Super Stress!

Feeling a bit mundane for only my third post ever, but seriously a lot has happened/is happening over the last 24 hours, and I'm just feeling a need to save my sanity by making a list.

These are the things that have been giving me super stress:

Item #1: Last night (Sunday night), I opened my son's lunch box to make his lunch for daycare this morning. Inside, I found the bill, which I was expecting. I also found a complete and total shocking surprise--a note saying that last Friday was the last day that our lovely provider can do daycare, due to a serious medical condition. Uhhhh...yeah. Meaning I had nowhere to bring my children today. I want the world to know that I have the utmost respect for this woman; I truly am in pain thinking about (speculating about) whatever tragic news she received from her doctor. I feel for her family, and for the loss she must feel giving up all of her daycare children, whom I know she loves immensely. I feel helpless, as I would like to help in some way, but I don't even really know what is going on. I also completely, totally understand that she was unprepared on Friday for discussing whatever it is with each parent, as she was in the middle of trying to hold on and get through the day.

Still, I really, really wish that she had said something along the lines of, "Hey, you should check out Jabberwock's lunchbox as soon as you can. I put a note about something important in there."

That said, today I ran around like crazy, all by the grace of my wonderful boss who let me come in early, leave halfway through the day, and miss a very important meeting with some honchos from the state department of education about something that I totally forgot to prepare for because I was busy trying to figure out what the heck to do with my kids. (Unlike my soul mate's boss, who told him he must have this figured out by tomorrow, no exceptions.) In the end, all is well. I got a great recommendation for a new daycare, I called five minutes before the other two groups of parents that were scrambling like me, I met with Michelle today and really liked her, and she has openings for my boys starting tomorrow morning. I am going in early to hang out with the kids and help them transition, and then I am going to breathe a big sigh of relief and hope that Jabberwock will be able to recover from this strange and sudden disappearance from his life of a person who has partially raised him for the last three years.

Item #2: About twenty minutes after I found the note in J's lunchbox, I got a call from my mother. Currently her brother, my uncle, is lying in intensive care with some freakish disease that suddenly struck him down in the middle of a normal cold. His optic nerve swelled up, and he lost all sight to his left eye. Then his brain was swelling, and he suffered from an excruciating headache. They told him he had viral meningitis, then encephalitis. Steadily, he has gotten worse. Now they are discussing Lyme disease and other possibilities. He's on a Lyme-fighting antibiotic and a powerful anti-viral. He has lost the ability to walk, and at the last update was pretty much paralyzed (a palsy, I'm told) on his left side and his optic nerve is twice the normal size. They don't know what to do. He and his wife and daughter are all alone in Ohio, far from all family. Again, I wish I could help in some way.

Item #3: My midterm grades are due tomorrow and I am blogging about it instead of correcting papers.

Item #4: I have to create sets for our play that opens on Thursday. Currently, I have about 1/8 of the set completed.

Item #5: I have not had a chance to exercise today, nor does it look like I will get one, unless I do not sleep.

Item #6: I keep writing my blog instead of working.

Item #7: I am avoiding making my lunches for tomorrow.

Item #8: Instead of being able to make sets tomorrow, I must attend a benefits meeting, at which they will be telling me how my super good but awfully expensive health insurance package is being discontinued in favor of a less expensive and thoroughly useless health insurance package.

Ugh.