Trying to Find "Balance" Again

Bradley, Auntie Lauren, Uncle Josh, Steven and Isaiah

   The picture above is one of my favorites of Josh, Lauren and the little boys.  Those boys love their auntie and uncle and the feeling is mutual!  

   Life has been so busy starting out with Josh and Lauren coming over for a visit at the end of May.  We loved having them here and having our whole family together again. :)  We thought things would slow down after that but, as things always seem to go, life got even busier.  

   To be honest, things have become a bit of a blur for me.  It seems like we are always running somewhere be it for Caesar's ongoing health issues, helping the kids with various things, spending precious time with our family, running errands and just trying to keep up with the gardens and the harvesting around here.  Throw in an obnoxious person with a screeching voice who lives in our neighborhood and likes to yell at her poor dog and it sends me into sensory overload and brings on migraines and sends me into a HUGE flare.  

   It has also been really hot here and I don't do the heat well at all.  I tried to go for a short walk today and ended up in lots of pain and could hardly breathe.  I felt like I had lead weights all over my body dragging me down.  Jeff had me sit down in my recliner to recover and took care of some things around here until I was able to get up and go work on watering the front garden while he took care of the back ones.

   We have had to put out more money than we had planned on and have had to resort to using the credit card to pay for Caesar's medical bills.  Jeff broke his glasses, so we needed to get him some new frames.  Luckily the lenses were still good and not damaged, so we could reuse those.

   Between all of this and the heat really messing with my sleep even more than normal, I am not doing all that well although I try to hide it as much as possible, and I keep pushing myself beyond my limits.  I have spent more time in my darkened bedroom curled up in my bed, sometimes with a pillow over my head, trying to drown out the noises of the world than I can keep track of.  

   I need to find some sense of Balance again in my life.

   There are things that I can control, and things that I cannot.  Unfortunately there is not a remote control that I can use to turn the volume down or mute a certain screeching person or their yapping dog.  What I can try to do though is go into the room farthest away from them within our home, close the door and turn on a fan to try and drown them out.  Tomorrow's project is going to be to get the guest bed made in there and set up the fan to do just that.  I'm also going to look for some room darkening curtains for that room when at the thrift stores or at Ross or Marshall's. 

   Moneywise, Jeff and I are going to sit down and redo the budget once again so we can pay off the medical bills as quickly as possible.  I've told him I would also like to go to a cash only grocery budget because it helps limit impulse buying on my part. 😉  Any leftover cash from the previous two weeks envelope can either be used to stock up on good deals or put back in the budget to pay off bills faster.  We also need to commit to not eating out as much again...we have slipped up on that one big time.

   My biggest challenge is going to be reigning myself in from doing way too much.  My health just can't handle it.  There is a certain "tipping point" for me and I have just run right over that too many times lately only to pay for it with increased pain (the kind that makes you nauseous), no energy, and having my anxiety and depression ramping up.  

   This will not be easy for me, or for Jeff for that matter.  He and I are both going to have to make some much needed changes and sacrifices because he too needs to find more balance in his life.  He tends to push himself to the limit and then burns out.  He has reached that point here lately and did not even argue with me when I told him to just sit and relax for a few days.  He gets antsy if he has to sit around, so when he agrees to just sit, I know he is either sick or totally burnt out.

   I think that finding balance in our lives is something that is universal to everyone.  It is something that most people I know struggle with.  I also think that with the way things are in our world today, we need to find a way to shut out the hustle bustle and just plain ugliness and find peace within our own homes if at all possible.  I know I do.