Good Morning. I'm sitting here a bit blurry eyed trying to type this out. I went to bed at 10:14 last night because I just could not stay awake any longer and felt physically and emotionally drained and my whole body hurt. The cat crawling back and forth across me sent shots of pain through me. I was so happy when Rufus decided to finally settle down. My hubby got home around 6:30 this morning from worked and I cuddled in close to him and fell back asleep until 9:20 this morning. I suspected I was in a crash cycle last night, but it was confirmed this morning and when I poured myself a big cup of coffee creamer and proceeded to add just a bit of coffee to it. UGH! I poured most of that out into another cup and added coffee up to the brim of my Aloha Hawaii, complete is hula girl, mug and am now sipping on that. I'll use the rest of the creamer with a hint of coffee over the next few days. ;)
Things are still a bit crazy around here. Between what is going on with our loved ones health and the irrational behavior of the other party who is, quite frankly, causing us huge amounts of concern and trying to help a friend through a really rough patch, I am spent. I highly suspect that if one of the loved ones is hospitalized again and IO (irrational one) has their way, we will be blocked from seeing them if the loved ones are not able to communicate their wishes. IO wants total control of everything. We just want the best care and to follow, support and respect the wishes of our loved ones, even if that means we would not have them here with us as long. :(
Yesterday I was feeling the need to escape for awhile so I headed into town to do some shopping. There were a few groceries that we needed and I was still on the hunt for more capris. I did not find any capris, but I did find 3 nice shirts, a really soft and pretty sweater, a dvd and 3 canning jars with lids at the thrift stores. I spent $15.00 on all of that. I headed up to Walmart, where I ran into my wonderful neighbors, Uncle Bob and Aunt Norma, who told me there was a big storm headed our way. I quickly bought what I needed and found some wonderful marked down items in the meat, deli and bakery department. As I exited the building, the storm had already hit and the rain was coming down in huge drops with the wind whipping it around. As I was trying to get my car loaded up with the groceries, a very sweet man offered to take my cart back inside for me so that I would not have to do that. God bless him! Once I was home I got the discounted pizza in the oven for a late lunch for Jeff and I, put the cooked roasted chicken in the refrigerator for dinner tonight ($2.69) and divided up 2 huge packs of discounted breakfast sausages into 9 smaller packs of 8 links each and 1 with 7 links and froze those along with 2 packages of discounted Sweet Italian Sausages ($2.78 each). Those went into the freezer for future meals. I also picked up some fruit and avocados. So to update my June Grocery Challenge, I have now spent $43.33 of my budget on the above and on bananas last week. That leaves me with $106.67 for the rest of the month.
Last night, feeling the crash coming on, I got a load of my laundry going. That got popped in the dryer this morning and I got another load going while my coffee was brewing away. I went out to the garden and picked some fresh strawberries and noticed that I have lettuce and radishes to be harvested and there are weeds that need to be pulled. Hopefully I will get around to some of the weeds today and then I can also get the 3 new cucumber plants I bought in since I had 3 others that I started from seed die. I also need to yank one of the tomato plants out that is slowly dying so that whatever it is does not spread to the other plants.
Again, thank you all for the outpouring of prayers, support and good wishes. We really do appreciate them all. I am going to try to get caught up on my blog reading and commenting within the next few days because I do want to see what those of you who are also bloggers are up to. All of you who leave comments here inspire me and I do appreciate every single one of you!
Be blessed!
I am so sorry for what you are going through with family. I know how that can be. I got reemed a new one a couple weeks ago, simply because I followed someone's wishes. It won't happen again!
ReplyDeleteI hope you realize that when people act like your IO is, it's not at all about you or other people. That person must be sooooo miserable with their life that they have the need to control where they can. It is really sad.
I will keep you all in my prayers.
Take care of yourself.
Thanks Cheryl and yes, I do realize that...it's all about them...literally. I am sorry that you had to go through something similar. I'm still keeping your brother in my prayers. :)
DeleteI've been sending up prayers for you and your hubby when I've checked the blog the last few days. There's a song on the local Christian music channel that talks about God making diamonds out of the dust and pressure in our lives.
ReplyDeleteNo surprise that you're going through a crash. For me, stress brings on my crashes faster then just about anything. Last week, it was something as mundane as an inspection of my apartment for warranty issues with the exterior siding. No big deal but I crashed from it. I have no tolerance for any stress, none - zip. Take good care of yourself. And, I have to say that you gave me a chuckle when I read about the 'creamer and a bit of coffee' in your coffee mug. Been there, done that.
Cheers, SJ in Vancouver BC
:) SJ, I'm so glad I'm not the only one who does that. ;) I'm sorry you too suffered a crash due to stress. That is my biggest trigger also. Even when it is the "good stress", I still crash. I've spent the day in the comfy recliner dozing on and off or out on the back porch. The weeding did not get done, but it will still be there tomorrow. Jeff and I did hot tub just a bit ago and our son Josh called and we had a nice visit. Both those things helped me to feel better. Be blessed!
DeleteOh bless you!
ReplyDeleteI can sure sympathize with dealing with an IO relative and with goofs like your coffee creamer.
Hi Rhonda...it seems like we all have at least one of those relatives. ((((((HUGS))))))
DeleteSo sorry to hear that stress is getting to you and causing you to crash. Take care of yourself. Try not to let the behavior of other people impact you.
ReplyDeleteYou did well with the grocery shopping. You are doing well with your grocery challenge.
Continuing to keep you in my thoughts. (((HUGS)))
Thank you Bless. I'm trying to do that but sometimes it does get to me. :)
DeleteI am very blessed with a wonderful, odd and slightly crazy family. Actually I need to remove 'slightly', from the above sentence. I have had a person who claimed to be a friend who lied about a situation and made it look like they were the person let down by us. That person is no longer a part of our life. That's something that cant be done when it's family. I do feel for you and can understand why the emotiona toil has seen you have a 'crash'. Here's hoping Karma pays your IO a visit soon.
ReplyDeleteYour grocery challenge has me in awe. We do pretty well but seem to be spendaholics by comparison to you. Keep up this fantastic work. Just a question, do you have a separate budget for paying bills like electricity, water and sewerage?
Hi Jane...I am so sorry your friend did that to you. I know how hurtful that can be. ((((HUGS))))
DeleteYes, we do have a separate budget line for electricity, etc. We do everything we can to keep those bills as low as possible. We installed a pellet stove to heat our home and replaced almost all of the single paned windows years ago to help bring our heating and cooling costs down.
We try and keep our cooling costs down, along with water usage. Our area was drought declared for three years straight and has not long come off the declaration. We are still on stage one water restrictions. Having said that we are quite lucky on our suburban 1/4 acre block, in that we have a bore. The water is drinkable if really needed. I use the bore to keep my garden going through the summer heat. Heating our home really isn't an issue. It's now supposed to be winter and I am writing this in cotton shorts and TShirt with sandals on my feet. Nights do get down to single figures in Celcius degrees and if we get cold we pull a throw rug over us in the lounge. We don't have any air conditioners for cooling. We just have ceiling fans. It does get very hot and quite humid in the summer but hubby and I don't mind the heat. The reason I asked about the separate budget was due to me trying to make a budget where these extra costs, including household insurances are accounted for in a weekly budget. This way I am putting aside a small amount each week and am never taken by surprise when the bills come in. Its the way I have to work. Hope you have a restful and peaceful week. You and your ailing loved one are included in my prayers.
Delete:) Jane, my husband is paid 2 times a month so we budget for some bills to be paid with his first of the month paycheck and the others with his middle of the month paycheck. We do have some bills that come up quarterly (our life insurance policies) and our property taxes come due around April of each year. We try to pay those off in one big chunk or we have the option of paying part of them in April and the rest in October. Since we know that is going to be a large amount of money all at once, we try to put money away throughout the year for it and/or we use our income tax refund to help pay that bill. With my husband being the only one working outside the home now, it put us in a lower tax bracket so we are now getting a bigger tax refund than we have previously. As for cooling costs, we have an evaporative cooler (also known as a swamp cooler). It does not cost us a lot of money to run it and I get overheated very easily causing me to get ill. My doctor told me years ago that I had to find ways to stay cool during the heat of the Summer. :)
DeleteSorry that things are still so difficult. I have learned through hard experience that you have to do what you can do and then step away, but that is of course a lot easier said than done. I hope you can find some time for you though in all of this. xx
ReplyDeleteThank you Amy. We have stepped away from what we can but unfortunately, due to the health of our mutual loved ones, we still have to deal with them.
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