Saturday, November 24, 2007

Winding Down

The Thanksgiving 2007 holiday is winding down. It started out on a rather tense note: My daughter was driving home from college in Baton Rouge, using an alternate route since Interstate 10 has been closed for over a week due to a natural gas well explosion. Holiday traffic on the designated detour was the hellish to begin with; but to complicate matters, the weather report predicted 60 mph winds and quarter sized hail! Then, about an hour and a half before she got home, she called to say her boyfriend's flight had been cancelled (he was on his way home to Wisconsin!), and that she might go BACK to Baton Rouge and get him.

I almost fainted.

She made it home safely. What would normally have been a three-hour trip took almost 5 hours.
And her boyfriend had to go back to the dorm, but was able to get a flight the next morning.

Speaking of which...this is a boyfriend I actually have MET and of whom I APPROVE! He didn't come from the internet or a singles' "matchmaking" website; he is a fellow student that my daughter has had a friendship with for a couple of years. Whew! I can't tell you what a roller-coaster her first couple of college years were...she almost made some tragic mistakes. I had to threaten to cut her off financially at one point, and insist that she move to a school closer to home if she couldn't get her act together. She pulled it off and now seems happy, independent, fiscally responsible (mostly) and committed to finishing her education.

And my husband is struggling right now, but not because of his academic load. His finances haven't worked out the way he had hoped, but maybe things will come together in the next couple of weeks. The financial stress is making the academics harder than it should be, but I guess dealing with stress is just going to be a way of life...

And I am still working at two jobs and living with my in-laws. Not much I can say about that. I'd love to have only one job and my own place, but it isn't in the cards right now. My husband's sister is still not trying real hard to get her son back (like by getting a job and establishing a stable home), but she at least has been seeing him occasionally and talking to him on the phone pretty often. I really can't figure her out. Her alcoholism/drug addiction appears to be under some control right now, why doesn't she go the next step?

So, as the holiday winds down, I still feel content and at peace. I am thankful for all that has actually gone right this year, or at least wasn't as bad as it could have been (i. e., the wreck that my daughter was involved in). I will try to go back to both my jobs on Monday rested and with a good attitude. How's that?

Ciao.

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