I’m sure Michael will eventually return to blogging. I really don’t think he’ll be able to restrain himself. We just both had a really bad day yesterday and Michael has been dealing with the worst of it all.
I’ve been working some really long and tiring hours. Yesterday I worked a little over 11 hours at Target with only a 15 minute lunch and a mere 2 bathroom breaks all day (torture for a 7.5-month pregnant woman). Our store is without a pharmacy manager and we had a technician call in sick yesterday and we filled twice as many prescriptions as we normally do - 129 brand new prescriptions, most of which were brand new patients, so all address and insurance information had to be added on each one. It was insane. At 5:30pm we started telling people they could drop of their new prescriptions but we would not be able to have them ready until today. The pharmacy closes at 7:00pm and we were so far behind we just couldn’t promise any more new orders be done before closing. It was a mess. Many of my work days at Target have been like this lately.
Michael had met with our contractor and our electrician yesterday morning. Things on the house haven’t progressed as quickly in the past few weeks and that has been frustrating. We have planned to do some work ourselves to save on expenses because everything we chose from light switches to doorknobs costs more than what was bid in the estimate for the basic items. The biggest frustration is the timing of the work we planned to do. We intend to lay our own floor tile and do some of the painting. We can’t do either until the drywall work is done, which can’t be done until the electrical work and insulation are in place. By original time estimates, we should have been able to do our things starting this weekend. That just isn’t going to happen. The insulation hasn’t even gone in yet, let alone the drywall. There were delays with the electrical work which put all the rest behind. Now it looks like we might have our window either next weekend - when we have our birthing class scheduled for all day Saturday (which can be moved to April 19th if need be, but that’s awfully close to delivery time), or the 15th, on which day I have to work. Worst case, we may be at our window the weekend of the 22nd, which is the baby shower in Illinois. ( You probably can sense where our frustrations are going.)
On top of just the events of the day yesterday, Michael has been carrying quite a load. I’ve been extremely tired the past few weeks and he has been trying to pick up the slack of the things I cannot do. He’s been trying to cook and clean and do the laundry and grocery shopping on top of trying to get in work hours for his employer. Because of the nature of my work, I can’t take care of any business from the store. Any communication that has to take place with our contractor, Michael has to take care of. In addition, we have had a number of issues with insurance payments and medical bills and bills in general that require some phone calls to work out (some because our companies have lost track of us between the moves and others because we recently changed banks) that again, Michael has to deal with because I can’t make those calls from work. There seems to be no end to frustrations in this department. All of this falls on Michael’s shoulders. He’s been beaten down quite a bit over the last few weeks trying to keep all these balls in the air. The thought of preparing for the baby to arrive, overwhelming in itself, only compounds our anxiety.
I know Michael’s blogs can be a little long and his hiding of the baby’s name was a bit devious, but it’s been his only outlet from all of these stresses. He enjoys puzzles and challenges and likes to “spread the joy” by creating challenges for other people to work out. After his bad day yesterday and the weeks of all of his extra stresses and a little needling about the blog and hiding of the name, he’d just reached the end of his rope. (Yes, we are both a little hyper-sensitive right now, but bear with us. Many days we’re standing within inches of the gates to the Funny Farm.) I’m sure Michael will be back when he’s able to unwind a little. Things are looking up for that to happen….see the “Prayers are answered” blog for more details.
