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You guys! DS graduated high school this weekend! He’s our third oldest, but first to graduate from a brick and motor high school which happens to be the high school that both myself and my parents graduated from.

My mom graciously offered to allow us to have the party at her house which is beautiful! My college roommate drove with her family from MN and made all of the sub sandwiches. I made all of the desserts. DH created the fruit and veggie tray from my Pinterest board.

It was smallish and simple and really nice. DH was so happy. I have so many feelings and thoughts, but for now I’ll just say that he made it through with honors and is heading to college. I don’t know what college will bring, but I wasn’t sure we would get here so many years ago. I’m proud, glad, and relieved all at once.

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Book two of summer reading. Apparently reading is helping me avoid prepping my summer course that opens this week.

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First book of summer reading complete. I started and finished it in one day. It was intense and sad.

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The aftermath of Baby attempting to climb out his window in the middle of the night. He broke the screen. We have window alarms on but only the bottom half of the windows as he’s never attempted to get out the top before. I guess we’ll be alarming those too this weekend.

So sick of managing the stealing and the lying. He had swiped an entire container of Pringles and ate all of them and then hid the container behind some things on his bookshelf.

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DH and I went to an elementary school orientation last night. The presenter had a slide show that introduced the school staff members including the OT, PT, and SLP. At the end of a presentation, she took questions. One parent raised her hand and asked why there would ever be a need for a physical therapist in a school.

I am still in shock. I literally cannot imagine what it would be like to have that kind of ignorance. I am a tad bit jealous.

I have had one kid or another in this school district with an IEP for almost 22 consecutive years.

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Let’s see if it’s worth the hype!

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Lord have mercy. Yesterday, I took NB, Baby, and H to a birthday party for THREE hours in the afternoon. I stayed the entire time and supervised. It was lovely. All of it was outdoors so they ran around a ton. However, I was exhausted from Friday—emotionally and mentally. It was mostly people I did not know so I felt out of my element.

I came home and asked DH to take over who spent his afternoon solo. E’s eye was hurting so I put artificial tears in which doctor said was fine. Huge mistake. Burned like crazy. She cried. Flushed with water which we are not supposed to do but what else could we do? Then put an ice pack on. That seemed to help. DH called the on-call eye specialist and she said to not give the artificial tears again (no kidding), and to not put water in the eyes again, but we probably didn’t mess anything up too bad. She has a follow up appointment in two days so I guess we’ll know for sure then.

While that was happening, Baby dumped motor oil allllll over everything in the garage. Like all over H’s new bike, his mower, etc. H went ballistic! Bit Baby hard on the shoulder. Left a mark but didn’t break the skin.

Baby is then screaming. Outside. Like he’s losing a limb. It probably hurt bad but then he was screaming that he did not dump the motor oil which he for sure did, and later admitted.

The dog threw up.

Baby and NB got up at 5:20am. 😳

Oh, after Baby started screaming about how he didn’t do anything, he then got a massive bloody nose. He wouldn’t manage it so he walked all over and got blood all of the floor, wall, sink, toilet, and himself.

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What a long week! As parents, what do we get for surviving the month of May?

Monday my elementary school kids had an event, and then we had family therapy. Tuesday was an orchestra concert for H and E, and my mom returned from her winter in Florida (hooray). Wednesday was senior awards and scholarship night which ran 6-10. Soooo long. I left at 8pm with the four littles, but DS won TWO scholarships. I have a lot to say about it but will save it for another post after I have done more processing. Thursday was supposed to be the final track meet and a 4H meeting, but they were postponed until next week due to weather.

Friday E had eye surgery. It was such a long day! She didn’t have to be at the hospital until noon, but it’s an hour drive for us, so we left at 11am. She went to school in the morning for two classes because she felt like that would help her keep her mind off of things. DH and I dropped H at my mom’s, and then took E into the city.

They make everyone age 11 and older do a pregnancy test. The nurse had prepped me for that over the phone when she called with pre-op instructions earlier in the week. I get it, but it was certainly a reality check to hear them say it was standard procedure. E is still so much a little girl; it makes me sad to realize there are so many other kids that have already had to leave that piece of them behind.

DH also had esketamine so he took a Lyft to that once E was settled into her pre-op room. They took her back and everything went smoothly. They did eye surgery on both eyes to correct them from crossing. One eye was more severe than the other. She had some blood tinged “leaking” from her eyes yesterday which freaked me out, but is totally normal given the surgery. Poor baby.

DH took a Lyft back to us when he was done with esketamine around 4pm, which is when E started feeling more alert and awake. We were able to leave around 5, and got home at 6. It was a fairly easy night getting everyone to bed all things considered. To be surprise, E slept through the night which means I mostly did too. She’s only on OTC Tylenol and Advil, so it’s not a lot to manage. Her eyes are super red and a little scary looking, but that’s normal. Additionally, she has stitches in her eyes, and they itch. Also normal. We have eye ointment we have to put in twice a day and we got some eye wetting drops but haven’t used them yet. She can’t swim for two weeks, which is one of the reasons we wanted to get this done now—she needs to be able to enjoy her summer.

Planning a lot of downtime for her this weekend and then we have a follow up visit on Tuesday.

DH moved up to a higher dose of esketamine, and he thinks maybe it’s working. He just had his third dose of it yesterday. Hoping to have some more in-depth conversation about it with him today since yesterday was so nuts.

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I had to take E to the doctor for a pre-op appointment this week. She’s having out patient surgery next week on her eyes to help correct them from turning outwards.

At any rate, I hopped on the scale while we were there because I don’t have a scale at home. I’ve been working out since January, and stepped it up to six days a week since early March/late February.

I have not dropped a single pound. It appears I gained a few ounces. It is incredibly discouraging.

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Completed week one of esketamine. No change. 😭 Like, I had to wake DH up at 10am this morning and tell him to get up and he still didn’t get out of bed.

The nurse practitioner decided yesterday that they will increase his esketamine dose. He goes back Monday so the change will probably not go through until Thursday due to insurance lag time.

I am beyond despair at this point. I’m not sure what comes after that. DH basically said he didn’t want to face the day today which is why he couldn’t get out of bed. Meanwhile I’ve been up with kids doing all of the chores, herding them through their routines and getting them out the door to where they need to be since 7am.

I’m tired. And just completed defeated. I’m married to someone who cannot find the energy to face the day for his wife or his kids. It’s a 💩y feeling and difficult to want to keep trying.

Meanwhile, he is refusing to job hunt because he doesn’t want to do something he doesn’t like. If you ask him what he wants to do, he’ll tell you he doesn’t know. New worry unlocked—I will be financially supporting us through the actual duration of our working years AND our retirement.

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DH got insurance approval today to begin esketamine. He starts next week. The schedule is a bit grueling. I’m not sure how we are going to make it work, but we are giving it our best. Really praying it works because the next option is ECT, and that scares me.

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So much has happened that I don’t even know where to start.

DH resigned from his job last week. He had a meeting with HR the week before and they gave him the option to resign, or to receive a letter of non-renewal. If he would have taken the letter, he would have then had the option to go before the school board and plead his case that he should be welcomed back in the fall. That seemed tricky at best given his current circumstance. He hasn’t been at work since mid-January.

I had to write the letter of resignation (really AI did most of the work), and then he tweaked it and sent it off. It was true—depression has kicked his butt so badly that he just couldn’t keep up with the job. After the letter got sent, I helped him complete his paperwork to get into see a new psych. He initially tried to get into this facility months ago, and when he called, he was told they wouldn’t even add him to the waitlist. I called out kids’ psych, and he made some phone calls to get DH in. He does his intake appointment this week. I’m planning to go with him because it’s just so much work for DH to advocate for himself (I mean that with kindness, not sarcasm). I don’t know how people who are this depressed and living alone or without a partner or parent or significant other, ever made it. Truly.

In the interim, his psych started him on Auvelity. I read the information about it and it seemed hopeful, but so far hasn’t done anything for him. The out of pocket cost is $1200/month because insurance doesn’t want to cover it. Thankfully, his psych gave him a months worth and last week offered him another months supply.

I’ve been really done about all of this in the past week. It’s hard to live with someone who feels apathetic about everything all the time. I’m not exaggerating. He was let go from his job because he got an email in November about his licensing requirements, and didn’t have the energy to respond until January so his licensure is out of compliance. If I received an email like that, I wouldn’t be able to sleep until it was resolved. I’m guessing most people don’t want to be married to someone that feels apathetic about their partner. It’s just been such a long ongoing thing, and it is feeling hopeless. I’m 50 and am 15 years into this marriage. I want it to succeed. I’d also like my spouse to be able to muster up some emotion that sorta kinda resembles love at some point, you know?

Ms. 6 and DD are coming home for Easter. Crossing my fingers it’s not WWIII. Ms. 6 has only talked to me by phone twice since she was last here because she was mad that I wouldn’t give her her medical records. It’s wild to me that she thinks I’m hiding stuff from her. I called her two weekends ago and offered to help her obtain whatever she wanted/needed. She said she wasn’t mad about it anymore, but didn’t really want to talk about it.

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Saw my fav, Amy Grant, in concert last night. Second row seats were incredible. Loved the venue in Madison. My college roommate went with me. It was a great evening!

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Ended up in urgent care with Baby, certain that he had crushed his foot in a ladder. Turns out it is not broken; just a bad contusion. Life is never brining around here.

Spring cleaned our porch today. Cleaning up our double stroller to sell because after more than 12 years of taking a stroller everywhere, we no longer need it. End of an era.

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Wordle 1,384 1/6

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

I should be buying a lottery ticket or something, right?

Guess I need a new starter word tomorrow.

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We left Ft. Myers at 10am yesterday. It’s 3:20pm now and we are about 30 minutes from home. We did not get into KY until 3:30am. Traffic was probably the worst we’ve seen it ever for a return trip, and we’ve been doing this trip, on average, twice a year since 2015.

The trip itself was warm and sunny. Glad we saw my mom. Glad for the warmth.

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Second read of spring break.