Update

You've probably noticed that I haven't been blogging lately. I feel bad about that and I hope I can get back into it. We've been a bit stressed over the past few months. This post is going to get a bit personal and will probably be long with no pictures. I'm mostly writing it for ourselves so please don't feel like you have to read it.

Yeah, it's very personal. And a lot of it is going to sound like a repeat. And be depressing. But it has a good ending.

On January 29th of this year, Jonesy got laid off from his job at Utah Opera. Their reason was because he "wasn't a good fit."

Sound familiar?

Because he was laid off and not fired, we were able to get onto unemployment and have some income. At the end of February, Jonesy got offered a job that was very different from theatre. He would be drafting for a prefab metal building company. The job seemed interesting enough and since Jonesy was starting to wonder about whether or not he should get out of theatre, he took it. 9 days later, they fired him. You see, Jonesy has a condition I'm sure you've heard of. It's called Adult ADHD.

It's not just for kids anymore!

He had just been diagnosed a couple weeks before he started the drafting job and was in the process of figuring out his medication. His ADHD causes him to have some nervous ticks when not under medication. Talking to himself, swearing, (No it's not toureetes) chewing on his tongue, (yeah, wierd, huh?)questionable and sometimes offencive social behavior (off-colored jokes, etc), and tapping his foot are just a few of them. It was these things that were cited as the reason for firing him from the drafting job. The problem here is that he had told them about his ADHD and how it caused these things and how he was in the process of figuring out the right medications to get them under control. But they didn't really have the patience to deal with or try to understand his problems so they fired him. This caused all sorts of horrible things. The worst being that our unemployment was denied (you can't receive unemployment benefits if you are unemployed because of being fired) which means no more income. Anyway, we are in the process of both appealing the denial of unemployment and filing a claim against the drafting company for discrimination which is all going to take a very, very long time.

Yes, this means you were all right all along. I really AM crazy.

Meanwhile, Jonesy is spending hours every day trying to find work (still no luck). My parents have been gracious enough to let us stay with them until we can get our feet back under us. We've got our furniture in my sister's garage and all our boxes in my parents' attic. The kids are loving it (they get to play with their cousins all day now). Jonesy is considering going back to school. He's also on a waiting list to start an electrician's apprenticeship program. He's also putting in dozens of applications every week at every place you could imagine. The good news is that Jonesy's finally gotten a diagnosis for whats going on upstairs

They also diagnosed me with Bipolar II on top of the ADHD. Back in the day the would have just called me "That weirdo that lives in the woods."

and is on a good cocktail of medication and it seems to be helping him a lot.

While this year so far has been nothing but frustration, stress and an overwhelming sense of fear and uncertainty of the future, I am still holding on to that little sliver of hope (which actually started out as a huge amount of hope but has slowly, with each new twist, been whittled down to a sliver). We do have so much to be thankful for, even now. We have each other. We have three exceptional children (at least, we think so). We have family close by who are willing and able to help us out. We're not on the streets or in shelters. We're able to feed our children and clothe them. All of our basic necessities are within reach. Even though it's hard to deal with Jonesy's mental illness, we can be thankful that it's not terminal. It's something that CAN be dealt with. Right now in life, we are very uncomfortable but I know (or at least, hope) that in a few years we'll be looking back and smiling (I don't think we'll ever laugh about this).

Hey, I'm crazy, I can laugh about ANYTHING.

Anyway, so that's why I haven't been blogging lately. I haven't felt comfortable telling of all our burdens and I didn't feel like putting on a false face and acting like all has been fine and dandy. So now that you all know that all is not fine, I can continue blogging about our every day lives and not feel like I'm being deceitful or leaving stuff out

I just want you all to know how much I love my wife. All this stuff we are going through, the only ONLY reason that I haven't completely fallen apart has been because of Havilah. Every time I have said "Nope, I'm done, not going to do it any more" she grabs me by the ear, hauls me back to my feet, and makes me keep trying. For some unfathomable reason, she loves me and isn't going to let me give up. She plans on sticking this out no matter what.

So if anyone is crazy here, it's HER.