Yesterday was the twin’s 10th birthday. It’s a big deal! And since I got back from my retreat it’s just been one thing after another. So I wasn’t going to write a post this week.

 

 

But here I am.  Let me share my chaos with you.

When I was in Asheville in my little cabin all alone, I spent two days in silence and all five studying my bible, reading, meditating, praying, fasting and doing yoga. I came back to a short work week since the MLK holiday was Monday. Seems like a good setup, right? That’s what I thought.

As soon as I walked in the house things started to happen. I have this wonderful touch faucet in the kitchen that comes on and off when you tap it. I’d brought home all these nice veggies to make cauliflower crust pizza for dinner and I was going to start preparing the ingredients. I touched the faucet and – nothing. The little light came on and off, but no water. Come to find out, it had been acting up while I was away and today was the day it quit for good.

Before I left, the dishwasher stopped draining after we replaced the garbage disposal that died. We had to have the repairman come twice to get the dishwasher working again, which meant a week of doing all the dishes by hand. That wasn’t so bad – we got to teach the kids how to do dishes correctly and they did a pretty good job! After the second dishwasher fix (while I was out of town), a leak started under the kitchen sink and drained down into the finished basement, causing some water damage and prompting a flood recovery company visit and home owner’s insurance claim. When I heard about this while I was in Asheville, I started having a hot flash (no, I’m not perimenopausal yet). My imagination gave me the hot flash! But I quickly calmed down – my husband reassured me that the leaking was stopped and he was on top of it.

So when I told him about the faucet’s demise, he took that in stride and got under the sink immediately to try to fix it, When this was unsuccessful, he added this to the plumber visit that was due in two days. I made plans for us to go out to dinner and boiled some water for dishwashing.

 

Dinner, anyone?

 

Tuesday was a day of administration and meetings. I went to the office and worked on on April schedule, met with my website guru and my book editor, and had my shoulder tendonitis worked on at the chiropractor. It didn’t seem like it would be a heavy day, but it flew by and I was exhausted at the end. But when I got home, the water was running again, even though the touch feature couldn’t be repaired and a replacement was coming.

Wednesday was the hospital and when I got ready to leave my house at 6 am, I couldn’t find my hospital badge. Let me explain the impact here: No hospital badge means I can’t get around the hospital. Many places in the hospital are locked without the badge – the parking decks, the OR, the call rooms, the elevator to the call rooms, the doctor’s dining room, the stairwells. So this was a problem. Now, I don’t lose things, but with all the running around the day before, I thought maybe I left it on my desk at the office. I detoured by my office and no badge. I couldn’t go back home and search more because the traffic would get worse and I’d be late, which is an absolute no-can-do when your partner has been working 16 hours overnight and you’re their relief. So I got back on the road and called the house supervisor, who told me to get a temporary badge from security when I arrived, which I did.

When I took over at 8 am, labor and delivery was wide open. The 48 hours preceding my arrival had anywhere from 10-14 patients in labor at any given time, so there was a lot still happening when I got there. I hustled through the day, got out of there and into traffic and onto a coaching call at 5:30 pm. I finished up the call, ran through the shower, grabbed a piece of my keto pizza and ate in the car on the way to midweek service. I was so tired, I struggled to stay awake for service (and it was a good class!).

 

Thursday was back to the city for surgery. I did the surgery, ran by the Trader Joe’s grocery near the surgery center, drove back to the office and tried to finish the April schedule before our office meeting. After fasting all day and a lovely afternoon of patients, I ran home ready to make that cauliflower crust pizza and break my fast. I knew something was wrong as soon as I got out of the car. As I approached the door, a very loud and machine-like sound was happening on the other side of the garage door. I walked into a house full of blowers to dry the water damage. Standing in my kitchen sounded like I was in the midst of a wind tunnel. Did I mention I don’t like noise?

 

Just a couple of the blowers…

 

That was enough. After all this, I wanted to check myself into a hotel, go out to a nice quiet dinner, and not come home until the repairs were done. Normally, I would have read my husband the riot act for not warning me about the blower set up and I would have complained the whole time the blowers were in the house.  Instead, I went into the kitchen, turned on the oven (which still worked!), and calmly made the cauliflower crust pizza. Among the blowers.

 

My cauliflower pizza crust!

 

For sure, I was on edge by the time the kids and Perry got home an hour later – that wind tunnel noise was incredibly annoying. And, I slept on my closet floor that night and the next because it was more quiet than anywhere else in the house. But I got through it. What made the difference?

Friends.

I had three conversations this week that made the difference. On Monday, my friend and her husband met with Perry and I for lunch and we talked and laughed and cried for hours. Certainly this would have been good in any case, but it meant even more because of who this was. This friend has been battling breast cancer for months, going through chemo, surgery, and radiation and is still actively recovering from surgery and continuing her treatments. For her to take time to be with me, for them to make us a priority over all the other friends and family that they have, that was a gift that helped me remember what was truly valuable and not fly off the handle because of the details of a messy life.

I also had a long conversation with a friend of mine from high school. She and I spent tons of time in high school together and have recently reconnected. Now that we’re all grown up with jobs and husbands and children, it’s so funny how we can love and support each other even more than we did in those challenging teenage years! She and I spent time talking about some of the hard and dark thoughts we each had been battling and helped each other through them. Our time reconnected me to the importance of relationship. It helped me rise above the daily grind and noise.

The third gift came in the form of one of my best friends, who arrived from Austin, Texas on Thursday night. She’s part of the reason I didn’t pack up and move to a hotel – I knew she was coming that night! Kacey was my maid of honor, she’s the godmother to our children, and she has the ability to talk me off a ledge like only a true friend can do. I texted her and apologized for the disaster she was coming into, and in true Kacey fashion she immediately texted back: Not a problem, See you soon. I can’t really explain what she did, but she’s one of those people who just becomes an additional family member when they show up, but only in the good ways! We talked about it at dinner last night. We were telling the kids about how I met their Auntie Kacey (they just think she’s been around forever, because for them she has!), and she mentioned that she doesn’t think she asked if she could come to visit for this birthday. She just made the flight reservations and let me know when she’d be here. And that was fine with us. That’s how the friends who are the closest are – they are the family that you choose. They are how we get through. They are the ones we know love us because they want to, because they know enough about us to walk away and they don’t. These three women are the reason this week that I can feel peaceful and grateful, instead of frazzled and frustrated.

 

Me and my girl

 

And now on to the birthday party celebration!

 

Who are the friends that you lean on to hold you up when times are challenging? How did you find the family you choose? Please share your stories in the comments below!