Christmas Wrap-up

I've mentioned it several times that I am not a fan of the holidays.  I just don't have the best memories of them growing up.  Now that I am an adult with a child, I am bound and determined for Sidekick to not feel the same way.  I've decided that holidays, especially Christmas, will be stress free, calm, and relaxing.  When I was/am with my family, it doesn't feel like that at all which is why I have chosen to not go out of town to my sister's. This year my mom spent Christmas with my sister and her family (she alternates between us), so it was just me and Sidekick.

Ugly Sweater Day at School

The Magic of Christmas

In the past, I have found the holidays to be a little sad and lonely.  This year was different.  This year felt good.  Sidekick and I made a lasagna the morning of Christmas Eve while listening to Christmas music and singing loudly. Sidekick LOVES to cook and it's fun to have him help me. I now trust him with a sharp knife and he does a great job cutting things.  Later that day, we went to church... Sidekick to Kids Ministry and I to the big church.  It felt good, and I was happy. 

We came home, cooked our amazing lasagna, and ate our Christmas dinner in our Christmas PJs instead of our church clothes.  It was Sidekick's suggestion, so why not?  Who says we have to dress up for Christmas dinner?  I read "'Twas the Night before Christmas" to him after eating chocolate pie, and he was sound asleep before 7:30. 

Christmas morning with Sidekick was special and calm. Sidekick was appreciative and excited about each gift and Santa gave him what he wanted.  My sister texted at 11:00 wondering what we were up to. I told her we could skype then.  She responded "in a bit" (apparently her husband wasn't home right then???).  Two hours later, I was still waiting. I kept trying to hold off putting together presents, starting a project, etc. because I kept telling Sidekick we will skype "in a bit".  I was annoyed and texted my sister only to find that her boys were outside playing!  WTF?!?  We had been waiting.. apparently "in a bit" means several f'ing hours! I asked two separate times what time we could skype and never got a response.

Sidekick and old Dog

 By the time they were ready to skype, Sidekick was watching a movie he got for Christmas and I wasn't about to interrupt it. Besides, at that point, their dinner was going to be ready in 30 minutes, so opening presents would have been rushed.  Their two hour dinner finally ended at the time when our dinner was beginning, and Sidekick was exhausted and I had a migraine.  I texted that we would have to skype the next day (apparently not convenient for them, but I didn't care).  Sidekick didn't care at that point about opening more presents, and his disappointment was finally over.

My mom called me that night and couldn't understand why I was irritated.  That conversation ended quickly. It was the first time I had heard from my mom all day.  Merry f'ing Christmas. 

Sidekick wanted this ugly ass robot monkey from Santa.  I found it on sale and had a gift card for him, so I got it for him.  It's plastic and heavy, and he insisted on sleeping with it!  At 1:55 AM he came into my room to tell me that the monkey was scaring him. Of course it was!  He's ugly and terrifying.  I walked him back to his room and put the monkey on the floor at the other end of his room.  He immediately wanted to play with it in the morning.

 

The next morning my mom texted me and a text argument commenced.  I told her that Skyping with the her family should have happened before my brother-in-law went somewhere and before the boys went outside to play. I felt like we were an afterthought.  I explained that that will not happen again.  My calm, stress-free Christmas was not that anymore because I was so irritated and annoyed with waiting for them. I made it clear that I will NOT do that again! 

A couple hours later we skyped my family and opened presents.  I didn't care at that point because I was still annoyed.  I felt like they let my son down.  He was just so wrapped up in the magic and excitement of Christmas and then had to see a bunch of unwrapped presents under the Christmas tree all because of one excuse after another. 

Buh-bye Christmas! See you again next year...  hopefully with zero chaos and stress! 

 

 

What Happened to November?

Wow!  I had no idea that it's been so long since I've blogged!  Wasn't it just Halloween and here we are just a little over two weeks away from Christmas.

Life has been insanely busy.  For the past four months, I've been working my a$$ off trying to secure a $2 million account (after 14 years doing this, it's my largest one ever!).  I won it at one point, and then just two days later, I un-won it because they thought the vote was too close.  So for ten more days, I continued to work the account in hopes of a good outcome, and fortunately I won it again!  We cut them an amazing deal, but it had to be approved by their Board and Purchase Orders need to be cut. The was a glitch in that on the customer's end.  We didn't think we'd be able to get all POs from them, which meant I didn't get 2016 credit for the entire order, which meant a significantly less bonus for me.  Ugh!  I am hopeful that I will get a PO by the end of the day today or first thing on Monday.  Needless to say, there has been an enormous amount of stress, lots of tears, upset stomachs, and sleepless nights. It's been quite an awful four months. 

But Halloween was fun and we had a 14th birthday party for Dog:

 

In not the exact words, Sidekick told me at one point when I was a crazy person with work that I was not a good Mom. Talk about a tug at your heart strings!  I was so in over my head that I was doing what I could to survive the stress of work and being a single mom.  It was really hard, but he somehow went with the flow and was rewarded with our first time going to Six Flags (bought 2017 season pass that could also be used in 2016). I think I may have redeemed myself a little bit that day, and during the fun time I needed to be reminded of what is really important in life, and it's that sweet boy who calls me "Momma".  And that took us into the holidays...

 

I'm not a fan of the holidays, and I've mentioned it every year since I started this blog.  I wish I could just go to sleep on Thanksgiving and wake up on January 2nd.  Shortly after my birthday and before Thanksgiving, I went into a bad funk.  For one week, I could barely drag myself out of bed to take care of Sidekick and work. If I was working from home (because I have a home office), I found myself working less and laying on my sofa more and sleeping.  One of the weekends Sidekick played in the basement or if he was lucky get to watch "extra" TV while I was two floors up in my bed for hours on end. I checked on him every once in a while, but I just couldn't function.  It was bad.  Really bad.  Through it all, Sidekick was amazing. 

 

I'm not someone who is very open with people when things are not going well in my life, which is probably why I blog anonymously.  I tend to just put on a good front.  During this time of my bad funk, I told a friend via text that I was not doing well and instead of receiving support from her, she gave me nothing. Absolutely nothing.  I was devastated because I thought she could be the friend to help me and to listen to me, instead she walked away.  Weeks later, she still doesn't understand why I was upset that she was being such a shitty friend when I needed her the most. Is it so difficult to just ask me what is going on, encourage me to talk to her, let me know she's here for me, etc.?  I had supported her so much through personal/work things that she was going through and the minute I hit rock bottom, she left. Eye opening. It really sucks that we work together and had to be together this week.  It was awkward, and I was miserable having to spend time with someone who I considered a good friend who ended up hurting me so much.  In the end, I decided we can't be close friends like we once were. I even unfriended her on Facebook and silly Fitbit to sever personal ties. I can and will be a civil colleague (as difficult as that may be), but I cannot be in a one sided friendship.  But, I miss her... a lot, so this is really, really hard. I'm trying to remind myself that I chose to do this because I didn't get out of her the quality of friendship and support that I was giving her.  Did I mention that I miss her?

 

So there's the latest in my life. I have invited five (or maybe it's six) SMC moms and their kids to our house on Sunday to decorate Christmas cookies.  It sounded like a great idea at the time, but now I have to make dozens and dozens of homemade cookies and clean my house. Today was supposed to be a vacation day so I could do all of that; instead, I had to work because there were problems with my $2 million account. And again, the stress level rises.  'Tis the season...