Year 4, Day 108: When I was 17, I started my first full time retail type job. Before then I’d only worked summer part time jobs and for my parents. I met lifers whose motto was “don’t rock the boat” because they just wanted to make it to retirement (15 years off) no matter how miserable they were. I experienced managers who were so inept they cried at work over their “best friend betraying them” (a direct report). I met people who slept with married people and got pregnant. I met people who slept with coworkers and got pregnant and even though they were unhappy, decided they had to get married for the sake of the kid. I met people who slept with coworkers and broke up, making the night shift super awkward for everyone.
It was a whole lot of life in one little building. In retrospect, I’m grateful for all those experiences that informed what I was looking for out of work and out of life: I didn’t want to have to keep my head down when work conditions were terrible for fear of losing my only job. I didn’t want to have to suffer silently. I didn’t want to let people be stepped on and stay quiet. I wanted to stand up for myself, to advocate for better working conditions, to advocate for everyone. I wanted options, respect, and no drama.
While I don’t necessarily feel like I have a lot of options now in case things go sideways, I do have the latter two in spades and that’s meaningful.
Year 3, Day 109: I’m sure everyone already knew this and I was just too stubborn/unmotivated to try but it turns out cornstarch is the secret to frying up slabs of tofu that don’t stick to the pan! I used some notes from this recipe and added cornstarch and garlic powder for my first attempt at frying tofu while following actual directions instead of winging it. I didn’t even need a spatula to flip them! Didn’t even use a non stick pan, either.
The garlic flavor didn’t come through at all. It smelled good but I couldn’t taste it. I won’t waste garlic powder next time but I will keep the steps of prepping hours ahead to let the liquid drain and adding cornstarch.
Year 3, Day 110: We spent $20 on a couple bags of raised bed and potting mix to add to the potato bags. I’d filled them maybe halfway a couple summers back. We grow small potato crops now and again, half a colander full at a time. I figured, even if I don’t grow a great deal more because we’re constrained by volume, a good soil top-up would do us good. Lots of plants are poking their way up through the replenished soil now, so I’m hoping for enough potatoes in a harvest to share.
We joke that these are the most expensive potatoes ever, $100 starting up a few years back and $20 now, and we most certainly have not gotten $120 worth of potatoes out of them but I have really enjoyed having an incredibly low maintenance little garden to dig in now and again and fresh potatoes to eat. It’s rare for me to say it’s not about the money, it’s about the fun, but that’s exactly what’s going on here.
Year 3, Day 111: I’ve been sad about my brother and our lost relationship lately. I saw a car that reminded me of his two best friends in high school. They were a set and I cared about them too but we all fell out of touch after they graduated from college and moved on with their professional lives while he remained stuck in the ditch of life. In what was probably a foolish attempt, I tried emailing the one I could find a work email for to see if he might want to catch up. It’s been three weeks and he hasn’t answered.
Maybe my email went to spam, he doesn’t remember me, or he doesn’t want to know me anymore. I’m still in touch or friends with most of my high school friends, 23 years on, and had always assumed we’d still be friends too. So that’s another small sadness.
Year 3, Day 112: The idea of the “friendzone” is such a weird concept to me. Is it some Harry met Sally “men and women can’t be friends” thing? Maybe it’s because I didn’t date much in my single years. I had a couple boyfriends through my twenties but generally most people weren’t interested in me. The (very) few that were weren’t a good fit. I didn’t recognize or reciprocate their interest. We didn’t stay friends after we stopped going to the same school. Maybe that’s what they mean by friendzone: I was fine being their friend, but they had only hung around in case I changed my mind, not because they valued my friendship or me as a person. Doesn’t seem like a worthwhile (or respectful) reason to stick around, if you ask me. I would hate to find out that someone I believed to be a friend had been hanging around solely in hopes of having a different relationship.
I have four male friends, dating back to junior high through college, who are very close, through-thick-and-thin-type friends. They stood in as my date for the occasional event that required one, without it ever being an issue for us or our respective partners who weren’t available because we were friends and only friends. Never once has the idea that we had zero romantic interest in one another diminished our friendship. We’ve openly acknowledged the fact that we had zero attraction to one another at one time or another without any awkwardness or stress. It just is. We’re best friends and best as friends. I cherish that. I wonder if people worrying about being friendzoned are open to having a deep non-romantic relationship with folks of their preferred gender or if that’s the only goal.
Year 4, Day 101: WEIRDLY smooth morning routine with the kids. Turns out it was the only smooth bit of the day. PiC got stuck at Costco for hours mid-morning, then was stranded when he got a flat tire that couldn’t be fixed on the road. I had to run out twice to drop him off and then pick up everyone.
Still, I was extra efficient and got through my regular work and 2 of 3 backburner projects. Not too shabby.
Year 3, Day 102: A couple friends came over in the afternoon to grill and played with the kids. We tried to strike a balance between keeping it simple and having a nice enough spread that everyone could enjoy something.
JB helped me skewer the veggies, we parboiled corn on the cob, and they all went on the grill with a tritip and hot dogs. The pie, ice cream, and potato salad were store bought. Unfortunately no one liked the potato salad much so we’ll get a different one next time. The kids didn’t appreciate much of anything but the ice cream and pie, of course, but they were willing to eat anything to get to the dessert so two thumbs up for motivation.
Year 3, Day 103: Double Monday! Having the day off yesterday was fun. Having two kids and a scared dog 🐕 who couldn’t settle or sleep all night because of the fireworks was an awfully high penalty to pay for the day off. JB had a hard time falling asleep but thankfully stayed down once they dropped off. Smol barely slept, continually popping up to look at me between 2-5 am. Sera 🐶 only slept after I gave her a double dose of CBD treats and melatonin. She’s still dragging today. I’m right there with her. I got almost two whole hours of sleep and woof. I’m not sure I can lift my arms much today.
Thinking about money, I’m ruminating on how we calculate our net worth regarding our home. I list our mortgage on the debit side. That’s concrete debt that we owe. But nothing feels right as far as listing the value. That is entirely hypothetical, since it’s dependent on someone buying at the price we are valued for. The cynical part of me views the assessed value primarily as a cost to us on the tax side, but not as an asset that we can rely on because who knows what climate change will do to the property values in the next couple of decades?
Year 3, Day 104: Erph. My everything is drained. But I have to keep going: get the kids out the door. Clear my work inbox/desk. Finalize management proposals I need to put in for long term needs. Covering for folks out on vacation and preparing for taking a bit of time off myself.
The list goes on and on.
Usually I’m pretty good about drawing a line under the day and saying that’s all, folks! But as we’re deep into summer (though it doesn’t feel that way at all), time sensitive stuff piles up and can’t be put off.
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I suspect I’d be a more optimistic / positive person if my children would go to sleep and stay asleep at night. If it’s not one kid, it’s the other. Or both. I can’t remember the last time I had two nights of peaceful restful sleep in a row. 2013?
Year 3, Day 105: I’m nursing a cold of some kind. Tested negative for COVID, at least. I’d wonder who got me but this was probably fatigue related.
We visited our local library for the last time today. Bittersweet. They’re moving to an updated building but we love our little
Year 4, Day 94: Rough start at 2 am with Smol Acrobat’s sadly calling for me: “Mama, not feeling good. Not feeling good, mama.”
They seemed to have dodged the COVID bullet from two weeks ago but they caught a different cold this weekend instead and a bit of fever was starting up. We cuddled so they could sleep again, while I tried to read my book on Kindle and remembered sitting with JB for them to sleep at this age.
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Weirdly enough it was a very un-Monday sort of day. Work was manageable. I had time to dig into a bigger project I’d put off for months. I still forgot one I’d been procrastinating, but that’s no surprise.
I had enough time to review some plans for the rest of summer, cook bulgogi and prep rice and salad for dinner, make PiC’s coffee for tomorrow and tidy up the kitchen a touch. Heaped on top of a pile of greens, the bulgogi made an excellent “steak salad” for me where I’d normally have devoured 3 cups of rice. We have enough left over for tomorrow thankfully, when I’m going to be running to stay on top of it all.
Year 3, Day 95: Smol Acrobat decided that it was PiC’s turn to suffer last night, rejecting me totally out of hand. I was trying to spare him. He was already facing a late night working but Smol was adamant they wanted nothing to do with me.
Despite that, this morning was unexpectedly smooth. Smol was irritatingly a jack-in-the-box at breakfast but their current obsession with the timers on my phone was leveraged to get them to wash their hands, put on their socks, shoes, and sweater. Each of those things is usually a separate, exasperating, fight until I want to pull my hair out. But letting them watch multiple countdowns got us right through to getting buckled up in the car. Whew!
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PiC bought me four ounces of fresh brie and I just realized that it must be consumed before July 3. I’m on it!
Year 3, Day 96: I’ve been rehabilitating my 15 year old backpack. It was a work pack that morphed into a Con bag and then became the go-to for everything backpack. It was the best pack. When the strap started fraying and separating, in fact when half of it was detached, I mournfully tried to replace it with an identical one but of course they just don’t make them anymore. Last week, I started wondering: what are the chances I can actually rebuild this strap? And replace all the zipper pulls that aged and broke?
I set the foundation of the strap bridge over the weekend and bought some upholstery needles for the bridge/patch ($3). I searched for zipper pull replacements but couldn’t commit to any style or price. Then inspiration struck today! I gathered my old free Con lanyards that we hold onto but don’t need, trimmed off 2/3 of the length and sewed some seams. They’re ugly but perfectly serviceable, easy to clip on and off, zipper pulls! 🎉
Excessively pleased with myself.
Year 3, Day 97: What a terrible morning. Smol got me up at 6. We muddled through the next hour looking at videos on my phone until body could start to function. We made breakfast (sausage! eggs! English muffins! toast!) for everyone and things were fine. But JB was sluggish, and didn’t get in gear until it was late and way past time to go, and they were in danger of missing the field trip bus. Think they’ll learn to get moving when we tell them that they’ll be late? (No, me neither) and PiC has caught whatever Smol Acrobat and I have. Boooo.
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This afternoon was a bit of a blur. We went for a walk, put up the garbage bins, she did zooms in the backyard, I cooked dinner, and went back to work for a few hours. Usually we walk later in the day and I feed her right after but I needed to be done with cooking dinner earlier than usual so my internal clock was tilted sideways. Embarrassingly, the days are starting to blend together so much I forgot I hadn’t fed Sera 🐶 dinner until much later than usual. She’d just patiently shadowed me the rest of the afternoon, without any increasingly pointed signals like Seamus would have given like tapping the food bowl or yodeling at me.
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After dinner, I put in the first of four seams on the backpack patch. The curved needle is exactly the right tool 😍 In hindsight, though, starting on the less padded side of the backpack would have been wiser. My hands ache from forcing the unfamiliar needle through the thickest part of the padding. The seam is ugly as all get out too, but that’s less important than how strong it is. With a quadruple thread, it seems like it’ll be quite strong indeed. Again, I’m quite pleased with tonight’s incremental progress!
Year 3, Day 98: Always nice to wake up to a swollen ankle. From sleeping. /sarcasm
It’s been swollen since yesterday but didn’t think it was worth mentioning if it’d pass in a day. It has not.
As long as I keep my weight off, I do ok but just ten minutes of hobbling around in shoes leaves my whole body aching with the knock-on effects of walking abnormally.
I got my first mammogram today. Friends and family warned me about the experience and it was as advertised: painful! It hurt too much to breathe when instructed to hold my breath, so I couldn’t sabotage it by gasping for air, and the technician was quick, so it went about as well as it could have. Results were back same day: negative. Many friends and family have been through the breast cancer wringer and we lost one dear friend to ALS after she’d bested breast cancer, so despite not having a family history (that I know of), a negative result is a relief.
Year 4, Day 87: Historically, terrible nightmares have plagued my nights but they’d eased off the past couple of years. Last night, they were back with a vengeance. Genocide, cannibalism, and persecution all night long. It was a relief to wake up and shake it off.
*****
PiC and JB spent all morning and half the afternoon helping our friends move. Smol Acrobat and I stayed home, since they would only have gotten in the way, and played, ran errands, and muddled through lunch and naptime. After JB returned and both kids had eaten, I whisked them both off to the park to get them out of PiC’s hair. I got almost two hours of work done all day. 🤦🏻♀️ ah well. Tomorrow’s another day. (Look at me, I don’t even have anxiety over this lost day!)
JB was reportedly helpful but also furious that the new rental’s fridge was cleared out but not cleaned. As they scrubbed, they fumed: how rude! Who rents out a place and DOESN’T CLEAN IT??
Total spent: $31 on diapers from Target.
Year 3, Day 88: I’ve been searching for the 3-ring binders that I like at Target. I’m looking for the kind that have a very hands friendly design, a single tab to open the rings instead of the standard design where you pull the top and bottom tabs. I don’t always have two good hands to work with.
Silly me, I hadn’t flipped the binder over to check the brand. It’s a Staples brand! No wonder I kept striking out at Target. The prices on binders range wildly between $4-23. 👀 This one is the right one and mid-range at $13. I’m waiting until I have enough Staples reward money to buy it. I don’t want to be out of pocket any more than we have to be.
*****
Related: I claimed earlier today that I don’t have a problem at all with spending and this immediately disproves that claim. 🙂
I don’t have a problem spending money on other people. I have a problem spending money on things that are for me or my enjoyment. My beloved mentor, Coach Malika, would have something to say about my deprioritizing my needs and wants, and she would be 100% right.
Year 3, Day 89: Day 3 of waking up with swollen fingers crooked into claw hands. What’s up with that? Our weather has been normalish. Ah well. A thing I’ve been practicing with my therapist is not dwelling on the why because for me, right now, that generally leads to self blame and then we spiral into self flagellation. That leads to more pain. So funny swollen hands day! Wee.
*****
Today I let folks know that I’m picking our June Lakota families, plural for two reasons. First, because I noticed there are a lot of names that have been on the list for a month or more. That’s a long time, usually they get taken care of in a couple weeks. Second, I’m going to be so busy in July, it’ll be really hard to help another family so I should try to pick two before we run out of June.
I started working with the coordinator on the logistics of the first family while contributions came in. It always takes a lot of time and back and forth, and sometimes even phone calls which are at the bottom of my preferences list, to get a complete set of information.
As always, I am grateful all over again to have online friends who step up whenever I put out the call.
Year 3, Day 90: Success! We purchased 200 gallons of propane for June Family 1! This should help them heat water for cooking and bathing for the rest of the summer.
*****
I’m working on thank you cards to my long time physicians this week. No reason, just wanted to take some time to express my appreciation for their care, especially at the big moments in our lives, and supporting me through my ridiculous health journey without ever making me feel bad for seeking advice or help.
*****
This was one of my running running running days. Run to drop off the kids, run home to work, run to pick up the kids, run JB over to self defense class. Run home to make dinner. Phew! I wanted to call it quits when we walked in the door but there was still dinner and bath and bedtime to get through. Naturally this was the day that JB would drop and smash one of the glasses from the set my mom bought 15+ years ago right after dinner so I was too tired to even feel mad.
Year 3, Day 91: MERCY. We cry mercy. Smol woke up crying 4 times in the night, just sobbing hysterically, as if they were terrified. Either they’ve begun having nightmares or they’re falling ill. The latter is often what precedes a feverish day. They’ve also been pretty grumpy this week, so we’re all worn down by today. Also I can’t raise my left arm today. My muscles feel like they’re being grated through the cheese shredder if I try, so I won’t be doing that.
*****
I’m working on shopping for June’s Family 2 today. An older man who has been in the hospital and is recuperating at home needed sandals, hygiene supplies and pantry foods. It took three attempts to figure out a shopping cart of staples at Target that would be shippable, and two tries to get the best prices for the food items I can’t get elsewhere from Amazon. They’re not my top choice but they are willing to ship to a lot of reservation addresses that otherwise can’t get service.
*****
It looks like we made it through the whole week without needing takeout! That’s a surprise. I don’t hold this over my head if we do need takeout anymore, fed is fed however we manage it, but I do like to acknowledge when we managed to cook all week.
Year 4, Day 80: I usually come into Monday feeling wrecked but this Monday comes with the extra spice of marrow-deep regret after spending most of Sunday washing loads of lost and found laundry and packing them away, and sorting and packing several unexpected boxes of donations from our friends who had also kindly saved empty large boxes for us to use. Unfortunately I burned through all my energy and my reserves of energy without realizing it, so I’m burnt out today. I had to pace myself very carefully all day, taking loads more breaks than my usual one, and work wrapped in a heating pad.
We also had a call with the daycare director today. There was another incident on Friday with the Prior Offender who attacked Smol Acrobat, this time right in front of PiC, where PO started shoving Smol when they wanted the toys that Smol was playing with. PiC intervened and they kept at it anyway. It’s developmentally normal but we still don’t want them in the same classroom where they’ll be around each other all day, everyday, and I don’t know what options there are but there had better be some.
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The one bright note: Smol Acrobat sat/stood at the table and ate their whole dinner on their own. No whining, no playing with their food, no flopping all over the place ignoring their plate. They just served themselves and ate!! It was a tiny miracle. The one odd thing was they called the BBQ sauce “spicy”, wanted to try it, deemed it thumbs up “goot”, but insisted that they only dip off my plate. That was an acceptable price for their feeding themselves without fuss.
Year 3, Day 81: We recently inherited a stack of old page protectors, from someone’s closet cleanout which is perfect because dun dun dunnnnnnnn….
Big project! Going through our financial and personal paperwork making sure everything is complete and organized. The paperwork currently merely exists in two binders. It’s not going to be particularly helpful to anyone in the event of our deaths. So everything is going into page protectors. Tabs will identify sections and the claims pages for life insurance and disability policies. I’m missing some information for my supplemental life insurance through PiC’s employer, and we’re missing his birth certificate so those two items are on the To Do list. Once things are complete and in order, I’ll type up a table of contents.
I’ve started a similar project with JB’s school records and notable moments. I’ve kept a journal with notes and pictures for them, in an old composition book, but it’s bloated with all the photos and cards I crammed in there to easily write in.
This inspires me to move my recipes to a binder system, too! My old journal method is good for storing data/recipes and useless for finding them quickly. I’ll need to pick up a new binder and possibly more page protectors by the time I get all these organized.
Generally I maintain a primarily digital records existence but some things you need to have in hard copy.
Year 3, Day 82: We were notified that Smol Acrobat was exposed to a COVID-infectious kid last week. We immediately tested the kids and we all came up negative but it’s going to be an anxious few days waiting to see if anyone else develops symptoms or tests positive.
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I’ve been trying to eat fewer carbs this week to see if it would help with my persistent pain spikes of the past few weeks and my unwanted companion belly bulge. It’s a bit rough going from ALL THE CARBS to some carbs, sometimes. This is a very moderate approach, just adding more veggies which I’ve always struggled with, and smaller servings of carbs but my cravings have zero respect for “moderation” and respond disproportionately. After three days of slightly reduced carbs, my body is urging me to throw in the towel. Shan’t. I’d like to give it an honest go for a few more weeks.
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Listening to my mentor and old friend talk to another old friend, both of whom I met through the PF blogosphere waaaay back in the day, talk about money is so heartwarming.
Year 3, Day 83: I’m doing the dropoff commute today so that PiC can bike in without having to stress about JB. I don’t mind doing my share of dropping off for camp and daycare but it sure eats up a large chunk of my day.
I lost another 45 minutes this morning to observing interactions between a white cop and a Black man. It seemed calm at first but then the Black man became upset at whatever he’d been told and I immediately worried for his life. I worried even more when three more cruisers showed up and surrounded the area. Why do you need to outnumber one upset, but absolutely and clearly non threatening, person by six or more officers?
I sat there as a witness, ready to film if anything went sideways, and was so thankful when they finally all pulled away without laying hands on him or escalating.
I hate this about our society. I hate that the moment he showed anger, I feared for his safety and his life because so frequently police have taken less as an excuse to murder. I hate that this is the norm and that my Black friends and neighbors and fellow residents cannot simply be human without potentially putting their lives at risk.
Year 3, Day 84: Whoops, I lost the note I’d written for Friday. Quick summary: a huge load of work came in and I cleared it all under Monday is a holiday for everyone else and I need to take some of it off to mind the kids.
PiC and JB are scheduled to help our friends move too, so they’ll be gone for a while.
Year 4, Day 73: You know it was a rough weekend when you’re looking forward to Monday because you can work without parenting for several whole hours.
Both kids are making me banana pants in their own special ways and to add insult to injury, it’s been ten days of this sleep regression. Smol’s waking 2x a night and refusing to go back to their crib on the second one (usually from 2-4 am). I am noticeably frayed around the edges.
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Sometimes, I feel dislocated in time. When I was 17, I felt ancient compared to my peers. Now I’m 40 and hear that my friend is sanding her deck and think: that’s what adults do. How does one both feel agéd and too young at the same time? It’s weird.
~~~~~
Writing my net worth update for last month made me realize that I still have a lot of financial anxiety only half buried. It usually floats in the background but our extremely expensive summer is (probably) making it come to the surface.
Realistically, 7.5 years to reach our financial goal isn’t terrible. There are so many other factors that we’ll have to deal with in the meantime – getting small kids through daycare and primary school, prepping them for college, aging elders in our lives to care for, figuring out how to climate-change proof our lives (as much as is actually possible), activism against fascism, etc.
Five dollar bet that zeroing in on this financial goal situation is my subconscious’s attempt to hold onto some kind of semblance of (false) control. It’s following up with a tantrum because I consciously know I can’t control anything. You’d think saying that out loud would help, but it doesn’t yet. It will, I think, just not right away.
Year 3, Day 74: Between the sleep regressions and being the biggest pill in the world at every single dinner, Smol is really showing JB up in the Difficult Toddler Department. Their arms mysteriously lose the ability to convey food to their mouth but if you take them from the table, they scream EAT EAT EAT!! When you return them to the table, they sit and crumple a napkin or turn sideways to contemplate the cosmos or pick at the coasters. But those arms still can’t convey food to the mouth. 🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️🤦🏻♀️
My rule of thumb is that they’ll eat if they’re hungry and don’t worry about it during the day, but the last meal of the day is the last meal. If they go to bed after 1 broccoli floret and 6 goldfish crackers from an earlier snack, I’ll be hearing “mama milk mama eat” at 430 am and then I just might transform into a banshee and scream. So I suffer through all kinds of contortions trying to get them to cooperate and consume the minimum number of calories into their system to hopefully get us closer to “through the night”. But my GAHHH is it frustrating to spend every single dinner trying to finagle food into the toddler whose disinterest in feeding themselves closely resembles a cat presented with an inferior meal. And it’s truly disinterest. They don’t have any issues with the food taste or texture. They’ll go from “food what food” to willingly eating anything if a sufficiently motivating greater prize has been offered. A kid that’s got texture or taste issues wouldn’t flip the switch like that.
Year 3, Day 75: PiC and JB are attempting to commute to summer camp by bike. I was quietly horrified by the idea as a very weak bicyclist but I knew they were in good hands with PiC who has years of bike commute experience. This second ride was a fun adventure for JB but it’s too stressful for PiC. JB can’t listen or hear well when they’re on the road. While the cars have been unusually careful around them this week, he was sweating bullets because JB’s ability to hear instructions on the bike on the streets is terrible. This experiment may end this week.
I had to run some paperwork to the elementary school and on my way out, remembered to ask the secretary if she knew when the lost and found giveaway was going to be. It turns out I’d gotten that wrong! Last year, it wasn’t an intentional giveaway, it was an old book giveaway and so they decided to put the lost and found items out too. She offered to let me pick through to find JB’s stuff so I explained that my interest was actually on behalf of the Lakota reservation. I’d planned to pack as many as I could carry back home for them (fingers crossed). She said, oh! No one’s come to claim anything so it’s all getting donated. May I have them, then? I asked, sight unseen.
They were happy to let me have it all! We packed up a huge box and 6 large garbage bags of jackets, sweaters, and vests. About half were already washed, I’ll have to wash the other half. Sera was quite surprised when I came home after my “quick errand” with many many sacks, like a rescue Santa. My local friend can provide 3-4 large boxes for me to pack these, so for the cost of shipping, we’ll be able to send at least a hundred, probably more, pieces of outerwear.
Year 3, Day 76: JB was the first up this morning. Smol had two wake ups in the middle of the night, PiC tended to both, so the two of them were out cold in the guest bed. I was aching and tired from yesterday’s haul, so I wasn’t up for another half hour.
They got up, got dressed, made breakfast, packed lunch for PiC, packed their own bags, and were ready to go without a single word from me or their dad. Amazing!
Now that I reflect on the day, I’m suspicious that we got a replacement JB. There was the whole morning thing. When I picked them up early from camp, they ran out quickly, no prompting needed, dressed for class, didn’t whine or complain when I gave them only 5 minutes to play after, didn’t dawdle when time was up, helped me at the grocery store, put on a pot of rice while I made the rest of dinner. They even bathed Smol after. I had quite the Supermom day myself, but that was very much enabled by JB being their (or someone else’s, where has THIS kid been?) best self today, unprompted. My guess is they were in an excellent mood because they had a field trip to look forward to and no school bully to deal with. They’ll be back to normal tomorrow. But I appreciated it!
Year 3, Day 77: Every day this week has felt like a highly compressed hour and also a week, rolled into one.
This was my first day all week without calls, meetings, or other out of office errands. I needed that solid block of focused work time to clear my desk before the weekend and finished just in the nick of time. Is it just me who feels this imperative to meet a totally arbitrary cutoff we set because that feels good? Because it’s very much my own deadline that I set. But it’s so nice to start the week with very long timelines on work rather than feeling crunched right from the get go because I didn’t clear enough work on Friday.
We had some commute logistics to straighten out. PiC had left the bike in longer term parking at work and JB’s bike was brought home, so he had to get that bike back before we could pick up the kids in the car. I don’t know if they’ll be doing the bike commute together again, it sounds like it was stressful.
Year 4, Day 66: It’s Memorial Day in the US. Somehow I never realized that we normally share Memorial Day with Canada. I guess the subject has just never come up? Anyway we usually have the same holiday Monday until we didn’t (this year) and Canadian friends wondering what all the moaning about work last Monday was about is how I learned we normally share it.
Usually holiday Mondays feel like punishment because the work that piles up by Tuesday hits like a hurricane but this week I’m appreciating it because the entire week’s schedule is terrible. I’ve got to take the kids to appointments both Tuesday and Wednesday mornings, have a midday Tuesday meeting, and have to take JB to activities once or twice a day every day this week. I spent some time Sunday and today doing as much work as I could squeeze into half hour blocks of time between child minding and my current pain flare which feels roughly like having an acid bath inside one’s skin. Nothing but the best fun for me! And, naturally, since my car has recovered from its fits last week, PiC’s car died this afternoon. Sigh.
Year 3, Day 67: It’s only the first day of four and already I’m ready to quit. 😅 We survived the stress of getting to our appt this morning, dashed back home to squish in some work, then had my midday call. By the time I had lunch with JB (catered by chef JB), I had an hour left to work before we had to get back out the door. Sigh. I did NOT want to go. I’m not even sure JB wanted to go. But they had a proper lazy half morning and half afternoon playing math and typing games on the computer and were ready to move around.
On the plus side, our postage has shipped and is due to arrive on Thursday. Next time we get a big enough order or three, I’ll be able to test the pricing against Pirateship to see if it’s cheaper there (thanks, Rae!). I hope it is, I really like the sound of scheduling pickup! For the small orders, the first class pricing is pretty reasonable.
Year 3, Day 68: My Tuesday ended with working until 11 pm, and today started with Smol Acrobat waking up at 4 am and again at 5 with a diaper leak. Absolutely no one was in the mood for life. But we had to haul everyone’s butts out the door because Smol had their second dentist appt and we had to get there in plenty of time to deal with any balking or bawling. JB had wanted to come along so we scheduled it for a day they could come, and they were helpful keeping Smol corralled and on track thankfully. Some days are good, some days are full of regret. Poor kiddo was so tired from the early wake up, they kept telling us they were tired. They didn’t want to go to daycare. Unfortunately for them, they had to. We warned the teachers and they caught a hefty nap in midday. Whew.
Meanwhile JB and I had to run back home for a couple hours for me to work and then run back out to their half day camp. I stayed, working, for the full 4.5 hours to mind how it was run and generally get a feel for the place. That hard folding chair was not comfortable at all and it was a huge relief to retreat to the car after a few hours.
I felt like maybe I was being a helicopter parent. They were trepidatious about being left in a strange place alone for the first time, nothing like their intro to daycare where they could not care less if we were still there. I wondered if I was negatively affecting their resilience by agreeing to stay there. But we’d never been there before and I needed to know how things ran for my peace of mind. After a half day, they were absolutely comfortable and didn’t care if I stayed or not. Thankfully! I could not camp there another solid 4.5 hours or 9 hours later this week.
Year 3, Day 69: A morning half camp for JB today meant I caught a few hours of quiet work at home before having to go pick them up, drop off PiC’s lunch, and run by two elementary schools on our way home to drop off the student prizes and my paperwork. This week has been a poorly plotted marathon of appointments and errands and I will be so glad to be done with the last one tomorrow. I wished I had rescheduled some things but the two biggies could not have been rescheduled.
We still made it to their two self defense classes and I still got my work done so we’re going to call this an Exhausted Win.
Year 3, Day 70: We made it to the finish line! Not unscathed.
JB lost their damn mind at the end of the day and interrupted me to mouth off about setting the table for dinner. Smol Acrobat went ballistic when dinner was over and it was time to brush teeth.
PHEW.
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Going through all our home insurance and other important paperwork, I noticed that our dwelling coverage has almost doubled since 2017. It’s increased incrementally each year, and so have the premiums, but never noticed this creep. This is a bit of a surprise. I wonder if this is all automatic adjusting for inflation. Must be, we haven’t done anything.
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.