My Open Window

It has been a long and trying year. I haven't been writing, and frankly haven't felt like writing. There hasn't been the time, the energy, the ability... Things have been up and down, and then like being on a Willy Wonka elevator, gone sideways and spiraled up through the glass ceiling. There have been quite a few times I feel like I was about to be tossed out and have the thing land on me, but fortunately that hasn't happened. I'll start with now and work my way back, throwing things in here and there over the next few posts or maybe not. I'm choosing to look forward and remember to be positive and to breathe. Because in the end, it's all about the breathing.

My life took a dramatic turn in the last 2 weeks. One I've been watching for about 5 months, but these last two weeks were like jumping on that Willy Wonka elevator again as it plummeting straight to the basement. My job, the one that I've been at for eleven and a half years has come to an end. I'm not sure if I ever thought that I would be in the ranks of the unemployed. I live in an area of the country where things are really really really expensive. My family and I enjoy a good life... on two incomes. And even if my income switched to being only a part-time income after Lexy was born, it was a significant assistance to our daily living. But, as I've said, I've been watching my work change and morph and twist and turn for the last 5 months, and the majority of it (in my opinion) was not for the better. I watched as my employer hired younger, cheaper, unskilled employees. I watched as they cut my hours back, and then I watched as they outsourced the main section of my daily activities. And the worst part of this was the emotional humiliation that I was receiving on a daily basis, and in front of the staff I was supposed to manage. Things came to the end of the elevator ride when I had a phone call from one of my bosses and listened for an hour and a half as she described my poor attitude, my unwillingness to do anything asked of me from scrubbing the toilets to just answering the phones, and on and on. I had already been stressed to the point of not eating, not sleeping, and later that evening had that stress manifest in nosebleeds. It is something that I might have chosen to deal with, if I wasn't 23 weeks pregnant.

This brings us to the good part of the story. I think. I know. The elevator took a turn from careening into the basement and making a major crater in the ground to rising straight up and out into the open air. Josh spent the evening managing our budget and trying to arrange things with our accounts. He took the time and the initiative to see if we could manage with my staying at home, taking care of the family and the house and myself, and managing our lives instead of someone else's business. After much praying, much thinking, much talking, and much reorganizing I gave my two weeks notice at my job last Monday and attempted to transition into a Stay At Home Mom. Something that I have wanted to do for years. Something that we have never been able to swing before. Something that I want to do, but am still a little wary of doing because I don't want to let anyone down, the most of all, my daughter. Something that seems to disappoint everyone in some way because it rearranges everyone's lives in a dramatic fashion.

But it's my OPEN WINDOW. My job door was slammed in my face. And God opened a window for me to jump through into something that I've always known that I want to do. My silver lining is that the timing of this allows for us to try for my to stay home with Lexy and our second little one to come in the summer. It allows time for me to prepare the house, organize rooms and kids, it allows for me to spend more time with my parents and return all the hard work they've done for us since (and before) Lexy was born. There are so many positives to come out of this is seems silly for me to focus on any of the negatives of the situation. But, in actuality I am. I've transferred work stress to budget stress. Can we really make this work on one paycheck. I'm concerned Lexy won't (and hasn't) understood the change in her routine. I'm worried that my parent's are just as upset about this work situation and the way things happened and that isn't fair to them. I'm worried that this will put undue stress on Josh, making him the sole bread winner and I don't want to make him feel responsible for everything that means.

And then I think of being a Stay At Home Mom and how much that will mean to the health of my daughter, myself, and what that will mean to her. I think that it will benefit her in ways that she hasn't had yet. Even with her at my mother's and being at her second home, I always wondered what it would be like if she were here. And that says something for my mother and how I was raised that I want that for my children.

And it begins. My new career, my ultimate career, my most important job that I now get to focus 100% of my time and energy on. Being a mother, a wife, a daughter, a neighbor, a friend. Focusing on the important things.

Now. If only I could stop thinking of ways to reuse the aluminum foil just to save money I think I'd be all good.