Recalculating

I am no longer overwhelmed. Things are back to normal making my many issues manageable (see blog post below). I am finding myself recalculating. Adjusting things to better meet our needs. Tweaks really, but helpful tweaks.

https://homewithmommy-fran.blogspot.com/2018/12/overwhelmed.html

1. Zach's Plates

Some meals Zach eats at a small tv table in his room. Usually, breakfast and lunch. As I have mentioned before, I have seasonal plates. The ones for summer are melamine and better for him. But, they are only in the summer. So, I treated him to melamine dinner plates, salad plates, and bowls that are year-round appropriate. He loves them!

2. Wedding Part 2

We have been married for over 14 years. A lot of what we still had was from those first few years including our wedding shower. We needed to adjust things to better fit our lives. Some things needed to be replaced anyway. We added salad plates and bowls to the remaining seasons (winter already had everything). We replaced the seasonal comforters for our bed and some of the monthly sheets. We replaced stained placemats and the cups. We also moved where things in the kitchen are stored to better fit our needs (including sending to the garage what we never use).

3.  Comfort

One thing is for me. I have talked about my dress for the weather chart. I had to modify some notes for it. Sometimes it's hard to tell which range to use when you include things like clouds that are coming and going and wind that sometimes is more frequent then others. I accounted for that. I also adjusted our meal planning. Same meals, I just added notes. To get through the holidays I just moved which days I made certain meals. I added a note about the shift and included that shift for when games fall on nights when I plan meals that take a while to make. It took way to long for something so small!

These sound like a lot but amount to big improvements in quality of life. It doesn't take much for that sometimes. Meals feel special on seasonal plates. It's nice to be able to use one for the boring sandwich of special Friday morning bagel as well as dinner. Zach really enjoys having special plates just for him. He has 3 sets so a friend can join him too. He also likes not having to be as careful when he's in his room. The new linens are more comfortable and look better too. It was time for these changes and it was worth working on over the last two and a half months.

Being able to mange my OCD helps calm the anxiety again. I have had enough time to take things slow so my senses aren't overloaded constantly. That is three of my four issues at manageable levels. But, January does tend to be a depression filled month. This time for different reasons then overwhelmed senses and an overscheduled mom.

I have a few things I can do to try to prevent depression from hitting. A lot of what determines if it hits or not will be the weather. The more I can walk outside, the better. Because stores are a claustrophobic nightmare. and I am claustrophobic. Doing that too much gets the senses stressed out and the other issues rolling again. I have some things at home that help. But, I can't do them every day so hoping the weather stays nice!

Recalculating our life has been working. I hope it continues to work. I will continue to recalculation to fight possible depression. Sometimes, we need to recalculate to find balance and peace.