Jumble

The past week or so has left me feeling off balance, like I'm floating above it all, or more like getting blown away by the wind, while I try to grab onto whatever solid thing I can, but getting ripped away each time.

Things at home are still touch and go some days. He's tired and cranky, so am I. I can't talk to him about all of the stuff that is happening at work, since he doesn't understand (or have enough patience to learn it so he can understand) what I do, and that some of the angst and conflict is based around legal ideology and theory in a small specialized field. It's not enough for him to just try to understand and see that I'm a bit shaky in the confidence area right now, that I just need some faith in me, since I'm having a hard time finding it myself right now.

I had a colleague make it very clear to me last week that he thinks that I'm a subpar attorney, and he called me out on it in front of the entire department. This was someone that I had trusted, someone that I had let me guard down to. The worst feeling is to be at the point of tears, being the only woman in the room, being pissed off at the person and pissed off at yourself because you can't make the tears disappear, and knowing that you have to suck it up for two more days. To say that the relationship is damaged would be accurate. He will never acknowledge that he was out of line for doing it, and will continue to believe that he was righteous. I'm still mad about it, and still shaken. I talked to another friend/mentor type, and he understood, since he knows us both, and was even my manager for a brief while. Some of the points made had merit-I'm not as strong as I should be in some areas, but I'm pretty certain that I'm not approaching malpractice. I haven't been submarined like this since high school-still don't like it too much.

There was a healthy, six year old boy that died last week from H1N1. Scares the living bejesus out of me. He looked a bit like Son. I'm trying not to feed into the panic, the worries, but I'm worried about my kids. Worried that someone will send a sick kid to daycare, that sick kid will end up being OK, but mine won't. The very possibility of that is unfathomable to me. I'm doing what I can-they are going to get both shots when they become available (BabyA had the nasal flu vaccination last week). Hands are being washed religiously. Vitamins and sleep are in pretty good supply. I don't normally succumb to this sort of stuff, but I'm more than a little bit scared.

The stupid thing is, I'm worried that the law of probabilities is going to catch up with me. Things have been going too well lately-the shoe has got to drop at some point. Despite my bitching here, things have been going pretty well. Up until last week, I was really having fun at work. I was being challenged, building a team that I think can be here for the long haul, learning. The kids have been so much fun lately-BabyA is speaking in complex sentences (albeit not always intelligible, but she's getting there), Son has had another leap in development. I got sucked into believing that this is the way things are supposed to be.

The first thing that dissuaded me of that fallacy was the ambush at work, what's next? Maybe it's self-fulfilling, but this has happened to me more than once, and I'm trying so hard not to be blindsided, to have the emotions knocked out of me, that I've got my guard up too high.

I should really go and try to be productive-my jug of Diet Pepsi is the only fortification that I have right now-charge!