At the bginning of the month I wrote a post about the change of dymanics of a group.  Well it is now a whole month later since the group was changed and I have to say I am amazed at how just one person so greatly affected the group in such a negative manner. 

Now there are few and far between squabbles, no fighting, beating, name calling and general meanness.  It is also amazing that none of the group has expressed any loss for the person who left the group.  Not one person has said they miss the member of the group that left.  This is speaking to me on so many levels I really just can not express my feelings with words.  Seriously, behaviours that were once a problem are not even an issue.

Gobsmaked. Truely.

It was not that long ago I walked to school with out my parents to see me the whole way there. 

It was not a short distance. 

It was not that long ago that I would spend all day and most of the evening out playing in the neighbourhood, only going home for meals. 

The neighbourhood was not small. 

It was not that long ago school doors were left unlocked during all school hours. 

I did not live in a small town. 

It is not so today. 

Today I accompany children all the way to school, wait outside the locked doors for the signal bell to ring and the teachers to come and get the children.  Then I return at the end of the school day and accompany the children home, after they have been released from the locked doors of the school. 

Today I am constantly checking on children as they play in their limited area of our neighbourhood.

Today is a scary place to live and it scares me to know what could be lurking out there.

OH. MY. GOODNESS!  Last August after Paul and I separated, I started going to church again.  On one of my very first visits to the church I now attend regularly, I met a wonderful couple called Matt and Jenny.  They are just the kind of people you love to avoid they always seem to happy and together and with it.  They have been very generous to me and my children whenever we see them.  And as it happens, we sit in the same area of the congregation each week.

As can be my habit, there have been times during short converations with Matt and Jenny that I have offered to sell my children to them.  Yeah, not an unusual comment coming from any mother let alone me with my children.  Then today as part of the sermon Pastor Clive was speaking on, a video tape was shown of Matt and Jenny speaking about how they have not been able to get pregnant and the one pregnancy that did happen, ended too soon and rather horribly and their child was lost.  Oh please dear Lord open a gaping hole in the floor and let it swallow me whole!  Here I am joking about not wanting my children with a could that can’t have any who want to have children so badly and can’t understand why they have not been blessed with any!  I could not look at them after that!  I have seriously been a huge jerk to these wonderous people who have only ever been so kind to me and my children.  Honestly I ache for them.  And I can’t understand what they must be walking through with this heartbreaking desire to have a family and they are not able to conceive.

I know that we are all brought to and through our own life experiences, but still I have not knowingly spat in the face of someone who was so undeserving of it and then rubbed it in.  I can only imagine the heart ache Jenny must feel seeing me each week with my brood and wanting her own.  I do hope that they are able to find fullfillment in what ever path they choose to become parents.  I can speak from the other side of adoption, of being able to know the child I carried for all those months was loved and cared for and treated just as if she was the biological daughter of her parents.  I can atest to friends bearing witness of having adopted their children and how thankful they are not only to have children to claim as their own, but to be able to express thanks to the birth mother for all that she did for them to have a family.

My heart truely aches for Matt and Jenny and I have no idea if I could ever even express the words of remorse for what would seem so crass a joke.

Okay, for the past several years or longer I’m not sure, I have been researching getting a tubal ligation done.  You might also know of this as having your (if your the womanly type!) tubes tied, or as a friend in Ireland so gently put it getting sterilized. 

Anyhow, I decided that I no longer want to be on any type of birth control, there are too many links to all different types of cancer and as I get older, that increases the risks there too!  So I go see the Gynecologist and have my consultation we have our chat and the operation was booked.  It happened yesterday … ugh.

I have had this type of surgery before about, ohhhh sooo long ago I forgot exactly what was going to hurt and what wasn’t!  But at least now I have an excuse not to vacuum, or push the tire swing and to be half baked on prescription pain killers! 

maybe not so as the title suggests, but still there are times when I feel like I am trapped by my own actions.  I left my husband (or made him leave might be a better choice of words), for very VERY valid reasons, last summer.  The same week, I was laid off from my job, the one that I was trying so very hard to keep when I left my marriage.  Facing everything I was facing at that minute, losing my job was the least of my worries.  I had bigger issues and I did not get laid off because I took a last minute vacay that week.  I fully believe that my loss of work was already in progress while my private life was on another path in its own progress.

When I was laid off I knew that there was no way I would gain another job in the amount of time I needed to get a job and absolutely knew that I would not get the same rate of pay and flexibility that I was receiving.  I had to take stock.  And quickly.  I only had so much money and had to, among other things happening, figure out how I was going to provide for me and my children.  I was not able to talk to the man I had just left for other reasons and had no idea where he stood, other than the insults and threats hurled at me in a drunken rage on his part at times in the past.  That was all I had to go on.  So I looked at what my choices were and what was the one way to maximize my income.  I chose to become a babysitter. 

Oh. My. Golly golly goodness!  I went from being an executive assistant with bookkeeping to a babysitter.  Now that is not to say that I am not worthy of caring for children who are not my own and they do go home at the end of each day happy, healthy, and dead knackered if I can manage it.  But there are times when I get the general impression some people look at what I am doing as having taken a step back, not forward in my life.  But at the end of the day I am bringing home more income than I was with my Exec Asst job AND for the most part I have more flexibility than the last job did.

Flip side, I am with at least one of my children 24/7.  I am no longer (Insane Mother of Three) the competent secretarial person, who could put together power point presentations in her sleep, conquer multi line switch boards in seconds and still find time to bake a banana bread for the lunch room.  Well the lunch room is now my kitchen and my iPhone sometimes doesn’t stop ringing and I conquer school runs, at times up to 5 in a day!  Now I am (Insane Mother of Three) Mom and Dayhome Mom. 

I’m still growing in to this new job description.

It is amazing how the dynamics of a group can change by removing one person.  Seriously amazing.  And as a person in the now changed group, the amount of stress that is no longer there is equally as liberating.  Maybe that is why I feel the freedom to write more.  I am less stressed and therefore not feeling as exhausted as I was, which in turn limited my posting.

Routines are still intact albeit with some very minor changes, but they are still there and continued with as we go about our day.  I am just in awe of how much one person affected the rest of the group in a negative way.  Gobsmacked really when it comes down to it.  Seriously I know that we affect each others lives but I am beyond words with the realization of how one person had affected my life so drastically that I literally felt sapped of all energy or over flowing with such negative energy.  Amazed really.  The change in a matter of days without this person is so great and to know that I don’t have to deal with this person again has made that change even greater.  Everyday there is less and less negative stress ~ ahhhhhhhhh!

Spring is upon us.  Well the season is officially here even if the ground is still frozen and there are still threats of snow in the weather forecast.  But there is still warmth in the air during most days and we are moving forward.  I can say that I feel confident with life and the unknown future, but Spring has a way of doing that.

It’s almost like we can feel the courage of the plants and hibernating animals as they slowly come to life again and burst through the hardened, once frozen ground.  And now that we can feel it, we move forward in parallel with the natural elements, we are growing a new together.  Together we are facing a new unknown.  Well nature knows what is coming, it always does know instinctively when to grow, when to calm and prepare for the coldness of winter.

But Spring is a time for changing from the sleeping, slow moving, sedentary fact of life to movement, life moving changes and growing anew day in and day out.  We unfurl our tendrils as we push through the darkness of winter and reach toward a warming light and start once again anew.

Spring. I embrace you.