Stress. What Else Is New?

When I was pregnant with Declan, I knew that things were going to be stressful. Ending college, moving cross-country, setting up a new house, trying to find jobs, insurance... I pretty much expected that my life would be in upheaval for a while. The upheaval lasted much longer than expected, however, when Aaron couldn't seem to stick with one job and was constantly changing his plan. We went from Wheatsville, to cooking, to personal training school all before Declan was born. Then there was the hypothetical chicken farm, and moving to Iowa, then THREE different jobs up here before he got the one he has now.

I used to think I liked change. I liked to mix up my routine, be spontaneous, do things that were unexpected. But when you add a child into the mix, I want NO CHANGE. I want to live in this house, keep our same jobs, our insurance, doctor, I don't even want to change our freaking CABLE plan until after this baby is born.

But things aren't going my way. Aaron thinks he's going to be fired on Monday, because he saw an ad for his job in the paper. Not HIS job, specifically, but an opening for a position like his. So he wants to quit preemptively, and start looking for another job ASAP. Now, this alone wouldn't send me over the edge of the stress-cliff. But in the past couple of weeks, Aaron has been dropping a lot of worrisome hints that he would like to make a change... Some are blatant - "I want to move to Mashalltown or Ames." "I'm going to apply at [insert random place of business here]." While others are veiled as being "for me" - "I think I found a way that we can move back to Texas."

And then there's the beer distribution company that he wants to open with his friend. Now Aaron has a lot of ideas. Mostly ideas that he thinks will make us rich. We have semi-followed through on two of them - Personal training and chicken farming. He took out a loan for PT school, made it almost all the way through, and quit. He found out / thought it was a hoax, and that the certification he'd get wasn't worth anything. Then chicken farming... well, that may well have been a ruse just to get back to Iowa. But he did get all of the stuff to raise chicks from his friend, borrowed more money for supplies, then never got started. Not even close. The chicken stuff is in our basement.

So you can see why I'm worried about his new beer distributing plan. It could definitely work. I want so badly to be behind him 100%. But he made awesome, convincing pitches for personal training and chicken farming, too.

On top of this job debacle, I just found out that while I'm on maternity leave, I'll still have to pay the insurance premiums that usually come out of my paychecks. That's $199 every two weeks. There's no way we can afford to pay that for 12 weeks while I'm brining home next to nothing. So we need to find different insurance for Declan and the new baby.

I am so frustrated with the whole situation that I honestly feel like quitting my job, taking Declan in my arms, and running away to live in the woods. Or go live with the Amish. I could learn to like bonnets if it meant not having to deal with this shit.