January 15, 2023 - Sunday

I have been SO stressed about CTO work lately. Like, struggling to fall asleep because of anxious thoughts about it racing through my mind...several times a week. I talked to Ben about it last night and I think it did help me kind of wrap my head around what I actually have power over and what I don't. I think I'm just taking responsibility for things that are not my responsibility. Like, for instance, kids having bad behavior. I can't just magically fix that. Volunteers feeling unhappy and stressed out. It's an hour and a half a month for most of them. It sucks, but that's just kind of the way it is sometimes. I need to put in effort to make things better, but I can't just make it all better because I want it to be. 

This morning was a little stressful. We had a lot of call-offs and I was really worried that things were just going to be chaotic. They weren't though! The classes all seemed to go smoothly and no volunteers seemed overly upset. Sadly, Leslie told me that she thinks she's going to quit. 😭 For now, she's going to go down to twice a month, rather than every week, but she said she feels like it's still going to be too much for her. I'm super bummed because I really feel like she is pretty indispensable for Oasis. I understand being a mom with two young kids, though, and feeling entirely overwhelmed. She started this position before she had two little ones and her life, and its demands, have changed considerably. We'll just have to see how things go. If she has to step back, it will be ok. Harder for me, but ok. 

When I got home, Ben had moved the TV and the 'entertainment center' onto the fireplace area. We had it there for a few years before but moved it when we thought we were going to get the fireplace working again...which we never did. We're just having some seating issues over here. There are six of us and only four of us fit on the couch. That means that two kids are stuck on the floor all of the time. When the kids were smaller, it wasn't such a big deal, but they don't want to just be on the floor anymore. They want to have real seats, especially on pizza and a movie night. I've been bringing it up to Ben every once in a while for a few months and, today, we just decided to go get a couch. We ran over to World Market to see what they had going on and ended up getting some CRAZY deals. We were thinking we'd be spending at least $1,000 on furniture today but......we spent $300!!!! Okay, so we found a few couches we liked, but when we walked around the back of the store, we saw a side of a sectional, love-seat size, for only $100! It means that one side has no arm, but I'm going to build an end table that is arm height and I think it'll be great! It fits really nicely in the spot we had in mind. THEN, we saw a swivel armchair that was really comfy for $500. We go up to buy it, but they said it's been discontinued and they only have the floor model. I complained about it being dirty and he lowered the price by $100. Ben said that wasn't low enough and the manager took HALF OFF (down to $250) and then applied a 15% discount to EVERYTHING IN OUR CART!!! So the $100 sectional piece was $85 and the armchair ended up being like $220! Just so crazy. We're very excited! I cleaned up the chair when it got inside and it looks like brand new. 

I'm so thankful that it's a 3-day weekend. I really need this break.