Weekly Wrap Up - Two REALLY Hard Weeks

I didn't do a wrap up on September 3, I was going to do it the following day, because Lindsey turned 16 on Saturday, September 4, and I planned to do the wrap up after her party.  We planned our standard family birthday dinner/party with the grandparents and aunts & uncles.  Lindsey helped me make all the food on that Friday, enough to feed the 14 people who were expected to attend.  We had our traditional cupcakes for breakfast, and we gave Lindsey her gifts from us while we had cupcakes.  This was the smartest move of the day.  She had wanted a cell phone, and I'd waffled back and forth on it, but decided to bite the bullet and get her one.  (In hindsight, I was SO glad about this decision.)

Lindsey and I went out that morning, picked up balloons and the cake and ice cream and came home for what was supposed to be a low key day waiting for everyone to show up around 4pm.

However, around 10am, the day started to fall apart.  Tom's mother fell and had to be taken to the hospital via rescue squad, so the grandparents weren't coming.  His sister called and had been exposed to covid, so they couldn't come.   The ER finally released the mother-in-law around 2:30pm, but she was hurt enough that she couldn't get into their truck, the sister couldn't go get her because of the covid exposure...so that left Tom to have to make the 40 minute drive out to the town where the hospital was to pick her up, take her home, which was another 30 minutes out, and then he had to back track and make the trek home.  He also missed the party.

My younger brother NEVER attends family events and this was no exception.  My older brother arrived around 3:30, and my best friend and her husband arrived shortly thereafter.  This meant we were then waiting for my biological mother to arrive.  She typically gets here pretty early, so we waited expecting her any minute.  At 4pm, we started calling and texting her, with no answer.  We decided to start eating and assumed she was on the way and just couldn't answer the phone while driving.  We finally texted the younger brother and had him run by her place to check.  At 5:30pm he called, and the worst case scenario had happened.  He found her on the floor, already gone.

My older brother and I were heading out the door, just at Tom was heading in the door.  We left him and my BFF to comfort the girls and attempt to salvage the absolute worst sweet 16 party ever.  (Believe it or not, the day did go further downhill for Lindsey, but I digress.)  They rest of the evening/late night was a blur.  The whole week was a stressful, numbing, blur of things to tend to, decisions to make and my quickly learning how to be in charge of things I never thought I'd have to be in charge of.  

On Friday, September 10, Olivia was fired from her equestrian center job.  In May they had announced mandatory vaccinations for all students and employee's and she filed religious exemption for the vaccine.  Then after 4 months, the college decided anyone with a religious or medical exemption would have to submit to the up the nose swab test THREE TIMES A WEEK.  Olivia again filed religious exemption because of the ethylene oxide that's used on the swabs (carcinogenic and causes fertility issues).   She was told that "your religious exemption only pertains to the vaccine, not the surveillance testing", and was fired.  

Saturday, September 11 was the memorial service.  The service was held in the little country church that she loved, it was packed with people.  I scheduled things that I knew she would have wanted, and there was even an altar call at the end in which 6 people prayed to receive Jesus.

This week has been one of checking off things from the things to do list.  Asking question after question until I finally got the answers I needed and then moving ahead.   Yesterday, Friday the 17, the last of her things were removed from her apartment and I cleaned it and turned in the keys.  Such a weird thing when 72 years of life are wiped away in two short weeks.

Lindsey has kept up with her school work the past two weeks, and then this week added her regular fall nanny schedule.  Monday, Wednesday & Thursday 8:30am-1pm with family #1 (just the 1 year old this year - everyone else is in school now), then Tuesdays and Fridays are 6:15am-4:30pm with family number 2.  The 2nd family has a newborn, two year old and five year old. 

Olivia has already picked up a couple of extra farm sitting, dog sitting and house sitting jobs.  So she's enjoying a break from the 7 days a week that she's been working since the end of April.  

That's about all I've got.  I'm exhausted in every way possible.  Next week will be better, I hope.