Up to now, my husband has been handling all of this, plus his job, the cooking, the cleaning, the checking of homework and the monumental task of keeping the Science Fair projects on track. While I am grateful and he has done a fantastic job, I feel my life slipping away, the clutter creeping in, budgets swirling the drain, and dogs and cats suffering a sporadic feeding cycle. My husband is very good at crisis management, but no one can do the job of two people well for an extended period of time, not even me. I know this because every 3 months, I crack, and need some sort of girl's night out or physical activity that recharges my perspective. Eventually, something will have to give and I feel the seams of our life bulging as my husband's work projects are piling up. He is starting to drop behind and the stress is starting to show. He will have to return to being 100% focused on his job to keep his positive momentum going. With me out of work, we really can't afford a loss in his momentum as breadwinner of the family. However, the dropping off and picking up of our children from school is throwing two very big distractions into his day. There is the 8am curveball where he has to juggle a conference call while making two girls' lunches, two girls' ready and out the door, and driving 40 minutes to school and back. He has to cram most of his workday in between the hours of 9am and 3:00pm and then run to pick up kids and relay them to soccer practices, the library and the grocery store. His boss is very understanding, but in a down economy, record unemployment, and poor sales numbers, the landscape is ripe for my husband to be superseded by someone younger and willing to do the same job for less money. Therefore, my aspirant spouse is not overestimating the kindness of his employer nor conceding a reduction in his productivity.
The love of my life has announced that he must return to his rigorous travel schedule, which consists of him leaving on a Monday evening or Tuesday morning and not returning until late Thursday night. It starts tomorrow. I don't think I am ready. One issue with driving is positioning myself in the car. I can barely sit in a chair let alone having to navigate around a steering wheel. As it is with everything, I have to take extra time: extra time to move the seat around, and extra time to get comfortable. With pain, everything requires careful and meticulous movement, calculated ahead of time and one's abilities not overestimated. And in the event I overdo it while out in the world, I have to rest. Another important obstacle on the road to freedom is I am still taking narcotic pain medications. These medications take 6-8 hours to be fully metabolized. Driving on narcotics is a serious malfeasance especially for a registered nurse. I cannot, with any good conscience, allow myself to get behind the wheel of a vehicle knowing fully well that the effects of narcotics would not only endanger the lives of my children but my new hip implant as well. To assure that I drive safely, I have to stop taking them. This worries me because predictably, around 3 or 4 in the afternoon, which is the time I have to pick the kids up from school, my hip begins to ache and generally, continues until bedtime. I can't take anti-inflammatories because I am being anticoagulated with daily Lovenox injections and while Tylenol is an option, it is ineffective. I am irritated to have to bite the bullet two and a half weeks after hip replacement surgery. I feel like it is all moving too fast.
Necessity is the mother of invention though and sometimes, you just have to jump in with both feet. Today is Valentine's day and tomorrow, my husband leaves for Missouri and Oklahoma for the week. He has not arranged for transport of the kids ahead of time. As usual, my husband places unrealistic expectations on my abilities and the reason for this is because I traditionally meet them. I am really my own worst enemy. I own his lack of preparedness because it is my own fault for not recognizing and verbalizing my limits. I should just say no, and that I can't do it, but I have a hard time with making that admission. This little factoid about myself frequently gets me into trouble.
Pending tomorrow's change in care plan, I did not take my morning narcotic and by afternoon, I decided to take my first test-drive. My kids were adorably concerned.
"Shouldn't you take Papa with you?"
"That would leave you here by yourselves," and in the event I botch this driving thing, badly, it would also leave them to be orphans.
"We could all go with you."
(Another brilliant form of natural selection)
"That's not a risk I'm willing to take just yet."
I promised to drive just to the end of the driveway which is about 1000 feet. If I wasn't back by dinnertime, I agreed that they could send a search party.
My car is a 5-speed, stick shift. The clutch didn't worry me but the rapid change from brake to gas pedal was my biggest hurdle. What if a child ran out in front of me? What if a car I was following were to brake suddenly? Did I have the reflexes to respond? I was apprehensive after it took me five minutes just to get in the driver's seat. I played with the position of the seat until I found the least uncomfortable orientation. Once in position, and after a few gas-to-brake pedal practice runs, I started her up, backed out, and headed down the road.
It was incredibly liberating to be master of my own destiny once again. The driving, the shifting, the braking, none of it was problematic. I even fudged my distance and drove to the end of the street. I was free. I couldn't wait to take the kids to school the next day. Just to be sure I was safe, I practiced a few rapid brake tests. While my reaction time would not win any Olympic medals, it was still fairly good. It was at least as good as that of the little old man down the street who frequently tortured me with his driving when I got stuck behind him while in a hurry. I would just have to adjust to this change in reaction time by giving myself plenty of time to arrive at my destination. This meant breakfast would be earlier at the Diva house.
Upon my return from my test drive, I was met by my family who appeared relieved that I hadn't driven off of a cliff. My hip seemed fine as I extricated myself from my driver's seat and crutched into the house. I was emancipated from house-ridden, patient status. I was now ready to rejoin the ranks of society. Perhaps a little retail therapy was in order, in celebration of this post-surgical milestone. Since we wouldn't be hiring someone to drive the kids as originally anticipated, this would free up some available funding. Well, not really, but retail therapy sounded like fun anyway, and I was in need of recharging my own perspective.
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