The Dog Days of Summer

This has been one pretty hetic summer for me. At work, my company runs a Summer Day Treatment in the summer. This is where we take 50 of our children (with emotional and behavioral issues) and run a type of summer camp in the mornings. We take the kids skating, swimming, do arts & crafts, and a whole mess of other activities. It can be a lot of fun, no doubt, but also seriously challenging.  And in the afternoon, I am still keeping up with my regular case load of clients! Oh and the never ending paperwork!

And to top it all off, somewhere around week three I somehow, I don't even know how, inflamed my sciatic nerve. Yes, I am, at 27 years old suffering from sciatica. I feel so old *shakes head*. It started out as dull ache, and then it started taking me 20 minutes to get up the courage, with the help of my husband, to get up from the couch. That was the point I finally went to the doctor. I took a few days off work, but not enough to fully recover, and I don't have that time to take off right now. So now here we are a month later, and I'm still in pain, and out of medication.   I just feel like I have to deal with it now and rest later. I can't go for runs, not even long walks! So I'm losing all the running stamina I've built up. That is uber frustrating.

But I think what is really nagging at me is that I have also felt a little sad this summer.  I feel like I'm in a rut. Adam and I had plans for this summer that just haven't unfolded as we hoped/believed they would. We had planned to buy a house this summer, but we don't quite have the funds yet, and I'm so tired of temporary apartment living. I'm ready to own our own space. And not having a home yet, means we can't have a dog yet, which is silly but I really want to be a dog owner again. We are also dealing with some personal disappointments that I don't want to share on the blog.

But I was talking about all this with my therapist. Yes, I'm a therapist with a therapist (don't be shocked most of us do have them). And she stressed the importance to me of not manufacturing my own unhappiness by being so obsessed with things that are going wrong. And she is so right. There are so many things to be happy about this summer.

I love the kids I work with. They make me laugh (like that one time I was asking the kiddos what they did over the weekend, and this 5 year old, who was completely serious said, "I went to da club!"), and they challenge me. Plus, some days I feel like I'm really helping them. And not to mention, I got to take them to the farm recently, and I got to milk my first ever cow (check that off the bucket list)!

I haven't been able to do anything thing major this summer, but I've been enjoying little pizza and yogurt dates with my husband (we are obsessed with mellow mushroom)! And when summer day treatment is over, Adam and I are skipping town for a little beach vacation of our own. 

So I'm making an effort to focus more on the positive.  What is 6 more months of apartment living, in the scheme of a lifetime? My kiddos love me, and love to bring me random flowers they find growing in the park. And I'm sure my sciatica won't last forever. And as far as our personal dissapointments go, I just have to believe that God has perfect timing.

So for now, I'm just repeating my new mantra, "Four more weeks till the beach!" Or, "Life's a Beach!" Or some other nonsense.