Cowgar Family Adventures

Tuesday, March 3, 2009

A Mother's Instinct...or Being Paranoid?

Your gut instinct, a sixth sense…call it what you will, almost every woman feels she has this. I believe that after having Lexi, mine went into overdrive, and after Lilly, I just flat out became paranoid. I stress about everything, I’m always anxious and nervous about things, and I have irrational fears. Sure I was a little anxious or depressed about things before having kids, but I think a psychologist would look at me with dollar signs in his eyes you know? Examples…

I feel like I’m having a panic attack whenever we drive across a long bridge, or a road with water on both sides. I fear the car plunging into the water, and Luke and I trying to get the girls out of car seats in a sinking car that is filling up with frigid water. They can’t swim; they can’t hold their breath. I get teary-eyed imagining the look on their faces when they can’t breathe under water. We actually have a little tool in the car now to break a window, since the windows are power, and I’m sure they wouldn’t work when the car is sinking.

Just this past week, the girls’ cousins came down with pink eye. Luke and his brother had just started taking turns going to each others houses for a day of work each week. It’s been a week since the outbreak, and they are cleared up, but I didn’t sleep last night because I was too busy panicking and crying about Luke heading up there today and bringing it home and Lexi getting pink eye right before her birthday party. I had been pleading with Luke all week to just cancel this week, and finally after seeing me so upset this morning, he called it off.

I now have a fear that one of us or both of us will die now that we have small children. I’ve set up life insurance for both of us, and since we don’t have wills (yet), I have a financial binder (that needs updated) that expresses our wishes if we both go. I know exactly what I need to do if Luke dies, but I have the binder all laid out so he will know what to apply for, and where to pay the bills, if I die. I especially have this fear when he travels, whether it be to his brother’s, or flying to Atlanta for his job. Do I sound crazy yet?

We live in a crappy neighbourhood. We have drug dealers across the street that the cops have stood on our porch telling us if we see anything suspicious to give them a call. It gives them a reason to search the place for drugs and weapons. The last neighbour we had beside us was selling herself for her drug habit, and ended up getting evicted because she was in a mental hospital (and obviously wasn’t paying her rent). The upstairs neighbour on the other side (we are surrounded by low income duplexes) must have a revolving door for sexual offenders, because the nice neighbour across the street has received notifications of two different guys living up there with a sexual predator history, and he knows we have small kids to worry about. So now we each have a handgun, and have gone through the conceal and carry course. We have a shotgun handy, we have baseball bats in various locations, along with some large maglites and some small tactical flashlights. We’ve had a window broken in the sunroom a few Christmas’s ago, and we’ve had some psycho lady knock on our front door at 1AM, only to find out she’s at the wrong house, so she goes to the backdoor and tries again, only to realize she’s at the same house, then she goes next door, tries to break in with a credit card, pounds on the door, gets let in (we had called the cops), gets kicked out, calls the cops herself, and takes a leak in the middle of the street before they get here. I am fully prepared to shoot anybody that comes through my door after bedtime, no questions asked. This leads me to the point where I just want to take the credit hit, and walk away from the house, since it will never sell for what we owe on it in this market, and in this neighbourhood, but we still have a lot of credit card debt, we have no place to go, and we probably wouldn’t be approved for a construction loan on the property after abandoning a house.

Walking or riding a bike in the city also gives me the willies. I came from a small glob of houses outside of a small town, so this living in the city thing creeps me out. I have this fear that a car will come crashing up onto the sidewalk while we are walking with the girls. I don’t carry my gun on me (I need to figure out a holster thing since I’m left handed), but Luke normally has his. I told him I’m pretty sure if that happened and one of the girls was hit and I knew they were dead, I am 95% sure I would take his gun and shoot the person in the car. Luke and Chris both said I would probably get off, because I could plead temporary insanity.

I’ve actually thought about learning another weapon besides using a gun. With a gun, you have to be completely aware of you surrounding, especially your backstop. I don’t want to shoot someone only to realize that the girls’ bedroom was behind the bad guy, and one of the girls could have been hit. There are these really cool collapsible batons called kubatons, that I think would be handy to carry around in a purse or something, and then I always thought it would be cool to be like Indiana Jones, and after watching a sharp shooter special on The History Channel, I found out that you can actually buy DVD’s that show you whip techniques. How cool would that be to walk down the street with a bullwhip on your hip? I’d have to buy a fedora just to complete the look!


So yeah, don’t know if I’m the only mother that feels this way or not. I guess I may just sound crazy and over paranoid, but I’m doing the best I can with it, and I’m sure as the girls get more independent and understand more, I will loosen up a ton. For now though, I guess everyone will have to deal with me:)

1 comment:

  1. I'm constantly worrying what will happen to Miles if I die. I have a will and such in place, but who knows? You are not alone. Mommy-dom is tough shit.

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