Overwhelmed!

It’s 12:20am on Thursday.  I leave on Monday to visit my family for a week and to leave my son for THREE MONTHS!!!!  And I have a migraine, my house is a mess, and Wild Man does not have all the clothes he needs!  Yes, I am overwhelmed.

And, people, I am letting my son drive across the country without me for THREE MONTHS!!  (insert hyperventilating sounds  here!)  Am I crazy?  Wait, don’t answer that.

I have my notebook on my desk open to the page with Wild Man’s packing list on it, and every time I go by, I see that Wild Man has been adding to it.  Which is actually good, since I only started with the clothes he needed.  Wild Man actually is listing out things like which books and video games he is planning on taking.

I found some lovely skirts at Lands End – and one really cool thing about ordering from Lands End and living where we live is that I can order one day and have them here either the next day or the day after, but I digress – and I ordered a black and a brown skirt.  They are really nice, cotton, ankle length skirts.  No, I’m not super-modest or anything, but when you wear an ankle-length skirt, you can get away with not shaving your legs for an extra day or so.  Anyway, when I got them, I thought I could make do with the brown, although it was more yellow-orange than I like.  On Sunday night, though, I was back on Lands End website and I found that they now had the khaki skirt in my size, so I ordered the khaki and, for good measure, the navy and had PWM return the brown one to Sears (quite convenient, by the way) when he took Rosie Girl to piano on Tuesday.

While they were at Sears, Rosie Girl found a bathing suit for Wild Man, so I actually don’t have to go shopping for Wild Man before we leave.  In a pinch, I can either shop for him in Florida or give the grandparents money to buy him clothes.  The main thing that he needed was a bathing suit so that he can swim as soon as we get to my parent’s house!  Rosie Girl also found herself a lovely suit – and hopefully, her growing has slowed down so that she can get two years of wear out of this one.

I’m a little (OK, a lot) frustrated with my migraines right now.  Unfortunately, we’ve had something like two or three weather systems come through right in a row and they have just done awful things to my head.

On a positive note, I finished Wild Man’s socks.  I’ve started a raglan sweater that I hope looks good because I am making up the pattern myself.  I am also working on a pair of socks and an entrelac headband with some yarn leftover from Christmas projects.

Wild Man went to the Nutrition Site by himself today.  I had a migraine and Rosie Girl was at school because they had a late start.  The folk there really wanted to see him today since it’s his last day before he’ll be gone for a long time.  We took a map that they’ll put on the wall and mark his progress.

Rosie Girl is all excited about dance recital which is in about three weeks.  It’s a bummer that Wild Man will miss it, but we’ll get a DVD for him.  It also sounds like Rosie Girl has finally decided that she’s going to audition for Show Choir next year, but definitely NOT for Madrigals because she only has time for one extracurricular choir.  If she makes it, the summer practice week is the same week that my family is coming to town, so we’ll have to make some arrangements for her to get to some or most of the rehearsals while not missing much family stuff.  It’ll all work out fine despite the teen drama that has already occurred!

PWM has been excellent this week in helping to get things done.  He’s been helping me get laundry taken care of as well as trying to figure out what shopping is essential.  Wild Man is going to be gone for a long time, but Grandma wants him to pack light, so there’s really not much to do until this weekend.  It just feels like there’s more to do than there is.

A certain amount of the overwhelmed feeling is simply from knowing that our “little boy” is going be to away from us for so long.  Last year, he was at camp for a week.  The year before that, he was with my parents for 10 days.  We’ve tried to have families that we trust that our kids can stay with so that PWM and I can have a night or weekend to ourselves every once in a while (especially important when I was working).  But this is much bigger.  So, I’m trying to get used to it.

I never knew my father’s parents – they both had died before I was born.  My mom’s mother died when I was seven.  My mom’s dad stayed with us several times, and I knew him better, but he was rather old – in his 80s – and he died when I was 12.  (My mom was the youngest of 12 children.)  I never had the chance that my children have to get to know their grandparents.  In fact, my kids knew their great-grandmother who just died last year in her 90s.  This opportunity for Wild Man is something that I never had, and he will, I hope, cherish.  He and Grandma will be a lot closer after three months on the road.

I’m sure I’ll still freak out on occasion.  But Wild Man is going to have a blast.  And Rosie Girl and I will have some fun this summer, too.  I want to get my kitchen and dining room painted.  Hopefully, we can get some things to grow in our garden and planters.  It will be good all the way around!