What a day to come back to this!

So, September happened. Then October was somewhere in there. November started the end of all sanity for me. December didn't exist. January was a blur. February consisted of recouping. And then there was March 2020......  Oh boy.

I am certain no one really needs me to explain March of 2020 (as I sit here on the 14th of the month about 2 hours after my state governor has decided to mandate school closings for 2 weeks), but I will need to explain all those other months.

October and November were supposed to be my final months of school! I was mere seconds from graduating with my Master's in Business Administration in Information Technology. After which I was going to study and sit for a PMI certification. 

My life for 18 months

yeah......

So in October, I began the previously dreaded group project with Capsim. I ended up with the greatest group. They were my angels in the midst of chaos. Liz, Gail, Mel, and I made the team Atomic Inc. At first, we way overthought the project, put off tasks due to fear, and just had major senioritis, but we muddled through all of that. Then came the pain.

In November I ended up with a tooth and gum infection that resulted in:

• 70+ hours in a dental chair 
• 4 root canals 
• constant pain
• a significant case of lockjaw
• a soft foods diet
• a necessary change in dental providers to fix a new bite problem. 

But in the end, I made it through all of that. The worst part, I couldn't eat Thanksgiving dinner. 

Atomic Inc. came through for me. They were awesome and we finished the project on time. Unfortunately, I still had a presentation and two little papers to write. I needed to get everything done by the middle of January or request an extension. 

Somehow in the recovery period, girlie's birthday, Christmas holidays, and school being out I didn't get that done in December. We had a wonderful Christmas though!

 

And now we get to the big one: January.
So January 8th a pain I had in my stomach got bad enough I was finally willing to acknowledge that there was something wrong and I made a little visit to the Emergency Department of our local hospital. The wonderful staff there successfully diagnosed me with a reality of Gallstones, Sludge, and a herniated belly button. (that last one is related to being a mummy)

Now I am well acquainted with Sludge and Gallstones thanks to the wonderful podcast

A podcast about the broken and biased American healthcare system.
Hosted by Caitlin Durante and featuring Samee Junio.

which I will fully review later. But I contacted Caitlin Durante and she responded <squeeeee>

My January went like this:

- ED visit - Doctor visit - try to do school work - run fevers of 102 + - not get school work done to my level of approval - Doctor visit - feel like I'm less of a mom because I'm sleeping too much - a sub position here and there - more fevers - lots of night sweats - getting subpar school work done and somehow passing - having to rewrite one part of a paper - doing my graduation presentation while running a fever of 103 - celebrating Little Man's 5th birthday - Graduating as my request for an extension is submitted - two days later surgery.

As I went into surgery my family started the domino effect of the flu that would keep us down for the month of February. So that sucked. Even the hubs stayed home one day from work (it was like the apocalypse) but it prepared us for what was coming.

Now we have made it to March. I am back on my feet, sort of. I need to lose some weight (per my doc and honestly just to feel better in my own skin). And I really need to get moving again. I miss running and hiking. I crave to have the energy to be active again. I haven't gone back to work yet but I am approved to now. 

And Covid19 rears its ugly head. 

As I said I get to stay home with my three angels (aka gremlins someone kept up too late and let play with water balloons and eat candy). This will be an experiment in patience and perseverance.
I am going to have to keep everyone updated on our creativity of how to not go insane.

Ghosts and Patronuses

Tonight we stayed up way too late.

Tomorrow we will be grumpy.

But it was worth it!

expecto patronum

Tonight the hubs and I kept the kids up late to have a fun surprise for them. We did sparklers and glow sticks outside with the camera.

I just want to say right now my camera and I are not all that well acquainted. We have a friendly relationship, so far, but we really need to work on our communication. 

You're a Wizard

Most of the time tonight:
"How do I convince you to do what I want?" I ask
My camera responds "I will do auto with flash."
"But I really don't want to do auto with flash at this moment" I respond.
"Subject is too dark"
"Subject is not too dark, this is what I want"
"Subject is too blurry!"
"That is the POINT!"


By this time the conversation has unraveled to the point where we are getting nowhere and we just cease communication in order to prevent a falling out.  We did have moments were things went alright and we were able to achieve our goal for the evening.

Unfortunately, this brings us to the sparklers.

When I was little I remember getting the greatest sparklers. They lit up right away, they shot of such pretty sparks, and most of all they lasted longer than 25 seconds.

The sparklers we had for tonight.  Not so much.   They refused to light. They had tiny sparks, and really they had a problem with premature extinguish-ation.  In the future, I will procure decent sparklers. Even if I have to border hop.  These were pitiful.  We didn't get any awesome sparkler shots but the glow sticks worked so well.

The kids had no idea what we were doing. They thought we were just taking pictures of them running around the yard.  Occasionally I would tell them where to run and to move their arms like crazy, but I didn't show them the results until I went inside and did a quick edit while they took showers. They loved the outcome with all the magic and ghost glory. 

I ended up with a bunch of fun images, even with the fight with the camera. And the kids had so much fun.  I know I may regret letting them be up so late when we have to be out of the house early in the morning, but I'll just have to look at these faces to remember why we do these things.

Expelliarmus

When you can't post, then don't post, then need to post but....

So there comes every summer this little thing I call the Blahs. I just get in a funk. A major funk actually. I was hoping this summer by planning and having ideas of things to do I would avoid it.

I was wrong.

So it all started at the end of May when we all got sick. There was a terrible stomach bug that started with the little man and just went the circuit. It was awful and exhausting. Even the hubs called out of work.  That just doesn't happen!

Luckily, when I was down I had help and the kids went to stay with their Mimi for the first night. Keeping my life a bit more calm.





Then we had the interesting event of our cat trying to die.  He tried really, really hard. He had a fully blocked bladder. Could easily have been a death sentence. We got him to a vet, thanks to the local low-cost animal service. He stayed there five days, then came home to refuse his meds, refuse the prescription food, and basically make Yoruichi's life miserable.  Pretty sure that they haven't stopped fighting for two months.  It doesn't help that both of them needed to lose weight. Ugh.



Finally, school! Oh, it is just not working out right now. I have to get up and go.  I have all the intentions in the world but nope nope nope.

I have about 4 days to write two papers. 

Do I want to do those papers? Of course not. So I'll be relying on KOA and Pom's and just that last-minute drive to get these papers in before Thursday. Praying that happens!



So all this complaining just to say I never remember to blog! I hate it. I even think while I'm doing something: "I should be taking pictures to blog about it" but then I don't.  Like the other day! I made 6 batches of hearty banana bread. It was quite an operation. I had everything sorted and weighted out. It was perfect. then did I do it?   What do you think?


The main point of all this is that there will be a few blog posts here and there to catch up on some of the crazies of the Beam's Happenings at the Gate House, projects ongoing. Maybe even a few tidbits about school. And definitely some reviews of random things, podcasts, movies, tv shows, books and whatnots here and there. I'm looking forward to doing all this again so please don't abandon all hope of hearing from us here at Beam's Creations. 

The History of a Failed Blog

A few years ago I pulled out a blog that I had started on my trip to Boston to visit my cousin in 2012. I never really did anything with this blog way back then, because let's be honest, who is going to do anything when you have postpartum depression and a very active toddler. So it sat there and in 2017 I had the idea to reboot it.

I sit here and laugh. By this point, I was home alone with 3 babies. The youngest, age 2, was exhibiting signs of autism, my little queen, age 3, could barely speak and had a reoccurring staph infection in her ears and throat, and my oldest, age 6, had such severe anxiety he was manifesting OCD tendencies.

The Baby Bears

On top of all this I was still suffering from severe anxiety, and if I'm honest, depression. I was not ready to be functional. Still, at that point I was taking on too much in order to ignore what I really needed to be working on, I just kept adding more and more stuff to distract myself.
Then the unthinkable happened. My sister Jetta died.

My family was devastated, a prepared-devastated, but our hearts were broken. She was our rock, our sunshine, our sounding board, touchstone, conscience, reality check, the smile you needed, the perfect mom, the best sister, and now our Angel.

After 5 years of living with stage 4 breast cancer, her body decided it was done.
We were not ready. Not one bit. Every day we miss her, want to call her, needed to know what she thinks, listen to her advice. Get the slap upside our heads when we needed it that only she was able to do in a loving and Christ-like way.  She was always honest, always, blunt, and always loving.

On my way home from her funeral, I visited one of my many quasi-brothers, Ira. I told him how I was treading life. How nothing was working and that I was miserable.  I had lost my identity in the whirlwind that was my children. How I did not have friends where I was living. How life had just drained me and how I was just a shell of who I wanted to be.

I was angry. I was hurt. I was lost. And most of all I was looking for a way out.

The last conversation I had with Jetta was about how my vacuum was broken. She knew nothing about the difficulties I was having with myself and the kids. I didn't want to "burden" her with it. I wanted her to enjoy her time with her kids. Only after I lost her did I realize that by keeping her out, I had taken from her a link to her family. A family she loved and missed.  We had moved away in 2015. I didn't see her for the last 3 years of her life.

Realizing this was a wake-up call. My honest conversation with Ira was a realization. Something had to change. I didn't want to live the rest of my life as a shell of a human being. I wanted to enjoy life with my children. I wanted to have a fun relationship with my husband, no matter how little time we had with each other. I wanted to form relationships with the people around me.

It was time.
So I put on my big girl boots. I enrolled in grad school at Ira's encouragement to finally do something toward my dream of becoming a college professor. I choose an IT Management MBA at Western Governors University.
I tried to get health insurance, which didn't work at first, but amazingly I was approved for Medicaid. I didn't look a gift horse in the mouth and immediately made a doctors appointment to get on some anti-anxiety medication. I found a therapist, who I now see weekly. I then changed my medication so I wasn't a sleeping blob all the time. And I kept going.

The journey that started in May of 2018 with the death of my beloved sister, became an active quest by September of 2018. Now, one year later at the end of May 2019, I am well on my way out of the deep pit of blah that my life had become.
I am starting to enjoy being around people again. In moderation.
I am spending active time with my children again.
My house is clean for the first time in years.
My cats are healthy.
I have monthly dates with the hubs.
I joke.
I play.
I plan, I follow through, most of the time.

So here I am rebooting Beam Creations yet again. I am not going to delete those few posts from years past. Instead, I'm leaving them to be able to show that while it may take a few false starts I can get going.

Hiking at Crowders Mountain

So we decided that we are going to try to go hiking more since it is one of my favorite things to do.

Crowders Mountain here we come.  

It was a great opportunity for the family to get their state park passports stamped.  These are so much fun, you should totally check them out.



We ended up hitting three different tail markers and went nearly 4 kilometers. So much fun.  We took the camera and got some great shots of goofy kiddos and fun buggies.

Millipede, Apheloria tigana maybe?

Luna Moth

 Just a few thoughts on Crowders Mountain. This is a great state park, but I would make sure to look at the website before you go to familiarize yourself with the trails and options that the park has. We ended up on three different trail markers the way we went, since we started at the visitor's center parking lot and not at the pond. The easy trails are better started at the pond parking, but the trail to them from the visitor center isn't that bad. You will cross roads. The easy trails are the Lake Trails and Fern Trail, we also were on Turnback Trail which is moderate.

There are lots of picnic places, but bring your own water. The water at the visitor center has to be tested and while we were there the testing had not cleared as potable water. They have this information on the website.
There are canoes to rent at $5 an hour, and backpack camping sites, too. It really is a great place.

Back to the world I love

So, about five years ago I was a new wife and a new mom with a grand idea. I was going to do something with my business acumen and love of crafts. I wanted to start blogging, writing my own patterns for crochet, sell my crochet items, and help other people sell theirs. I had this initial fire that I was going to start a blog, register my new business name on all of the sites, crochet in my off time, and make a go of this.  Then reality got to me. I was new at everything. I didn't really have any routines down, and I didn't make any concrete ones as I was floundering along. So what is the first thing to go? Oh yeah, that grand idea. Not that I wanted to let it go but, I had a baby, I was working part time, I had a husband (who just so happened worked about 70 hours a week), and I had no idea what I was really doing. 

Now fast forward five years. Add two new babies, and a few moves across the country and a handful of jobs that did not make my heart sing and here we are back to Beam Creations. I had laid the ground work for such a thing years ago, but couldn't make it go. Now, I know better. I know to ask questions, ask for help, and also take things slowly. I may not ever make this a business that pays all my bills, but I am going to take up Beam Creations and make it my own. 

What is Beam Creations?

Beam is easy, I entered the Beam family in April of 2011. We are the Baby Beams. 

We are a crazy out of control bunch.

Hubby, Scoshi, Bit, Firefly and Me.

 

As for Creations, well, that would be life. Creations can be anything from the crafts the kids or myself are trying to do, the crochet patterns I am developing, the photography I love, the food I am attempting to feed my family with, our hopeless gardening attempts, or our family adventures we thrive on. 

I look forward to sharing our family's adventures and creations as we figure all of this out.