End of vacation blues (and more)

I'm feeling really "blah" tonight.  This week has been just so crazy and hectic, and knowing I have to go back to work in 2 days just has me a little down.  I'm really not looking forward to going back to work.  I have barely thought about it at all this week, until realizing today is Friday and my week off is winding down quickly.  And knowing that in a week and a half, I'm going to be working with 2 people I really don't know very well makes me really anxious.  And for the first time since I was made Office Manager over 7 years ago (which was honestly just to justify my pay, if you ask me), I will actually be looked upon as the Office Manager.  Before, the girls I worked with had everything under control.  They knew their jobs better than I did and did a good job without any intervention on my part.  Now I'll have 2 newbies who will be looking at me for guidance.  Plus, I just don't like my job anyway.  We know this.

So.  This week.  The vacation I really need a vacation to recover from.  Seriously.

Monday.  Well, you know my Grandfather passed away Monday.  In addition to that, our dryer broke and the laundry went into hyper reproduction mode.  I swear, my hallway looks like all our closets and dressers barfed.

Tuesday.  I honestly don't remember much of anything about Tuesday.  I know I went to the laundromat.  But Tuesday pretty much seems to have fallen into some abyss.  I'd like it back, please.  

Wednesday.  Our impromptu Fun Day.  My back is itching from the sunburn I didn't realize I had.

Thursday.  I woke up to this...



That's not the Super Moon.  That's my husband's new neon Snap On clock, which resides above our computer in the kitchen (yes, my computer is in the kitchen).  Whenever I have my back to it, the neon reflects against my glasses and freaks me out.  I think I'm having a migraine aura.  I turn the stupid thing off, someone turns it back on.  I hate it and I don't even know what my husband had to purchase to get it.  His dealer told Bill he is going to need a garage before I start stalking him on Facebook and castrate him.  Bill said, "You?  You and me both."  No lie.

Then, when I was getting the girls up for Day Camp, I found out that Isabelle got up in the night and her ear was bleeding.  Really?  Are we ever going to be done with ear issues?  So, I called to make her a doctor's appointment.  They gave me an 8:40 appointment, which meant that I couldn't take her to that and drop the other two off at Day Camp so Bill had to get up and deal with Day Camp.

After the doctor telling me she really couldn't tell what was causing the bleeding (tubes are still intact, no apparent ear infection), and more discussion with Bill, I believe what happened was that Isabelle woke up with swimmer's ear in the middle of the night and tried to clean her ear out with a Q-tip.  She scratched the eardrum in the process, and it bled.  I guess.  There was still dried blood in her ear tonight, which seemed odd - I would have thought it would have stopped by now - but we're doing antibiotic drops for a week.

I got home and immediately had to leave for Hot Springs with my sister.  Bill needed the van, obviously, to deal with picking the girls up from Day Camp, and I didn't want to drive the truck because the AC doesn't work.  We had lunch with my parents in the retirement village dining room and I got a text from Bill...

"Where is the van key?"



I was an hour away, with the only van key.  Even if I had asked for someone to run me back home, there was not enough time for me to do that and get back in time for the memorial service.  Bill was super cool about it... I totally expected him to be all kinds of ticked off at me.  He made it work.  I am not saying it was entirely safe or legal, but he made it work.  He also managed to overdose the kids on sugar via a Triple Fudge Meltdown at Applebees (Apiece.  Really.  What was he thinking?). 

Friday.

I woke up late to take the girls to Day Camp.  Any other day of the year, they're up at the butt crack of dawn, but today they sleep in and drag getting ready out to epically frustrating proportions.  

And Isabelle had puked in the middle of the night and didn't notify anyone.  She mentioned coughing, so I think she just coughed until she threw up, because she wasn't sickly at all this morning.  Bill cleaned up the puke.  He's been a good man this week.  I really hope she just sleeps tonight, because I don't need another surprise out of her in the morning.

Today I read a book.  A whole book.  Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander M.D.  He's a neurosurgeon who went into a coma after contracting an impossible case of E. coli meningitis and miraculously recovered fully after having a near-death experience.  I'm not saying it is a bad book, I read the whole thing in one day, so it was definitely interesting.  But it just wasn't entirely what I wanted it to be.  I don't talk about religion much, but I'll just say that I'm searching for what I believe.  Last summer I really got back into going to church and felt really good about it, but then I just felt crushed with uncertainty again and was content with just not knowing anymore.  If that makes sense.  But now I feel that need to have some sort of answers again.  I don't know if I should go back to church, because I just don't know if that's what I believe anymore.  

My Grandfather was not a Christian.  He was a deeply spiritual man, I do know that, but he found his peace in nature and meditation.  I really wish I had taken the time to really talk to him about it, but, of course, it's too late.  I do know that something happened right before he died, though.  His caretaker said the last few days he was alive, he spent most of his time awake staring into the corner of his room.  And just a few hours before he passed, he gasped and had the biggest smile on his face.  He drifted off to sleep and died a little while later.  The book I read today was his book, and he gave it to my mom.  I saw it at her house after the memorial service and took it when she told me it was Grandpa's book.  I guess I hoped it would help me, but it really was more of the author trying to explain that it was scientifically impossible for his experience to just be some hallucination (which of course, many scientists and doctors are debating his reasons for saying that) than a book about what he actually experienced and learned.  He did get into that somewhat, but not to the extent I was searching for, I guess.  

Maybe I was hoping it would tell me something profound, something that just would make me go "Aha! That's what I needed!"  Maybe I thought this book was there for me to find right at this moment because I really need to know something, something that does not make sense to me right now.

See, I was raised believing someone like my Grandfather wouldn't go to Heaven.  And I just can't believe that.  And I really can't believe that based on what his caretaker said.  Unless at some point in the past few months he had professed his faith in something he had always previously denied and no one told me...  Unless it was just some chemical euphoric reaction...  Even so, I just have a hard time believing that someone as kind and honest and just plain GOOD as my Grandfather would be eternally damned.  I'm not just being biased because he's my Grandfather, he was honestly and truly one of the best people you could ever meet.  If he couldn't go to Heaven and someone who is just a terrible person, yet had become a Christian at some early point in his life, can... I just can't reconcile that.  I just have so much trouble believing in this version of God I was raised with, one with all these strict rules, one who would punish so many people with Hell because they were raised to believe a different way.  In my mind, He loves everyone.  Unconditionally.  No matter your religious "flavor".  God is Allah, God is The Universe, God is Buddha.  God just wants us to love Him, love ourselves, love each other.  Period.  But I was raised being told, "No.  Oh, no, no, no.  That's wrong.  There is only ONE WAY.  The others are wrong, they're all going to Hell."  Why create such a vast world, and condemn so much of it?

OK, that got deep.  

I'm tired.  I'm blue-sy over having to go to work.  I'm thrown into philosophical and spiritual confusion.  Sorry.  I don't mean to be a bummer.  I'll leave you with my husband's pet lint roller to cheer you up..



And you thought I was joking.