Curve Balls...

It has been forever since I have been on here and I am so terribly sorry. Life has yet again thrown curve balls in my direction and I have been handling them to the best of my ability, unfortunately that has meant that some things have slipped from my grasp, like being able to to write on here. I have missed this terribly and am hoping that after the next month things will slow down enough around here to give this blog some much needed attention. Until then, I'll just let you know about the most recent round of curve balls that were thrown my way.

I explained in my last blog post that I had recently changed jobs. I had started in a completely new area of a company than what I had previously experienced. I started in accounting with some amazing and funny women. The two women that I began working with are so much fun that it has made work fun to go to. It was less stressful for me and consisted of mostly paper pushing and data entry which kept me completely busy every day. Unfortunately for me, the stress free time did not last. I must say that I love learning and expanding my knowledge. I was approached by the general manager to help with an upcoming Aerospace audit that the company was having. I'm not sure how much you all know about manufacturing and Aerospace standards, but to go from mostly commercial work to Aerospace work is a very time consuming and extensive transition. When my general manager approached me, there was roughly a month prior to the audit. Now my previous job was with a company that held a majority of aerospace and defense customers, so I had some knowledge of aerospace standards and requirements. Unfortunately, the aerospace standard had recently been updated and we had to go through a complete and thorough audit this time around. While attempting to help the company with this transition and keeping up to date with all of my accounting duties, it was almost as if I was working two jobs. I brought quite a bit of work home with me daily to update the necessary paperwork for the audit and get up to speed with the changes in the current revision of the standard. They eventually hired someone in to handle the accounting aspects of my job while pulling me full time into production and updating quality standards to meet the Aerospace requirements. Roughly two weeks before the audit, I was informed that my new title would be production manager which is quite surprising to me, since this is mostly a male dominated area of many shops. The men I work for are extremely respectful and appreciate the knowledge that I do have but I feel almost like I have to truly prove my worth. The audit, and all the updates will take me into the middle of August before it is through and then I have to work on maintaining all of the changes we are currently making. It is going to be challenging and time consuming but as I said I love to learn new things. Unfortunately the new hire for the accounting department has not been entirely successful and so I am still helping out with aspects of that department as well. It has been difficult and stressful to say the least. But this is only the first curve ball...

The next curve ball, was heartbreaking...My husband's grandmother passed away a few weeks ago. She was definitely another grandmother to me and was an amazing great grandmother to our children. Hubby loved her like another mother since she helped raise him for several years and was extremely close to her. It has been heartbreaking for him to lose her. That women was strong and funny. She loved to laugh and whenever the whole family got together it was literally nights filled with laughter. I love her very much and miss her terribly. We have been trying to help with all the necessities like cleaning out her apartment and helping with the memorial (Hubby has made an incredible slide show that made me cry). It has been difficult since it was a sudden and unexpected loss that has happened following other unexpected losses We have had months of  sadness and aching hearts. Between our cat, my husband's grandfather on his dad's side, my uncle on my dad's side and now Hubby's grandma on his mom's side, it has been an extremely rough six months.

This leads to my next curve ball...Explaining death to my children has not been an easy task. Trying to help them understand this type of loss and helping them grieve is complicated and rough. Hoping to have the right words for them to understand such a vast topic while creating a way for them to work through it has been one of the toughest things I have done. I felt like I didn't have enough words, or the right words. It is hard to explain something when it is hard for me, the parent, to grasp. If you are curious how I explained this to my children, message me and I will gladly share with you what I shared with them. I don't want to go into detail here because we all have different beliefs and views which are your own. This has been one of those times where I'm not sure that I haven't failed in this parenting gig. I mean having to explain death to your children is always hard and I wonder if I should have tried to shield them from it more but how can I do that when they won't ever see their GG again? How to explain it? How much to explain? How to help them understand that the doctors couldn't do anything even though they are supposed to help people who are sick? How in depth should I go? How much of my beliefs do I share? How much do I want them to explore and discover on their own when they are older? It has been a series of never ending questions and then second guessing myself every time I explained anything. If any of you have had to explain, how did you do it?

So dealing with all of these curve balls, grieving, stress and questioning everything has left me worn out and run down. I am hoping once work slows down and we get past the memorial that I can get back to sharing more with all of you. Please feel free to share anything with me. What have you all been up? What curve balls have been thrown your way recently?

Until next time, I am just going to keep working through this journey...