We are in the midst of a transition year. Having moved last July from one town to the next we are still adjusting to our new lives 9 months in. This of course is not unexpected as we knew it would take awhile for everything to start settling, but man, transition times are hard!
Everyone has their own list of hardships of course. I find that sometimes it can be helpful to read about others’ struggles to help feel less alone as well as to write out my feelings. With that in mind I’ve decided to share mine publicly, not to solicit sympathy but as way of recording and journaling my thoughts. Here are the biggest areas in which my family is currently feeling a transition in no particular order.
- Managing construction projects to fix up our house.
If you’ve ever gone through construction you know that it often takes longer than you thought and that unexpected issues come up, as has been the case in fixing up our new house. For instance replacing carpet with hardwood floors led to having to pause completing the flooring due to water damage on our floors under the windows due to water leakage that needed to be addressed immediately. This meant having to order and install new windows on two sides of our house. To put new windows in meant jackhammering out the stucco around our windows, putting the new windows in, re-stuccoing around the new windows, and then eventually painting the exterior of the house. Since flooring was top on our list of things to do, everything else was pushed back until the windows were properly installed. So currently all painting projects (interior and exterior) and other projects we wanted to do inside our house are on hold while the stucco guys (who are outside my house at this very moment) finish their job. What we hoped would be several months of construction has turned out to be a much longer process. Is this frustrating? You bet! But we know given time things will eventually get done and that we are lucky to have the funds to do any of this, but while in the midst of construction, being patient or grateful isn’t always easy. - Getting through a transition year of school.
We knew it would be a challenge for our son to transition to a new middle school in 8th grade, especially since my son had been homeschooled since 4th grade and he was now entering back into the public school system where academic demands were not flexible. Thankfully my son rose to the challenge and has done very well this year academically and he might even manage to complete his high school language requirements during this academic year. What we didn’t count on was that socially at this particular school, my son is suffering due to lack of diversity in his classroom. The school that we chose for his transition year was great for people that don’t thrive in the normal public school setting since it’s a hybrid school with both an online and in-person classroom component. What we did not count on was that the in-person kids in the middle school were mostly from rougher neighborhoods with gang activity so it was clear very early on in the school year that my son did not fit in with these kids and actually had a lot of anxiety being around them. So socially he has suffered this year as he has no classroom friends. We are counting down our time at this school and know that the high school that we moved here for will be a much better fit for him socially. 6 weeks left! - Adjusting to a new dog with a health issue we weren’t aware existed.
A deal we made with my son in moving homes during his middle school year was that we would adopt a dog once being in our new home for 6 months. So to honor our promise to our son, we adopted a 2 1/2 year old rescue dog on Feb. 11th of this year being unaware of a health issue that she had. Before adopting her there was a small wound that wasn’t healing near where she pees but the foster mom caring for her thought this wound was on the mend so the dog was released to us to adopt. One week after we had her we realized that this small wound was not healing. Flash forward 2 1/2 months and 3 surgical procedures later, we FINALLY have confirmation as to why the wound isn’t healing (a foxtail embedded in scar tissue near her vulva) and have a plan to remedy it later this week with what we hope will be the final surgery. For anyone familiar with foxtails, they know they are a little barbed plant that can get inside an animal and it will keep traveling forward until it either works its way out itself or wrecks havoc inside the animal. On the bright side of things our new dog is super sweet with a very nice temperament; the rescue organization we adopted from has covered the costs of many of our surgical expenses; and most importantly, once this foxtail is finally removed we have high hopes that our dog will recover fully, finally be de-coned after 3 solid months of coning her, and have a happy life going forth.