I found this draft post from a year ago and I'm beyond relieved that it's no longer relevant. I'll share it anyway because it's about something we all go through at times and it was certainly a mountain range on the landscape of my life for several years. Now it's just an occasional steep climb.
I'm racking up frequent driver miles ferrying children to appointments and have clocked up many hours in waiting rooms over the last six months. On the plus side, it feels like we are making progress for each child and I am well caught up on celebrity shenanigans. I am also getting smarter about calling ahead to check on waiting times and now have more three small, portable screens with which to distract bored children, not even counting my iPhone. I also have the regular help of my fab Mum but there are still times when an hour with increasingly uninteresting toys at the Dr's surgery cannot be avoided.
On the negative side, there's the driving, which I find exhausting because I'm not what you'd call a 'natural' driver. There's a lot of concentrating going on. There's also the lack of productivity: there's only so much paperwork one can do in a waiting room and disappearing outside to make phone calls doesn't always work. It's down time, for sure.
The randomness of the availability of the medical and allied health professionals we are seeing has convinced me I cannot, at this point, think seriously about having a job. I mean, if I'm offered an appointment next week on Thursday at 3pm and the next available is three weeks away, I'm going to take the offer and worry about how I'll get the kids from school later. I can't imagine trying to fit it all in if two or three days of the week were taken up with work.
A nice reminder of the flux of life. I am, happily, now in the throes of arranging some part time work for next year. Things which seem unending and overwhelming today will become, "Oh, yeah, I remember when that was a big deal...seems like such a long time ago now" by next November.
