Past the Breaking Point

Life has been pretty stressful around here for the last several weeks, for the following reasons:

1 - My BYU class that I was finishing up had a deadline of April 5th.  With all the home projecting going on, my class got put on the back burner.  It was a huge relief when I turned in my last paper and saw that final grade.  (As a side note:  I turned in a brilliant final paper, but didn't bother doing proper citations.  I turned in 100% work on the writing and figured the teach wouldn't dock me too badly for the crappy references.  I was right!  I got a 92% on it, which roughly correlates to my final grade in the class.  I'm so proud of myself for accurately estimating my grade on the paper, and hence spending the perfect amount of time on it!  An extra few hours of my time was totally worth 8%.)

2 - Taxes due.  I'm self-employed, which is a whole different animal.  Before deducting all my business expenses, we owed a substantial amount of money.  The problem was that I didn't realize at the start of this that I needed to keep track of all those expenses!  So I spent the last few weeks getting that all in order, including adding up 3,005 miles worth of mileage (luckily my invoices each have an address on them, and I have a crazy-detailed spreadsheet that I'm kinda OCD about).  In the end, we paid the Feds $9.  Score!  (Also, happiness:  Ohio has a new Small Business Owner deduction, and heck, I'm a small business owner, I'll take that deduction!  The end result is that we only paid Ohio $12.)  ...  This also means that we've accurately estimated how much taxes to deduct throughout the year from Rob's paycheck.  Which feels awesome.

3 - California trip.  So, this one is a really long story.  I'll give you the sum-up:  We were planning to go to California for the entire summer, but things have changed and now we're not going.  I'm not super sad about not going, in the end, but the transition from Excitement About a Trip to Acceptance of a Major Change was a hard one.  I spent a week feeling like the world was spinning underneath me and I couldn't get my bearings.  Now I feel pretty good about it, and I can even see how this could be a really good thing.

Note:  Miciah will still be going.  She reminded us in about 3 seconds flat that it was "her turn" to spend the summer with Grandma and Grandpa, since Elijah spent the summer with them last year.  I had forgotten about that.  She'll do Girls Camp out there with her cousin, and they're both really excited about that.  Girls Camp is on this GORGEOUS mountain property, so they'll love it.  Plus, they'll be together, and that's always the highlight of their year.

4 - Work.  Freelance work is funny, because I can have weeks where I work just a handful of jobs, and then weeks where they need someone almost full-time.  I'm free to say no, of course, but accepting more work is sometimes nice for a variety of reasons.  So for about 3 weeks I worked almost full-time and it was rough.  The paycheck will be nice, but it was stressful.  ...  I decided, through that experience, that full-time work wouldn't always feel that stressful - mostly it was the sudden difference that was so hard - but I still am not overly anxious to try it out on a regular basis.

5 - The Basement.  My emotional decline linked to this seemingly never-ending project has been interesting to me.  (I think things are interesting, as a general rule.)  I was excited, then I was a little anxious plus excited, then all excitement faded and there was just the anxiety, and then, past that, there was hostility.  A lot of hostility.  Not towards any person, but towards the house.  The dang house that is never finished, that takes over all my weekends and free time, that's cluttered and cramped because everything is shoved into a tiny space, that costs too much and gives too little, etc., etc.  I just lost it.  There were breakdowns, though not tears, as I struggled to cope with it all.


As a result of all this, my brain has only managed to deal with what was immediately necessary to think about.  I have future plans that have needed some attention, but I just couldn't handle thinking about them.  Heck, I could barely manage getting through the day without yelling, cussing, and/or beating myself in the head.

It occurs to me that most people are probably stronger than I am.  :)  I am okay with this.

Basement pictures to come!  It's SO almost done, guys.  I'm finally excited again because I'm starting to get my house back.  WHAT WHAT?!!!  It's amazing.  And the space really does look great, now that I can look at it without wanting to punch people.