OK, first, the truly good news: I won the Best Special Needs Blog Award from The Bump! Thanks to all of you for your support, thanks to the Academy, and kudos to the other nominated blogs, they're excellent (for•ev•er, Rhema's Hope and Slurping Life.) I win a $100 Pottery Barn Kids gift card, which I'll offer up as a giveaway, because without you where would I be? I am now up against the blogs in all categories for Best Overall Blog. Many seem to have bazillions of readers, so I'm guessing I won't win that but hey, I am not greedy. Want to vote, anyway? Here you go.
Now, the news that will turn out to be good, I am sure: I got laid off from work on Monday, along with a bunch of other great people. One word: recession. Today was my last day at the office. I love what I do (I'm a magazine editor), I adore the people I worked with, but I am feeling fine. Perfectly fine.
It's weird: After going through the trauma of Max's birth, I literally thought nothing could ever stress me out again. I was right, and I was wrong. I still stress about plenty of stuff, of course. I stress about Max's lack of speech, his cognition and his limited use of his hands. I stress about deadlines. I stress about our finances. I stress about my parents. I stress about [insert stress here]. Yet while I had anxiety about the prospect of a layoff, I have actually not been stressed by the reality. I can weather the big bad things, because I have weathered really big bad things: having a baby who had a stroke at birth, and having a kid diagnosed with cerebral palsy.
My pep team has been rallying:
* My mother wants to do a girls' trip to a casino (she is The World's Most Conservative Woman but once a month she takes a bus with a bunch of seniors and hits the nickle slots and the buffet, I am not sure my heart can handle that kind of excitement).
* My sister wants me to come hang with her and baby Margo.
* My friends want to take me out for drinks.
* Dave wants to break open some Dom Perignon champagne we got for our wedding. Please don't worry, I have no plans of becoming an alcoholic, although if I take The Granny Express to the casino I may have to bring a flask of something along for the ride. Actually, I just checked, we could get $159 for that bottle of champagne on ebay—wow! Good to know in case we can't swing the mortgage.
Tomorrow morning, I will be putting Max on the school bus, and then I will drive Sabrina to preschool. That's my idea of a wonderful new beginning.
xo
