Desolation

My Beth Lee moved out last night, into the college dorm. This was the plan, and it's a great step forward for her. I'm proud of her, and I'm confident she is ready for this. But I am desolate with her gone. I don't think she knows how I feel, and that was part of my plan, too. But it's truly a case of hypocrisy, because I look like I'm doing o.k. but inside I am a mess and grieving the loss even though it's what I want for her. Things will never be the same again, and they shouldn't be, but I am in pain anyway. I don't know how to do this detaching without ripping my heart out.

Yikes!

I'm back to work a week from today. I packed my summer with as much as I could, and although I did get a lot done I still have a lot to do. I have been feeling less fatigued, but I've also been able to sleep when I need to. Once I'm back to my work schedule, I will be getting up earlier and not sleeping no matter how fatigued I am during the day. I'm trying not to feel anxious about it, but it keeps coming to mind anyway.

busy with work

I'm trying to get lots done for my company before I start back to work later this month. I have a lot of ideas and things I would like to do and follow up on, but that means I don't have time for the continuing education I wanted to do or the projects at home that I needed to finish so I don't go nuts surrounded by clutter and the feeling of never being finished with anything. I haven't been walking as much since I hurt my ankle, but I am doing my physical therapy exercises daily. I hope to get a pedometer that works soon, but summer's going by fast and I won't be walking much in the fall and winter so even if I finally get one that works it may not get much use for awhile.
I had conferences last week and this week for 2 days each. I have a full day conference out of state later this month, and another conference for a few days in September. There's so much I want to do, but I can't get everything done. All the cleaning and organizing I did has been wiped out by my family. It only took them a few days to un-do my work and surround me with clutter and chaos. That makes me very depressed.

Getting social!

This summer I have worked very hard to get together with people I don't see often but care about deeply. I can't really entertain at my house, because I can't get it reasonably clean. So I've been organizing outings with friends and so far I've had people join me at several outdoor concerts at our local library, go to an outdoor presentation of a Shakespeare play, go to the county fair, and meet at various parks. We even had our neighbors over, but sat on the front (relatively clean) porch. I'm working on getting the inside clean, but that's not happening anytime soon since there is so much work needing to be done. I am in a kind of fatigue remission again, and I know from past experience that I can't count on my health once fall comes around and I'm working again and it gets dark earlier and earlier. So I am trying to be with my friends during the summer when I have time to take naps when I need them and still have time to be social with my buds.

Draining the life out of me

I have spent over 40 hours each week for several weeks now, just deep cleaning my house. I'm still not anywhere near completion, and there's not a single room that's completely done. I've worked in the office, kitchen, and dining room. I see improvement, but I also see that no one else in my family is lifting a finger to help or to maintain what I've accomplished. I am allergic to dust, and I hate to spend hours and hours picking up after other people. Since I put my things away where I can find them again, it is not my stuff that I'm having to clean up and put away. The more I clean, the worse my mood becomes and the more depressed I am. I am between a garbage pile and a trash dumpster. It drains the life out of me to spend so much time cleaning, but it also sucks the life out of me to live in clutter and be surrounded by piles of stuff. I seem to loose either way. But I can't continue living like this, because it is affecting my health. I am trying hard to make my home a place I can stay and be comfortable in, but it's taking a toll to have to spend my limited energy on cleaning and see my family be so indifferent even though I've explained repeatedly to each of them how important this is for me. I guess they just don't care about how the house looks, being able to find things, etc. But the hardest part is realizing that they care so little about what I need.

It's been awhile

I have had many computer problems, but hopefully they are resolved or are resolving. I have been busy taking classes and learning teaching strategies. I've also taken advantage of my time off work to get together with the friends I don't get to see very often during the school year. I've been cleaning my house for hours each day, trying to get it to the point where it is reasonably close to the way it should be so that I can continue to live here comfortably. Since I am the only one in my family of 5 that is bothered by clutter, I've been unable to communicate effectively with them about how important order is to me. I've tried to enlist their help, but although they say they will do things, they don't follow through so for now I am doing everything myself. I can keep up with the daily things and make very slight forward progress in cleaning and organizing. However, all the time that I spend on that makes it impossible to fit in the studying and writing I really want to be doing. I don't like spending my time on things many people could do at the expense of losing that time that could be used for things only I could do. But I have no solution figured out yet.

I'm Back!

Hello, I'm back! I had some technical difficulties with accessing my blog, but it seems to be working for me again now. Tomorrow I go to a conference in Dayton, where I will be speaking on helping the distractible child, adapting curriculum for learning differences, and when socialization IS an issue. I enjoy helping people figure out ways to make their lives easier by helping their kids in more effective ways. Gosh, I wish I'd had me when my kids were younger! But the traveling can be pretty tiring. I wish we could fly to some of the conferences we go to, but we have to haul our trailer full of Heads Up products and there's way too much to ship. We are going to be in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Florida, and New Jersey over the next six weekends. Then we'll have a couple of weeks off before another Ohio conference. I don't know how much longer we will be traveling to conferences. The costs of traveling and renting booth space add up fast and it's a whole lot of work just to break even. I think we'll focus more on advertising next year, especially with the price of gas continually going up.

Wow! Check this out!

I just created my own blog! I followed the online instructions, and next thing you know I have my own blog. I learned something new, and the brain experts say learning new things and challenging your brain helps prevent Alzheimer's so I did something preventative for my brain today. Yea! Can't wait to try out some more new things later. Is there a blog tutorial that can teach me more, like how to upload pictures and live links? Must find out!