All Up In: Some Big News – I’m Moving!

Music. Welcome to all up in my lady business I am your host Mary nisi on this podcast all explore the fine line between having it together I'm losing your shit here I share my journey as an entrepreneur a mom a wife a DJ and randomly a beekeeper I have no shame and no filter except the ones I use on Instagram my stories of resilience a little structure and a lot of resource Wellness can show you how to take those same things and live your life with your hole. Music. All right folks thanks for tuning in today to the Pod I am your Fearless host Mary and yeah, the last couple of episodes have been interviews which is always so fun for me I'm curious as to like what you guys like do you like the interviews do you like the things where I just Yammer hit me up. Let me know what you think Megan Taylor is such a goddess like it was so great to talk with her and Vivian oh my God are you guys just all like looking at your your rising and ascending and your Gemini's and year that Star that it's not going to be giving us light soon. Anyway this is this past week has been a Vibe and some craziness the big news for me as I announced on my socials for the friends in my life and whatever that we're moving my husband John and I we have been thinking about it and dealing with it has been the sort of fraught thing you know moving in generals hard but I kind of swore that I would never move to the suburbs like my whole life like I'm a you know like I'm a cool person I'll never move to the suburbs like on a city person and I swore that we'd never do it and even like when we got engaged I was like just like literally the day that he proposed to me just so you know I'm never moving to the suburbs so it was like I didn't I was really just digging my heels in on it and I meant it I mean I work in the city and I you know I love my house and you know I think that I had this dumb identity thing where I'm like I'm too cool to move somewhere clean and convenient and it also seems like you know a crap shoot him where you go like I know Chicago like the back of my hand and I know where I would like to live here but how do you know where it's cool and not crawling with like a MAG of nightmares and also I'm like an old mom you know I don't want to have to make friends and relate with like a 29 year old who like has kids the same age as mine like the other thing is I'm kind of a handful like I I think to myself I'm not good at making friends but that's not true I can I can. Talk to people but it it's like I tend to go really weird when I meet new people and it's almost like I'm daring them to not like me or I'm daring them to like take a chance on me or something like I've had friends like actual friends like my friend Debbie who passed she would say like do you really just not want anyone to like you like. No I just it's like I want to make sure that they know what they're getting like if I get I get to come weird as quickly as I possibly can so that like I don't know it's what I do it's like I don't understand it, but anyway I just I've been here since I was 19 and I've been here for 28 years and I have you know it's like I've paid my dues I've been around I like seeing people I know everywhere I go and having Chicago feel like a small town and like having access to all of the things the city can provide I like people to walk to Walgreens when I need to go grab Band-Aids or like I can be at a show within 15 minutes of leaving my house and, you know see rock bands and just run into people I know I just I really like all of that but then covid hit and my house began to feel really small. You're all stuck inside during covid there was no range life where I could settle down. But then John's job moved in 2021. Yeah last summer John's job moved up to the North Shore and he was one of those guys that rides his bike to work every day regardless of whether like he had like bike riding boots and like all of the gear and he you know he just was that guy that rode his bike to work every day and. Once his office reopened they had to start driving up north in the commute was killing him like he hates driving anyway like he's. Awful to drive with like I will almost always drive when we're together because he like sees every red light as like a personal, faults like a personal character flaw that he liked Hit a red light and he's always like if that guy had moved I would have been able to I would have been like 5 Seconds ahead of would have made this light like. Any everything was in traffic he's always like trying to figure out how he would have liked made the lights time differently like he is he's really obsessed with it and it's not good for his mental health to be stuck in traffic and I don't care like I I don't mind driving I'm not a very good driver which is only part of the problem but John really hates driving and it just was really affecting him like he would come home from work and it would take him like 23 hours to like unwind and you know and. He didn't agree to a Suburban commute when he got that job but whatever you know it was it was a choice that his company made and he loves his job and so he rolled with it but he really started pushing me to start considering moving. You know to the suburbs both from a you know from terms commute but also just now he's like up there a lot and he's seeing like how easy it is to pull things off and how you know just different it is so like last fall. Sebastian's prescribing physician for his medication that he takes really started hammering us on how we shouldn't put him in CPS and that it wasn't going to be the best situation for him the classes are too big and I his IEP wasn't going to be followed and he will get lost socially and and that was something we really believe because he's always had like friends but they've always been friends we've forced on them like they were like our friends friends. Our friends kids but generally speaking like he could always be like I could have a play date or I could just sit here and play by myself like he's always been really good at playing by himself and you know it's like you lose these kids lost so much during the pandemic in terms of like social interaction like that's like we he was in. It was halfway through kindergarten when the pandemic started and he lost his fresh his first year his greatest your first grade was almost all remote and like those are like really big Social Development times for kids and he missed that and so you know we start panicking that we weren't giving him the best possible situation so we were panicking that we weren't giving him the best opportunity so. Around this time last summer Sebastian has started developing some like ticks and some OCD like anxiety behavior and we had been trying to find him a therapist like a mental health therapist and they were as anybody who has a kid that they're trying to find a therapist for in this time therapists are, in high demand and it took a lot of time it took months for us to find a therapist for him and when we finally found her she was in Oak Park which for those who are not in Chicago is like it's a very close suburb it's like right next door to Chicago it's a really wonderful little suburb with amazing houses and we started having to drive there every week and we got to see how great these houses were and how cute the areas are and all of a sudden it's kind of dawning on us how many friends we have here and so we maybe I wouldn't have to make so many new friends and even though it would add 30 minutes to John John's already. Annoying commute because Oak Park is like west of Chicago and John's job is North it was technically the suburbs and John tepidly went along with it because you know it was it was least getting me comfortable with the idea of moving out there and we went out looking but nothing was really blowing our hair back and then around this time Sebastian was making like a little crew of dudes at his school here in Chicago, like really good friends like like the thing I never thought he could do because like he's never really formed great. Solid bonds with kids he's got friends he's got friends that he's that he. He's been with friends with since he was a baby and they're tight and they're friends but like the with Sebastian it's always been a thing where he's like he'll play with another kid or he could not and it's not like it's imperative to be with other kids and all of a sudden he was developing that and all of their parents were cool I mean I love all of Sebastian's friends parents and I'm like oh my God we have a little Community here. And like all of the things that were kind of normal about school we're coming back like we hadn't really experienced a lot of like School Community because of covid which is something that I desperately need. And you know we were back at school I joined the friends of group at his school and I was organized I organized like the back-to-school party which was really cool and Sebastian was getting good grades and we're looking maybe this is okay maybe we can do this maybe we can make this work and by now we had switched gears and had started looking at Evanston you know I think I was sort of stalling or throw a little fit like okay fine if we're going to the suburbs we're going to move to a really inconvenient one for you John and you know like I don't I don't know why I was pushing Oak Park so hard well I do know we have a lot of friends there and the houses are gorgeous but really if we were going to move to make our lives easier going north would be the better choice and we do have a lot of friends up north it's not like. You know John was like I can't add more time to my commute and I realized that I was just stalling so. We turned our detector our direction towards Evanston and it was still a tepid hunt like we started looking in the fall and through the early winter and then we were just trying to get through Christmas break which was a shit show. Like Omicron if anybody remembers Omicron was was raging and everyone was getting it so we couldn't leave the house during Christmas break. This is that all seem like that was like a thousand years ago the Christmas was a thousand years ago. And I had a DJ on New Year's Eve because what am I DJ's got covid and so I'd work and like I couldn't I couldn't get covid so we didn't do anything over Christmas break we didn't leave the house we didn't see anybody and you know I'm still trying to run my businesses and we were selling the building around that time was just a chaotic situation but. But Sebastian really kind of suffered during that time because he's a slave to routine like he needs. A very tight routine and like you know during Christmas break there wasn't one and there were a lot of screens and no activities and it kind of sucked and he needed to get back to school like we were like he like like we really were really like okay once the Christmas break is over and he's back on his schedule he'll stop being. You know kind of difficult to be around and then he got back to school and after one day the teachers just didn't come back to school like there was a. Like a not really a strike they kind of a strike at CPS like they little your back for one day and then the teachers were like we're not coming back unless there's safety measures put in place which you know I support the teachers and I agreed with what they were doing because CPS did not do anything to really. You know they weren't you know there were there were they just weren't mitigating the risk of methyl of people getting sick. But then Sebastian got a whole extra unexpected week off and that was really bad for him and I have a job that allows me to be flexible so that Willie wasn't the problem it was he really needed to be at school. It is not the teachers fault that CPS couldn't anticipate this. But living through it was another thing we had amped up looking at that point like we kind of sort of panicking and were like okay we gotta get out of here because we can't keep. We can't be in a situation where the school where the teachers can strike at any time and take him away from his, time from his schedule and his routine and he's to be in school learning and the schools need to be safe like I know that covid is still happening and like I wanted to be at a place where like masks for still happening and you know the class sizes were smaller to keep the whole thing kind of safer and cleaner whatever cleaner made up another word anyway so we started kind of looking more seriously and you know the same time Sebastian still you know he's developing these serious friendships and once again we are looking but it also sort of is feeling like it's not so bad if we stay and it was it was just a cluster fuck it was mine fuck it was like. Do we stay do we go like. You know empirically I know it's a better seen to leave but like boots on the ground staying here doesn't seem so bad and we weren't and we kept fighting houses and putting it offers I'm not getting them and it's just. A mess you know and I think that if he was neurotypical. And the pandemic hasn't sucked my soul out of my body like I'm not sure that this is something that we would have even really. You know arrived at you know maybe John would have been pushing it more but I would have been like you know there's no good reason to go but you know. Maybe the universe. I don't know where it was like it was you know I was in this place where I'm like you know maybe the universe is telling us something when all these houses were following through falling through and we're making all these friends and, you know. But we're still looking we're still giving it a go but then we had Sebastian's parent-teacher conference and I almost hesitate to tell the story because my son's school. Really amazing and his teacher is an incredible educator he luckily got to have her two years in a row like she was his friend his first grade teacher and then they looped to she looked to second grade so she said he's so she really knows him well and she's wonderful and I don't want there to be any criticism of the school or her because at the same at the there it is a really great school and she's an amazing teacher. But at this at this it is parent-teacher conference she had and she had really great things to say about him. And his grades grades were all A's and B's and she was going no telling great stories about him about how he's participating and how good he is with his friends and it was a far cry from what his. His parent-teacher conferences were like when he was at that other school and I would leave them in tears and I. I think I've mentioned I have mentioned before that one of the things you really have to be careful of when you have a kid that is that is autistic is that you know is falling for statements from caregivers that are like oh he Blends in so well you'd never know that he was different you never know it was autistic. When the AIDS come in to try to talk to you and you know to teach to him or be the his Aid they kind of look around the room and they're like which one is he I can't figure out who he is and I. And it sounds good it's like what you think you want to hear like all my kids like everybody else like he's able to pull off tasks without support or. You know he's he does get distracted but you know his friends are there I often you know his friends are able to like help him stay on track because they wanted to be successful as well. And it makes you it's it sounds like a good thing but the thing is is that you have to kind of. Realize the skills developed by years of therapy is a positive reason why he would be able to function in the classroom and deal with distractions is frustrations and whatnot but also a lot of it is masking which is like the is tamping down the urged for him to stem like it's about he's a big stem or he like he flaps his arms he makes noises he paces. And you know and it's. You know the stimming in the masking the masking of his stimming the masking of trying to Tamp down his his urges that. You know the his try to stay on task it's draining it drains a lot of energy and you know there's also a subtle reward system for when he doesn't act. And he has an IEP that is supposed to address his needs for eight hours and, supports when he's not necessarily it like one of his huge problems is executive functioning like his ability to go from one thing to another thing or like Switching gears like getting him to stop doing one thing and going to the next thing is it's really hard. And when you're in a classroom with 26 other kids and you're the only teacher it's like it can be really difficult to deal with the executive functioning issues and is IEP is supposed to be supporting this. And this is why, you know so many parents have to sue the school district to get what their kid needs in their IEP because especially in a school system by CPS that is so strapped. And you know it's like they want to believe he's okay so maybe they'll start fading some of his supports. And his grades are good so his grades are good so I'm not I'm not really super terribly concerned but so I asked her so what so three of his grades fell from AIDS to bees like nothing terribly. You know life-altering and nothing alarming nothing you know I'm not only tiger mom and dad on it but I'm just asking her like why did these three grades drop and she was like well. He's really good with things that have like a regular schedule like reading like you pick up your book you read that's you know it's the same all the time and. You know but things like science where you know every day the experiments change the steps change it's harder for him to follow along and he gets distracted, and you know she can't stay on him and be there you know on him to get him to go from one thing to the other and he doesn't always finish his assignments because teen gets distracted and they have to move on to the next thing and so he's getting bad grades because of his executive functioning and I accepted that answer at the time. But the more I thought about it the more I was like no he's being punished for not having convenient executive functioning skills that he is never really going to have. And his I sieep is supposed to address this but school is so stretched so thin and they want to do what they want to help them I don't blame the school or his teacher it's the system that has fucked him over. And. You know so when I thought that through it's like that's not going to get better over time that's not going to get easier over time like you know as kids get older the supports tend to fade and. You know he needs to be in a classroom that has just two teachers in it and. Like all the schools that I'm looking at have that you know where and there's like you know there's 26 kids in these clusters 15 classes on average where we're looking so it's just like it is really hard for me to be like okay he'd be fine if he stayed here I think he'd be fine who knows but I don't know and if he was neurotypical this wouldn't be a problem but. So we started pulling harder we started pushing harder to find a place and then we did we found a place a couple weeks ago and it had it was beautiful and we were super excited and we had the offer and we started the whole process of inspections and radon tests and you know getting our home ready to List It Too for selling. But I was feeling really weird about this like the sellers were kept we're asking for still like they we had to do a quick closing and they were going to run the house back from us for a couple of months and they like we're they move turning the attorney review letter and I wasn't feeling very comfortable about it I was reluctant to tell people that we were moving we didn't tell Sebastian yet that we were thinking about moving or that we had accepted offer but I was really and I was really worried about telling all my new mom friends at school but something just didn't feel right and I was chalking it up to just never. That never liked not that I didn't want to move and and you know and I felt weird about that and. You know the sellers were had requested more time for attorney review normally it's over in 5 days they didn't get back to us at five days and then at eight days we kept we had kept emailing and texting there or emailing their lawyers in the lawyer wasn't getting back to us and finally on the Thursday after it was supposed to be done on a Tuesday filing that Thursday the lawyer was like can we get more time, there's any more time like they have covid and they're having a hard time finding a house to move to and wherever they're moving too and they just need more time and we're like okay like we can give them more time but we just it needs we're giving them more time of the answers going to be yes but they just need more time so the lawyer was like great thanks for the time oh and by the way you did their wedding toast and jam to their wedding and I looked it up and we did do their wedding it wasn't me it was one of my DJs and the husband had even like referred us like sent an email be like hey some friends are getting married here's their name like you guys did such a great job so we do I was at least happy that we had done obviously any we did a great job at like we did such a great job that he referred us for other people so it was like okay what so this is a great like and then I didn't want to when I looked at their contract I realized that they also got married at the same place that John and I got married at so I'm like oh look at all these things coming together the universe like you know I did there a great job on their wedding and they're going to do a great job by giving us an amazing house so then after a week last Friday. I got a letter from their lawyer canceling the deal on US unless we gave them an additional 50,000 dollars on the house that we were already over paying for it because this markets insane. And it was infuriating was insane at like seriously you're going to extort money out of us an extra fifty thousand dollars like what that's insane. And you know I'm thinking to myself because she's lucky that I didn't call him the day before his wedding and be like you know the DJ is going to show up as long as you give me an additional two grand like.

30 in the morning last Friday and. I was a half hour before I was doing this thing okay so I think I've mentioned doing Katie thomashefsky was on when you talked about rain Guinea we have this like meditation coach and she's this like mystical woman who lives in Mexico and I had done this thing with her before it's called a transatlantic dialogue and. Where she kind of like puts you is Oliver Z mm I don't think I'm that susceptible look I've never been able to be successfully hypnotized but like when. I did this thing with rain Guinea she like puts you in this weird trip is all of resume she puts you in a weird trance and then get you to go back to some like core memory and then kind of unravels why you're thinking about the core memory and like she the first one I did with her I got to some very crazy places and I just happened to schedule another one with her for Last Friday morning. And so I get this like message that. You know they're canceling the deal then I have to go into this like trauma this like you know this trance mattock dialogue with ring Guinea and I go in there and oh my God I had all of this like crazy trauma that that we managed to unearth it was related to my own home life growing up and it was crazy like I actually was able to settle a lot of crazy scores in that weird to our trans Matic dialogue that I had and it's weird when these things from like oh man. After when I got the letter and I was like oh my God I can't do this dialogue right now it's going to be like crazy but then it actually want to be exactly what I needed so like once again Universe serving up some crazy stuff so when I got out of the dialogue. I got a message from our realtor that says another house popped up do you want to go see it and John and I are like fine we'll go look like you know. Whatever so he dragged her ass is up to Evenson again and we saw it and it was fine. But the location wasn't good the house was fine and the real our Realtors like level on which is walk around the neighborhood just to kind of, see how it feels and like whatever just to kind of see if walking around the neighborhood makes it feel better so we're walking around we're just kind of talking through like you know what do we do and how much this sucks and then. The realtor was like oh my God this house just popped up it's a little bit more expensive than what you guys were looking at but I've been I've been kind of stalking this place for weeks I knew it was going to come on the market and I've been in it before and I think you maybe want to see it so we're like whatever we're already here so we we drive over and. Um and we walked in the door and it was like putting on my wedding dress it was like it was like. All of all the stress of my life like fell off my body we walked it it's like. We just generalized water on gate mouth like we were like this is it this is the house like I it's it felt amazing it felt right everything about it was utter perfection. And we put an offer in on it and. The we were like a little letter that when the agent knew our situation they knew that we had like been trying to buy this house and that the the sellers had fucked us over and ask for more money and that we've been looking for almost a year and. You know he felt really bad for us and so you know we put the offer in then the next day they were back and they're like hey another offer came in but our sellers we want to sell it to you can you like adjust your offer at all so we like through a little bit extra money on there and then they called us and said we got it so like

30 in the morning on Friday I had my dreams devastated and didn't know I was going to do them by noon the next day we had a whole other offer done in the cans so you know it took almost a year but I have to say we really know it's the right place and I really I really never felt settled about the first house because it was cursed the seller dragged their feet and wasted our time and it was I think was all part of the process John thinks that they got greedy because the seller was taking a bath on crypto and I like that theory I'm sticking with that theory I had driven by their house after they, we've seen it and I drove by the house because I definitely know where they live and like he drives a Tesla which you know is how. Now is which is now a shorthand for like Tech. Like douchebag Bros apologies to anyone who already has one when they were cool and before Elon Musk ruined it all but they aren't cool anymore just so you know they aren't they aren't cool anymore but but yeah so anyway so things are moving ahead and we are moving in July and here's the best thing yesterday almost a week after they canceled the deal they still hadn't returned our earnest money check. And my realtor was like we did it for the new place and the sellers agent. I said oh you know what I was going to call you because the seller regrets how it all went down and he wanted to restart the offer again like it's the hardest pass like really he's coming back now and been like you know what it's been a week and I'm realizing that, you know we're not going to get a better offer than yours and you know now we really want to move ahead so are you still interested and it's like fuck you man karma is a glittering stunning thing like you like. You don't do that you don't do that and the place we're moving into is like a million times better like it's so much better and. They can drive their Tesla into the lake so that's what's happening that's the story. Music. So the shooting happened three days ago and Uvalde Texas and it obviously it's really fucking with me you know I look at my own little boy my beautiful child the same age as those kids and I just I can't believe that we are here and I cannot believe. That this is what's happening the idea that none of this will change anything. That my kid is a Target and that this could happen to him how are we here like how is this happening how our guns so. Much more important than a life and especially this is going on online of the mm whole abortion and debate to it's like the hypocrisy and. All of it is just it's staggering. You know the yesterday the Senate Republicans voted against even discussing it even taking up the conversation Ted Cruz won't discuss it with reporters they get defensive and have no answers because it is indefensible. And all the Coppa Ganda coming out with the confusing timeline that no one can agree on looks like a massive cover-up I really hope that they do wins the governor's race Abbott is this sad white coward, he's just the worst and that image of Beto confronting them like they all are just these emotional. Erratic unchallenged thoughtless pigs I can't I can't stand it. But if it's true that the cops were afraid to go in because they knew they wouldn't survive being shot by that gun let those kids died because they are because they're scared cowards when they when they were parents running into the school that says all you need to know those guns need to be banned. We don't need more money for cops or metal detectors and no more safety drills are my little boy cowers in a corner. With the lights off with the the door locked hoping that the shooter will find an easier place to get into I think of the trauma that I still have from. Does nuclear war drills hiding under my desk in the 80s which was in retrospect complete theater. I feel like when they would make us sit under the desks in the 80s there's no way would survive a nuclear attack by going under our desk we'd be vaporized like that's not that wouldn't be helpful it was basically theater to make a scared of the Russians, then actually trying to help us if there was actually an attack you know the only Republicans pushing that narrative remember. Cowering under the desks and be as still being afraid of Russians between this in a row and Ukraine and the insurrection. Covid being over by a long shot George Floyd Buffalo the hundreds of other shootings and general degradation of trust and kindness and empathy how do we keep going I know I keep on keep adding these at the big bombers but like. Is anyone okay because I'm okay less than I'm feeling then I'm like I'm like I spend less time being okay than having this feeling like it's all just pointless and never going to get better how does it get better. Do you wish I knew. Music. Thanks for listening to all up in my lady business it is written by me Mary nisi. It is produced by Christina sorum Williams and Amelia Ruby with softer sounds. It is recorded at the toast and jam offices in Logan Square in Chicago. You can find resources and links from this episode in the show notes at all up in my lady business.com, if you enjoyed this episode and you did Smash that subscribe button and if you're the kind of person that reviews things on the internet please rate and review us wherever you listen to us it really does help people find us follow us on all of your socials and don't forget whatever you do this week do it with your whole ass thanks for listening. Music.