What's next?

It all started yesterday...with the flu. At first I kinda thought I was lucky. I mean, I didn't feel good by any means, but it definately wasn't the worst case of the flu that I'd ever had. As long as I stayed laying down and didn't move much, I was ok, just a little nauseous and dizzy. Mercedes didn't feel well either, but hers was more of a cold like thing.

Then last night I couldn't sleep. Part of it was that Mercedes was up a few times, and I don't know why else, but I only got about an hour's sleep last night.

Today Mercedes woke up feeling like I did yesterday, and I did still feel a bit under the weather but I was better than yesterday. I had hoped to catch a nap, but Mercedes was demanding of my attention all morning, and as I wrote earlier, when I did finally go out, that's when she chose to go to sleep.

Then I got an email about my ex husband that meant Mercedes was going to be hurt & disappointed, which of course as her mother hurt me, cause I hate to see her hurting.

And that's when the crying started. Then I started realizing that this is probably just the beginning of many hurts and disappointments that she will suffer because of him and that made me even more sad (and mad). And combined with the lack of sleep and still getting over the flu, I was feeling pretty emotionally drained...oh but how little did I know...

Then a little while later as I was waiting in the drive thru at Dairy Queen, for some reason that I have not figured out, I suddenly got that punched in the stomach feeling realizing once again that my brother is really gone. I know it's been 2 months, but still there are times that it just catches me off guard and it's like I'm hearing it for the first time again. So now I'm sitting in my car, bawling, waiting in line at the drive thru at Dairy Queen...I guess I should at least be glad that I wasn't inside the restaurant. So when I come home and just after Mercedes and I finish our supper we hear a funny noise...it's kinda like a hissing sound. So we follow the sound and it leads us to....


our hot water tank, which is right next our furnace that did not work properly for the last 2 months and just started working right TWO days ago

and as we try to get close enough to investigate what is making this hissing noise we step onto this pile of SOAKING wet dirty laundy (and this is after we've already removed about 10 towels that were just dripping with dirty water).

It appeared that the pipe on my hot water tank had sprung a leak. And as I looked around my laundry room, with at least an 1" of dirty water all over, and I turned my head and looked at my dished from today that I hadn't even got to yet since I hadn't had the energy too, and I just took one more look, and literally sat down on the floor right where I was standing and started to bawl. It was more than I could take today.

Luckily for me, my mom & stepdad live next door and I made a quick phone call, and my step-dad came over and spent 20 minutes trying to figure out how to shut off the hot water. Unbeknownst to me, Mercedes called my mom and said "Grandma can you please come over, I'm worried about my mom, she's just sitting in the chair and she's crying but she's not making any noise or moving, just tears, and I'm not sure how to help her". So my mom came over and honestly for the first few minutes she was here I was literally incapable of speech. I just felt like it was all too much for one day. Hell, who am I kidding I think this is all too much at one time.

I think it's just plain wrong for me to lose my brother, leave my husband, try to be a good single parent, learn how to be a homeowner all on my own, deal with seasonal affective disorder, fighting depression, trying to help my 8 year old deal with the death of her uncle and the divorce of her parents. And a house that has choosen now of all times to suddenly have a bunch of problems.

Was there not a way we could have spread those out a bit? I mean really do I HAVE to go through this all at once? It's mentally and emotionaly exhausting and I just feel drained, and in some areas, I know the fun is just beginning.