Ch-ch-ch-changes

So, last week while I was having the time of my life on the water (which I will blog about more later!), my kids were away at their own week long camp. This meant that the husband was home alone. It was supposed to be his week to relax, play video games, get some peace and quiet, etc, etc.

It didn't turn out that way for him though. Last Monday, my husband lost his job. The company he worked for had to, sadly, close their doors.

My sweet husband didn't call and tell me Monday though. He wanted me to have the best week possible and thought telling me this would not sit well with me, and so waited to tell me on Friday - the last day of my trip.

{side note:  he was right. And I'm mostly glad he didn't tell me because frankly, being out of town, there wasn't much I could do to help him. That said, a very small part of me is angry he didn't call me right away LOL!}

I can tell you right now, I started crying when he told me. Not like sobbing, bawling crying, but tears coming out of my eyes crying. I am a stay-at-home mom. He is our income. And just as importantly, he is our insurance. On one hand, I knew no one was going to let our family drown under the weight of this, but still, it's not a place we ever wanted to be.

A few hours later though he called with some good news. He had some job offers and was going to accept one. You can imagine how relieved I was! Talk about roller coaster of a few hours. In about 2 hours I went from thinking husband was employed, then unemployed, then employed again. I had a sense of peace right away about this whole thing - we were going to be okay, no matter what happened and I was also thinking that we've been through worse.

I was enjoying this sense of peace. I do not do change well at all and was impressed with myself that my anxiety wasn't higher. And of course, I was feeling extremely grateful at how it all went. I mean, he was dealt a bad hand, but turned it around rather quickly.

I talked to him again that night and reminded him to enroll us in COBRA right away - we needed to have insurance and we knew the new company had a waiting period to enroll. And the floor dropped out from me again. With his company going out of business, COBRA is not an option. Somehow I managed to stay calm. I knew we'd manage and it would be okay. I was still carrying a sense of peace in me, and honestly, I thought (and still do) that in the long run, things would be better overall for us.

Tuesday I kind of had my freak-out day. Also, my hormones were going crazy - which didn't help (this is probably because the first thing I did was drop my daily medicine to every other day since I wasn't sure if I'd be able to refill it). I was a joy to be around on Tuesday, and by joy, I mean a complete nightmare.

Husband started his new job Tuesday. We bought a new-to-us car the day before.* I wasn't sure what was going on with insurance. Hormones raging. Too much change for me to handle. Sigh.

I'm feeling better today. Last night we applied for some gap insurance coverage. I have applied to a separate program for any cancer care I might need (since our gap insurance will not cover any of that - it is a very basic policy). At the end of the day, I'm reminding myself that it could be so much worse. We really are lucky. On the other hand, I also want to ask the universe to kind of give us a break for a bit! But, really, I'm so grateful my husband has a job already. But there is a lot of change going on around here. I'm trying to embrace it all as gracefully as I can.


*I know, I know, he loses a job and we get a car? His old car was 15 years old with a lot of miles on it. It is in the shop about once a month right now. His new job has a commute that is four times as long as the old job and we can not afford for his car to break down weekly. So we had to bite the bullet and get something newer with fewer miles. Which we did, and while I would call the car new-to-us, it certainly isn't new! And we don't have to worry about it breaking down, which is really important!