We went back to work on Monday, when our holidays ran out though the renos had not. Monday and Tuesday night we came home, had a quick, simple supper and went straight to work.

We were up until 2am Tuesday morning, getting everything together before Ethan and Rachel came home Wednesday. That evening, we finished assembling their beds, installed Rachel’s light fixture, and sewed curtains for around Ethan’s bed.

There is so much more we want to do: add moldings to the beds’ side-rails, paint or stain the beds, finish the trim around the windows and doors, finish Rachel’s ceiling paneling and put trim around all the ceiling corners, baseboard, sew and hang their window curtains. It never ends.

That night I gouged my finger on something as we hoisted Ethan’s mattress onto his bed. Later, as I held a board on Rachel’s bed for Ian to screw into place, the cordless drill slipped and flew into my finger. It didn’t do any major damage, just drilled off the top layer of skin and bruised me, but it sure hurt at the time. Later I barked my shin hard on something as I lifted it and tried to walk with it. Naturally, I thought, I will take more injuries in one hour at 2am than in the rest of the week and a half on this.

I was exhausted all Wednesday. Around suppertime, I texted Ethan and Rachel’s dad, but they were still a couple hours out of the city. My aunt had arrived in town for my mother’s wedding weekend, so we had a family supper that evening. We cut out early because Ian had yet to cut down their doors to accommodate the new floor-height and then rehang them so the kids could have bedroom doors again.

I was outside in the back yard with Hannah while Ian was upstairs hanging doors when I heard them come in. I’d told Ian to not let them go into their rooms until I was there, so I was trying to coax Hannah inside to go see and greet them and I heard Ian say to Ethan, “So? How was your week?” And Ethan replied, “it was the worst week and a half of my life. I was fighting with my dad the whole time and there’s something I’ve been wanting to do all week.” And he went running upstairs. Ian went running after him going, “wait, wait don’t go in your room.” And I grabbed Hannah and went inside.

Ethan was still on the landing when I got there, “Well I guess I can’t go in cuz I can’t open my door,” he said. I turned the knob, and it caught a little, but opened. Ethan pushed past me and threw himself dramatically on the bed. The bed that hadn’t been there before (just a mattress on the floor). Then I watched him pull his face out of his pillow and turn it around to survey the room. “Well I like that chandelier,” he said finally as I sat on the bed with him.

Rachel had some kind of wordless happy-face paroxysm on opening her bedroom door. So although she didn’t say specifically, I think she liked it.

That night, of course, the kids wouldn’t settle at bedtime and were getting up for snacks, water, conversation, complaints, books, etc, etc, until nearly 10. I had entertained wishful thoughts of being in bed by 9, but also, Ian and I had promised each other to look carefully at our budget and make decisions about daycare for the next year. So we were up after ten while I looked through our online bank statements to find pertinent budgeting numbers. After that, then we remembered that we had to deal with taking Ethan and Rachel to a daycamp that they’d missed the first three days of and that we weren’t remotely prepared for. So we had to dig out registration information, sign release forms and medical information forms and scope whether we had any lunch fixings. It was nearly eleven when I went to say something about being tired and the words wouldn’t come out because I kept slurring and jumbling them. Then I started crying. Then stopped crying. Finally got to go to bed, where I didn’t sleep right away because I was so miserable I had to cry some more.

Why am I telling you this? I don’t know, I’m just really trying to assess lifestyle and priorities right now. We’ve been going to hard, changing so much and taking on so much for so long now. In the last year alone we bought a new house, I worked on a ridiculous redesign project that required insane overtime from last November to February, we got married and we did this renovation project. Those were all exhausting and draining and “as soon as we get through this” kind of times. And the only one of those that didn’t cost ridiculous money was the overtime. And that one was the hardest to take psychologically.

I had a line on daycare for Ethan and Rachel that day and I tried really hard to talk both Ian and myself into taking it. I thought longingly back on our lives pre-Hannah, when we had this little routine of getting up at the same time in the morning, carpooling to daycare, doing our various days, carpooling home. We had routines and we had our holiday care all sewn up and didn’t have to be strategizing and worrying all the time. We didn’t have to give up all our own holidays to childcare for school holidays. We had our monthly budgets and nothing really changed month to month.

But we looked at our budget, looked at the debts we want to pay off as soon as possible and decided to just do a couple of hours of after-school care, so that I could at least work normal hours (instead of 7am-3pm)

Later, talking about it with Ian, I said, “I just felt so much more stable a couple of years ago and I want that back. I don’t know what’s different, daycare or what, but I was even more stable back when-” I had been about to say, “back when I was a single parent” but I had that epiphany moment right in the middle. “Oh! I know what’s wrong with me,” I said. And then, “I’m not spending enough (or any) time alone.” And as soon as I said it, I had that lump in my throat that happens when you inadvertently say something that’s too true for comfort.

So yeah, that was right before this wedding weekend full of family and suppers, brunches, ceremonies, 200 ppl receptions, lunches, cheesecake and gift openings. And there’s more busyness to come. But, overall, just having had that realization, I’m feeling more hopeful. I’m feeling like, “yes, finally this all makes sense.”

And as soon as I can give some time to myself, I really think it will get better.