Yeah… so if you can’t tell, I’m still working on that whole balance thing.

I’ve been running like a mad man. I remember when I first started out with this whole motherhood business, I would see other older moms wearing their crazy mom schedules like a badge of honor. The more they could juggle the better they were. And for some strange reason I couldn’t wait to join the crazy schedule mom club.

I remember looking at those moms and thinking, “How fun will that be? Driving my kids to different activities, having a career, a perfectly clean house, well thought out meals… Ah I’ll be perfect.”

I would look at these moms and be so excited for that time of my life when I no longer had spit up on my tattered t-shirt from my glory days as a high school soccer player, but instead had a polished organized look about me. And along with it I had an organized schedule, an organized career, and children who were unorganized but only in a comedic, commercialized pretend messy way. And instead of wanting to pull my hair out I would just do that commercial mom smirk and shake my head and smile lovingly at my children.

Can we stop there? Because that’s not my life…

Fast forward 13 years. I’m not her. I’m not that woman, I’m still wearing my tattered t-shirt and I’m drowning in maternal expectation.

And to add to the pressure I’ve got more than a hundred other kids, who I didn’t even give birth to, who are relying on me as their teacher.

More times than not this feels awesome, but this week. This week it is not awesome because I just scheduled a knee surgery that is going to take my feet out from under me for quite a while. And the pressure of all of the people who rely on me is getting to me.

Whoa… wait, what?

Lets back up to an incident that happened in late July that I never told you about…

One sunny day I squatted down next to Penelope to help her pull up her pants, or wipe off her face, or tie her shoes (I don’t remember which) and when I stood up I did something weird to my knee. I tried to walk it off but couldn’t walk.

This is when I first slowed down on blogging by the way. I was really bummed out by the fact that I had such a stupid knee injury and I was just waiting for it to go away so that I could carry on with my regular blogging schedule without whining like a big baby.

Two weeks later and I was still limping. Two months later and I was still feeling the pain. I haven’t been able to run since and even walking sometimes was even painful. I’m a Girls on the Run coach this year at my school and was extremely irritated at not being able to run with the girls.

The pain never went away but started to manifest in weird ways. It started to shoot down my leg and radiate out of my big toe. My knee cap felt like it was always on the verge of dislocating. (In high school I had a soccer injury when this happened a few times and after being told there was nothing they could do I finally had to quit.)  This constant feeling of anxiety was making me terribly irritable. My husband started to call me the lion with the thorn in his paw from Aesops’ fable.

At my first doctor’s appointment I was told that my knee was completely unstable and that the only thing holding it together were my leg muscles. (Thank you squats from yesteryear.) She thought I had torn ligaments either during my first injury in high school or this summer pulling up Penelope’s pants (I’m such a badass.)

But after an MRI, some x-rays and a visit with an orthopedic surgeon I discovered that it’s not that simple. My tibia bone is attached to my knee at a bad angle pulling my knee cap and all of that other good stuff with it. The only solution is to saw into my tibia bone, pull it over into the right position and then screw it back in. It can take up to a year to fully recover…

Do you know how many pity me cookies I’m going to be tempted to eat during that time???

I can’t bend my leg or put any weight on it for 6 weeks and I can’t go back to work for at least three. I would wait until summer to do this but we’ve met our deductible, so I need to get it done before the end of the year. Plus, I can’t go any longer thinking my knee cap is going to pop out at any minute.

I’m terrified, I live in a split level house, this means I have to go upstairs if I need to pee, down stairs if I want to eat and even further downstairs if I want to relax and watch tv. How will I be able to put on my pants by myself, get out of the shower, carry a cup of hot tea? I won’t be able to pick up Penelope or pace around my classroom to make sure the kids are actually paying attention to me. It’s my right leg so I can’t drive, and Brent is gone a third of the time and can’t afford to take 6 weeks off, even after 6 weeks I won’t be able to chase after a toddler by myself. Getting ready for work in the mornings for the rest of the school year is going to be ten times more irritating than it already is if I can’t quickly go up stairs to get things together…

Now do you see why I haven’t written? I’m a nutcase.

The good news is that I’ll be forced to take time to just sit and relax. The weather will be cool so I can just snuggle under the covers have a tea and pain killer hot toddy and just read. The probability of me getting bored is high so you’ll hear from me a lot I’m sure. In fact, there is a good change that I will be blogging under the influence, so it could get weird.

In the next weeks, I’m going to try to adjust my outlook on this whole thing. Instead of freaking out about it I’ll enjoy the time I have not being completely disabled and spend the rest of the time preparing for whats to come so that I can go through this the healthiest way possible.