May 10, 2019
1. Friday: A day that started too early and ended far too late – we were quite glad to close the book on it with no one MUCH the worse for having lived it. Except for the almost disastrous fibro flare up that continues to frustrate.
2. Saturday: Not that “productive” = “good” but I do enjoy a productive day that doesn’t wipe me out entirely and includes naps. It’s so satisfying. And it can only happen with a healthy husband who happily does more than his fair share to ensure I can get those naps. Today, despite a bone deep fatigue, the dogs were bathed (him) and their bedding washed (me), stocked up on groceries (him), naps were grabbed (me and JB) and two parts of PiC’s vision for organizing a messy corner of the house were picked up (him). Bet your bottom dollar that PiC did most of the heavy lifting. I like to think we do a great job of defying the norms: “married women actually do more domestic work than their single mom counterparts—provided their partner is a man.”
3. Sunday: Didn’t do a lick of work-work because I was so tired this weekend and I’m just glad that I was able to get some of the rest that was desperately needed. PiC got to have his morning outing, JB and I hung out all morning not bothering with any of the usual routine until we brunched at 11:30.
4. Monday: Caught up on a healthy amount of the workload that would normally have been winnowed down by a few hours over the weekend so it’s ok! I can preserve our weekends sometimes!
5. Tuesday: USPS managed to lose a week of our mail which happens to include some really important stuff, so I reported it today. Cross your fingers it all turns up?? Also I cooked two days’ worth of food so dinners are set for a couple nights. Go me.
6. Wednesday: I was having a pretty tough day and needed some wisdom from a soul sister. Three texts later, a dear friend and mentor was asking me probing questions that helped me see to the heart of my problems and find patterns and solutions, sharing personal stories for me to learn from, and my heart was filled with laughter and love. I’m typically anti-phone call but this was so needed.
10. Thursday: A young member of my family asked me for investing advice! 😍
:: Tell me some of your good things!
May 3, 2019
1. Friday: Our oven broke earlier this week and I was so busy I just shoveled the veggies onto a smaller tray and roasted them in the toaster oven instead. Thank goodness for that appliance! I finally took a minute to try preheating it again today to start diagnostics… And voila! Not broken!
(Later it turns out that PiC did the thing I asked him to try to fix it but didn’t tell me so it’s not actually magic but IT FELT LIKE MAGIC.)
2. Saturday: I forgot to record this before so I’ll do it now – I went two days without my laptop and while it was unnerving, I was ok! Woo!
3. Sunday: After catching JB’s cold, I see it’ll have to be the really little things this week. Like rotating my Tylenol and ibuprofen seems to keep the headache and sore throat to a minimum level of discomfort.
4. Monday: We are slowly making progress on a couple of home projects. Not much but we’re actually pricing out some materials and that’s a start!
5. Tuesday: I missed a couple doses of meds but the throat was surprisingly ok today.
6. Wednesday: Total bummer that both my cold and fibro flared up badly so I’m focusing on being grateful for the parts of my body that aren’t in pain.
7. Thursday: Steak and eggs for breakfast! FABULOUS.
:: Tell me some of your good things!
April 26, 2019
1. Friday: Complaining does help. I was telling Tenacious Feminist of my tired-woes, and one of them was a Target order I couldn’t quite complete. The order was started to restock our sunblock but one of her suggestions got me out of my chair to check another item and it turns out we still have 2 sunblock tubes, I just missed it on my last check! $33 order bumped to “save for later” for the next time there’s a sunblock sale and we need things.
2. Friday: PiC found a $50 piece of equipment he thought had been lost. YAY for not having to spend money on the same thing twice!
3. Friday: Also I figured out how to fix my sunglasses that JB royally messed up. That’s a relief. I started this day in a very deep funk and all the little things are adding up to help bring me out of it.
4. Saturday: I still hurt all the time, and I’m fatigued like you wouldn’t believe, which can trigger pain (or the pain can trigger fatigue for a fun turnaround), but my dietary changes have wrought changes I would never have believed could happen ten years ago. I can hold a pen to write today. I can hold a dog’s leash in my hands without them swelling up into oven mitts today. I never thought I’d get this much function back, ever. I know it can go away but getting this much back even for a short time is just about unbelievable.
5. Saturday: We had to drive a long way to see family for Easter and we both made it out of the house on time (gasp!), we also made such good time we were able to lollygag and hang out for a while before meeting up. Such a novel unstressed mortification free (I hate running late) experience.
6. Monday: Everyone was dragging because of our very-busy weekend but we made it out the door to our respective destinations and managed to get some things done.
7. Tuesday: It was a glorious 77 degrees almost all day. I was in heaven.
9. Wednesday: I lost this post and was very sad, and then 801red (my tech support) found it and I was very grateful. He’s the best. Highly recommend.
Tragic Sandwich: I worked on homework with Baguette last night, and she is starting to understand parts of speech and how they go together to make sentences!
10. Thursday: I’m unlikely to spend the money on it but I’ve gone so many days, multiple days, with not swollen fingers that for the first time in 10+ years, I thought it might be nice to get a wee little wedding band for myself. Just something light and small off Etsy or the like. I didn’t get one when we got married to save money, sure, but mostly because it felt pointless to buy anything I couldn’t wear more than a day at a time because my fingers were constantly swelling up and deflating at random times.
:: Tell me some of your good things!
April 19, 2019
1. Friday: I finally grew a brain. Instead of getting up super early (for me), then being frustrated that I couldn’t wake JB up for 20-30 minutes because ze still needs more sleep, I just went straight to work and got a bunch of critical stuff off my plate. Then I went to tackle the sleeping dragon.
2. Friday: I sometimes have a love of advice columns (most definitely Ask a Manager!) but this particular one from Nicole Cliffe had some gems.
3. Saturday: We didn’t plan on it but we had the afternoon free to support PiC at a memorial event that went twice as long as we expected. JB was in good spirits and we had just enough supplies to keep zir fed and occupied, luckily. Physically, I was thrashed afterward for days, but it was an important thing for us to have done together.
4. Sunday: Working on the weekend is not a fun thing but I was glad to get through a few hours of work this morning so I could spend the afternoon doing fun things without stressing over the bad Monday to come.
6. Monday: Sunday’s work made SUCH a difference to my work day. I don’t want to always require weekend work but I will build on this momentum. Also I’m proud that I’ve consistently checked on Friend 1 (a dear friend going through some really tough life stuff right now) consistently every week this year.
7. Tuesday: The past 10 weeks have been ultra-stressful for work reasons but also for personal reasons. A friend’s wife has been an absolute snake to us, actively stirring the pot and having tantrums worthy of 45. Because we’re unable to cut her out of our lives for a specific period of time, due to prior commitments that are bigger than us, we’ve been dealing with her shenanigans for the short term. I realized this week that it was really getting to me, priming my brain for drama every day, so I actively decided today that it doesn’t matter what she thinks or wants or has a hissy over, she simply does not exist today. Or tomorrow. Or the rest of this week. Even after another bout with insomnia last night, I can feel that decision actively reducing my stress.
9. Wednesday: I slept well enough to wake up early all on my own this morning! If I can keep this up through next winter, we can skip forking over a great deal of money for the daylight alarm clock I was considering. Come to think, this might actually be related to some spring/summer weather? If so, I may just be putting off the inevitable for another year but that’s fine.
10. Thursday: I got SO MANY things done today but most importantly, I actually had an appetite for the first time in three weeks.
:: Tell me some of your good things!
April 12, 2019
1. Friday: JB had gotten up incredibly early this morning which was good but it meant ze was low on patience and energy by the time ze got home and threw an incredible tantrum when I expected zir to follow up on our agreement: New puzzle if ze finished all zir evening chores. I had to hold very firm because ze escalated into unacceptable behavior (screaming and throwing things). I didn’t lose my head or my temper while dealing with it, thankfully.
2. Saturday: We had to take my clothes to the tailor but my reliable place had been purchased by a new person. I was a little worried – I’d never used him before and his prices were really high. But he was very kind to JB, entertaining zir a bit even though PiC was there to mind zir, and even giving zir a gigantic chocolate bar when we returned later that day to pick up the clothes. He’d changed their business model to a same day only model, which was weird, but also kind of nice to knock out that chore in one day. Exhausting but nice. Now I have 3 nice articles of clothing that I can wear a lot.
3. Sunday: JB is really feeling crafty this weekend so we spent the whole morning working on sticking our Safeway Monopoly game tokens to a board and redeeming the online entries (we won a coffee and a Refreshe drink) and sticking stickers to things.
4. Sunday: Discovered a place in LA that I want to go, thanks to Restless Rabbit’s recent report – The Last Bookstore.
5. Sunday: To start bringing down that CPW on my nice clothes, I swished my way around the Cal
Academy in my newly tailored beautiful floor length with half sleeves and pockets maxi dress from Elhoffer Design.
Bonus, I found a new use for my two little cardigans that I was going to sell – the grey and green sweaters work perfectly over this dress when I need a little more warmth.
I’d forgotten how nice it is to have nice clothing that also fits well! It was a luxury I let go when I stopped working in places that required me to look professional.
6. Monday: The IRS withdrew our money (which wouldn’t be a good thing generally but I got nervous about mailing our payment as a check. I should have just paid online!). California paid our refund and the stinkin’ HOA FINALLY reversed their erroneous charges ($300)! That “only” took 3 months of constant emails.
7. Tuesday: On my mission to find some important paperwork, I ended up decluttering a nice batch of old crappy photos. Win some, lose some. (I didn’t find the paperwork.)
8. Wednesday: One batch of chickpeas burnt so badly they went straight into the compost, the other batch was pretty good. Neutral? Then I concentrated on really putting together dinner instead of distractedly doing ten things at the same time and it became rather beautiful.
9. Thursday: I woke up really early, earlier than intended even, and it wasn’t painful. I didn’t love it but I needed to be up early and it was nice not to have to force myself out of bed.
:: How was your week? What were some good things that happened?
April 5, 2019
1. Friday: It was such a tough week and I survived!!!! It was touch and go for a while.
2. Saturday: Finally dabbled a little bit in our maths to find our a possible retirement age. Not far enough along to be anywhere yet but I touched it! I’ve put this off for three years.
3. Saturday: I watched three kids alone for a while and cooked. Everyone was alive and the food was good.
4. Sunday: Gorgeous clear skies and a warm 🌞 day.
5. Monday: I couldn’t find anything good on this day except the knowledge I have a long overdue massage scheduled this week. Focusing on that.
6. Tuesday: Oops. Saturday’s dabbling made me stand on the edge of our money universe and become totally overwhelmed by all the work we have left to do and the longing to be done. My money anxiety hit an all time high because of it. Reading Kristine and Tanja really helped me reset my perspective and mode of thinking to a calmer one. Now I know why I kept ignoring setting an FI number.
7. Wednesday: It’s been a monumental struggle for months to wake up before 7 am despite alarms starting at 6:30. A combination of sleep deprivation due to painsomnia and regular insomnia, and sleep aids not aiding, meant we were always starting our mornings behind the eight ball every single day. Talk about starting up stressed.
Today was the second day I managed to go to sleep early enough the night before and sleep through most of the night with only two nightmare calls from JB and get out of bed a shade before 7. I call that victory.
8. Wednesday: Lots of small and big pieces fell into place. Despite a packed day and not getting nearly enough work done, I resolved to get JB home early and I did. Since we had plenty of dinner leftovers from Tuesday, dinner was on the table before 7. We got JB in bed by 8. Small victories, huge effects, much relished.
9. Thursday: Another really tough work day but I managed to get through a larger portion of my backlog than expected. Huzzah!
:: How was your week? What were some good things that happened?
March 29, 2019
With the return of the grey skies and drizzle, the depressive nibbles are back. Positive thinking has been good for me but it may not be enough to hold back that tide. I’m not feeling pulled under yet but I can feel myself hovering around the edges a bit so I’m being extra mindful.
1. Friday: Though so much of my body was hurting that it seemed pointless to apply heat patches to any single area to ameliorate the aches, I was able to fall asleep in under an hour. That never happens!
2. Saturday: We had a downright gorgeous day for our free event of the day: Holi! Hundreds of people descended on a nearby town for the Holi celebration and it was tons of fun. I’m nearly broken from it physically but my face hurts from smiling and the kids had so much fun they were tired enough to go home without protest after.
3. Saturday: I’m extra proud of our provisioning. I usually fail to bring something essential but this time we only ran short of water because JB spilled my water bottle. We had: sandwich quarters, ham, cheese and veggie rolls, cut veggies, nuts and cheese, goldfish crackers, string cheese, apple juice pouches, and Cuties. The three kids and two adults ate EVERYTHING. I think we did have a few little leftovers but it was minimal. I don’t have a lot of aspirations in life for how other people view me but being the parents / people who are adequately prepared with provisions on excursions like this is one of them. It makes me feel so rich even though it’s actually being frugal to pack enough food instead of standing in line for food truck food. We probably spent as much on the basic foodstuff as we would if we bought two big lunch plates BUT we also had a lot of extra snacks that meant we had a much more fun several hours than we would have if we’d hit 3 pm with hungry tired kids and no provisions.
4. Sunday: We hosted a long overdue set of friends for dinner. It took all my everything to prepare for the evening, and PiC did a completely fair share of the heavy lifting on all the side dishes and entertaining JB during the mandatory Mom-break periods when I literally could not move any longer.
5. Sunday: JB and I seem to be getting into a decent pattern of having Sunday mornings together. I’ve never dreaded them, I’ve tried to view them as bonding opportunities, but haven’t always been good at making it play out that way. We’re doing some cooking together, followed up by playing and art time, and spend a little bit of time on language skills. I managed not to run out of patience more than twice the entire morning and I’m proud about that.
6. Monday: This weekend was a massive case of overextension. So many regrets. Not for all the things we did but definitely for how badly I timed them to be in the same weekend. So much pain and fatigue. But the fatigue slowed me down enough to realize I should reschedule all our recurring transfers for savings so we aren’t inadvertently overdrawn again just because of bad timing.
7. Tuesday: I AM VICTORIOUS. I have been fighting with the rental prop’s HOA for 3 months and they’ve ignored my very polite and reasonable requests that they do their job. I finally escalated to their Regional Manager. In less than an hour, I got my answer. I’m still reporting the local office for intransigence.
8. Tuesday: Had a friend drop in for a very quick visit on her way home, it was so nice! Physically I still felt terrible but it was a nice uplift to my mood and the timing was perfect for my weird (right now) work schedule.
9. Wednesday: Hot damn. I had to wake JB up to get zir ready for school and for once, we didn’t have a single tantrum from wake up to departure. Minor miracle.
:: What were your good things this week?