One Of Those Weeks

Sometimes I have these weeks that are just so insane that I can't even tell anyone everything because I really don't think they will believe me.  And I pride myself on maintaining balance despite having a lot on my plate.  I have pretty strict boundaries and guard my time with Rahul, but sometimes life just gets nutty.  So baseline, I've got single motherhood and my own business.  Add to that the new business that I'm trying to start and the fact that I have less than zero money.  All of that I can handle.


Problem #1. When you adopt internationally (and under some other conditions, too...) you are eligible for a large tax credit in the year the adoption is finalized.  I couldn't get Rahul's adoption finalized until a year after he had been here (due to crazy things like my lawyer filing in the wrong county and New York State losing my fingerprints) so I have had to wait a really long time to qualify for this tax credit.  I have tons of outstanding bills and I need seed money for my new business, so I have been LONGING for tax time so I can get this money.  Long story short, I found out last Thursday that I don't qualify for this money.  The way my tax preparer broke the news to me was by just kind of slipping it into conversation, as if I wouldn't notice. Uh, I did notice.  According to her calculations, not only was I not getting this huge chunk of money that I have spent 10 time over, I OWED money to the government!  Needless to say, I did not take her word for it, but I still haven't found the answer to the question of how I file for this credit and I'm now looking for a new tax preparer!

Problem #2. Mice. I have lived in my apartment for 2 years and have never seen one mouse or evidence of mice, until one just sauntered into my room a month ago. I don't do well with mice.  They creep me out to a very large degree.  I had the exterminator in my apartment the very next day but have literally been bombarded by mice for the past month.  They've gotten into my couch, every closet, my bathroom, mat kitchen, they're everywhere.  Every time I see one, or see where one has been, I become like a crazy person and get out the caulk gun and the steel wool and the plaster and seal up every crack and crevice I can find.  And just when I think I've seen the last of them and there can't possibly be any other way for them to get into my apartment, one goes running past me!  And its usually just as I'm putting Rahul to bed.  Luckily, he's not afraid of them, so he's been a big help to me.  But I realized last week that I think my son is going to be in therapy someday talking about how his mom was always crawling around on the floor with plaster all over her hands and vaccumming the living daylights out of every cushion and closet.  I try to make it fun--"It's like we're detectives!  Mice always leave us clues as to where they've been!"--but come on, there's nothing fun about watching mommy crying in a heap on the floor because the mice chewed through the bag of dog food. 

Problem #3. Dr. Hertz.  He's a psychiatrist and his name is Dr. Hertz--I guess I should have been warned.  My son needs medication for some severe mental health issues, and I need this doctor to moniter his health and prescribe the medication.  It is dangerous for him to be off this medicine, so its imperritive that I have good communication with the doctor.  But he never calls me back.  I will text and voice mail him 20 times for every 1 call back.  So I hear you, you're saying, Hey! Get another doctor, lady!  And I say to you that it is EXTREMELY hard to find a child psychiatrist who will call me back.  I have called probably 50 places and gotten exactly nowhere.  Anyway, Rahul has been having a rough time lately, emotionally, and he was about to go on vacation, so I needed to meet with Dr. Hertz and get a refill for his medication.  I know the drill, so I started texting and calling him a month ago.  Finally, he texted back saying he had an appointment for us at 6pm last Friday.  I took it and cancelled our other plans so we could be there.  Don't you know he stood us up.  And Rahul was supposed to go out of town the next morning for a week with no medicine.  So I texted him every five minutes, called him, called his collegues and ratted him out, and finally, as I'm driving Rahul to my parents' house, I get a 3 word text back from him "called in script".  No apology, no explanation.  Ugh.  I started the search for a new doctor this morning. Wish me luck.

Anyway, life goes on.   I am leaning on Jesus for my strength, and all is well.  I'm very focused on finding solutions for these problems.  I've put in calls and emails to tons of doctors and tax experts.

And I got a cat.

A (Wo)man Needs A Maid

OK. So I CHOSE to become a single mom, so don't always feel justified admitting how hard it is.  People, it. is. hard.  I'm pretty used to the pace by now (its been almost 2 years!), but one little thing can throw all my carefully constructed balance completely out of whack.  Last week I got sick and life fell apart.  I could not keep up with the demands of my business and my child and I just kept hanging in there thinking I'd feel better and everything would shake itself out.  But by Thursday afternoon I was done. I called my parents who live 7 hours away, and asked them to come help me for the weekend.  One great thing motherhood has done for me is that it has made me a little more comfortable asking for help.  (It has also, according to my mom, made me a lot more tolerant with loud chewing sounds.  She is constantly amazed when Rahul is chomping away at his food with his mouth open that I do not even notice.  I used to have a zero tolerance policy for loud chewing and would walk up to people and close their lips with my fingers or ask them to spit their gum out into my hand!!!)

So of course, my parents drove down to help me and I cannot explain how much weight lifted off my shoulders the moment they walked in the door.  My mom came carrying a pot full of ingredients to make chicken noodle soup and my dad chased Rahul around the yard while she cooked it up.  Over the weekend they managed to do all of my laundry, washed all of my dishes (I had several days' worth piled up), took my son to Target twice to buy birthday presents and took him to the actual birthday parties.  They also played several hours of hide and seek with Rahul (his current favorite game) and read him his bedtime stories (since my voice sounds like a cackling witch).  And they helped me do my grocery shopping and footed the bill!

They left this morning and I feel several hundred pounds lighter than I did a few days ago.  My head is clear in more ways than one and I can focus and concentrate on keeping my world spinning. 

Silence Is Golden

I just spent 2 days in Kennebunkport, Maine and had such a great time.  At this stage in my life, my idea of a perfect vacation involves a cozy room, a fireplace, a good book and silence.  This was my sixth visit to The Captain Lord Mansion  and it is one of my favorite places in the world.  I discovered this B&B about 15 years ago when I was looking for somewhere for my family to spend Christmas, since my parents' house was under construction and my sister Robyn and I both lived in small apartments.  Robyn was in law school in Portland, Maine, so I found a couple of places in Maine, sent my sister to check them out and The Captain Lord Mansion was at the top of my list. She (and my dad, if I remember right) visited it first and as soon as they walked in the door they were won over and made our reservation.

I can't afford to buy milk right now, much less take a vacation, so this trip was my Christmas gift from my parents.  And boy, did I need it.  Since adopting Rahul almost 2 years ago, while I've had the occasional break, I hadn't taken a vacation.  And I have to say, the thing I appreciated the most about the trip, was the SILENCE.  Its amazing how soothing the sound of silence is.  I literally parked myself in front of the fireplace in my room and read the whole time.  The breakfast cook told me about a man named Wilbur who visits there every Fall for 18 days.  He loves reading so much that he ships a big box of books to the CLM before he flies in.  She said he becomes a fixture in the wing backed chair in front of the fireplace in the mansion's common room and just quietly reads from morning to night.  Sounds like bliss to me.

One of the books I took with me to read was Persuasion by Jane Austen.  I read it years ago, but recently saw a great exhibit of Jane Austen's letters at the Morgan Library and it inspired me to re-read some of my favorites.  The first time I read it I was traveling on a Greyhound bus and the sun went down just as I got to the best part (the last two chapters are gripping and amazing!) and the light above my head went out.  Panicking, I looked around the bus for another seat and realized that they were all filled!  So I held the book up the window and every time we passed a street light I would read a few words.  I just couldn't bear to wait until I got home to see how it ended!  So as I re-read Persuasion yesterday and was getting to the end, I realized it was time to check out of my room.  I really didn't want to get into the car without having finished it.  So after I checked out and packed my car, I sat in the wing backed chair by the fireplace in the common room and dug in.  And just as I was nearing the end I heard the mansion staff whispering about me. Apparently I had earned a new nickname--Wilbur.

Money Changes Everything

Today there was a bake sale at my son's school during lunch and I wanted to send a few dollars with him to school so he could buy himself a treat.  Now, I am about as broke as a person can be, but I set aside $3 earlier in the week so he could participate in this activity.  Right now, $3 is a lot of money to me! So this morning as I was explaining to Rahul about the bake sale, he asked if he could bring more than $3.  I should have just said no, but I felt tired of constantly telling him I don't have money to buy things and I just wanted to be able to say yes. So I took another $5 out my wallet (that was already earmarked for something else) and gave it to him. I felt really good that I could give him something he asked for and he never spends all the money I give him for these things, so I figured I'd probably get it back.

So when I picked him up from school today, I asked if he bought anything at the bake sale.  And he said, "Yeah, and I gave Tony $4 because he wanted to buy something and he only had $2."  Now, I have no idea who Tony is--Rahul has never mentioned him before. But right then I wanted to call his mother and GET MY MONEY BACK! I was furious.  I didn't want to make a huge deal of it, because I know Rahul was just trying to be generous, but I wanted him to understand how to draw the line between being generous and giving away money we need for survival.  I thought of that scene in The Pursuit of Happyness where Will Smith's character is asked casually by his boss to lend him $5 to cover cab fare and when he looks in his wallet at the last $5 he has to live on he struggles to give that money away rather than risk his reputation and therefore his future at his company.  Sometimes its just really hard to give away money.  And $4 to one person is $4,000 to someone else.

I have tried to teach Rahul about money and its a really complicated subject for us.  Rahul spent his first 7 1/2 year in poverty and when I adopted him he was suddenly thrust into a life where he can have nearly anything he wants.  When he boarded the plane in Delhi to come home with me, he had no possessions with him except for a book I had given him and the clothes on his back, which had belonged to his orphanage.  How do you guide a child through the transition from nothing to everything? 

No Man is a Failure Who Has Friends

This is what Clarence the angel writes to George Bailey at the end of Its A Wonderful Life.  I can relate to that movie so much. George has such a clear vision for what he wants to accomplish in life.  And even though he has the talent to achieve success the way he envisions it, life just leads him in a different direction.  He feels like a failure, because he hasn't hit the marks he expected to, until he is shown what the world would be like without him.  Then he realizes that he has led a very powerful life and his relationships and his virtues are what make him rich.  

I cannot begin to express how similar my journey has been.  

Today I am working on my business plan for the salon I plan to open later this year.  My son is home from school because there is a snow day and he is playing Wii.  Right now he's very irritated that I am making him read the words on the game himself, because he is learning to read and he hates it.  I adopted him from India when he was 7 1/2 and he is my favorite person in the entire universe.  Although he is 9 now, he is still learning English.  Actually, he speaks it very well.  And very often.  Reading just hasn't clicked yet.  My dog, who is the craziest thing you ever saw, is cuddling on the couch, snoring softly as he naps.  He is my best friend. Yes, a dog.  I have lots of human friends, too.  People I admire and who constantly fascinate me.

I never planned on being a mom.  Or being single.  Or being a business owner.  But somehow, this is my life!  My wonderful, unexpected life.