This being the weekend that we both have our kids (except for John, who’s camping with Boy Scouts) we thought that maybe we’d try to get them together for a little longer than the evening or afternoon we’ve done before. No, they would all spend the weekend here. My sweetie (no problem) and all three of the younger, more squirrelly kids.

And I thought I could handle it fine. And I was so wrong.

It doesn’t help that I’m about to be smacked with the hormone fairy’s wand. I’ve never been much of one to be bothered by that, or maybe I just didn’t know it. I lived alone for a long time you know, and if I was easly irritated with no one around to irritate me, how would I know?

It doesn’t help that I’ve had an incredibly stressful week. I didn’t know if I was going to be employed on Friday by as late as Tuesday, and then my health insurance ran out on Thursday. It all got resolved, but I’ve been a little bit of a stress monkey anyway.

It doesn’t help that I like to be alone now and then, and haven’t really got much of that lately, for assorted reasons. It’s fine to not be alone for good reasons, and I do like it and wouldn’t choose otherwise, but the fact is that I’m used to some down time to sort myself out, and I just haven’t had much lately. And when that comes to a head, it gets right up there and makes its presence known.

It really doesn’t help that I’m by no means the most maternal person in the world. I like my life to have some order to it, and maybe not too much noise please. I’ve finally got my kids trained to stop when I tell them they’re about to push my last button, but these other two are not used to me, are younger, and also are girls. Girls seem to shriek, and I’m not used to that. They’re not doing anything wrong, just being kids. It’s just that I don’t handle kids all that very well.

Someone recently told Junior that if he thought his divorce was hard, just wait and see what combining families felt like. I didn’t think it would be easy, no, but I now have a feeling that I’m in for way more than I thought. This will probably be the hardest thing that I’ve ever done.

I’m afraid to fail and afraid to falter at it. I’m not used to failing. I’m used to being able to rely on my own skills to pull myself up and out of wherever I happen to be, without relying on anyone else. I am not in the habit of sharing the load, and frankly, I’m not very good at it. Junior and I talked quite a bit about this today, and for once, I wasn’t afraid to let down the veneer and show him what I was really feeling. I was honestly feeling overwhelmed, and just wanted my quiet house back so I could curl up with my book and regenerate a little. Once I figured out that was where I was at, I told him. I didn’t have to worry that he’d get mad and leave me, as I’ve feared confrontations in the past. It wasn’t even a confrontation; he could see that I was on the edge and wanted to know how he could help me. I am worried that I hurt his feelings, but I’m not scared that a little emotional overload will crash our relationship.

And that makes all the difference to me. This is not only something that I don’t have to do alone, doing it alone doesn’t make any sense at all. We will pull together as a team, and if there are days when I’m weak and he steps up, there will also be days when he needs me to take care of him. But oh man, is this going to be a challenge, and they are still at a point where they like each other. Just wait until they start fighting amongst themselves.

This terrifies me, but may well be the most rewarding thing that I could ever choose to do.