Scrambled Thoughts

I'm having one of those days where there are just way too many thoughts swirling around my brain that I cannot even process them, let alone concentrate long enough to get anything done. I went for a walk earlier to try to burn off some nervous energy (and take advantage of the first truly warm day we've had). It did help calm me down, but I still can't focus. So now I'm here. Maybe if I write out a list of all the things occupying my mind it will help?

Today I am thinking about...

• My grandma. We learned in December that she has congestive heart failure secondary to 2 wonky valves in her heart. She's having a couple of procedures today to further evaluate the situation and narrow down her treatment options. The plan was for me to drive down and be there when this happened so I could help keep track of all the information and relay it to my mom (who is medical power of attorney). My mom's brothers are both there, but neither are particularly savvy about medical stuff, and neither communicate with my mom well about these things. Unfortunately, thanks to a series of poorly communicated messages, neither my mom nor I found out this was happening today in time for me to get down there. So now she and I are both in our respective homes, impatiently waiting for updates on the situation. It's so frustrating!
• Work stuff. I'm supposed to be starting a new position in my office, but it's taking the HR department F-O-R-E-V-E-R to get things moving. In the meantime, there are a lot of unanswered questions about what I will or won't continue to do, what I can or can't tell my co-workers about the status, and what will or won't happen with my old position. Basically I'm just in a permanent state of limbo, and have been for over a month now (my boss was originally pushing for the new position - and salary - to be effective March 1). A raise will be nice, but mostly I just need to know either A) keep doing my doing current job as usual for X number of weeks, or B) drop everything and start on new job projects.
• Renovations. I think I've mentioned on here that we are planning to start some major home renovations this summer. We've had the contractor do a walk-through and he is coming back tomorrow to give initial estimates and timelines. He was originally supposed to come today, but had to reschedule. I don't think we'll probably be able to do everything on our wishlist at once, but we need to see the breakdown and bottom line in order to figure out what we can afford for now. Also we'd really like for things to start in mid-June, so we need to get going on stuff like financing, packing up things to put into storage during construction, etc.
• Our cell phones. After 10+ years as customers of Sprint, we have finally made the switch to Verizon. And it was - and continues to be - an ugly process. The last straw (after months of problems and horrible customer service) came last week when a service tech in the store managed to erase 1000+ pictures from the memory card in my phone, including ALL of Nathan's first year of life that I'd taken with my phone. New cell phones stress me out (having to re-set options and figure everything out), and on top of that we're in a messy battle with Sprint to get part (if not all) our cancellation fees waived in light of their numerous failures to provide the services we paid for. We've been "disconnected" from their customer service department mid-call so many times I can't even count. It gets my blood pressure up just thinking about calling them again, and Paul's even worse. I have to send him to the garage to talk to them so he doesn't wake Nathan up from all the yelling. I just want to close the door on this fiasco and move on...
• Parenting a toddler. I feel so unprepared for this stage of his life. I spent so much time reading about and planning for a baby, but now he's a toddler and I'm realizing I should have kept reading! Did you know you're supposed to brush their teeth as soon as they have them?? I didn't. At least until I visited my dentist and they happened to mention this to me. And yes, I realize that in the grand scheme of things, he's probably going to be just fine in spite of my negligence concerning his oral health between the ages of 6-13 months :) Nevertheless, I can't help but wonder... what else am I missing? And then there's the things I know are coming sooner or later... Potty training! Preschool! Temper tantrums and terrible two's! For the most part I think I do fine focusing on how fun and exciting it is to see him turning into a little boy more and more. But when other things in life start to overwhelm me and raise the stress level, I start to freak out about this stuff too.
• Trying again. To have another baby, that is. This is a big one. For a while it seemed so far off in the future, it was easy to shake our heads and say "not now". But lately it's been coming up more often. Paul's insurance will probably change the end of 2014. Right now we have amazing coverage for IF stuff with his current plan, so do we try to take advantage of that and use it before it changes? Am I ready for that roller coaster again? We have frozen embryos still, so that's good. But it's not a guarantee obviously. And how does that even work with the numbers (how many do you thaw, how many do you transfer, how many times do you do it, etc).? I know we're not quite ready to do this again, but I also know we can't wait forever to give it a shot. So when is the right time? After all, that's partly why we're tackling the renovations this summer, so that they're done before we start adding more hypothetical children to the mix!

That's a lot of thinking. And those are just the big things. I'm not sure if I feel better yet, but at least now I can say that I let myself dwell on each one separately for a short time. I hope that means I can sleep tonight instead of tossing and turning for hours like I have been lately...