When Things Become Too Much

I've been a bit stressed lately.  I have a bad tendency to get involved in things too much, where I try and do everything for everyone and belatedly realize I'm up to my forehead in stress and a hairs breath away from a massive breakdown.  I volunteer a lot, I know most of you know that and while I do enjoy helping, sometimes it becomes too much.  I'm either at the school or the hospital every day and that includes the weekends.  I do field trips throughout the weeks this month with the kids every day I'm not at the hospital, which is Tuesday, Thursday and Friday.  On the weekends I work at the school fundraiser that's happening this month, sometimes all day from 10:30am - 9:30pm.  I realized last night, as I was going to bed at 8 something because I was so exhausted that I'm spent.  I woke up this morning, looked at my house and had a panic attack (I'm a wee bit obsessive about my house, it doesn't have to be perfect, but clean is good).  My daughter and my husband helped me get everything in order.  I adopted a stray cat that was in a parking lot who was very hungry and flea infested, when I went to lunch last week too, which is odd, because I hate litter boxes, but he's sweet and he loves me and I'm keeping him.  At any rate, in order to not break down again I meditated and decided to think about all the things that make me smile.  Here is a short list:  

My friends (you know who you are and I love you)

Nora's laugh

My husband's kisses

Simon & Midas (pets)

Yoga or a run

Pumpkin spice coffee

*takes a sip of pumpkin spice coffee*  See?  Bliss.  Be well.

SIMON ROBERT H.

A Few Things About Shell

Ok, so I was trying to think of something at least halfway entertaining to say, since I've been offline for a bit.  Unfortunately, I'm not a very entertaining person and my life is actually fairly normal and uninspiring.  Aside from that I suffer from depression, so really, wanting happy humorous entertainment from me is kind of a daily hit or miss.  I can give you fake happy if you'd like, I'm fairly good at that.  It's one of my talents.


Having said that I see that there are a few new followers to the blog *waves madly at T, Brad and Matt* Hence, I'm going to do a short about me bit to give those who don't know much about me a bit of a background.  Sound good?  Grand, here we go.  I'm a mother of one (only one, thank you Jesus, love her, there will be no more), I'm in my early thirties, ok, 31 to be exact.  I'm originally from Pennsylvania, but moved down to finish my degree at USF in Tampa halfway through college.  I've been married to my hubs for 7.5 yrs.  Wow, 7.5 years.  Dang, it doesn't seem like it's been that long.  He's a USMC officer in flight school at the moment.  He's been in the military about 9 years, I know, they beat me to him!  The bastards!  He was with the Am Tracks (Assault Amphibious Vehicles) before finishing his degree and going to officer school.  Thus, I kind of follow him around.  He was deployed to Iraq three times with the Am Tracks and now if all things go his way he would like to be a Cobra pilot.  (The helicopters with big guns - that's how I remember which one is which).  I'm sure there will be more deployments in our future, but at the moment I'm enjoying having him here.  We're not anything alike, honestly.  It amuses some of our friends and family how vastly different we are, but it seems to work for us, so I'm not questioning it.  A few examples of our numerous differences:  I'm a pacifist, he's a Marine, I enjoy long distance running, he thinks anything over 3 miles is excessive, I'm a - oh my do I even go into politics? - let's just say liberal, he's conservative.  I believe the universe is all connected, he believes we turn to dust when we die.  I drive a hybrid, he drives a truck.  I'm emotional, he's logical.  He wants to take care of me, I try to take care of the world (fyi, this never works, the world's too damn big).  I'm bisexual, he was raised Catholic.  Oh wait, no no, the raised Catholic thing was suppose to go somewhere else, I meant to say before meeting me he was just sexually repressed!  lol.  Fine, I'll be serious (he was though!), he's straight (at least I certainly hope he is, otherwise I missed something big along the way!)  Yeah, that's us, in a nutshell.  We're in Florida at the moment, until we get sent somewhere else.  I don't mind too much though and besides, when it's all said and done and I get to grow old with him, it'll be worth it, even if he is a bit odd.  :)

Shell's Life

I apologize, I'm running on very little sleep again, so if this post sounds as if it has been written by a three yr old that's why, or at least that's the excuse I'm using!


My daughter has asthma, seasonal allergies and eczema.  Apparently they generally come in threes and she was blessed with them all.  Hopefully she'll out grow them and the eczema isn't too bad, although that may be because I lather her up with loads of cream as soon as she gets out of the bath everyday.  At least she's good about it, she now just grabs her towel, throws it on the bed and lays on top of it as if to say, "I know we're doing the whole grease monkey thing, so let's just get on with it."  Her allergies this week have been atrocious though and neither of us got much sleep at all last night.  She gets drainage (yeah, gross) when she lays down at night, which causes her to cough, which last night caused her to vomit.  Ah, the joys.  I ended up sleeping in her bed with her, which let me tell you, sharing the bed with a 5 yr old is like wrestling a live octopus.  Lord.


So, moving along with the rest of the life of Shell.  I know, you're all anxiously waiting on the edges of your seats to know what I've been up to for the last week.  Well, Nora began kindergarten in August.  I am now the "Room Mom" for her class.  Yeah, I don't know exactly what that means either, but her teacher sent me a note saying she put me down for it and if I could please go to the meeting, which I did and then ended up as the Volunteer Coordinator for the PTO, as well.  *shakes head*  Today at some point, I'm going in to the Associate Health Clinic of the hospital here and getting my TB skin test done, which I'm guessing takes an entire minute to do, turning in my immunization records and then I'll have a short orientation and should be good to go to begin volunteering there on Mondays and Wednesdays.