The Stumbling Stepmom

Know those times in life you where you feel like you have a handle on things, a fairly good routine going, and things on the home front feel decently settled for the moment and under control? Well, I don’t know about you, but whenever I feel that way, especially now as a stepmom of five boys, that’s when the shaking of my so-called solid ground starts to rumble. The rumbling turns into a stampede of elephants. Yes, elephants. Stomping you flat. You lay on your face trying to crawl to the back of the herd or anywhere to the side, to find a safe place out of stomping range where you can get back to regular life. Yep. That’s how my life has been since the last time I wrote a post.

Case and point: Wednesday night after a very busy long weekend out of town, my husband and I were getting ready for bed, really tired from the last couple of weeks, when my 16-year-old came into our bedroom holding his bleeding hand. He had been whittling earlier in the evening, gotten distracted, and the knife slipped and stabbed his hand in the fleshy part by his thumb. Thankfully, he missed any tendons, ligaments, or even really any muscle, though we didn’t know that till later. A late night ER visit, $1, 100, and three stitches later, we climbed into bed with only a few hours till my poor husband had to get up for work.

For those of you that have boys, I am sure you are used to these kinds of episodes and aren’t surprised when they happen. I have only been a boy mom for 19 months, and though I know to expect this kind of thing, it still surprises me when it happens. Like a couple weeks ago when my 13-year-old came home from school with quite the burn on his thumb from trying to hot glue some paper. He had a nasty blister and was teary, so I dropped what I was doing, put some aloe vera on it, and ran to the store to get some burn gel and popsicles. You can’t heal a burn without healing a heart with popsicles.

Or in a different vein, having my oldest come home with less than 24 hours warning for three weeks while he works for his company at their Utah location. Then a few days after he left having one of the boys’ cousins come to stay for a week. I actually really love having a full house so I didn’t mind at all having them come stay. I enjoy it, it just makes life busier and I find less time to do things that I love, like writing this blog.

I also picked up another job, this one more full time, if I want it to be, but thankfully one I can do online from home. But between applying for that job and getting it, working my other two part-time jobs, getting my two youngest through the last couple weeks of school, getting my 16-year-old’s wisdom teeth out, teaching my 20-year-old how to drive, planning long weekends around everyone’s schedules, and regular daily life, my stampede of elephants has been more like several stampedes. However, that being said, I promise to post more often and make this blog more of a priority rather than something I do only when I have free time, because who has any free time these days?