One day at a time...

Today was another attempt at maintaining normalcy around here. I took the kids (4 of them, anyway) to the final basketball game of the season (yay!) and managed to limp the She-Beast home with her massive oil leak. After we got home, I started cleaning and doing the massive amounts of laundry that needed to be done. I lost track of how many I did, but I did at least get all 3 boys' beds stripped and remade, a few loads of clothes done, and the towels are washing and drying as I type this.

Luckily, a good friend showed up unexpectedly with her daughters, and while the kids played she helped me to do some cleaning and straightening up. It is times like this that make me realize how lucky I am - I might not have any family nearby, but my friends are incredible. Another friend brought dinner by as well.

I got another call from my ex's family, this time informing me that they had decided to set up a memorial fund for my son and his brother. I gave them the information that they needed and they assured me that they would send me all of the information that I would need for it.

My oldest daughter has a friend spending the night, so the 3 girls are in the bedroom playing around for a while longer before I send them to bed. I had to throw a major temper tantrum to get them to all play nicely together - when one of my girls has a friend come over, she never wants the other sister to play with them and it always creates drama. Once I went off on them and threatened to send the friend back home, things calmed down considerably.

Of course, in the middle of doing laundry, the dryer died again. Ugh. I crawled up onto the kitchen table - the only way I can reach the breaker box - and flipped all of the breakers off and on, and it still wouldn't work. So I pulled the dryer out from the wall, unplugged it, and plugged it back in. Voila. It works. Stupid piece of crap. *grouch*

Somewhere in the middle of all of this, I realized that today would have been Gramma's 102nd birthday. She died in 1994 from cancer, and not a day goes by that I don't think about her. She's even the one who taught me how to do laundry back when I was a freshman in college and living with her and my aunt and uncle. Life was so much simpler then. She and I would load up our laundry in my 1976 Mustang II and head to the laundromat. While our laundry was washing, we'd go to the pizza place next door and have pizza and soda and chat about life in general. Such good times.....

I feel like the fog that I've been in for the past few days is starting to lift. I still have an occasional meltdown, but it's getting easier to think and easier to breathe. I'm planning on taking my youngest to church tomorrow, and there's a dinner after, so we'll have lots of time to visit with our church family. I'm sure that there will be tears, but I know that's next to impossible to avoid right now. Each day will hopefully get easier.

I know I've said it before, but my friends are amazing. I know that I couldn't have made it through the past few days without you. Thank you for everything.