Rebuilding Rob

As WordPress continues to recycle old prompts, I pulled another prompt from The Coffee Monsterz Co to respond to today

What is your favourite and least favourite part of a typical day in your life?

Coming home? Or going to work?

My favorite part of my day is the time when I get home from work.

Honestly, I’m not even sure how true that is. Over the last week or so, I feel like I’m starting to really get noticed among my co-workers. I’ve always been one to keep head down and fly beneath the proverbial radar, if you will. I try. It to get involved in too much gossip, either with the students or with my fellow staff members.

But, for example, there are certain computer programs we use- either in classroom instruction or among the staff for one one usage. More than once, my principal had said “ask Rob. He had used this in his class everyday. He knows what he’s doing”. Granted, this isn’t anything like getting a promotion or a new title at an office job, but is still a sign that my work is being noticed by my boss, and now by my peers.

This, as I said earlier, is new for a guy who likes to go relatively unnoticed. Sometimes I feel like one of my students in that I’ve gotten so little positive attention professionally speaking, that I almost don’t know how to respond it or when I do. I’m certainly not one to puff out my chest or brag. In my mind, of course, I know that I need to just keep doing what i do everyday. But being seen as something of an authority on. A subject by my peer s is still a new feeling and I like it

Wait. Does this mean that my favorite part of my day is…WORKING?!

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying I don’t enjoy my time with my own kids or my social life. But at the moment, my job is probably the best part of my or al, daily routine that I’d look forward to 

The Long Goodbye

But at least part of my day, and this is going to sound bad, is visiting my mom and her assisted living center.

Let me explain

Mother initially went to the hospital last September (24). At the time we thought she might need a little more physical therapy to get her strength back, and she could return to her home. This hasn’t been the case.

She bounced back and forth between the hospital, short stay rehabs and her assisted living. This past January, she got very sick with a urinary tract infection. We thought we were losing her, but she bounced back somewhat. She’s been in the memory u it of her assisted living place ever since.

To say it’s emotionally draining is an understatement. While she has her good days and her bad days, we all know she’s not going to get better. Her health is only going to get worse. After visiting her on a particularly rough day, I’m always wondering “is this going to be it?” When she’s not calling me or Phred no -stop, I start wondering if something happened.

I remember when The Old Man was dying, it was four moths from the day he last watered the hospital to the day he died. That was difficult because we had to process what was happening. With Mother, I feel like we’ve had too much time to process the reality of the situation and come to terms with it. I know it sounds incredibly cold, but I also have my one kids, my job a couple interpersonal relationships that resemble a social life. I have things I need to tend to as well.

And I can feel it physically taking its toll on me. I have aches in pains in my body that I’ve never felt before. Part of that because I’m getting older; but part of that could be stress affecting me physically.

So now, i’m getting ready to face some other holiday season of juggling my own life with looking after my ailing mother. it hit me the other day as I was walking through the memory unit and I could see some of the Halloween/fall/Thanksgiving decorations, oh well, an occasional Christmas movie pops up on one of the TVs in the common area.

As I’m type this right now, it occurring to me that it’s not so much that I love my job as much as I love the break that my job gives me from dealing with Mother’s declining health.

You know things are bad when your work is becoming the escape in work-life balance.

Thanks for stopping by Rebuilding Rob. Be sure to like, 👍 comment and subscribe to my blog below. It’s greatly appreciated! Also, feel free to follow me on social media as well! Check out my most recent posts as well as some earlier, related (and perhaps, not-so-related) posts:

• Rob’s Retro Movie Review: This is Spinal Tap (1984) – The Movie That Scaled to Eleven
• A Death in the Family (And My Disposable Income): My Life in Comics
• The Supporting Cast: Navigating the Eras of Male Friendship
• Life is What Happens: A Look Back at My Non-Existent 2025 Vision
• The Moment I Walked Inside a Hallmark Movie

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The article “the best and worst part of my day” first appeared on Rebuilding Rob.