In which I get my groove back.

I've been having a hard time with this place, and feeling especially homesick for our old stomping grounds. If we could take the mild weather we've been having out west, and our schedules that allow us some weekdays together and apply them back home to some long, relaxed zoo trips, I would be the happiest girl in the world.

I've slipped into a little bit of a funk. I don't really like leaving the house except to work, and I've had to talk myself more than once out of quitting my job and becoming a full-time hermit. I'm no stranger to depression and anxiety, and I've sort of learned to deal with it.

First I have to let myself feel my feelings to an extent. I need to ride the wave without letting it pull me too far under. I think having so much help from Travis and so many distractions with work and the kids has helped. Sometimes I just want them all to go away for a while and let me fall into my slump.

After a while, I fight back. And I really have to force it. It involves a combination of cutting out or cutting back on things that make me unhappy, doing more of the things that bring me joy, and pushing myself a little out of my comfort zone. At times, it's just a matter of reminding myself what I've already made it through, and that I'm still here. If those things didn't wipe me out, I can suck it up and work that night shift or tackle that mountain of laundry.

Step one has been making drastic changes to my work schedule. I originally took the job out of desperation. Travis had been laid off and his first employment prospect wasn't very promising, and I needed to do what I could to keep us afloat. When he was offered a much better job than the one he originally interviewed for, I wanted my job as a way to get out of the house and bring in a little extra fun money. It didn't take long to bump me up to a position with more hours and benefits, which I was grateful for, but soon I was being over-scheduled and felt like my life had become nothing but working and sleeping. With Travis and me working opposite days and us nannying for the neighbor kids during the week, it felt like our family was getting almost no time together. Travis and I were getting even less. His old job in Omaha had him working upwards of 70 hours a week at times, and he missed out on so much. When he started at the railroad, he moved out west a few months before the rest of us and missed even more. I think I got tired of holding it together on my own and allowed myself to fall apart a little when I got here, and let him take over. When the railroad laid him off, he took a job that only required three 12-hour shifts on the weekends and gave him to us for most of the week. It's been great, but I can't help but feel like this might be the only time we have to just enjoy being together before the railroad calls him back to the road and we're thrown back into turmoil and uncertainty. So I've been tempted to quit my job. But then I see that little breakdown on my pay stubs that shows me what I'm working for. Health, vision, and dental for the kids and myself. And I know we won't really enjoy our time together if we're broke. So I just cut back.

Step two will be finding a way to enjoy where we are. I miss home, I miss it so fucking much lately, it almost hurts. But I can't keep dwelling on something I can't change right now. We're getting a membership to the rec center so we can work out and take the kids swimming, and just generally have somewhere to go to get us out of the house from time to time. There's a small children's museum  we haven't checked out yet, and I want to get the kids in swim lessons. On Tuesday, I switched my early morning shift for an afternoon shift and I want to take Wilder to preschool and feel like I'm part of things again. Because it hasn't felt that way lately.

I still don't feel like I'm part of things with Ryland, and that's hard. We text, and we FaceTime. His teacher emails me to let me know how things are going. I try to communicate with his dad, and he's good about meeting up with me whenever there's a long weekend so Ry can be here. He was here for most of the holiday break, and I'm looking forward to having him here for spring break. But it still doesn't feel right. I don't feel like I'm his mother when I'm not the one getting him ready for school every day. And that's the number one reason I'm desperate to get back. One way or another, it will happen. I just have to try not to lose my mind in the meantime. For whatever reason, it feels like making it to summer is the answer. Summer, when school and other obstacles are out of the way, the lakes and parks open again, the sun shines between the magnificent summer storms. I'm ready for summer.

Cookie Time

I like making holiday cookies in theory. But really, almost nothing excites me less than a sugar cookie. And I haven't been brave enough to try gingerbread from scratch. And do you know, I have never once in my life bought molasses. I don't even know where one finds molasses. It's one of those ingredients that just plain intimidates me. I'm assuming it's in the baking aisle, but I've never looked. In case you're as much of a baking expert as me, gingerbread requires molasses.

And while we're on the subject of baking ingredients that stress me out, let's talk about brown sugar. Some beautiful genius came up with this handy little gem for keeping your brown sugar from drying out into one big cement brick.

Anyhow...I recently rediscovered my Pinterest account (after neglecting it for a while since I deleted the app from my phone to free up storage space), and decided to give one of my many pinned cookie recipes a try. I stumbled across this one, which excited me for two reasons. It's for chocolate sugar cookies (any cookie containing chocolate is the cookie for me), and they hold their shape/don't spread out during baking.

I always screw something up during the baking process. Always. For one thing, I didn't realize when I was taking inventory and making my shopping list that I was completely out of vanilla. A quick Google search assured me that maple syrup is, teaspoon for teaspoon, a fine replacement. It did not mention whether or not cheap, terrible-for-you butter-flavored syrup falls into that category...but, onward!

I also completely goofed up the first major step in the dough-making process. I was mixing the wet ingredients with my mixer and letting Ryland handle the dry in a separate bowl, but I missed the part of the recipe that excluded sugar from the dry ingredients. Whoops. I did not cream together my butter and sugar, I mixed the sugar with the flour and other dry ingredients, and I burned out my very old hand mixer trying to get all of my ingredients to combine. I ended up mixing by hand, and to be honest, I found this dough really difficult to work with. I didn't think there was any way these cookies were going to come together.

But they did. Rest assured, it will all be okay in the end.

Don't skimp on refrigeration. The recipe calls for the dough to sit in the refrigerator at different steps in the process, and it's all part of the bigger picture of a cookie that keeps its shape.

During the first hour of our dough chilling in the fridge, Wilder and Isla fell asleep. So Ryland and I had some time with just the two of us, cutting out our cookie shapes. It was SO easy to do with the refrigerated dough. I saved a little ball of cookie dough for the little kids to play with and roll out after their nap.

We decided as a group that the sprinkles we had on hand were not Christmas-y enough, so we decided decorating would wait until after dinner, so Travis could make a run to the store for us after work. I did whip up my own frosting,

I froze a couple of our cookies to leave out for Santa. Less than two weeks until the big night! I feel like I should be more overwhelmed by the fact that there's only one weekend left before Christmas, but I have just about all of my preparations done. I only need to do a little bit of Santa's shopping for him, and get the kids their presents they "need." We (sometimes loosely) try to stick with the "Want Need Wear Read" rule of gifting, and then they each get stocking stuffers and a couple of fun things from Santa.

I Was Waiting to Blog

I've been waiting for my life to look a certain way, for it to be more impressive. But the need to write things down that has been with me since I can remember, that need hasn't changed. Our life hasn't been easy or pretty this year, but it has been happening nonetheless. And I need to write it all down.