The post-Disney hangover is always very real, but this time around has been next-level. Your first clue? No Disney posts before the post-Disney post. Yeah, that bad. They'll come eventually.
We got back last Monday night (or rather, very early Tuesday), and it was full-speed ahead into work and appointments and all the things. The house has been a disaster since Craig and Jacob "moved", because they took furniture with them, leaving nowhere to store certain things when they decided to live here again until we left for vacation. So Jacob's food was taking over the dining room table, his clothes were all over his room, he was sleeping on the couch since his bed was at the apartment (meaning he could justify leaving the living room a bit messy because it was his "bedroom"), and the usual overflow in other spots hadn't gotten any better despite him taking some things over to the apartment. Oh, and he brought over a few cooking things and his air fryer, which either didn't have places in the kitchen or displaced kitchen items we already had. Everything felt awkwardly hoarder-ish for weeks, and it had me completely aggravated. Not to mention that the house desperately needed cleaning before all of that, but I had been waiting until they moved so there was less stuff I needed to move or clean around. Well, once they moved it lasted less than a day, so that never happened, and then all of the additional stuff came back and made the problem even worse.
We had some company potentially coming less than a week after we got back, which meant I had to get some of the house in order regardless. I made it my mission most of the week to try to work through problem areas, clean what I could, and make it presentable. To their credit, the boys did their part by moving the ginormous Legoland out of the living room and down to the basement. Not that it's a lot better there, but having an empty corner of the living room back is pretty nice. Jacob's version of clean in other areas is still pretty questionable, but I guess we'll just take baby steps for now and I will feel justified in moving any "abandoned" items in between their visits.
We're still trying to figure out what that all looks like, mind you. On top of facing down the physical and logistical challenges of their move to the apartment, the very real reality of being a split household has been a lot to process. While I'm not really a single mom in reality, I have become primarily responsible for one kid, and whatever responsibility I have for the other is now considerably more complicated because it's a half hour across town. I think I've said here in the past that any time marriage felt tough, all I had to do was think about how much more annoying co-parenting from two different locations would be. Yet now here we are, albeit still very much happily married. But living separately is obviously not ideal and we'll have to be intentional about keeping our relationship strong. It's possible they may stay here on weekends, at least once in a while, but I'm not sure what that will look like when lacrosse season starts and Craig is traveling or working all day Saturday. Jacob can walk some places from the apartment, but he'll still need a lot of support so I anticipate he'll end up at the house a lot.
Reading the legal paperwork to separate our household--in order to establish their residency separately--was a bit sobering. While I was grateful all of it is just a formality and not some rigid set of rules we need to follow to the letter, it did give me pause to think about what all of those things would be like if this was an actual, unhappy separation. I don't ever want to have to work through any of those things in anger or resentment, or decide where our kids would be happiest, or anything like that. This was really a last resort and far from ideal, but I'm grateful we're all on board, still committed, and willing to work through the hard parts of this. It's still a little scary, though, because you don't know what you don't know until you know it, and there are a lot of unknowns here and a lot of months ahead of this very odd living setup.
Ironically, we've been realizing that the same kid that hated having a sibling for over ten years is now going to be a little lost and lonely without one. While the boys don't 100% get along, they have become pretty brotherly in the last few years--bonding over baseball, video games, weird YouTube videos, and generally trolling me. As much as Jacob seems like an introvert because he doesn't have any close friends, I think the silence of the apartment might get to him after a while. We did invest in another Xbox so the boys can still play together. Otherwise, I can't decide if Carter is going to enjoy the life of an only child for once, or if he will resent being stuck here with me and feel like he's left out of the guy stuff too much. He needs time with Craig, especially when it comes to baseball, so we're going to have to find a balance.
I'm trying to get back in the mode of cooking for two and figuring out what we can eat without Jacob. I don't want to gluten the whole kitchen, but also...non-gluten-free eating can be cheaper and better and broader. Carter and I definitely have some ideas of things we want to try and places we want to go, but I guess I need to be prepared for a full-on cleaning every week when Jacob comes back. But hopefully those things help make this situation feel a bit more fun for Carter.
School is starting in a week and we haven't bought any supplies except Carter's backpack. I have no idea if I need to buy Jacob's (or if he even has a list yet), or if he and Craig can reasonably manage that. I'm glad to only be responsible for one lunch and one kid most mornings (particularly since it's the one that usually makes the bus), but given that Jacob's bus is ridiculously early and Craig could be on the road sometimes, I'm not entirely sure how we'll pull those mornings off. It might be walkable for him, but maybe less so in the winter when it's extra cold, extra snowy, or in particular extra icy, as the last thing we'd want is a fall injury in the middle of a very important basketball season.
On top of everything else, work has been overwhelming. The vacation catch-up was challenging, but I'm also dealing with new things and clumsy systems and broken reports (because of a new database we're transitioning into). Add in being distracted by life in general, and every task feels overwhelming. Between work and home, the list of tasks seems endless and my focus is absolute crap. I've been battling back a cold since before the Disney trip--I've been alternating Zicam and vitamin C for three weeks trying to avoid an ill-timed, full-blown cold. It's generally worked outside of a few periods of stuffiness, but I'm wondering if my luck is about to run out, or if I should just let it happen and get it over with now that the trip and my birthday are done. I'm confident it's just a plain old cold since I've been able to push it off this long, but Jacob was eager to get back to the apartment when he noticed I was a bit stuffier yesterday. I obviously don't want to make Carter sick either, but I think we can mostly keep our distance with only two of us here.
Speaking of Carter, we're just about at the one-year anniversary of getting his ulcerative colitis under control. I'm so grateful that he's doing so well--40+ pounds and probably 5 inches later--but it's still sobering to know he could always be on the cusp of an issue. People fail drugs all the time after years of success, so I'm always a little nervous that our luck will run out. But I'm so thankful for the good year we've had. Still, it has me thinking back to last year and how hard that time was.
The other thing that's been throwing me off these last couple weeks is watching all of Jacob's same-age peers heading off to college. In an alternate reality that could have been us, or in another alternate reality, we could have been dropping him off at prep school this past weekend. I guess I'm grateful we didn't have to do that, but it's still weird seeing all of the kids he was once in the same grade with starting that part of their lives while we're still facing down senior year. And another new school. And an apartment. And my baby heading into his last year of middle school already. It's also sobering to have passed the 30th anniversary of my first college move-in. That just doesn't seem possible, even though I have my own child who's about the same age I was at the time. The math is definitely not mathing on that one. I mean, how could that fully formed early adult moment be a full three decades in my rear view? And somehow I'm now 48?! What is up with that? Suffice it to say that time is flying.
Oh, and my dad broke his ankle last week, so that's put my parents into a tough spot, particularly since it's going to make it very tough for my mom to attend her sister's husband's celebration of life in Wisconsin in a couple weeks. I've offered to come stay with my dad, as it's the least I can do, but sometimes the hardest part of aging parents is getting them to let you take on any sort of burden (no matter how important or noble the task or how willing you are). So that's been weighing on me, as well.
I'm just struggling to process a lot of what's going on in life right now. Too many transitions, new things, hard things, too many expenses, and so many troubling things and struggling folks out in the world--sad things, tragic things, injustices, burdens, and pure stupidity. It's a hard time to be an empath, at the very least. And I'm trying to process it all with a brain that hasn't been firing on all cylinders in a while. Darn you, hormones (I think, anyway). My stream of consciousness is about as coherent these days as that of a certain president, and I'm not sure if it's burnout, disturbed sleep, or perimenopause kicking the crap out of me. Maybe all of the above. My ADHD-specialist therapist has been on medical leave for months, and I'm just not sure if I can think and plan my way out of this, or if meds need to be in my future, if only to get me functioning properly again to give me the confidence to tackle it other ways. The world just feels so heavy. I'm so grateful we just had a great family vacation, and despite some challenges we're still probably in a better place than a lot of people, but "easy" is not a word I would use for much of anything right now. I promise I'm okay, but I also wish I could take off work for another week and try to get my act together without sacrificing sanity or sleep. I guess that's what the coming long weekend is for, right?
Anyway, I just wanted to vent all of that before getting back to happier times with some Disney posts. But thank goodness I took notes throughout the trip, because this delay in posting (amidst everything else floating through my brain) would have done the details in, no doubt. We had a great time, for the most part, but of course those trips are always an adventure! More soon!
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