Oh, bother.

The title of this post comes from the infinitely wise Winnie the Pooh, who often worries about more than his little stuffed-with-fluff brain can handle. Pooh and I have a lot in common these days.

Let me start by saying that I continue to feel so blessed by this pregnancy and the fact that things have gone so well so far. *knocks on wood* But the past couple of days I have just felt ridiculously overwhelmed. It's hard to explain and I can probably chalk a lot of it up to hormones, but today I just wanted to stay in bed with the covers over my head. The things I'm currently worried/frustrated about:

1. Money. My husband and I make enough money but we're certainly not rich. Since buying our new house things are even tighter, and the expenses just keep adding up. We're paying off new windows and dining room furniture, which I planned to put our tax return toward - until we finally got his W2s and discovered that somehow his deductions were screwed up. So instead of the $1,300 we were getting back when just my info was in Turbo Tax, we now owe $700 between federal and state. I'm going to see if I can get a CPA to double check it, but if we owe that much money I have no clue how we're going to pay it. Oh, and our tax return was also supposed to pay for the vacation we're taking with his family in June.

Add to that the fact that our title company forgot to collect $500 from us they should have at closing, and we are now having to pay them. (Yes, I checked with a lawyer first.) We made one $250 payment and still need to make one more.

And finally, I will need a new car when this baby comes (as I mentioned in a previous post). My car is a small two-door with 140,000 miles on it. I can't even fit a carseat in it. My husband thought his car was going to be paid off this summer, but a phone call to the bank told us it's going to be paid off in December instead. There is no way we can afford two car payments.

2. My job. I took my current job as an escape from a job from hell. It was the right thing to do at the time - my last job was causing so much stress that I cried all the time, couldn't sleep and my stomach was constantly in knots. My current job is at a college, in a business-y capacity - not my forte. On a daily basis I have no clue what I'm doing because there was no training provided and hardly any support available. I have no idea what I'm going to do when the baby is born because while I need to keep my benefits (my husband can't get them through his job), my 40-minute commute for a job that I don't love is weighing on me. But see #1 - we need money.

I currently freelance a newsletter for my old job for extra money and am now looking into selling Lia Sophia jewelry, but even with both of those things I will still need to work somewhere.

3. The baby. This one I'm sure is plenty normal, but seeing my sister-in-law the past few days has really generated this unspeakable anxiety in me. She is due in two weeks, and I see them getting ready for the baby and it terrifies me. She sat on the couch last night showing her brother where the baby's foot was pushing out, and the idea of that just freaked me out beyond belief. I really can't put it into words, but I just felt so uncomfortable with it. I know I will love this baby more than anything in the world when it arrives, but right now I am just feeling so overwhelmed by everything in our lives that it's tough to see past the road blocks. I am a person who likes control, and this is one instance in which I am going to have to give it up.

So I'm trying to take deep breath and tackle one obstacle at a time. I keep telling myself that for the most part there is nothing I can do about any of these things right now so I just need to take the advice of another animated character, Dory:

"And you can't jump the track, we're like cars on a cable/and life's like an hourglass glued to the table/no one can find the rewind button, girl/so cradle your head in your hands/And breathe...just breathe..."
- Anna Nalick