Streamline

Welcome back!



What? You mean you've still been here? You mean, I'm the one who has been gone, the one who hasn't posted in over a month.



Oh.



Well, welcome back to me, then.



For those of you just joining the party, let me introduce myself:

I have always felt that you can tell a lot about a person by how they choose to describe themselves first. With that thought running through my mind, I can't decide how to start my description. I guess since the kids are at theater camp and I'm sitting on the couch next to my DH ("dear husband"), I'll start there.



I'm a wife. I've been married to my best friend for fourteen years. We met in high school when we both auditioned for and were cast as romantic opposites in Harvey. We were "just friends" for two years and dated for four, so we have been together for twenty years.



I'm a mom. I have three kids - seven-year-old twin boys (A and B) and a five-year-old girl (J). A loves anything electronic, Legos, and music. He also has Aspergers Syndrome, which is a form of Autism. B loves his daddy, creating crazy obstacle courses like on Wipeout, and Star Wars. He also probably has A.D.D. and we are working on getting him evaluated this summer. J loves coloring and arts and crafts as well as teaching "dog school" to all her stuffed animals and dolls. DH and I agree that she has P.P.M.S. (pre-pre-menstrual syndrome).



I'm a teacher. I currently am running a preschool summer camp at the Jewish preschool I teach at during the school year. I also teach Hebrew and Religious School at my synagogue. Before I had kids I was an elementary teacher. After I had kids I found lots of ways to bring in money while I stayed home with the kids. I provided full-time childcare for my now six-year-old nephew and for my now three-year-old niece. I ran a Moms' Morning Out from my house two days a week. I even had my own Kids' Birthday Party Business, providing theme-based entertainment/crafts/activities at different people's houses.



I'm also CEO and CFO of this household. I am sure I could come up with lots of other words to describe the various jobs I have with relationship to the house (chauffeur, laundress, cook, etc.) but I think Chief Executive Officer and Chief Financial Officer kind of sums it up.



My blog used to be named "My Life as a Stay-At-Home-Mom" but once the boys were in school I started teaching nearly full-time (J was at the same preschool) and that name just didn't seem right any more. I renamed it "Keeping My Head Above Water" because most days that's just about all I can do, keep treading water so I don't drown.



Before last year, my life felt really, really full teaching preschool, attempting to run our household, and taking care of all three of my children's individual needs. And then things got interesting. July 10th of last year we began DH's bizarre medical journey, which, unfortunately, still has no end in sight. In a nutshell, DH has been experiencing Left-Sided Hemiparesis that comes and goes with no obvious explanation. He has been hospitalized five or six times at four different local hospitals, been seen as an out-patient by two different neurologists, a rheumotologist, a neuropsychiatrist, a Lyme Disease specialist, an Infectious Disease specialist, a neuro-opthamologist, his general practioner, a gastrointerolgist, a psychiatrist who specializes in Conversion Disorder, two different physical therapists, an occupational therapist, a speech therapist, including two different doctors at Johns Hopkins. Each relapse lasts anywhere from as little as two days to as long as three months. Twice now the symptoms have affected both sides of his body. At its worst, he is unable to move independently and cannot be understood. At its best, he needs a cane and can lift his left arm about as high as his shoulder. And then sometimes, for no reason that we can determine, the symptoms vanish completely. We cannot predict when a relapse will hit, how long it will last, or how bad it will be. And even though he has undergone every test that every doctor can think of, we still do not have any idea what is causing his condition.

And that's my life right now.

I decided to name this post what I did because "streamline" is my new favorite word. A colleague recently told me she was working on streamlining some things at school for all of us and I instantly fell in love with the idea. My goal is to figure out how to streamline my life. I don't exactly know how, but I do know that I plan to blog about it, so YOU are invited to join me on this adventure. I would love to hear any ideas on ways that you have streamlined any area of your life; who knows - maybe I can apply it to mine!