Panic Attack

** Caution: the following is a bitter, cranky, possibly boring rant that is merely typed out to help my clear my thoughts and possibly explain to others why I'm being such a jerk lately**

As I typed an email this morning, I had a panic attack that ended with me crying the entire 25-minute drive to church. Maybe it's the drizzly weather or the fact that I haven't had more than 5 hours of sleep each night for the past few weeks. Or maybe it's that I'm so completely overwhelmed by the upcoming months that the combination of the weather & lack of sleep is making me lose my friggin mind. Mike knew I'd been down lately & sent me to a day spa yesterday to get a pedicure & massage, then to dinner with a friend. And what was my reaction when I found out I wasn't going home after the spa? "Holy crap, my boobs are going to explode, just give me my kid so I can feed her!" Nice, huh? Here's what makes me want to dropkick every person, place, or thing I come in contact with:

• The weather sucks. It has been drizzly and cold. It's MAY, Mother Nature!! Get it straight!
• My hormones are out of control. At least I hope it's my hormones.
  
• My kid has decided to wake up 3 times a night and stay up for about an hour each time, screaming because she's tired and expects to be fed because Mike likes to feed her just to get her back to sleep. Not my style of parenting. She also likes to take short naps and whine incessantly between naps because she's exhausted, but thinks she's missing out on some ridiculously sensational party if she sleeps. She's not. Usually, I'm trying to sleep, too. I absolutely dread bedtime; her's and mine.
• Mike deploys again in mid-July. Keep that in mind. It's the basis of every other stressor in my life.
• My sitter, Kim, graduated and has left San Diego for good already, so I'm in desperate need of a new child care situation.
  
• My best friend, Kristen, is getting married on Aug. 1 (remember that date, too) up at Ragged Point. I have no idea what to do with Shannon because Mike will be underway, and I really don't want to leave her with anyone. As much as she drives me nuts right now, I don't think I can handle being away from her for 3 days. And even if I take her with me, the drive will be 6 hours (sans all the stops we'll have to make for her) to the central coast, or 5 hours to Bakersfield on Thurs, then 3 1/2 hours to Pagged Point on Friday for the rehearsal.
• The bridal shower and bachelorette party are tentatively planned for July 11th & 18th, respectively. Mike is supposed to be leaving on the 12th. Can't miss the shower, and yet don't want to miss our last day together for 3 months. Yippee. And then, what to do with Shannon during the weekend-long bachelorette party? And what about nursing/pumping? And, yet again, I can't handle leaving her overnight or longer.
  
• I'm hoping to get hired as a full-time teacher this year. Great. The school year starts early this year. July 27. Awesome. The week before Kristen's wedding. That means I'll have to at least take the first Friday of the year off, and more like Thurs AND Fri so we can drive up there. Yay. That's gonna look great to my principal, whoever that might be.
• If I do get hired, I'll have to set up my classroom, plan my first weeks' lessons, start BTSA classes, etc alone, as a speudo-single mom without Mikes immediate help & support. And unless I can get my dad to come down to help me out, I'll be doing it with a screaming, sleep-deprived child in tow. Or maybe sending her to daycare. That I'll have to pay for before I get my first paycheck.
  
• Back to daycare. I hate the thought of daycare for an infant. I actually hate the thought of someone else raising my child for me during the day, but I can get over that, as long as it is a low ratio of children to caregiver. My biggest worry is that S is so dependent on someone to help her get to sleep (despite all the effort I've put in to try to teach her to be an independent sleeper), that she won't get her naps throughout the day. But nannies are extremely expensive, and I'd probably end up just giving her (him?) my entire paycheck if I were to be hired full-time. Home daycare is my next preference, but that scares me, too. Lots of horror stories about those situations. And all those germs!
• And then there's the weaning her from nursing because I won't have time to pump during the workday and would probably just dry up anyways since my supply is so low as it is.
  

So, there, in a nutshell, are the main reasons I'm having panic attacks. Really, I could go on & on about why I'm freaking out, but I won;t bore you. "Too late," you say? "Too bad," I say! You shoul dhave stopped reading after the warning at the beginning.

Oh, and she has 2 teeth now. Two sharp little razor-like protrusions that could scrape the scales from a dragon.