“When you think you’ve had enough of this life to hang on…” Everybody hurts. And it’s okay.

This explains it quite well. It’s 11 minutes, but totally worth it, if you’re confused about the mess.

The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

Photo: somegeekintn on Flickr

It seems like this weekend has been just one thing after another, and it carried right into Monday, which can best be described as "a hell of a bad day." Isn't that the way it seems to go? When it rains, it pours. And I had a downpour of epic proportions.

My grandmother's back in the hospital again, this time with MRSA, urosepsis, pneumonia, and some other thing like C-Fiss or something, which the nurse spelled for me and I promptly forgot. She's 91, so naturally, this is all pretty serious. On top of all that, my dad's back is acting up again, so he's in massive pain and needs rides places and some morphine, ha. The rides, we can provide. The morphine, not so much.

Then, I don't know, the crap hit the fan in a bunch of other ways- my son broke his mouthpiece on his bari sax, I had a doctor's appointment which my doctor's office was kind enough to send me to the entirely wrong place at first. My dog got into some trash and threw it up all over the place. I dunno, yesterday was just…awful.

I suppose the hardest part is watching both my dad and my grandma be sick at the same time and feeling helpless to change anything at all. And the guilt, man, the guilt. Running up to the hospital to hang out with a mostly non-responsive grandma, then wanting to leave immediately, but staying because leaving makes me feel guiltier.

I know that it's just another dip in the rollercoaster of life, but sometimes it's so hard. Keep me in your thoughts.

Mornings and nights are such a challenge in my house.  My husband is a night owl.  I think my daughters have inherited the twilight personalities from him.

At 9:00 p.m. I start telling them to go to bed, but some nights it's literally 1:00 a.m. before they finally settle down.  I yell.  I fuss.  I have hissy fits.  I take away things.  I threaten.  I reason.  I suppose I'm simply a failure as bedtime Mom. 

Then the morning comes.  Erin will not miss school willingly ever.  She's missed two or three days this year, but only because she had the flu.  It's because school is her social hour that she gets up fairly easily, but her attitude is a nightmare.  She's irritable, angry, and obnoxious in the morning.  I know it's because she does not get adequate sleep at night.

She does sleep, though.  Right now - 6:00 p.m. - she's sound asleep on the couch.  Erin came in from school and crashed by 4:00 (another reason she won't go to bed at night!).

So how bad would it be if I start spraying her with water when I get home?

This almost makes me miss having a baby. Almost.

I've been sick for a very long time, although sick isn't quite the word to describe how I've been feeling. I've been having major stomach trouble, and then on top of that, I've been exhausted. And exhausted isn't really quite a strong enough word to describe it. There gets a point in my day where I just cannot go on. And down I go for a nap, while my kids tear up my house and keep asking what is wrong with me that I have to take such a long nap every day.

At first, I thought I was depressed. Well, I was depressed, actually. I got on an anti-depressant that worked well for me, and I thought, okay, now my exhaustion will go away. And it didn't. I went back to my doctor, who ran tests. Finally, he told me there was nothing wrong with me and I was probably just depressed. He suggested I try exercising and eating right.

The problem with that is, I do. Every morning I get up and work out. My diet, while not super-perfect, is largely pretty decent. And my stomach was still hurting and my bowels were still very odd and random, and I'm still just so TIRED. Finally, a lady I know told me I needed to get down to a health food store and get a certain type of vitamins and get some "colon-blow", as she called it.

"What the heck," I thought. I would try just about anything at this point. If someone guaranteed me that walking naked down Murfreesboro Road would make me feel better, I'd probably do it. Seriously. I feel that bad.

So I went to this health food store in town and a very kind older lady listened to how I'd been feeling and she said, "I'm going to sell you something and I'm going to give you something." Cool, people so rarely give things for free right now. She sold me some heavy duty fiber-cleanse powder stuff, then gave me some vitamin samples. The vitamins are called Life's Fortune Multi Vitamin and Minerals. I took the sample pack of 3 pills as soon as I walked out of the store, and about an hour later, I noticed something. I felt pretty good. I've had a bunch of periods of feeling "not too bad" since this whatever came upon me. But I actually felt GOOD. I went home and worked out, then went shopping and I just felt good. It was seriously amazing.

I still had to take a nap yesterday, but it was shorter than usual, and I woke up feeling pretty decent after the nap. I took the second sample pack of the pills just a few minutes ago, and we'll see how that goes. I'm really really hoping it continues to work out, because I just can't go on like this anymore.

As far as the fiber cleanse, well, I'm working on that too. It tastes awful. It seems to work as far as making you more, ah, regular, though, so that's good. I think that probably takes some time to work, so we'll see how it goes over the next several weeks.

I'll keep you updated but so far, so good.

Jenn at Frugal Upstate lists why she hates school fundraisers. Well, she can speak for me anytime, because I hate them for the exact same reasons, and I do the same thing- refuse to participate, but instead write the school a check to help out.

Really, the only thing I have to add is the one I hate the most- the magazine fundraisers. They ask you to fill out these "postcards" which they then send to your family and friends whose address you fill out. I used to work at a company who did those sorts of fundraisers and what they don't tell you is that they also harvest those addresses to sell to other junk mail companies. These companies are seriously shady, and they are making money hand over fist, giving the school a pittance of what they are really making from the magazine sales.

I do sometimes participate in these, but I usually mail them to my mom's dogs. Then we laugh as we see how much junk mail "Indiana Brown" gets from these companies. Shady, shady, shady.

Photo: Queensonia2001 on Flickr