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Monday, January 28, 2008
ugh
It's been a really long time since Nameless Dread kept me awake. Well, it HAD been, to be precise.
Part of it is the new dog. In a very small way, it's like having a newborn -- you can't communicate with her, she can't tell you what she wants, there are constant Excretory Issues to be dealt with, you lose sleep, she upsets your household in just about every way, and over everything else there's this keen sense that I have REALLY got myself in for it now and tell me again what was so wrong with life before we decided to do this? So there's that. It's not that we aren't glad to have the dog, or that we don't like her. It's just that claustrophobic PPD-ish feeling you get when you look at the long years of your life to come and can't imagine that any of them will not contain the stress that you feel this very minute.
And then the weather doesn't help. It's positively dreary, and almost unrelentingly wet and windy and cold. (This makes taking the dog out to go potty tons of fun.) In our happy and careless Renting Days, a few weeks of weather like this made for an adventure, even if by the end of it your kids were attempting to tear each other limb from limb what with the whole cabin-fever-all-summer-in-a-day kind of crabbiness. It was a great opportunity to wax rhapsodic about sitting by the fire with a purring cat and Jane Eyre. Remember that? But now we have this very big investment (pardon me while I have an Official Mortgage Freakout) standing out in all this wind and weather, and everything is our responsibility. If a tree falls on the roof, or the water pipes at the well freeze under the snow because the stupid shed keeps blowing away and we can't build a real well-house until the stupid weather lets up (and what the heck kind of people have a well just sitting out in the open for all these years anyway?), or if the roof leaks (when the roof leaks, I should say)... there's no landlord who's going to call a contractor to come and fix it while we sit back and watch, no sirree. I used to love winter. Now I can't wait for 105-degree days when the sun comes up at five and doesn't go down until nine, because that weather isn't going to break my house, so there's much less need to sit up cringing all night waiting for disaster to strike.
Add in a bunch of small stuff like T deciding that we're going to leave the congregation where we've been for eight years (not to be hard on T -- it's a difficult decision for him and he's doing the right thing, painful as it is), and worry about whether the kids will ever find the kind of lifelong friendship that I wish they could have, and the irrational fear that I am being a terrible mother and doing an awful job and that people who said homeschooling was bad for kids must be right, and the state of the world and the direction we're heading as a culture, and whether tomatoes and apples will ever be both good and cheap again, and here you have me, blogging aimlessly at one o'clock on a Monday morning with a mass of unease settled deep in the pit of my stomach. Which is stupid, because LOOK AT MY LIFE. But there it is -- Nameless Dread never claimed to be logical.
Comments
Nameless Dread is Nameless Dread. You're right, it is NOT logical. You will get through this; I know you will. It's hard with all this new stuff piling on you all at once -- things will settle down soon. They have to.
Hang in there.
Posted by: mary at January 28, 2008 06:28 AM
Hang in there. I remember that stage when I got the kitten...
Posted by: Kat with a K at January 28, 2008 07:16 AM
We recently got a puppy, and OH MY GOSH, I feel you on this post. A few days after we had her home, I thought, "Um, why did we get her again? Our lives were just fine before." But now? I love her and can't imagine not having her. She is 99% potty-trained and is well-behaved as long as we walk her every day. It will get better. Hang in there.
Posted by: Jennie at January 28, 2008 07:55 AM
Go to sleep. I mean it. Count sheep or recite poetry to yourself or whatever you do to slow the squirrelcage in your mind down and distract yourself.
If you had nameless dread at 3PM I'd respond differently. But what I find is that for me at least, 3AM is the bad time. If I wake up at 3AM and start worrying, pretty soon every sniffle is lung cancer and every one at work knows I'm a fraud and they're about to fire me. And it's all very real and obvious and logical, except when I wake up in the morning it turns out it wasn't and that things just aren't that bad. That's how it works for me anyway. It's very helpful to have a named cause and cure for Nameless Dread, even if they're respectively 3AM and Go to sleep.
(I'm not belittling your concerns; these are obviously all very real problems. I just suspect that in the morning you will remember the joy you find along with the dread in house, dog, and kids, and that you will have at least a handle on dealing with the problems they bring.
Also, of course those people who talk about hoomeschooling are right. Homeschooling is bad for kids - some homeschooling, and some kids. Some of it is so good that I've thought of asking a former coworker to adopt me so I could be educated along with his kids.)
Posted by: Dichroic at January 29, 2008 05:40 PM
Check your voice mail.
Posted by: jenn at January 29, 2008 08:21 PM
{{{{Hugs}}}} I can relate to a lot of what you said.
Posted by: Denise at January 30, 2008 05:28 PM
I can relate too. I remember the night that Dogbert had her 10 puppies. I was SOOOO overwhelmed! we had 11 dogs in the house!!
Posted by: debi at January 30, 2008 08:20 PM
