A loooong weekend

I'm not feeling too great.  We went to my parents this weekend to help again with what has turned into a massive effort to get their house cleaned out and ready to go on the market so that they can move close to us.  We've been working on this for over a year at this point.  And I'm exhausted.  I don't feel like I can go into all of the details here, but I feel like a lot of responsibility is being placed on my shoulders.  A lot of things that could be handled elsewhere, are being put on my plate, and I'm starting to feel more then a little worn out, and honestly, a little resentful.  I need a break.  On top of all that, my parents house has gotten to be too much for them.  They can't keep up, and it shows.  The amount of dust that has taken up residence with them, is incredible.  And my allergies can attest to that.  I started feeling crappy a couple hours after we got there, and I'm still feeling it now.  Their house literally made me sick.  It's heartbreaking in a lot of ways.

It's also hard to want to take Bean there.  Every time we go there's so much work to be done, so one of us ends up trying to keep her entertained among the chaos while the other one works, works works.  My parents seem to have no idea how to help with her, so we can only get half as much done as we're capable of.  It's frustrating.   And I feel like if their house is making me sick, it could be doing the same to Bean.  I want her to have a relationship with her grandparents, but I also wanted to get her out of there as quickly as possible.  I still have that little part of me that is that little kid who just wants to sit in a corner and say "it's not fair!"  Family should be easy, trips to grandma and grandpa's should be fun, it shouldn't be like this.  Then I remember that I'm an adult, and that yes, life isn't fair, and that's just the way it is.  Everyone has their challenges, and right now this is part of mine.  So I'll figure it out, and try to keep Bean on the fringe of all of it the best I can.

The good part about this trip was that I finally carved out a little time for Bean to have fun.  When I was in high school, I worked at our local children's museum and I managed to find time for us to take Bean there before we came back home.  She's a little shy, so it took her awhile to warm up and get into it, since there were kids around she didn't know, but once she did, she had a lot of fun.  It was the perfect ending to a not so perfect trip, and I'm really glad that we managed to do it.  I felt guilty that I wasn't using that time to help my parents, but I did the best that I could, and that's all I can do.

So hopefully life will go back to normal for awhile.  Bean and I will hopefully both feel better soon, we don't have any trips planned for awhile, and hopefully we can finally get moving on weaning.  I feel like we've had setback after setback in that department, and I'm ready to really push ahead.