Please take a minute to click the link below and vote for Leon – (future Tommy Hilfiger Model).

And if you could help pass the word and ask everyone you know to do the same, we would be ever so grateful.

Thanks!

Maybe if someone read me a bedtime story….?
Maybe someone with a sexy voice…. and an accent….?
Maybe someone that isn’t so hard on the eyes?
But “WHO”???
Exactly!!! Yum!

I was in a pretty pathetic and desperate state of mind.

But today is another day and I’ve got some repairs to make.

I am happy to say I slept a good 10 hours that night. Something I definitely needed. Not napping created the crash and burn effect I needed to restart my clock. I’ve been eating better and taking my meds ON TIME, and at least TRYING to get on a better if not normal sleep schedule.

The morning after was tough and slow going. I had a very heavy patch of brain fog going on and it lasted quite a while too. But that was to be expected and I just made my way through it.

When life gets you down do you wanna know what you’ve gotta do? Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. - Dory, ” Finding Nemo “

When I woke up the next morning, I decided to take a ME DAY!

…and now I am thinking maybe it’s more like a ME WEEK. ….or 2 ….ish.

I really need to pick up some pieces and get back on track. Because believe it or not I was somewhat on track. Really, I was! December went fairly well for me in terms of getting things done.

As the holidays approached, I was able to Christmas shop, get my house back together, decorate, and celebrate with family and friends, but not without the HUGE, HUGE, HUGE help I got from Ron. (…and Leon too). Thank you, my loves!

All the clutter found a home or else it went into the trash. We cleared away piles of stuff that we really did not need any longer. And while there was/is still more work to be done, we were able to make our living space, livable and our workspace, workable again.

We decorated the house and the beautiful Christmas tree that Ron and Leon went out and chopped down, during the Annual Oldfield Christmas Tree Hunt. The house was finally a warm and welcoming place again. Everything looked so beautiful and inviting. AND PEACEFUL.

The lights are my least favorite part of decorating the tree

Awww fiddlesticks - half the tree lights don't work

We spent Christmas Eve at home with our family, both Ron’s and mine came for dinner (17 of us in total). And the thing that amazed me the most about it was how relaxed I felt. Tired, but relaxed.  Finally!!!

I love taking out my china for the holidays, it makes me feel like I'm almost a grown-up.

Can you see the tree in the next room?

I realized it was because my house was full of the people I love and who love me, AND because Ron and I had put so much effort into putting order back into our home.

Santa Ron!

My Family

My loveys

Like mother, like daughter

She's waiting for Omi to cave, an hand over the chocolate.

You blow boy!!! In a good way!

The Angel and the Devil, but which is which?

Cheers!

Cheers!

Cousins!

Much of the week that followed Christmas, was spent relaxing in the glow of the Christmas lights, watching Leon play with all his new toys. We spent some time visiting with family, Leon got to go ice skating (can you imagine me on skates, HA!), and we took our traditional trip into NYC to see the tree in Rockefeller Center and check out the Christmas Window Displays.  We ended our winter break and the year at the home of a dear friend watching the Doctor Who marathon. It was a wonderful little staycation for all of us, and it certainly ended the year nicely.

Leon and like a third of Grandma's Christmas Village

Our Tree! The lights flying off to the side are actually being pulled by Santa in his sleigh and his 8 tiny reindeer.

Leon and his Christmas haul! It was a very Merry Skylander Christmas!

Now in the midst of all that activity, I had made one big mistake. I ran out of refills for my Cymbalta and kept forgetting to contact the doctor’s office. So for about a week-ish leading up to when I completely snapped (see previous post) I was off meds.  No wonder I had been such a WRECK! - DUH!

But NOW, I AM doing better,

So to those of you who reached out, THANK YOU! AND I LOVE YOU TOO!

I am feelin’ better, so no worries. But I need to take some ME TIME.

So…   I am not ignoring you. I am just under repairs,     ….and probably not answering the phone,    …or emails.

But I loves ya!!

Oh and Happy Christmas, Season’s Greetings and a Joyful New Year to all!

I’m screwing  up again and I just don’t have time for it. I want this new year to be a year of change for the better!! So I have a plan to implement.

Being that I just spent about 15 minutes in the arms of  Kiera, my almost 4-year-old  niece, crying as she stroked my hair and wiped away my tears. I’d say I’m not getting off to the best of starts.

Then again, if I am going to have a nervous break down, there is no better person to be around than a little angel. And she is an Angel. (it’s a plus when that little angel doesn’t get a scare when seeing her Tante  Jiji fall to pieces.)

I haven’t been sleeping regularly. My nights are getting  later and later (or earlier and earlier, depending on how you look at it). In the last week I’ve gotten to bed at 4:30am, 4am, 2-ish …I think (I was proud of myself  for that one, after all I managed to get to bed early that night.) Then it was 4am again, and 5:30am and last night/this morning I went to bed at 6:30am. It’s not healthy, I know. What I don’t know is why I am like this.

It’s as if my life runs on a different clock than everyone else’s, everything is backwards. My days, find me excessively tired and exhausted, and my body seems to work against me. I hurt physically, which  for the most part I am used to being a problem. My fibro flares are definitely worsening with each new episode as time goes on. I don’t know if it’s an age thing or a female thing or just the normal course fibro takes. Personally I am convinced that I have MS, but no one else is. So I guess I must be wrong.

Mentally I feel so freaking scattered, confused, and somewhat lost. My memory is getting so bad; …scary bad, like I am going nuts, bad. I can’t seem to string my thoughts together, let alone complete a normal sentence or have a clear conversation with someone. Even writing this right now has been difficult, it’s taken me over an hour to get this far. my thoughts and emotions are all over the place, They all want to come out but some how they are all scrambled and tangled and stuck in my brain and driving me mad. My words have been coming out of my mouth all wrong, I want to say one thing but something else completely unrelated comes out. It’s called something, when that happens, but I cant remember what it is right now (HA!, go figure)

 –Google Search– Aphasia! that’s the word, Aphasia. Do I have aphasia? Hell if I know. I am not sure of what it is exactly I haven’t really researched it. And it’s probably best if I don’t….

During the day I feel as if I am just getting through it, one wobbly step at a time. I occasionally have spurts of ambitious thoughts of productivity, but they  seem to get squashed once I try to do something about it. I get too physically tired, too easily and abandon whatever it is I am trying to accomplish. Nothing ever gets done… , not completely anyway.

One of my changes for a better new year includes changing my sleeping habits for a happier healthier me. So the plan is to get to sleep before midnight and not staying up all night long. It sounds easy right? But it is not!! And like I said I really just don’t know why I am not sleeping?

I don’t know why my brain feels all foggy and dull and dimwitted and sleepy all day. And I don’t know why it starts itself up and runs at full throttle at night. It’s as if the dimmer control on the light bulb in my head gets turned all the way down during the day and then gets turned all the way up late at night. It’s as if, my brain is at its most active and productive stages in the evenings. Seriously I feel like I am at my widest awake at night when everyone else is going to bed. AND sometimes I actually end up getting things done. Whether it be doing some writing, organizing files on the computer and backing them up, archiving my photography, and readying them for display, researching my medical and neurological problems, researching ADHD, etc, etc, etc. I am actually doing these things well into the morning. But that’s not to say that I don’t goof off at other times too. There ARE nights that I will promise myself that when Ron heads to bed I will follow, but then when he heads to bed, I just can’t, I don’t feel tired and I know I won’t be able to sleep. So I inevitably  decide to watch just one more show. If I am not feelin’ what’s on the DVR, I will find something on Instant Netflix that I am interested in watching. I if it’s a movie, I may get to bed as early as 2:30 or 3am; but if I land on a new TV series that I want to begin watching I may get so caught up in the cliff hangers, and poor me without an ounce of will-power, will end up having to watch the next episode ..and the next one …and the next one …and so on, and so on, and so on. That’s kind of how I ended up being up till 6:30am this morning (by the way “United States of Tara” – excellent show!!). I do want to add that my lack of will power wasn’t the only reason I was up so late last night. I just COULD NOT sleep. Even at 6:30am – I got into bed, and I just laid there and laid there. And I felt like I was exploding on the inside. All I wanted to do was GO TO SLEEP. The voice in my head would just scream ”Sleep already, SLEEP!!!” But I couldn’t and I was just so frustrated and angry; really angry. It was freakin’ 6:30am and I just could NOT sleep.

…….eventually,  I did doze off and slept in until 10am.

So here I am now with only a few hours of sleep, and I am a total mess. The tears just keep rolling and they are not stopping!!! I just want to make them stop! They are giving me a headache that just gets worse and worse with every tear shed. Everything is making me cry. Everything and nothing. To top it off , I’ve got the crazies; my skin is crawling and I just want to rip it off, I am jittery and nauseous and dizzy. I keep pulling at my clothes and my hair, I can’t sit still, I keep jumping up to look for something, but I don’t know what I am looking for, so I sit and I cry while I write, then I get up again and I pace, and then I do it all over again. I am just so tired.

Right now I could sleep, right now in the light of day I could just sleep.  But I REFUSE!! I can’t! I won’t!! I am fighting it. My lids are heavy and they want to close, but if I let myself, how will I ever get back to a normal sleep schedule.

I have been puposely depriving myself  and withholding my naps. That is my strategy for turning  my clock back to the right time zone. And that is a biggie for me. I LOVE my naps. I NEED my naps!! Really I do, especially given my complications with Fibro and the excess tiredness and fatigue I am constantly suffering  from. Naps are a natural and necessary part of my ordinary day, even when I am on a more realistic sleep schedule. But for the last week I’ve held back on the mid day naps so my sleep schedule can match the rest of the world’s. So here I am with a bad case of the crazies; and the tears just keep falling.

Yup, I am broken all right!

Please don’t ask me why or what’s wrong. I don’t know the answer to that and it will only make me cry more. That’s what was so great about having a little angel around. She stroked my hair and wiped my tears and said ” It’s okay Jiji; it will all be okay”, ” I will stay with you and hold your hand and I will be your friend”, “And then Uncle Ron will come home and hold your hand, and he will be your friend too.”  

…Okay, okay, so that did make me blubber all over the place too! But those were good tears. Unfortunately my Angel was picked up early today and I am left here to go cuckoo all on my own. It’s probably for the best though. I am arranging for Leon to be on a playdate right after school too!

ARRRGGH! More tears ….and not so much, the good kind this time.

Where are these tears coming from? Like I said I don’t know exactly, but there are a whole slew of possibilities ..or even the combination of a few or all of them. Probably the later. Lemme see, I am sleep deprived; depressed; in physical pain; menstruating; I am self sabotaging myself; I have temporarily fallen off of my meds (and my rocker too it seems); I still feel over-whelmed by life – which is not part of my new year’s plan; I have too much to get started and I don’t know what comes first; I forget to eat until I remember and then I eat the worst stuff on earth (i.e.. A whole bag of chips for dinner) so I am probably malnourished; I can’t think straight; I have trouble staying awake during the day (even when I am on a good sleep schedule); and there has been such sad news going on all around me lately; and, and, and I am just broken, really, really broken.

An acquaintance’s husband died on Dec 23 with no warning, leaving a wife, a 7-year-old son and 3-year-old twins and barely any money to make ends meet. My close friends, Heather and Eddie are going through hell trying to get answers as to why their sweet little boy keeps ending up in the hospital, most recently being in the ICU throughout the Christmas/New Year’s holiday. My mom’s sister, my Tante Angela, died this past Monday. And just today I found out that a classmate’s, of Leon’s, mom died on New Years Eve. We had met while the boys were in pre-school, she was such a nice person and a great mom. I always have such a hard time hearing about young children losing a parent. So yes, life has been a bummer lately and the news has been really, really sad. And did I mention the whole I am menstruating and therefore I am more hormonal and cry-ee than my usual self thing?

So yeah, I think I am broken. It is definitely not the first time (and probably not my last). Today was just the day I SNAPPED!

…it has taken me all freakin’ day to write this; emotional outbursts in private and all; so I am taking my evening medication and some Tylenol PM and I am getting into bed now and I am going to pray for sleep, and a tear free day tomorrow. Good night.

Today was the day I snapped and tomorrow is the day I will begin again, to fix it.

Leon: What, it’s not my fault! I dropped my glasses in there!

Me: !@#%@#!!!

Ahhh, just another ADHD conversation.

He's just lucky he's so damn beautiful

Get started on making the house more festive

Make a visible dent in the computer room (desk top and file cabinets)

Blog a bit

Put paperwork in order for Special Ed Meetings

Write note to teacher re: Leon’s checklists

Make returns to stores

Be happy with what I have accomplished today, and start again tomorrow.

I have so much I need to do. So, so much. So much that I have just been tripping myself up just thinking about it all the time.

This year has not been kind to me (that post is coming soon). It’s as if my life was involved in a 10  car pileup. One thing went wrong, then another, and another, and another, and so on. And detangling it all is a mess in itself. I would get so over whelmed with the enormity of it, that I would feel road-blocked and paralyzed to do anything. I just never knew where to start. Anything that I did start would be dependant on something else getting done first, and getting that done would also depend on another thing happening and so on and so on. I just did not know where to start.  So in the end I mostly ended up doing nothing and the pile-up would just keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger and so on. And there I was trapped somewhere in the middle of it all just getting more and more depressed over what a failure I am as a wife and mother and even at taking care of myself.

I’ve always been a list maker, and that has usually worked for me. But this year somewhere along the line I lost my way. I would get stuck on making the list and never actually get to the work truth was the lists wouldn’t be made up of 4 or 5 things to get done it would be 4 or 5 pages of things I still haven’t done. Eventually I just stopped making the lists all together, again because of the enormity of it all. I felt like I was failing at life.

At some point you can either give in and become a hoarder or you have to get a plan to get things done.

I had a plan to get a plan. But I  wasn’t sure what that plan was yet or even where to look.

I finally found one I want to give a go at, in a hot tub, at the base of Hunter Mountain, just a few weeks ago.

I was enjoying a soak in the tub with a few friends and a few drinks during my brother-in-law’s wedding weekend in the Catskills. We got to catch up with friends we hadn’t spent time with in a long time. The wedding was a blast and I walked away from that weekend with a new plan.

Melissa is the one who told me about a book I should look into. I was drunk that night so by morning the details were a bit hazy. But what I pieced together from our conversation was that it had something something something to do with seven somethings or other, in which you decide who you are, and who you want to be, and what you want to accomplish and then you assign a priority or a percentage of your time to it or something like that, …I think?

It went something like, what percentage of who I am is a wife, a mother, a blogger, PTA volunteer, crafter, etc… and then assign a percentage of your time to that part of you and work on a little bit of each part of who I am each day. So like if I am 50% homemaker and 25% crafter and 10% blogger, the time I give to each of those things should be divided accordingly. This way I can start making a dent by freeing myself up a little bit more each day in all the parts of my world that are important to me, including the parts that wants to do more than just clean house and chase after what I haven’t gotten to yet.

I was drunk at the time, so I could have gotten it all wrong but I did get something out of it that makes sense to me. At the time I thought she was referring to this book which I had read about previously (but I never actually read the book itself), and I had already put it on my universal wishlist.  I later learned via a Facebook convo with her that she actually meant this book, which also looks like a good read. I haven’t read either book as of yet, but they are both on my wishlist now and I do plan to read them when the avid reader in me jumps up to a higher priority in my life.

So while I am not following any specific magic formula as of yet on how to get things done, I was inspired by what I had learned from my friend to come up with a plan I could actually follow. For this plan I need to set priorities and assign a specific amount of time in my day to each of these priorities. And just get done what I can in the amount of time I give myself. And I also need to allow myself to be happy with what I have accomplished for the day and not wallow in the muck of what I still have to do, there is always tomorrow.

So, Melissa, if you are reading this, thanks for the info, and the kick in the pants to getting things done.

Now excuse me while I go look for the Christmas lights.

….wait what were YOU thinking?

I made this for my good friend Angela

Parents initials and kids initials on tree

This was personalized for my first sale on Etsy

Signature board can be displayed on a wall or even used as a trivet after the wedding

Personalized Ring Box

Chair Signs for the Mr. & Mrs.

Once the Holidays are over I plan on jumping right into my New Year’s Resolution to build up my inventory for my Etsy page Always Branching Out. 

Let me know what you think. I am always open to new suggestions…

(Click here for more wood)

Weddings Products are huge on Etsy too. I found tons of inspiration for my sister-in-law’s wedding there.

These are some of the items I’ve made  for Suzie & Eddie’s wedding;

Bride Hanger for the special once in a life time gown

Wedding Signature Board in use.

Wedding Signature Board Personalized with Initials and Wedding Date

Wedding Signature Board close-up

The Toasting Glasses I made especially for Suzie and Edwin

Mr. & Mrs. Chair Signs (which I personally love love love because they can be repurposed after the wedding as wall decoration, mail baskets, etc. )

And the Mr. & Mrs. in person

My favorite creation, the personalized Cake Topper

...and with the date on the back

I was very excited to see it all put together so nicely

One of my New Year’s Resolutions involves me getting my Artsy Fartsy on in 2012. And getting it onto Etsy.

So get ready for some more coming soon

His ODD was in full force and rearing its ugly head. Everything was an argument or a fight, he asked for things he knew I would disagree to and then would have a huge fit when he would hear the word no. He lashed out, got fresh, and as a result he had to suffer the consequences of his actions. The consequences in this case being no video games for the rest of the day, including his newest addition to his collection; Skylanders.  He had just gotten it for his birthday the week before and was becoming obsessive about it. I felt he needed a break from it. Which he did. But the storm that came after that, resulted in a huge temper tantrum. There was yelling and crying, and screaming and runny noses, and soberly “i hate you’s”, and “i hate myself”, and “i just want to be left alone”, and screaming into pillows, and pinching and scratching at himself, and me grabbing a hold of him in my arms to cradle him and love him and keep him from physically hurting himself.

Phew! I see more and more of myself in this child every day! Memories and things long forgotten and tucked away in the far back of my mind. And now as I watch him go through so many of the things I went through in my own childhood (things that had made me feel “wrong”); and now to see him go through it, and not know how to deal with the intense emotions that come with it,  just kills me. I only hope that I can parlay my understanding and feelings to him based on what I have already gone through and cushion the blow even just a little. Let him know, he is NOT alone, there are others who understand, who get it, who have the same difficulties and differences.

This poor child carries the strain of always having to restrain and keep in check his natural ADHD impulses to do his own thing, his own way, while he is in school all day and for just long enough after school to get his homework done. The meds that he is on helps him to do that, and for all intense purposes work great, but some days are a bit more challenging than others. Sometimes the smallest monkey wrench puts a crimp in his day and throws him completely off course. It could be anything, maybe his schedule was unexpectedly interrupted, maybe he isn’t feeling well or maybe someone said or did something that he just can’t get off of his mind. What ever it is, it can cause the storm described above…

and below….

Leon: MOM! I am having a REALLY bad day! All I want is to come home and relax by playing my new game and you won’t even let me, And I am just really really stressed (pleading now, with tears running down his cheeks) PLEEEASE let me play with my Skylanders I just need to forget today happened!! Pleease!!! I DON’T WANT to go to fencing, I just want to RELAX!!! and I can’t do that if I can’t play my game!!

ME: (cradling my poor sobbing little boy whose trying desperately to sway me into changing my mind about taking away his video game privileges as a result of consequential behavior) I know you are upset, Leon. I am sorry that this hurts your feelings, but you know the rules if you get nasty with mommy you lose certain privileges and telling me you feel too sick to go fencing but just fine to play video games is not going to cut it.

Leon: I’m sooorrrrrry! I won’t do it again. Pllllllleeeeeeaaaassssseeee can I play my game. I had a bad day and besides I got some bad news at school and I am stressed about it! I just neeeeeeeeeed to playayayayay my GAME!

ME: What bad news? Do you want to tell me about it.

Leon: I just don’t want to talk about it OKAY!!! (screaming) Just let me PLAY!!!!!!

ME: eh, there is that tone again. (remaining as calm as any parent who just wants to strangle their beautiful child can)  Lets just try to stay calm and talk things out and we can see were we go from there.

Leon: If you knew this bad news you’d know why I am so stressed!

ME: So tell me about it

Leon: I don’t want to

ME: Okay you don’t have to tell me. But I am a little worried, can you tell me if it’s bad news about you?

Leon: no

ME: is a teacher involved?

Leon: no

Me: a friend?

Leon: yeah…

Me: did someone get hurt or sick?

Leon: no it’s not like that, it’s, it’s it’s just to horrible to say, I’ll write it down.

Me: (a little concerned now…. takes the folded up paper from his hand – reads his scribble and…..) (SMILE) Leon, is this what is upsetting you so much?

Leon: yes!

The note says: “ _________ has a crush on me! (It’s shocking!)”

ME: (inner voice) AWWWWW how freaking cute!!!!!!!!! (outer voice) This is flattering news, it should make you feel good about yourself. _____ is a very nice girl and she obviously has good taste. Don’t look at this as a bad thing, think of it as a good thing. I thought you liked ______.

Leon: I do! but I don’t want a crush, I want a friend!!!!

ME: All you have to do is just tell her that.

We talked a bit more about how he came to this knowledge….

Leon: Her friend came and told me, and then _____ said she was too embarrassed to tell me herself.

ME: what did you say?

Leon: nothing, I just fainted!

Ah the complexities of a fourth grader.

Today he came home in all smiles, we talked a bit before my bronchitis sent me back to sleep and he had a very nice evening playing with his dad.

I had asked him if he had spoken to ______. 

Leon: yeah, I told her that I didn’t feel the same way about her, and I asked her if we could still be friends. and she said yes.

Alls well that ends well!

I just hope ______  is okay! I mean who can blame her? My kid has always been a looker…… 

and he is an AMAZING KID to boot.

Dear Trick or Treaters

Another thing we love to do is BOO our friends;