means that I need to go back for the 3-hour gestational diabetes test. Which, oh BTW, is a fasting test, which means you have to get there at 7:30 a.m.

And you know, in the grand scheme of things, this is not that big a deal, right? Obviously my health and Baby 2.0’s health trumps any minor inconvenience. I know that, I really do. But at that moment, when she told me that, I… god, let’s just say that I owe this nurse an apology at my next appointment, because I basically turned into a petulant child.

“But… but… I don’t wanna! No!”

And then I almost burst into tears. I had to work really hard to hold back the floodgates.

Now, leaving aside the fact that the test itself sounds like pure hell (and it does, the one-hour test was bad enough), there’s also the issue of scheduling. And the fact that Catie doesn’t even wake up until after 7:30. And did I mention that Dave is about to leave town for three weeks so I’ll be on solo parent duty?

Oh, right, I haven’t blogged about that yet: Dave is going to England for 3 weeks. And I am 100% supportive of this, because I know he’s been homesick for a while and I think it’ll be good for him to spend some time with his family and friends over there. And this is probably the last chance he’ll have to go before Baby 2.0 makes her arrival. So, it’s FINE that he’s going, it really is. It just throws a major wrench in the works, as far as things like scheduling early morning doctor’s appointments.

I told the nurse I’d have to call her back because I didn’t know what I was going to do. I’m sure she thought I was insane.

I got home, and I worried and fretted for hours. I talked to my mom, then I started to calm down a little. I looked at Dave’s itinerary: he’s leaving on a red-eye flight Tuesday night. (For some reason I thought he was leaving on Monday morning, hence my panic.) So the next morning, I called the nurse back and said that I could do the test on Monday or Tuesday morning if they could manage to squeeze me into the schedule, but after that? I’m screwed as far as childcare arrangements.

And God bless her, she found a way to get me in on Monday morning. The lab they normally use is booked, so she found somewhere else I could go instead. (It’ll be at the actual hospital where I’ll deliver Baby 2.0 someday.) I don’t care so much where it gets done as long as we get this over with as quickly as possible.

So, if anyone’s done this three-hour test and can tell me that it’s not all that bad? I’d really appreciate it. (Also, WTF am I supposed to do for 3 hours? I think I’m renting a movie online and borrowing Dave’s iPad to watch it while I sit & wait. But other ideas are certainly welcome.)

resurfacing

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Ok, let me sum up the past couple of weeks here:

1.) Holy crap, I have a three year-old!

my 3 year-old girl

And boy, it’s like some kind of switch went off in her head and she KNOWS that she’s three, and that she’s a big girl now. I can’t even really pinpoint the change I’ve seen in her recently, but it’s there and so strong.

She starts at her new daycare next week. We’ve been talking about it a lot, and we’re all very excited.

2.) SNOW!

snowfall at night

I know that people in other parts of the country find it hilarious that we get 5 inches of snow & everything here shuts down, but… well, yeah. That’s how it works. I don’t even have any pics of us playing in the snow like last year, because Catie came down with a cold the day that the snow started, and then both Dave and I had to work all weekend. So that sucked. I wouldn’t have minded a cozy weekend inside, but this was kind of a stressful one. And poor Catie got cabin fever, so by the time Monday rolled around and Dave had to go to the store, she threw a screaming fit because she “HAVE TO GOOOOO WIF YOUUUUUU!!!” (And yes, he took her to the store with him. I’m pretty sure it was the highlight of her day.)

3.) Work, work, work.
Ok, so I started a new job, right? And I kind of casually mentioned back here that oh yeah, I also got asked by my old job to do a quick little freelance project for them. And I don’t know if I can accurately convey just how much this has kicked my butt, but OH HOLY MOTHER OF GOD, has it ever. The last time I worked a full-time job was when I was pregnant with Catie, so we’re talking 2006, right? To go from my little casual part-time here-and-there gigs to not only working a full-time job but then ALSO having to work in the evenings and weekends on this freelance project, not to mention being a parent to my kid, and trying to keep my house in order (which, HA! Haaaa!!! Y’all should see my house right now. I’m waiting for those snarky British ladies from “How Clean Is Your House” to show up at my front door and point out the dust bunnies lingering around all of the baseboards because I haven’t vacuumed since before my mom’s visit three weeks ago. And with 2 cats and a toddler? I NEED to vacuum more often than that, BELIEVE ME. And exhibit B: Catie’s toy box is currently empty because she has dumped every.single.toy. on the floor and I haven’t had the energy to either make her clean it up or to do it myself). So, yes, this is killing me, is what I’m saying.

But! The good news is that I finished up my freelance project last night, and the extra money is going to be really helpful this month since we’re still recovering financially from our Christmas trip to the UK. When I finished the last little bit of work that I had last night, I promptly burst into tears because I am just that tired and I was holding it in because I didn’t have the time to cry before that.

My plan was to go get a massage as soon as I finished this project, but wouldn’t you know it, I’ve caught Catie’s most recent cold, and there are not many things in life that are grosser than lying face-down on a massage table with a runny nose. So the massage will have to wait a while. *sad face*

Oh, and the new full-time job is going really well, so that’s great. I’m enjoying it a lot. But I told Dave that if my old job contacts me again about doing a “quick little project” for them, I don’t care how much they pay me per hour, I’m just going to take a hammer and bash myself in the head with it, because I think it’d be about the same on the pain scale.

Famous last words, right?

moving makes me crabby

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So, the house thing. God, where do I start? Ok, I mentioned this earlier, but basically, our down payment is coming from the UK. Dave, his mom and his brother own a couple of vacation cottages in Scotland. They’re taking out a business loan against the value of the properties, and our portion of that loan will be our down payment. Which is awesome, because when it’s all said and done, we’ll own a house here in North Carolina, plus we’ll be part owners of a couple of vacation cottages in Scotland.

Speaking of the cottages in Scotland, want to see them? Here’s one and here’s the other. I know, the view is totally hideous, right? Gah. I can’t wait to go visit there, but someone *cough*Dave*cough* needs to get his passport renewed before we can go anywhere.

So, yeah. The loan. It seems that the bureaucracy involved in getting a loan is just as tedious in the UK as it is here. So there’s a couple of little things that need to be done before the loan funds can be released, but those little things are expected to take at least two to four weeks. Why? I really couldn’t say.

Meanwhile, our closing date was supposed to be on July 21st. As in six days from now. Obviously that won’t be happening. The sellers have agreed to an extension, but if we don’t have the money by August 31st, they can walk from the deal. Hopefully it won’t come to that, we should have our loan money long before that date.

BUT. Our lease expires on July 31st. So what happens if we don’t have our loan funds by then? There are a few possible scenarios:

1. The sellers could let us go ahead and move into the house and rent it for the month of August. That was our hope, and it would’ve been ideal, as it would’ve meant that we only had to move once. But they said no – I’m not really sure why, I think they’re just being overly cautious about any potential risk for them. (Or it could be the way our realtor called it, which was, “They’re just being turds.” I love her.)

2. We could extend our lease by a month on this house (or even just a couple of weeks), which would give us enough time to secure our funds, close, and move. Again, that would be mean that we only have to move once, so yay, right? I called our landlady to ask for an extension. She said that while nobody has rented this place yet, “if somebody wants the house, I gotta give ’em the house.” Um, thanks for the loyalty to your current tenants, bitch.

The thing is, I totally get her reasoning: in this type of neighborhood, most likely the new tenants will be a family with kids, and they’ll want to move in August so they’ll be in the district before the school year starts. So she’s worried that if she extends the lease for us, it might cause her to lose a potential new tenant. But does she have to be so rude about it? Everything is such a headache with that woman.

Anyway, we won’t know whether or not we can stay here until a couple of days before our lease expires. And since I’m a chronic planner, the idea of putting it off that long (and then possibly having to scramble to find movers at the last minute, which will be impossible at the end of the month) makes my stomach cramp with anxiety.

3. We move out on July 31st, load all of our stuff up into PODs, board the cats, and find temporary housing. Maybe we shack up with Cat and Tony, maybe we find a short-term furnished apartment or an extended-stay hotel. This is seriously the least desirable outcome for me, since it means two moving days rather than one, plus dealing with the aftermath of a seriously stressed-out toddler. Catie doesn’t do well sleeping in new places, and the transition to a new house was going to be bad enough. But if we’re staying someplace for a couple of weeks and then moving to the new house? God. She’s going to be sleeping in our bed every night until her 3rd birthday. Ugh.

So yeah, I’m stressed. And I’m pretty horrible when I’m like this, I feel so irritable and mad all the time, and I’ve been snapping at both Dave and Catie. (Twice now I’ve yelled at Catie to just be quiet when all she wanted was my attention. And I made her cry. Mommy FAIL.) I just don’t know what to do, and not having a solid plan in place makes me feel like I’m going crazy. I hate it. But I continue to pack boxes anyway, because what else can I do?