Curve ball

 You know that saying "if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans"? Well, its so true - at least for me at the moment.

This year was supposed to be dedicated to studying for the MCCQE1 and the NAC. I had all these plans to study 20-50 questions per day from UWorld and do flash cards whenever possible. To prepare for each up coming rotation with Toronto Notes. Also I had hoped to finally get involved in some of the medical clubs to get some more hands on experience with patients. I had discussed this with my husband and our nanny that this will require more from them with dealing with with everything related to the kids and home. 

I wanted to focus on studying and use my free time on the kids for fun stuff and to workout and stay on track with relatively healthy eating (nutrition is the first of my habits to slid into unwanted territory and I really wanted to avoid that.

And then our nanny goes and breaks her leg 4 weeks ago. Barely 3 weeks into the school year and our nanny is 100% out of commission until early in the new year at the earliest. My parents had just left to go back to Canada and Jordan's parents are still TBD regarding their visit her.  Which means we have zero help available to us. 

Its forced me to have to really scale down my expectations. And to be honest I was really anxious about it. I'm not angry at our nanny - she is a wonderful person - but I do miss her and admit that I get really annoyed about the situation (however I would like to state for the record that we are continuing to pay her salary 100% for as long as it takes for her to be healed and back at work - this was an accident and she shouldn't have to be punished financially). Because now a huge chunk of the kid and home stuff falls on me. Jordan works from noon till about 8PM and I'm usually done class by 1PM and home by 3PM. This means most of the time I can make it to pick the kids up from school. But as a result I have totally lost my afternoons. The time I had allocated to extra study or picking up a shift at the hospital now is devoted to driving to pick up the kids (who go to three different schools), driving to take my middle son to soccer, stopping by the grocery store, doing laundry, helping with homework...

But...I've definitely taken an "all or something" approach that I learned via the Balance 365 Life program. Shit happens to everyone. And wallowing in self pity will get me no where. So I'm just trying to adjust as best as I can. Everything can't be perfect. Laundry mostly gets done on the weekends but I try and throw a load on here and there during the week. The house is messier but as long as its not crazy bad, I just ignore it. I have though made the kids take more responsibility for cleaning and helping so thats been a positive thing to come out of this. Dinner is a bit chaotic but Jordan is stepping in as well so its not terrible. I'm actually surprised how little we've resorted to McDonalds so far. The kids don't get a bath every day but I still make sure that they wash their hands, faces and brush their teeth well before bed. 

And as far as studying, some days I'll only do 2 or 3 UWorld questions. But 2 or 3 is still better than none. I still go to Crossfit in the evenings when I can, but don't go everyday like I had been and another trade off is that sometimes this means the kids end up going to bed later. 

I hope that when our nanny is healed and rehabbed I'll be able to make up for some lost time study wise and worst case I'll just push the dates of when I will take the exam back a bit.

In the meantime, I'm taking it one day at a time.