Getting Old

I've been a stay-at-home mom for the last 18 years, with a brief stint in the working world as a self-employed auditor. Working and homeschooling was too difficult for me to handle well when the children were young. Homeschooling has been a great experience for my children. They had far exceeded their public school counterparts academically. More importantly, my children have developed a unique sense of who they are without the influences of fitting in with everyone else. My children are also more mature. Yes, they goof around and act crazy, but they handle real life situations appropriately. They think about how their actions affect other people. The children are more influenced by what they know to be right and wrong, than they are by their peers' opinions.

On the flip side, my children are lonely in our new town. They miss the constant flow of friends in our home. All of the kids want to go to school next year to meet more people. Their point is valid. We are not making the connections in the community that I had hoped. The local homeschool group is not a good fit with my family. The structure and religious aspects of the group make it impossible for me to join the group.

At 46 years of age, I looking at having extra time on my hands. Working part-time would be great for the extra money, but I have been out of the workforce so long that finding employment will be difficult. Many of my previous skills and knowledge have become obsolite or my level of skill has declined.

I need to find a hobby or skill that I would find fulfilling or would earn money at some point. I love to sew and am good at it, but it's not a marketable skill.

Bifocals

I'm old. Well, old enough to need bifocals. Several years ago, I purchased my first pair of bifocal contact lenses. They were wonderful! No period of adjustment. No noticeable change from one lens to the other lens. Because my vision is so poor, I need to wear contacts all day long, which ends up around 18 hours/day. At the last eye doctor appointment, the doctor mentioned that I was beginning to get blood vessels around the retina. The cause was lack of oxygen to my eye surface. During my recent eye doctor visit, he noticed that there was further growth into the eye. So, I need to wear my lenses for shorter periods of time and switch to a more oxygen friendly brand of contacts.

Today, I picked up my first pair of bifocal glasses. It's been about 8 years since I owned glasses. The ultra-thin lenses ended up being about 1/4" thick....not very attractive. I'll be wearing them quite a bit around the house though. The bifocal lenses are taking me awhile to get used to adjusting between to two lenses. Reading lessons with Paige were interesting. She was 4 feet away from her book and reading easily. I was 12 inches from my book and needed to use my finger to keep my place. It should be a blessing once I get used to seeing through these new glasses. I won't need to grab the wall when walking to the bathroom in the middle of the night. My before-bed reading will not strain my eyes. It will no longer be necessary to fight with putting in contact lenses before I am fully awake.

Changes

It's a little sad, a little exciting, and definitely the closing of a life chapter. This afternoon, I took down my youngest child's toddler bed. My children tend to be much smaller sized than average. Most of them have been in toddler beds until they are 4-5 years of age. I have had a crib or toddler bed set up in the small bedroom for the last 21 years and 2 months.

We had planned on getting the two youngest girls bunk-beds for Christmas. Unfortunately, they kept moving the toddler bed around the bedroom and leaping from little bed to the large captain's bed, where our 5 year old sleeps. Today, they bent one of the metal clips that holds the bed base in place and I was afraid that they would eventually knock the bed onto themselves and get hurt. They will be sharing the 5 year old's bed until we purchase the bunk-beds in a few months. While we were placing pillows on the new shared bed, the 5 year old expressed a concern that she would be pestered during bedtime by her younger sister. Her younger sister pesters her now, so I don't see a big difference. We usually find both girls in the same bed at some point during the night.