A Day in my Used To Be Life

Everyone has a story.  Don't worry.  I'll make it short and in list form.

1.  I was an elementary school teacher.  (Yes, there was electricity then.  And, no, there were not dinosaurs - except for a few of the teachers who taught at my school.)

2.  I was a school administrator.  (Yes, I got to call all the parents of the naughty kids.  No, I did not enjoy this.)

3.  In 1992, I lived a made for TV movie except it was my Real Life.  If you don't read the link, the plot for this movie was that a husband and a wife adopted a baby boy only to find (two years later) it was a bit of an adoption lie.  Hubby and I were the husband and wife.  Due to the not quite legal things done by the adoption agency, we lost our adopted son after he lived with us for two years.  He went back to live with his birth-mother.  I wanted to die, and I'm pretty sure hubby did, too.  But, we didn't.  Fortunately, this story has a happy ending which is that we still love this boy who was our son for two years and now we love his birth family, too.  Our precious baby is grown up now and still a part of our lives. 

4.  After I was a school administrator, I somehow landed a great job where I worked right under the Assistant Superintendent of a nice little school district.  (The Assistant Superintendent is the one who assists the actual Superintendent, and in a sense, I assisted her.)  I got to take a pee in private without small people knocking on the door or looking under it.  I had a name plaque on my desk and business cards and a phone extension.  People actually trusted and counted on me for Important Things and I was Very Busy.  Then I got pregnant.

5.  Two years after our adopted baby boy went back to live with his birth-mother, hubby and I had a son.  He is known as Boy 1 in my blog, or just Boy Child.  Then one year later a daughter (Girl 1).  Then one year later another daughter (Girl 2).  (Then five years later another daughter.  Girl 3.)   This after being told a couple of times that we probably could not have children of our own.  Lesson:  Sometimes doctors don't really know what the heck they are talking about.  Another lesson:  Daycare for three kids under the age of three is really expensive.  So, I became a SWOT mom.  If you don't click the link, a SWOT mom is kind of like a ninja, badass, MacGuyver, super hero, oh and loving taxi to a few small people.

6.  Around 2013, when Girl 2 was eight weeks old hubby called me from work.  He'd been having a migraine for about a week and had gone to see a doctor.  He told me he was on his way to the ER because his MRI had shown a brain aneurysm.  I *kind of* freaked out.  A few hours later he was having an eight hour operation in which they cut his head open in order to put a titanium clip in it and save his life.  I was furiously pumping about 20 gallons of breast milk and hoping he wouldn't die.  He was in ICU for two weeks and had about a year long recovery during which time he wore a Kotex pad on his shaved head (attractive, I know).  I think he was happy he lived, but I know sometimes during that time he wanted to die.  I am really, really glad he didn't die.

7.  I did some odd jobs (literally and figuratively) during his recovery to keep us afloat.  I decided that I might never go back to teaching.  I also decided that life is shorter than we know.  So, I decided to start blogging.  And procrastinating a teensy bit more.  And drinking a little more beer.  Hell, what did you expect?  Something more profound?  It is me.

8.  Lots of other things happened during the Days of my Used To Be Life.  I changed my underwear a few times, but I won't bore you with the details.

I spent a lot of my Days in the Used to be Life wishing I had other people's lives because my life was so....sucky, poor, boring, ugly, painful, fill-in-the-blank.  I thought the grass was always greener on the other side.  But what I've learned is that most of the time this green grass on the other side is chemically induced and brown underneath just like mine, and we are better off just sticking with the life we have, muddling through, laughing a lot, helping each other, and meeting some nice people along the way.

Peace.  And I'm happy you are here.