Beyond overwhelmed

I'm trying to deal with so much right now, that I've gone beyond the state of "overwhelmed" to a state of not feeling anything anymore.

All last week me and AC were out of town, having gone back to our old place to finally move our stuff out of there and truck it 600kms across BC to Vancouver to a storage facility. My mom was staying at my brother's place.

Most people get several weeks to slowly sort through their stuff and get rid of things before packing up, but we had to do it all in 5 days. It's especially hard at our old place, because it's so remote and the nearest dump (in the next town) is only open 2 days a week. There is no garbage pickup service. Each trip to get rid of garbage or donations to the thrift store took up about 3 hours of travel time, taking away at the time we needed to pack.

And of course, every time you move, you never realize that you have way more stuff than you thought you did, and everything would take longer than you planned.

On top of the stress of moving, AC found out the day before we left that he'll have a job starting on our first Monday back in town. That was great news, except that it meant that I had to arrange for all-day care for my mom while we were out of town and dealing with moving.

To complicate matters, the phone was no longer hooked up at our old place, and there is no cell phone coverage in the area. I had to spend a couple of hours each morning talking to our Case Manager, the Home Support Manager, a scheduler, and various private agencies from a neighbor's phone. This further ate into the time we needed for packing, which was a big concern.

Our Case Manager was initially very helpful, and it seemed as though she would be able to help me take care of all the details. But she only works Mon-Wed, and on Wednesday I got a voicemail from her that gave me a very vague update about what was going on. After calling the Home Support Manager, I found out no progress had really been made and I would have to arrange everything myself after all. As well, public Home Support Services was not going to allow us as many hours of coverage as they had previously said they would. I'd have to fill the gaps with private care and arrange it at the last minute without regular access to a phone while packing. It was all such a mess. I didn't sleep at all that night worrying about it, and having no clue how to resolve it.

On Thursday I found an agency that sounded wonderful. They were able to help me out on short notice. They were going to send me all the details and some resumes of potential caregivers ASAP by e-mail. I was on the road driving back to the Coast all Friday, so I wasn't able to make any more progress, other than check messages and try to return calls during the brief moments that we were within cell phone range. But it seemed like things were coming together.

However, here it is Sunday, and I have less public Home Support than anticipated, and the private agency still hasn't sent me anything. I spoke with the owner yesterday, and she said she's working on it. I am worried! We need someone tomorrow! I'm skeptical that it will all come together.

I'm really ticked off that both the public and private agencies assured me they could help me out earlier in the week, and they both let me down by the end of the week. What am I supposed to do now? Will I have to miss work tomorrow? I have already taken off a week of work without pay just to deal with moving, and I can't afford to take more time off.

There are actually a couple more variables going on right now that add further to the stress of the situation, but I don't want to get into those details here right now. * I'm so overwhelmed with all of this that I can't really feel anything at all anymore. It would be funny, except I lost my sense of humour a long time ago.

All I can do is take each hour and each day one at a time and deal with it as it comes.

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* EDIT, August 27th, 2009: The other variables I didn't want to mention at the time of writing was that we were pregnant! We were totally thrilled about this, but it was another thing to worry about, as well as being an additional challenge because I was always extra tired, and it hindered our moving because I was not allowed to carry heavy things.