Normal Is Overrated

Back to normal. The last ten days were supposed to be back to normal days, back to the daily routine. My parents went back to Israel, Hidai went back to work, the kids went back to school, and I spent 3 days cleaning the house and am now sick again for almost a week. Normal.
But it's just superficial stuff.
Are we back to normal? What is normal?
When you are a parent with kids in school you sometimes feel as if normal is the fact that they are home. Somehow the time between vacations feel "not normal", you just got a breather before the next 10 days off school (end of February if you are wondering). And it's not that I don't like my kids being home, I do, and in fact this February I am going to use them as an excuse to do things that I want and are to embarrassing for a 33 years old - like the Harry Potter tour. Why should I care if they didn't read the books / watched only a few of the movies? I did.
It's been so long since I've had something resembling routine, I don't even remember what it looks like. I always find it so amazing to see how adaptable human beings are. You can usually see it with the kids, if you did something twice it's the new routine. So they ate chocolate after dinner twice - now it's everyday. Habits, routines, rules. People do not live well without them, and changing them is so hard. When we just moved here, we didn't have an apartment or our things, so we basically lived on fast food for a few weeks. It was so hard changing it back to good eating habits, to preparing real food.
Or maybe it is just that - normal changes all the time. I don't know if it's like that for everyone, but it is for me. If I try nowadays to go back to what was "normal" for me in Gibraltar before all the jobs issues began, I can't. If I try to go back to the time before this Christmas I can, but that didn't feel like normal even then, it felt like it does now - a search for normal.
I know I feel it more than most, because we just moved (anything short of one full year is considered as "just moved" in my book), because I still don't feel completely settled in (I wanted to say "at home", but that would have led to a whole different discussion about homes and this song), and I am still sick most of the time (which in fact led me yesterday to inform Hidai that our lives are in shambles and that all is ruined. Just because I forgot to take my Lemsip Cold and Flu pills. I am not a happy sick person.). But I can see the effect on everyone around...
Kids went back to school last Tuesday, because the teachers took an extra day to prepare for the kids. It worked. I have never (in all my years as a student or as a parent) seen such a happy bunch of teachers. They were so genuinely excited to be back in work, it was unnerving. We were all "take them. Keep them. We'll be back sometime today if we must", and they were so happy to be back (the teachers) that it was contagious (for the kids), but seriously - they are studying about "80 days around the world"now, so Ron's teacher MADE THEM AN AIRPLANE in the classroom. And dressed up as a pilot. Really. They focused on that the whole week - no maths, no English, no science. Yon's teacher went for the tent theme, and filled the classroom with fabrics and small tents. Both kids felt they were in school heaven. It still didn't mean they wanted to go to bed on time, wake up on time, go to school in the morning, and be nice in the afternoon. It was a very hard week. They got used to get onto bed around 10pm, and wake up around 8-9am. Very nice if you are in holiday. Very bad for school days. On vacation times (and weekends) they wake-up and watch a movie (or two) before we even start the day. Doesn't work like that on school days. It took us most of last week to get them back to normal sleeping time. The fact that they were tired all the time did not help their attitude improve, so we had crying, fighting, angry growls (Ron is teenage growling. Yon is a lion), bickering, etc. etc. etc. Lovely. It was the same thing when they started the school year. It took Ron a few weeks to get back to being the lovely kid that he normally is. I am hoping it will be quicker this time, and football helps so hopefully the fact that this week he has 2 football sessions will help, but until then I have to deal with this unflattering glimpse into the horror show also known as the teenage years. Yon on the other hand is in NO mode, which leads him to say no to everything (even contradicting things... He just like saying no. It was in fact his first word. Seriously). In nursery he is in all-animal mode, which is a step backward. Animals are his safe place, and by the end of last term he was playing with a lot of other things and almost no animals, but now he is back to just animals. Again, hopefully it won't take him as long this time to open up and feel safer.
Hidai went back to work last Monday, and although I can't say that he screams "No!!! I don't like it!!!" every morning like Yon, it did take him three days to get into full work-mode and start working every evening. This week has been a very hectic week for him so far, so I guess that helped him with getting back to normal, and in the same time (at least for me) it just makes it even harder to want to go back to the normal life in which Hidai wakes up in the morning, take the kids to school, goes to work, have no time to talk to me all day long, comes home late, is in charge of all things bedtime related, and go back to his computer to work until midnight. I can't say I appreciate this routine very much. Don't get me wrong, I like my alone time, my favorite moment of the day has always been the moment I close the front door in the morning after everyone leaves the house. It's my moment of quiet, of possibilities - in that moment I can do whatever I want. Apparently most of the time I want to do laundry.
On the other hand, I hate going to bed alone, so sometimes I do wish the work stress will lessen, but hey, it's still a lot lot lot better than it was when we lived in Israel, and I guess it was hard on me this week especially because I wasn't felling well, and yes, because it's hard to go back with a bang. Where is the gradualness?
That brings me full circle and back to... Me! I've had a lousy couple of weeks. First of all, my parents left, which (although I was happy to sleep in a bed again) was so... Sad. We learned long ago never to close one visit without having a date for the next one (an excellent advice I got from my friend Daphy. Always have the next ticket in hand), but this time due to budget problems we didn't (damn you 2012 and your money/health problems). We only had September planned (BA travel points sucks. That is all I am going to say about that). It took us almost a week after they left to find a solution to the problem and make sure they can come over in May. Second, we closed down the Christmas which did not go well with Yon (or me). Third, with my parents here and for a few days after they left I had too much family drama and too many conversations with/about family that could have gone better and left me feeling frustrated, angry and very tired. Not a good combination, not a good situation at the moment, and no resolution in the near future.  Fourth, it's the middle of January. Now we have a budget plan from the beginning of February to make sure by the end of our first year here our money situation is no longer entitled to be called a "situation" (I hate it when we have a money "situation". It's never a "situation" when you actually HAVE money. Which of course, at the moment we don't), but we still have to live on the most absurd amount of money until the 1st of February.  Fifth, all the talkes this past weeks, and the 2012 review I did for myself and for the blog led me to discover that I am nowhere near where I wanted to be in my moving-on process. I think this year felt like war. And every war has a price. And I think deep down I was hoping that it will just go away, that once we settled down everything will go back to normal. But it didn't. it doesn't. Normal will never feel the same as before. Sixth, I've been feeling bad since last weekend so we couldn't go out and unfortunately staying in bed didn't help as much as I wanted it to, and I am still sick, and with Hidai's busy week, I still have to do everything by myself. I am, quite frankly, sick of being sick.

And then something magical happened - It snowed. Oh, I know snow isn't magic, but it's so is. On Monday morning we woke up and everything outside was white, and when I went to pick up Yon from nursery, we came home while it was snowing.
I love snow (we get the f**&^%ing cold anyway, so the least the universe can do is make it snow), I don't know who was more excited about it, me or the kids (me! me! me!), and they say it might snow again this weekend!
And for one frozen moment in time, when you look outside and everything's white and the snow is falling down from the sky, for that moment, it's okay that everything's not okay. Because in my old normal life, I didn't have snow.
And normal is overrated anyway.