May 10, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 50: After three extra terrible nights in a row, my anxiety had been steadily ramping up so that I was wound tight anticipating a fourth bad night and bad nights forever. It was a rough lot of months before we found a way to switch off. But! PiC caught a “good” night of sleep with Smol! They slept four hours, woke up for half an hour, and slept another four! Their morning started at 530 but that’s just shy of miraculous for us. I am working on breathing through my expectations and hopes that fuel the anxiety that crops up whenever we’re caught in a series (but not a useful pattern we can address) of bad nights.
We’re also coming to the end of our time with the Snoo so that’s contributing to my anxiety about the tools we have to cope.
Of course the trade off seems to be losing the good blocks of napping we had during the day last week.
I know these are all phases but in the thick of each tough one, it’s hard to push out from reacting and just be. I’m working on it.
Sadly, despite actually getting a few hours of sleep, my pain is much higher today. What’s that about? Does it seem “safe” to have pain when sleep is possible? How is that logical, body? Or maybe this is the anxiety backlash manifesting.
*****
The afternoon brought something unexpected. A friend sent some Lily’s (sugar replacement) peanut butter cups! I haven’t been able to get to the one store that carries them for a few months so this was a delightful surprise. JB has been trying to convince me to like surprises better than I have for years and this kind of thing does help change my deeply ingrained habit of expecting terrible things when I’m surprised. Long time readers will remember that there was a long period of terrible surprises with my Mom’s poor health. Car accident after car accident after blackout dental emergency after getting lost after blackout after a stroke after …. you get the picture. Surprises, historically, have been BAD.
Year 2, Day 51: Some news out of Pfizer today: if all goes well, the younger set down to age 2 may have a vaccine by the fall. This has set off a whole lot of mixed feelings.
I want to see the people I want to see. I don’t want to be rushed into a whirlwind of make up activities. We’ve already gotten a birthday party invitation for an outdoor meet up and though I love the people inviting us, my first feeling was a sinking feeling.
I want childcare but I don’t want to socialize much more than we do now. One meeting a week plus a couple video calls is enough.
*****
Urge to scream rising. Is this burnout? Probably. Does it matter? Nope. There’s nothing we can do about the things causing that burnout right now. AUGHHHHH.
I know the usual advice is to take a break but any little break I take makes me extra antsy to just quit entirely.
For now, today, I will remind myself not to seek a dopamine hit by way of JETPENS, and just breathe through the mini pity party I’m hosting for myself. That dopamine hit can be for another time when I can consciously choose a treat and enjoy both the choice and the eventual selections. I love stationery things so much.
It was like pulling teeth but I wrote some Mother’s Day cards and might even be in time to get them in the mail.
*****
Breathing through the discomfort worked. I found a neutral emotional setting. We ordered in falafel and schwarma for dinner so we could just enjoy a food and not fuss about cooking and clean-up. The baby took a decent afternoon nap. I didn’t get all my work done but I caught up a respectable amount so I am not going to think about it again tonight. I needed to reset my equilibrium and not trying to shut out the negative feelings helped them pass through.
Year 2, Day 52: The shopping from a box goodies are still making JB’s day. They’re wearing another new to them item that’s 1.5 sizes too big but that’s fine. They’re having fun with it and, really, their philosophy on wearing the fancy dress stuff on any day because every day is a fancy day has some merit.
*****
Most of JB’s schedule this week was cleared because all their tutors had personal issues. We only had two out of four Spanish lessons, their superhero fitness class is on hiatus, their tutor and their ballet teacher both have health issues to tend to. It’s left them with more free time than they had during Spring Break! We’ve been managing ok with giving them a mix of totally free time to do as they wish, some outdoor time with one of us walking the dog, some unsupervised backyard time, and some “play with your baby” time. It’s not great but I am, on principle, in favor of them having some unscheduled days like this. Just …maybe not a full week at once next time?
We are super thankful to aunties and uncles who make time to have playdate calls with them, though. Again and again I bless those beloved family who choose not to have kids but still enjoy spending time with mine. They help our world keep turning.
*****
We’ve been discussing how we’re going to deal with Smol’s continued horror show of sleep. A friend has recommended a sleep consultant that they used, I’ve done some research separately into some sleep consultants. We’re slowly working out a plan for ourselves but we may also need to get some help. We didn’t get any with JB but we also were in far less demanding jobs, with Seamus instead of Sera and didn’t have a 6 year old running around needing parenting in a pandemic. Help is not a bad thing, I tell myself over and over.
Year 2, Day 53: My wrist has been tender and painful for two weeks now. Just an observation. I’m practicing the habit of noticing but not winding myself up about it. I long ago learned to punish myself emotionally, deeply and intensely, for my body’s “failings” and I’m still working to undo that reflex. It did me no good and there’s no reason to keep holding on to it.
*****
I came off a short four hour sleep session last night expecting to feel like a pair of beat up old shoes. Strangely, though I didn’t feel GOOD, I also didn’t feel the expected dragging fatigue that’s sidelined me most days last week from venturing past our front door. I decided that if I didn’t feel horrible, it was as good a time as any to take all the kids out for a long walk, so we did!
Year 2, Day 54: Conundrum. Smol Acrobat LOVES hanging out with JB. JB LOVES hanging out with Smol Acrobat. The reasons they love hanging out are because JB loves singing and dancing and making loud obnoxious to parents noises for SA and SA absolutely cackles with the joy of it.
But it scrapes layers off our brains. HOW DO WE TOLERATE THIS. I think we have to if we want work time.
*****
I have turned into my mother. I can down a full glass of water without taking a breath. 30 years ago, I used to sip like a tiny butterfly.
May 3, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 43: Today was my relative’s funeral. I took most of the day to attend services virtually and just be. After the services were over, I took all the kids out for a walk. We spent 15 minutes in the backyard. JB tested out a hand me down tricycle that was gifted to Smol Acrobat far far far too early. Smol lay in their stroller contemplating belly buttons and sunbeams. I had a late lunch alone. Followed that up with a scoop of ice cream when the kids were all otherwise distracted. I did some work in the quiet.
*****
Last night was my second night in a row on Smol Acrobat watch. By the afternoon, I was tired down to my marrow. How the heck did I do this for four months in a row?? I was moving around purely automatically by 3 pm, doing what needed to be done, but none of it was enjoyable.
I cooked miso salmon and green beans for dinner, and decided to eat my feelings with a batch of Annie’s cinnamon rolls which are chock full of everything my body hasn’t been a fan of. Too bad, my brain needed it. No guilt, though, I refuse to let food become a guilt thing. I just try to maintain balance. JB thumbs upped the salmon over the green beans. They thumbs upped the cinnamon rolls over the salmon. Shocker, I know.
*****
PiC was on duty with Smol tonight, thankfully.
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April 26, 2021
Year 2 of COVID in the Bay Area.
Year 2, Day 36: WordPress is threatening to take away Classic editor in the app “soon” and that makes me mad. I don’t have time or brain to waste on figuring out the stinkin’ block editor so this may mean a forced pause in my blogging for a while. I almost entirely update on my phone in stolen moments here and there.
*****
I have been so tired that I:
- Set down my aligner case where it belongs and then spent the next ten minutes searching for it.
- Tried to place an order online without ever entering my credit card information.
- Tried to turn on the baby monitor six times and forgot what I was doing every time.
- Watched PiC make Sera get up for a last outing, then completely forgot that happened and went to take her out again half an hour later.
- Kept forgetting to close Twitter to open my Kindle or Kobo apps to read a book. I got stuck on scrolling because I couldn’t remember what else I was going to do.
*****
Is there a greater gift than a partner who doesn’t need to be told what to do next? I’m not that partner right now, PiC is. I was planning to cook dinner with my zero energy and less than half a brain. He decided we were getting take out, asked if I had a preference, placed the order and picked it up. We’re totally imperfect people but we also always try to do our best for each other and it shows. He’s the best.
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April 20, 2021
My cohort is rapidly rounding the bases to the Big 40. One dear friend expressed his feelings about that rather succinctly: “gross!” which made me laugh but also made me think.
I haven’t pinned down how I feel about it, but it made me think about what would mark this past decade as a success for me personally. It’s getting a little late in the day to do something about it if I’m not aligned with my values, but it could set me up for a great decade in my 40s. I take a look back before I look forward.
My late teens and 20s were almost entirely about survival.
I graduated from college (21), started this blog (23) while working full time at my first job out of college, paid off my parents’ debts, dated PiC for a long time with lots of life ups and downs, got engaged (28, long after I was “supposed” to be married – 25 according to family expectations), squeaked our marriage in under the wire to land that in this decade, and buried my mom who had been chronically ill.
That period was about laying a strong foundation.
My early 30s were building on that foundation.
I took a huge career risk several years ago and so far it has been worth it. We decided to try for a child and had JB before I became considered a “geriatric” mother. We set up our estate plan and trust, I accepted some incredibly hard truths about my family, and then went through the necessary steps of cutting off my dad. I’m so grateful for the friends and chosen family who have loved us in his place. My health had just been the worst for years and last year’s dietary changes brought improvements I never thought were possible. It’s not a cure and doesn’t fix everything but it helped. I started therapy last year and that wrought serious improvements to the fatigue I was struggling with, and helped me survive the first several months of the pandemic PLUS a pregnancy.
I’ve got a couple more years left in my 30s. What do I want to wring out of those years?
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March 9, 2021
*Wow I started this about a year ago. Now we have ANOTHER tiny human squawking frequently.
Not the perseverance kind of grit, we want to keep that in our lives.
The other kind that’s annoying and makes you feel itchy and irritable, like minor unnecessary arguments. I started the new year with a whole load of grumpiness. I was way behind in work, even though I’d worked all the holidays, because we also had a truckload of personal stuff to do (financial, family time, wanting to write for the blog after not feeling the urge to write for weeks, eating dinner every single night what is that why can we not just eat once a week??)
Solitary Diner talked about changing some things to make taking call less stressful. She can’t make call itself less stressful. But by figuring out that it’s the uncertainty of call, and how that uncertainty derails her, she was able to find a decent solution. By choosing not make a lot of plans on call days, she was able to appreciate it when call went her way instead of being upset when it didn’t go her way.
I had to make similar changes.
As parents: In our first year as parents, we had a tiny human squawking frequently. That derailment of my plans was doubly difficult when I’d had my heart set on getting some things done and getting some sleep that night. I tried to get everything done as things came up: caring for JB, answering emails, troubleshooting, admin work, walking the dog. But as my agent of change and chaos, while JB was the biggest variable, they weren’t the only one. As a result, I felt pulled in thirty six directions at once and I was always cranky. I finally tried compartmentalizing. When JB was awake, the only thing I did was handle JB and JB-adjacent tasks: laundry, clearing up, cooking, eating, organizing, packing lunch. All tasks during which JB could hang out with me and splitting my attention was no problem. There was no gourmet cooking happening, nothing on the stove ever needed my constant attention. When JB was asleep, the only thing I did was work.
Sectioning my day like that meant that while I still had to work a third shift, I was just tired, not tired, cranky, and frazzled.
I have to do something similar now that the pandemic is eating my brain and we’ve had JB home constantly. When I get tetchy, I have to do JB-adjacent things that don’t require my full attention.
Household 1: We recently just got my Roomba that I’ve been saving for. It’s been a 5 year dream in the saving! PiC pointed out that the dogs and their inability to drink without slopping half the bowl of water across the entire floor was going to be a problem. Roombas are not water bots. We’ve long been annoyed by the need to constantly mop up after our beloved pups who wanted to double as spraying hoses every time they drink but we’ve not considered what to ever actually done anything about it until now. I finally realized there was an area in the house I could move the food and water bowls to reduce the sloppage significantly, so I made the experimental shift. Mopping is down about 80%.
Household 2: I saved for years for this one. The Roomba itself is another way we’re gently removing some frustration. I want the floors to be vacuumed more frequently but I don’t have the energy or time to do it myself. The Roomba is a useful tool to help us out. Thanks to Wall-E, I imagine Ronnie has a personality as it scales minor obstacles, or gets stuck. I’m vastly enjoying being able to set Ronnie on the move and know my house is being cleaned while I work.
Household 3: We’ve stopped hand-washing all our dishes and instead run the dishwasher 2-4 times a week. If you told me ten years ago that PiC would relent on this chore, I’d have laughed my butt off. But here we are!
Work: I reconfigured software to give me quick access to my frequently used tools. Then I redesigned some templates that I were both clunky and didn’t work great. Now they are aesthetically pleasing and I get the job done faster! There has yet to be software to stop me from accidentally hitting “cancel” instead of “save” or closing a tab I didn’t mean to close, though.
All of this makes me think of that West Wing scene when Bruno tells the President that he would be a fool to ignore any tactic that won’t hurt them and can reduce drag on the campaign. I agree with the sentiment and really need to practice this more.
:: What things bother you? Can any of them be fixed with a small adjustment?
July 15, 2019
Walking the dogs, I see a lot of open garage doors. Sometimes, there’s a whole living room set up in there. People hang out enjoying the breeze (or the fog). The rest of time, the garages are storage units. Once in a long while, I spot a car parked, and it might be covered with stuff too, but mostly they’re packed to the gills with boxes and piles and more piles.
It’s positively nerve-wracking to see people threading their way through the 6 inch path left between stacks piled right up to the ceiling. It looks like the whole thing is going to come tumbling down and crush them. It very nearly did, last week. The stacks of stuff atop the boat that clearly hasn’t been out on the water for quite some time because it couldn’t possibly be extracted from the garage were teetering precariously as the lady reached for something just beyond her fingertips. I didn’t want to be a creepy stranger though, since we don’t know each other, so I walked on, holding my breath for her.
It made me reflect.
That’s so much time and money sitting there. Time digging through your piles. Money re-buying things you can’t find and probably already have. Energy and psychic energy. I feel like that stuff preys on your mind. It does on mine, at least. Every time I look at something not being used, the money we paid flashes before my eyes: $100 for that bike we don’t use, $200 for that camera lens, $300 for my bike I’ve never ridden. It’s not a huge list but each thing and the associated opportunity cost makes me batty. One Frugal Girl did this to herself on purpose to train herself out of buying things, it really works!
And yet, we all have a tendency to hoard here. I’m as guilty as anyone else, with my obsession with reusing containers (and really nice note cards and really nice pens and a really good zipper pouch). Some of it stems from not having stuff when I was younger, I keep wanting to fill all the needs. Luckily, I also don’t want to feel crushed under the weight of my belongings, wasting time and money on storing things that just sit there moldering away. I want to feel free and enjoy our space. Emphasis on having space. So I embrace that feeling as much as I can.
Generally, we hold the clutter to a static volume so it’s not growing by much but that’s not good enough. Seeing what can happen if we don’t keep working at this decluttering, relentlessly, is a heck of a kick in the pants to get back on it.
I’ve been staring down (errrrr…. ignoring) my own piles in the garage and the office because a) I keep running out of time and energy and b) it’s really hard to get rid of things with a preschooler running around trying to reclaim everything. I need to tackle at least a box a week if I want to get on top of this but I’ve got to squeeze it into daycare hours.
Stress cleaning works well for me and I put it to good use last week: framed photos that I’m not ready to put up were all piled into one place, two boxes were emptied, piles of magazines were recycled, and a handful of books were set aside for donation. There are seven more boxes in the office and seven more boxes in the garage but two boxes and random floor clutter eliminated is progress!
We’re not trying to be totally minimalist. I remember someone tweeting that their house could burn down and they wouldn’t replace most of what they owned. That’s not us or how we think of comfort. We’re striving for a happy medium of having most of the things we need plus a few things we want.
Speaking of wants, S’s career break post brought up my list of wants. I don’t think it’s a secret that despite all the work I do to reduce clutter, I still crave things like a magpie. Not a thieving one. But definitely an avaricious one. It’s nice to get it out of my system because most of these wants boil down to money and having a nearly endless supply of it, set against my desire not to be found buried under my things like the worst episode of hoarders.
- This adorable Captain Marvel tutu dress. I barely ever wear dresses and I have never in my life owned a tutu but here I am, wanting one because this is so awesome. (This only comes in kid’s sizes)
- Refills for my Uni-Ball Signo 207 Retractable Gel Pen, 0.38mm Ultra-Micro Point. They don’t seem to sell refills anywhere. I hate the waste of just tossing pens when they run out of ink.
- A new ultralight laptop.
- A new backpack.
- Two beautiful brightly colored tablecloths for both the regular and expanded-with-a-leaf sizes.
- A water pitcher for serving guests so I don’t have to walk back and forth to the kitchen filling two glasses at a time over and over. I will have already put miles in cooking and serving before we sit down.
- A better organizational set of baskets for my office. I bought several baskets on sale from Michael’s dirt cheap two Christmases ago but they’re not quite enough for my needs once I gave some to JB and the dogs for their toys.
- A digital piano (which isn’t allowed until I have cleared my entire office of all unnecessary things. So maybe never.)
- All of the books: Seanan McGuire’s, Sabaa Tahir’s, Daniel Jose Older’s, Terry Pratchett’s, Cassandra Khaw’s, N.K. Jemisin’s, Nnedi Okarafor’s, Zen Cho’s. All of them. A glorious library full of books that won’t hurt my hands, a hammock, and a fabulous cushy chair in which to read.
- A group vacation with my closest friends where I’m actually on vacation.
- A three week vacation in Japan with people we enjoy and that are good with JB.
I’m working on channeling my wanting for things into only very useful things we’ll use for many years but it needs some work.
:: Are you comfortable with how much you own?
January 21, 2019
I’m having a bit of a patience problem.
- I’ve almost closed out the 2018 budget but there’s one last check to be cashed from December 1st (when is it ok to tell someone to take their damn money already??)
- I was fortunate enough to have a choice between maxing out our IRAs this year right away or investing more in our brokerage so I did the former to get it out of our hair.
- I’ve calculated our expected cash flow for the first three months of 2019 and scheduled automatic savings to reflect that.
- I’ve calculated our expected large expenses for the year and scheduled automatic savings to cover them over the course of the year.
What’s left?
Mostly the everyday things.
- Working my job every day with attendant frustrations so I can keep earning that paycheck that feeds our savings and investing.
- Feeding my family – meal planning, grocery shopping, thinking about diet stuff.
- Walking the dogs – training Sera, making sure Seamus has every possible health need covered.
- Making sure to the best of our abilities that JB grows up to be a good and decent human. We also need to get zir into some sports and activities to be a bit more well-rounded and make a few more friends.
- Reading all the good books I can reach (more more more!)
- We’ve got one big trip for later this year to be planned out. After that? Probably staying close to home for a while. Now that Seamus is showing his age (his hearing is suspect, his eyesight seems to be less sharp, he’s definitely much crankier) we’re going to curtail international travel so we can spend this time with him.
These are good things. I’m enjoying them. I’d like to enjoy more of them. I’d like to be out in the garden ripping out the rest of those weeds now that the rains have softened the previously rock hard ground.
I should be pretty content.
Instead, the past few weeks, I’ve been obsessively sitting here staring at our accounts, glaring at them to sprout 100x their income as if Power Stare is a method of investment growth (it’s not). I’ve been cranky and impatient. (more…)