One Thing After Another

This morning I tweeted something that Link said to me in the car on the way to school:

16yo: “A lot of stuff happened yesterday. That’s probably why I was tired.”
Me too, son, me too.

Link is doing a marvelous job of taking back control of his life. He’s making lists and working hard to complete assignments. He really does have lots of things going on and less time to relax than he used to have. I’m working hard to let that be his process even though there is part of my brain that is desperate to take it over and run things more efficiently.

Howard had a bad brain chemistry day yesterday, which meant that he spent several hours miserable. He’s so much better than he used to be at recognizing the onset of depression and taking management steps. Sometimes it still gets bad anyway. For the most part he handled it on his own, but I was support crew, supplier of hugs, and manager of household things which could not wait. Naturally this reminded me of the post I’ve been meaning to write about being the spouse of a depressed person. I started writing it today and realized that it is actually three posts. Through it all, we breathe prayers of thanks that Howard cycles quickly out of depression. The deeps rarely last more than a day and the downs are usually gone in mere days.

Patch had cello lessons in the morning which is a happy thing. Gleek had her SEOP meeting in the middle of the day, where we met with a counselor and selected her classes for next year. There were twenty packages to mail. Gleek had an orthodontist appointment. Howard had a doctor’s appointment. Sam’s club gave Howard grief about refilling his anti-depressant prescription. I also had to finish putting the last pieces of marginalia into LOTA so that we could do a color test print.

All of those things, and I’d decided to try going to a writer’s group at 9pm. I was excited about it. I need social things in my life. I really enjoyed reading the submissions and was looking forward to talking about them.

Then at 8:15 Gleek tried to jump a curb on her scooter and missed. She tumbled across the pavement and was in too much pain to get up until after I was brought from the house. By 8:30 we decided that an X-ray was called for, so I took her to the emergency room. It was not broken. No casts for us, just medical bills and a missed writer’s group.

Today has not been quite so one-thing-after-another as yesterday was, but there were still moments where I felt like I was running to catch up with my life. Calm happiness and good perspective are hard to maintain on days like these. I think I’m allowed to be tired and feel a bit worn. But when I feel my brain headed for the running monologue of woe, I turn aside instead. I can see how this week is better than last week. I can see how we’re beginning to catch up on the things that fell behind. Life is good, even when it is an exhausting one-thing-after-another day.