Hump Day Nuggets

I'm sitting by the fire, drinking wine after a great streak of days.  As usual, I just want to bottle up life just as it is, and simultaneously go back and forth in time.

Life seems to be finally settling.  Have I said that before?  The truth is this first year here has been wonderful, but rocky.  Ainsley still cries about missing her old friends and our house and neighbors, even asking if we can just go back and knock on the door and tell them we changed our mind, can we please have our home back?  My heart breaks because I'm a feeler too.  I know what she's feeling and I hate that I can't make it better.  All I can do is surround her with love and the goodness that's all around us here.  It's just going to take more time than we'd hoped.

We decided to go to the cabin last minute last week.  It's our first MEA in Minnesota after all! (four day weekend for my Oak Park peeps)  It was so incredibly wonderful.  I started a new knitting project after finishing Louise's sweater.  We kept ourselves busy and lazed just enough.  I planned well mostly in that I cooked everything here (chili and  meatballs and potatoes) and just had to heat things up and cook simple things there (TJ's pancake mix and pumpkin rolls are the best!)

'Now we are home and looking forward to Halloween.  We are having a cousin party at our house and trick or treating with new friends and that all feels really good.   This week I've had fun making costumes for the girls.  Felix needed a store bought Iron Man because I knew I couldn't do that justice on my own!

I've been loving the weather, cool and beautiful, a few dark rainy days here and there.  Perfect for fires and knitting and being out and about getting things done.  That's Felix up there giving me the thumbs up for his first bread machine bread of the season (accompanied by Smitten's Beef, Barley and Leek soup - so incredibly good and easy.  He's also a superb yarn winder.  When I ask him to help he runs to get the winder out of the cupboard in the dining room and after I get it set up he does the whole thing.  I love that little guy.  (the red yarn is for a new sweater for Ainsley, Louise wants one in off white because I suggested a neutral might be good, oh that girl!)

Now a complete digression...
I want to share something personal, about mental health.  I hadn't been to a "proper" doctor in years.  I'd seen only midwives since I got pregnant with Ainsley and since we're done with that phase of life it was time to find a doctor here.  I was scheduled for a full workup in September and was so sure they were going to find something catastrophic.  Cervical cancer, ovarian cancer, thyroid cancer, some kind of incurable horrible cancer.  But you know what?  I'm completely healthy.  Except, I still have debilitating anxiety and depression.  I'd been on medication from high school until right before I got pregnant with Ainsley.  Then off it since because it wasn't life threatening.

It's been over three years since Felix was born and I've struggled so much.  For some reason as a mom I thought more than ever that I should be able to overcome it on my own.  But I wasn't.  I was miserable most days, but the few good days I'd get every once in a while were enough to convince me that I was going to make it.  Well, I decided to come clean at my exam.  Thankfully they made me take a mental health questionnaire and well, I failed.  I've been on medication for over 4 weeks now and I feel like a new person.  I decided to write about this in case anyone else in in the same boat.  It was so hard for me to admit that I couldn't fix my problems on my own. But here I am, doing so much better.

Ah, so life is settling in.  I pinch myself every day.  I love it here so much.  I wish I could meld Oak Park and here together somehow.  This will be life I think.  Figuring out how to meld it all together, and being thankful for what's right in front of us, all the while.