Pure and utter chaos

I am behind reading blogs, I am behind with holiday tasks, I am behind with work and my exercise routine is in the toilet and I may be getting sick........Right now I either need to laugh or I will cry........

To back-up.....I have been traveling a lot for work and it has taken its' toll on me in many, many ways.  I generally really love to travel for work because that is the "fun" part of my job; working with customers, doing system implementations and integrations. etc.  My normal time in the office is necessary, challenging but not the part of my job I like the best.  I was in Chicago two weeks ago and Reno last week.   I'll be heading back to Chicago in early January, Orlando near the end of January, Washington DC and New York in February - my husband HATES it so that makes it that much harder.  As many of you know it can be difficult to maintain an exercise regimen on the road; my training is in the toilet and Boston is looming on the horizon.

Kick in the gut #1:

My step-son's girlfriend is pregnant; I haven't even met her.  Meg has been through this situation and I hope I can muster all the support and courage that she did.  This is not something ANY of our kids are ready for; we're heartsick, but will be as supportive as we can. I can't even begin to process all of the emotions I am feeling right now.

Kick in the gut #2:

Our home flooded last Thursday night; luckily we have flood insurance.  We live adjacent to a "small" creek and it rained close to 2 inches in a little more than an hour; the creek just couldn't contain the volume of water.  Parts of our home had 6 inches of standing water; other parts 2-4 inches.  The entire first floor of our home is basically uninhabitable right now.  We're STILL waiting for the insurance adjuster so come out, so we can't move things out, clean-up and try to settle in.  We may be able to get displacement assistance, but it is not usually covered with flood insurance claims; it is covered with home owner's claims - isn't that weird?  This flood could have been much, much worse; thankfully our family and pets are safe and sound, no one was injured.  On a positive note, I had been wanting to replace the flooring in my bonus room; I will get to now :-)  Unfortunately, we also will have to replace our less than one year old hardwood floors; along with four bedrooms of carpet; three tiled bathroom floors and I'm sure many more things that we don't even know about yet.

Both of these priceless little items happened during my business trip to Reno so my husband had to deal with most of it himself; he is a saint.

I had been registered for a half marathon yesterday; even though my life was in shambles and my training less than stellar I decided it would be good for me to go run the half.  It turns out it was a great decision; I took it really easy, saw a million friends and got out of the house & away from reality for a few hours.  I treated this a a long, slow weekend run and it felt really good to get a few miles in.  Isn't this logo and medal cute?  Don't you just love my race number too......

Have an awesome day everyone!