Right when I was trying to figure out how to make that work, I got another blow: my mom—my only backup, my emergency contact, my everything—was diagnosed with a heart condition. The surgery she needed wasn’t fully covered by Medicare.
And just when I thought nothing else could possibly go wrong… my washing machine died.
Of all things, that was the final straw.
If you’ve ever had toddlers, you know laundry isn’t optional—it’s survival. Between sticky fingers, spilled juice, and potty-training accidents, I was drowning in dirty clothes.
I tried to hand-wash everything in the bathtub. Two days in, my fingers were raw and bleeding. When Bella noticed, she said, “Daddy, your hand has red paint!” Then Lily, ever the empath, burst into tears and threw up on her shirt. That was the breaking point.
