Blogging for Books #4: Insanity
For this Blogging for Books, write about a time you were pushed to the brink of insanity (figuratively or literally), and how you lived to tell the tale.
Mother's Day, 2004. Don't get me wrong, I love being a mom. My children (and the father of my children) are the most important people to me in the entire world. But being a stay at home mom of 5 children 5 years apart in age can be trying on the best of days. On the worst of days, it's not a pretty picture of perfect mental health...
The day began with me seeing Greg off to the airport. A lovely Sunday at home with my children. Only we had no A/C and the weather had decided to try for record high temps. There was a gerbil loose in the kitchen that had evaded capture for 3 days. The garbage disposal didn't work and there was an endless "to do" list to make our house sellable. Bonus, my PMS hormones were beginning to erupt Mount St. Helen's style.
Did you remember it was Mother's Day? Well no one else did. I made meals for everyone. I cleaned up afterwards. Gifts? What gifts? Unless you consider "picking on your siblings, making messes in various areas of the house, whining about being inside, whining about being outside, and general mayhem" a good present for Mom. It was a very long day. As a vent, I wrote a sarcastic blog post on what a wonderful Mother's Day I was having. Bedtime could not come soon enough. I felt guilty for feeling that way on top of all my other cruddy emotions. It was Mother's Day for God's sake!
I tried calling Greg for a little adult support. Disconnected. Dialed again. He answered but had bad cell phone reception in the Montana mountains. "Why was I so crabby in my blog post?" Why?!?! I started my woeful litany of the dreadful events of the day. Disconnected. *&^@! I called again. He still had a spotty signal and "it wasn't a good time to talk, he was at a client's home." Disconnected.
The PMS monster took over. I started crying. For an hour. It was too much. The heat, the lackluster Mother's Day, 5 wild children, being alone, awful cell phone coverage, the escaped gerbil, the house in a state of home improvement hell. I did the unthinkable, what only those in the throes of true insanity could do.
I deleted my entire blog.
Gone. The whole thing. No back up archives on CD or in a Word file. All my ramblings, posts of cute things the kids did (or not so cute), pictures, comments, everything. 7 months of work carefully constructing my online home. Gone with a couple of clicks of a mouse button by a momentarily insane, overworked, hot, tired, crabby, PMS'ing me.
I called and left Greg a hysterical message telling him that I had deleted my blog. I'm sure the crazed tone of it made him wonder who this lunatic was and where was his wife? The moments afterwards were surreal. My blog was gone. My online existence had disappeared in one quick irrational minute. Could my real life vanish as easily? It was a sobering thought.
So I did what Greg does in times of crisis. I went to sleep. Later that night in a stronger cell phone signal area, Greg called and woke me up. He told me to email Blogger's support and see if they could restore the blog. He said several encouraging sentiments including that he enjoyed reading my blog. After a few hours of unconsciousness and hormone regulation, I felt semi-human enough to turn the computer on and give it a try.
And the rest, they say, is history. The next morning Blogger restored everything down to the misspelled words and run on sentences. While I've had other insane moments since and I'm guaranteed to have more, I've learned my lesson. Not the cheery "This too shall pass" or the cryptic "God never gives you more than you can handle." I've learned to survive bouts of deranged behavior by two simple actions:
Turn off the computer and take a nap!
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