Government Shutdown Contemplations

My post title may be a bit misleading as I am not really here to talk about anything overly political.  Rather I am here to share my thoughts on the ripple effect that politics and consequently the government shutdown has had around me and how easily this situation could really escalate into something much worse. 
I was very thankful to no longer be a government employee when all of this started happening and I know so many people that were to be and still are affected by the shut down.  I found myself incredibly thankful to be a NAF (non-appropriated funds) worker.
The day of the shutdown is when it seemed to have the most impact on me mentally.  I was scrolling down my facebook newsfeed and just reading through the fears and prayers and anger and frustration and a whole range of emotions felt by my friends each directly and indirectly affected by this issue in some way or another after the furlough letters went out. 
Of course it was being covered by the news networks but I remember thinking how petty the news was when so many people were about to go without pay for an undetermined amount of time and all the news seemed to care about was the fact the museums and national parks were going to be closed and how this could affect the weddings that were planned to take place at them (mainly national parks).  Although I am sure that if it were my wedding that I would have felt a little more slighted, but being that it was not I felt that this was such a travesty to parade around a couple who seemed more excited about being on tv than upset about the need to change their venue for their wedding.  Why were they not interviewing the national park workers, or museum workers, or countless other government employees that had no idea how long it would be before they brought home a paycheck to take care of their families. 
I started to have intense flashbacks to when I had been previously unemployed and the emotions that I felt at the time.  I remembered how scary it was and how powerless you felt when you would do everything in your power and it still didn't seem to be enough, how quickly bills would stack up and you would find yourself doing things like donating plasma just to pay for gas and food.  now I know that for the majority of the furloughed workers that things have not escalated to the point that they did with me, but how far off are they?  With the American economy in a slump for so many years it has left the majority of people in a water treading type of financial situation.  Some have excelled and others are constantly aflounder relying on paycheck to paycheck to stay afloat.  After many of these currently furloughed workers previously losing 20% of their pay for about 5 weeks in a row less than a month ago, I can only imagine the toll that this is taking on their mental state. 
It was sometime amidst this thought process that I heard that the commissary (the on base military grocery store) would be closing after that night for the duration of the furlough.  Already in need of a couple staple items I figured it would be best to try to head over and get what I could while it was open.  Although our commissary at the base here is not a very big one it was a mad dash for each item.  Lots of shelves were bare and there was mass chaos ensuing at every aisle as the stress and frustration had found it's way into the grocery store.  I grabbed one of the last packets of hamburger meat and proceeded on to other items that I required and kept looking around and many bare spots within the shelves.  All that I could think about was that it was reminiscent of a natural disaster and what if things escalated and we could not go out to off-base grocery stores, what if they looked the same and I would be utterly unprepared.  Would we still have electricity?  would I be able to make use of my freezer and fridge items?  How long would I really have before all of that food expired on me and I was left to rely on what was in my pantry?
Having grown up in Montana the concept of food storage was not a foreign thing to me.  There would be many times when the threat of being snowed in for a few days or more was a very real thing.  You never knew how long you would need to be prepared for and so we always had a stockpile of dried and canned goods.  Since moving to Texas I have had to start over from scratch and have moved every year in the last four years.  Also I have lived alone the majority of the time, with small stints of my sister coming and going.  Because of this, I have never fully gotten a very lengthy supply of any pantry items.  I honestly don't think that I could survive for more than a couple of weeks (and that's stretching it) if I had to.  I really feel like I need to be better prepared for anything. 
Times like this bring out the fear and consequently the frustration and anger in people.  These can be dangerous times.  I keep thinking that now would be the time that an active shooter scenario that we have seen at Fort Hood and the recent navy yard could easily be just about anyone that has been put into this trying situation. 
I pray for the safety and peace of mind for all of the brothers and sisters in arms and in our nation during this time of strife.  I also pray for the politicians to soften their hearts and their minds to come to the most benevolent decision for our country.  I pray that they can put our country first and personal agendas first.  Service before self is not happening here.  If we are not careful we will turn ourselves into a third world country.  We have to stand together as a nation, because without the strength of unity we are weak when divided and when divided we shall fall.  I wish that I could replace the anger and the fear and hatred in the hearts of our leaders and our citizens with love for something.  Whether it be this great nation we live in and die for or for the reason we all came here in the first place and the reasons we choose to remain when we have a vast amount of other countries to chose from, we remain here in what we call home.  Right now we need to take care of our home, tend our own lawns, come together as a people.  We need to spread the feeling of love, whether it be in a simple gesture of something more grandeur.  We need to worry about ourselves and fix what is wrong at home in our country.  Politics has become a bad marriage and we are the children that can be damaged for life if their is no reconciliation and this marriage is torn apart.  Where is the marriage counseling here?  Where is the love that all sides had in their hearts to make this nation great, keep it great and the pride to continue to grow in greatness?  We seem to have lost some of ourselves as a nation in the greed for whatever vices we hold.  We need to find the love, the pride, the unity that makes us what we are as Americans...

I could go on for quite some time, but I think that my point has been made, and I have gotten across the message that I wanted to send.  I send love and light to all of my fellow Americans no matter how weak or strong and I hope that we can all stand together and hold the hands of those next to us to help our Nation rise up to the greatness she can be.  We are all powerful as one.

Mission: Potty Training Status: Accomplished!

As a single mother of one child and alone in most of the things that I do, I find that everything is a HUMONGOUS learning experience for me.  I always feel like I am doing EVERYTHING the hard way.  I feel like no matter what I do, Liam (my son) likes to drive me to the edge with the big things.

For example when it came to sleeping through the night.  My son did NOT sleep through the night for 15 months.  I tried EVERY method that I could find in EVERY baby book that I could get my hands on using every tip I could find late and night to the glow of my laptop with Liam in my arms eyes wide open.  Towards the end I was literally falling asleep at the wheel driving to work.  I would be in the middle of working on something very intently typing and writing and creating and next thing I know I am nodding off.  Some of the guys at work thought that it was so hilarious that they would start to take bets on how long it would take for me to nod off.  It was getting bad, and I was starting to lose my mind.  My only saving grace was that Liam was luckily an extremely happy fairly silent baby.  He just liked to be awake and be held and not miss anything and would smile and gurgle up at me and it would help me keep my sanity.  I would talk with the lady at his home daycare and we decided that he must not need sleep to function and that he might be an alien because he wasn't even sleeping a lot during the day at daycare to explain the lack of sleep at home.
Towards the end around the 15 month mark, I had finally reached complete mental and physical and emotional exhaustion.  I don't even know how I was functioning anymore at all.  I remember just crying by myself all the time or starting to get so frustrated about the whole thing.  I called my mom (who lived 8+ hours away from me at the time).  I told her that I just really didn't think that I could take it anymore, and that I was not meant to be a mother, I wasn't sure how I was going to make it through this, and if I didn't sleep I wasn't sure how anything was going to happen.  She offered to meet me half way that week end and have Liam stay with her for about a week.  Even at that time I was saying " No way a week is way too long, just a day or two so that I can do nothing but sleep and I will be good."
So I think it was on that Wednesday or Thursday, Liam must have known, because he FINALLY slept through the night, and was a great sleeper.  People used to marvel and how easily he would go to bed and stay to bed for me, and I would just tell them that it was my reward for the 15 months of Hell that he put me through haha.  That is until Liam got the sides of the the crib and into his toddler bed...  he still doesn't sleep through the night because he has to get up and potty or get a hug or look at the stars or sing a song or have a kiss or get a drink......  Still working on that one.

Reading was one of many methods that we tried

Please forgive me for getting side-tracked there.  Back to the celebration at hand:  The potty training mission completion.   I started potty training Liam a few months back.  Once again, knowing ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about how to potty train a child let alone a boy I was freaking out inside and consulting every parent and book I could get my hands on.  I remember one of the first thoughts I had when I found out I was having a boy, was how in the world does a single mother potty train a boy with no male for him to see to stand up and pee?  Liam wasn't even born yet and I was asking anyone I knew with a son about methods that had worked for them....  let me just say that there was absolutely NO (yes NONE) one method that worked for Liam.  He always loved stickers, so naturally we started out with the sticker chart.  However, I had made different column for peeing, pooping or just sitting on the toilet to get him to feel happy about it.  (I did buy a really super awesome potty seat that he picked out that played songs and made noises, and NOT ONCE did he EVER go potty in it.  I did and still do however get a lot of use from the top of it that fits onto the toilet.)
Back to the sticker chart...  Liam likes things a certain way and it would turn into a fight over why he couldn't put a sticker in a separate column and so eventually I lost that battle and there were stickers all over the paper.  Needless to say he got bored with that idea, and going potty was no longer fun, he didn't want to go in there if you said the word "potty" he would run out kicking and screaming and saying "No."  So I tried food (using mostly leftover halloween candy, and then toys and then movies and back to stickers, etc.)  I tried to stick with methods used at school and had many "naked weekends" to help Liam to recognize when he had to go.  However he didn't really seem to care when and where he went.  so then I went to the underwear and he wouldn't care if he peed on himself.  I felt like he was NEVER going to be potty trained.  Although the last few weeks of straight underwear saved me on diapers, I am sure I spent about the same on water and laundry soap to clean up all of his messes.  I was last weekend once again reaching my breaking point.  We had been trying and trying and I was getting super frustrated.  Especially when I saw that Liam had move up to the officially potty trained list in his class and I would hear raves about how wonderful he did at school and how he would go on his own without any prompting.  I was starting to get a little bit angry at this point.  Angry at myself wondering what I was doing wrong and why did I suck so horribly at this, at Liam for KNOWING that he needed to go and refusing to do so, at potty training in general because it seemed to make my life Hell.
I re-engaged online avenues for methods, I would grill my friends on facebook if they even mentioned anything about potty training, and everyone was so chipper and bragged about how easy it was and about these 2 day methods and 3 day methods, and "just put them in underwear" or "let them run around naked" and it will just click for them in the "potty training weekend."  I read and re-read "Potty Training for Dummies."  (That book really talks down to you, such as FAILURE is because of YOU as the Parent)  That book was really making me feel bad, I personally wouldn't recommend it based on it's tone.  It had good information but as a first time parent, I need uplifting advice and encouragement.  I even almost paid $40 for this online program guaranteed to work in 2 days...  although once I read the steps she wanted to start from scratch and NEVER use Pull ups and have all these specific rules such as NOT having tried to potty train yet that I didn't fall into.
So last Thursday Liam had an especially HORRIBLE day of potty training at home.  It seemed like he was full of accidents and I would clean one up and he would be going potty somewhere else in his pants.  I knew he knew when he had to go because he would try to hide in another room.  And then he got poop ALL OVER my living room floor and was walking and it was EVERYWHERE.  I had had a REALLY Long week and was sick and needless to say.  I just lost it.  There was some screaming and some yelling and some crying and some thinking for the umpteenth time that I really had a puppy and not a son and that I wished I could put him outside and he would go on the grass....
Needless to say Liam and I hugged I apologized for yelling (I must say that really I just screamed in frustration and yelled You know you need to go why can't you go IN THE POTTY) and so we consoled one another and I felt like a horrible mother and I called my mom again and was ready to give up and told her how I wasn't meant to potty train a child and that I just couldn't do it, it wasn't possible.  I needed to find someone else to potty train my child because it just wasn't going to happen.
Of course my mother told me about how at some point we all reach a frustration level and he was still young and he would be potty trained before he was in Kindergarten.  I went to Liam's school and again asked his teacher for advice and she told me to do things I already was, and she gave me  a sheet of stickers she uses at school.  On Friday Liam went pee ALL by himself at home and it was momentous and then he had an accident and then the weekend was accident filled again.  Monday was like a light switch Liam was in going potty by himself but still having some trouble with making it to poop.  I started to think that maybe Liam was trained to be potty trained during the week but just not when he was home with me especially on the weekends.  He got better and better all week and had NO accidents at all with Pee, and finally got poop down as well.  It was glorious and wonderful.  And I think nothing really worked that great but he does get a cookie we baked and iced together that stay in a container on the window sill and a sticker if he does a good job.  So far that seems a fitting reward for him.  I have absolutely NO advice for anyone else, except that by the time you are about to pull your hair out and give up they will sense that it is time to stop Fing with you and get down to business.  Or maybe it will be a complete piece of cake.  Every child is different and try what you are comfortable with until you find something that works for you and your child/children.   I wish anyone else the best of luck no matter what kid they are on.  If anyone needs a hug, to vent or to cry it out a bit, I am here to listen and share with you :)  One day it will FINALLY happen and we can celebrate together!

At least he LOVES cleaning the toilet, still working on training him to splash less though haha