March 30, 2016
I’d been wondering something in my quiet moments. Why I haven’t started that business yet, or finished a creative project? Surely I’ve not gotten lazy and complacent?
It’s possible but it doesn’t seem likely.
Despite knowing that I’m awfully tired from constantly being on the go, oh and also you know, health, it’s hard to fight the sneaking suspicion that my lack of greater achievement’s down to a personal failing.
To get to the truth, I decided to Time Study myself. What do I do all day? Where can I make improvements?
Between two full jobs, a full toddler, Seamus, and the odd hobby or two, there is no such thing as a typical day.
Our days fit in three categories: both of us are home and I have work, I’m home with LB and have work, I have work and no LB.
So let’s dive right in!
A day where I work without the baby around
PiC gets to sleep in until 6:20 am, could lay abed even later if he wanted because LB doesn’t stir until 6:30 but he likes to get started ahead of hir.
It’s 7:47 before I hear it. The door creaks open and a cackle floats in. It’s time for my morning kiss and goodbye, it’s a Daddy and LB day, which also means it’s a Mom and Seamus day.
I sit up. “Can I have a kiss?” Obligingly LB leans in and suckerfishes to my cheek. Little lick, little nibble. Baby kiss!
“Can I have one more?”
Ze convulses in a silent laugh, then twists upside down and sideways out of PiC’s arms to dangle over me, expectant.
I catch hir blithely trusting form and ze grins. One last kiss for the family and they’re off. Seamus and I look at each other, and flop back in bed for another ten minutes of cozy peace.
Sooner than I’d like, I crawl out of bed. It’s time for Seamus’s morning routine.
Checking email on my phone for emergencies, I brush my teeth and get dressed. The favorite part of my telecommuting schedule is usually living in my pajamas but somehow getting dressed in the morning feels more efficient than waiting til we have to go outside later.
Within 15 minutes of waking, Seamus has his medication and we’re headed outside. This used to be a quick dash to take care of business while I distractedly checked email on my phone. Thanks to a reminder of OHIO, I’ve adopted a firm stance about time wasted on rereading emails, so this is now our time to contemplate and appreciate nature in companionable silence. We move slowly at first in the morning chill, watching the last bits of fog lace through the tree branches, letting our old joints warm up.
By the time we find our stride, it’s time to mosey on back. Our morning jaunts take 25 minutes, and then Seamus prances at the door, anticipating breakfast. I get him started, start a load of whites in the wash, get a glass of water, find my glasses, and settle in to work.
Thirty seven emails and 4 hours later, it’s time to hydrate and grab a mini chocolate bar from the fridge. As an afterthought, and a placatory gesture to the adult somewhere in me, I also take the yogurt cup with me. Funny how when you set the yogurt and candy on the desk together, I end up eating the yogurt first. Don’t get me wrong, the candy disappears an hour later, too.
Think about eating a real meal. Keep working.
Early afternoon brings a quick flurry of activity: put clothes in the dryer, wash the dishes, prep the veggies for tonight’s dinner, open, recycle, and shred mail. Put together the week’s to do packet for bills. Then, back at the computer for three more hours.
Seamus dines early these days, but he always starts the dinner dance 30 minutes before just in case I can be wheedled. Most of the afternoon is dog-naps, but his internal clock is something to behold as his perked ears bob up behind my computer screen five minutes before I intend to take a break. Dinner for him is the work of a few minutes, then I’m back into the computer glare for another hour.
By 5 pm, a break would be welcome, as would be dinner, so I head into the kitchen to throw something together. Starch, veggie, protein!
Put the pot pie in the oven and sit back down to quickly draft about two-thirds of a blog post from that scrap of an idea that bubbled up with the pot pie fixings. 30 minutes later, the oven is cozy just in time for LB and PiC to get home, exclaiming about the buttery pastry scents wafting out the door.
LB hands me the contents of the daycare bag, one by one, and I quickly wash up hir bottles and lunch boxes.
LB’s still unbelievably upbeat after a long day with hardly a nap, so ze cackles hir way through deconstructed pot pie, and then experiments with gravity. Hey look! The chicken will SPLAT just like the carrot did, and so does the green bean! That’s hilarious! *cackles*
We know it’s a necessary phase but child, stop that!
We bundle The Messy One off to hit the showers once the play time turns to boredom and most of the food now gets rubbed in hir hair. A bottle of milk warms during shower time, and the non-bathing parent clears up the dinner mess.
By 8:20, ze’s creaking and chirping from bed, falling asleep, and I get a shower! I wryly think back to the early days of newborn life when a shower was a complete luxury and give myself a full 10 minutes before it’s back to work while PiC does post-dinner washing up.
My concentration starts to waver around 10:30 and I realize that the last ten minutes were lost to mindless oblivion. It’s time to call it, so I check everything one last time to make sure I hit my deadlines and head to the kitchen.
Usually packing LB’s lunch is still amusing: ze eats everything so I just compose a sort of balanced collection of snacks in bite sizes and that’s set. (Yes, I’m easily amused.) I’m the most underachieving bento box packing mom ever and I’m only that because it totally entertains me. If I could justify it, ze would be carrying hir own R2-D2 to daycare. Heck, if I had to pack a lunch that sucker would be MINE. PiC is in charge of the bottles and labeling everything according to daycare procedure.
Oh and Seamus needs his meds so I check on the supply and make a mental note. Second half of the month is always time to figure out if we need more medications or pill pockets, or basically anything on Amazon’s Subscribe & Save. I’m aiming for that 15% off, if we get a delivery.
The kitchen’s cleared up, lunch is packed, and we’ve made it through another day. I deserve bed and a book. If only sleep came to adults as easily as it does to the dog whose been snoring for the past 2 hours! These hours of the night are the most wasteful part of my 24 hours: I have to read to relax enough to sleep. There are days, though, sleep eludes me til past 2 am.
Yesterday, I worked til 2 am so at least trying to sleep is an improvement for this hour of the night.
What did I learn?
As much as I love seeeing LB’s face all day, when it comes to working, daycare is a blessing. I get so much done when it’s just me. I have so energy left at the end of the day to snuggle hir and do bedtime routines. If only daycare wasn’t a petri dish but that immune system needs to be built sometime and early is better than later.
Daycare has made a huge difference in our ability to get things done and not be exhausted every second of every day. It’s been absolutely critical in letting us both have our alone time professionally, and therefore have the energy to give each other personal time.
I’m not a morning person but sometimes my pain drives an extra early morning whether I intended to or not. This means that it’s not always a good idea to insist on getting everything done the night before. For the first time, I’m becoming relaxed about doing as much as I can, when I can, and trusting that the rest will get done in its own time.
:: What morning routines work best for you? Are you decidedly at your best at any particular time of day or day of week?
October 7, 2015
We’ve been reading a lot of Dr. Seuss lately. More accurately, I’ve been reading, LB just cruises by and checks out the illustrations sometimes. Believe it or not, this is the first time I’ve read Oh, the places you’ll go in its entirety. It’s actually pretty good!
I like that the optimism and enthusiasm is tempered with nods to reality: that sometimes you’ll be alone, sometimes you’ll hit a rough spot. And other times, you’ll steer into….
The Waiting Place…
…for people just waiting.
Waiting for a train to go
or a bus to come, or a plane to go
or the mail to come, or the rain to go
or the phone to ring, or the snow to snow
or the waiting around for a Yes or No
or waiting for their hair to grow.
Everyone is just waiting.
Waiting for the fish to bite
or waiting for the wind to fly a kite
or waiting around for Friday night
or waiting, perhaps, for their Uncle Jake
or a pot to boil, or a Better Break
or a string of pearls, or a pair of pants
or a wig with curls, or Another Chance.
Everyone is just waiting.
Oh, the places you’ll go!
Clearly, waiting isn’t high on Dr. Seuss’s list, not the way he puts it, but every so often, patience is a virtue.
I’m waiting on … little things
- UPS to deliver replacement electronics. All my devices are trying to die on me.
- UPS to deliver Seamus’s medication.
- United miles to post to our account.
Bigger things
- Perhaps a bit nervously, my interview for Jessica’s podcast goes up in October.
- For the next round of inspiration on my writing project. You can’t always force the writing. When I do, I end up with a thousand words of drivel. It’s not a pretty sight.
- 2016 travel plans are taking shape. Quite a few things are already lined up next year and we’ve got several itineraries started in TripIt.
- For my work across multiple projects to bear fruit. For free moments to squeeze in work on those projects.
- A lot of people I care about are having a hard time right now, in all aspects of life, and I’m doing my darnedest to support them, online or off. I am hoping that their efforts bear fruit.
What are y’all waiting for these days? Are you having trouble living in the moment as you wait or do you feel balanced?
August 25, 2015
Status: Flattened, with feet up. It’s the only way I can write, with the few still-functional fingers, when my hands, arms, shoulders, and back are racetracks for searing, electro-shock variety pain. After etching grooves deep in my bones, the pain creates a fatigue swamp, literally knocking me out for a few hours. By Day 5, staying conscious is an accomplishment. I spent Days 1 and 2 waking up from that haze wondering what the heck time it is and when I passed out.
Looks like I overdid it. Or maybe it was all due to fall apart right about now. I’m not sure. Navigating that balance between doing what you “can” but not taking on too much is like blindfolding yourself, spinning in circles, then trying to unlock the master lock of a door with ten identical knobs. With a toothpick. It’s a crapshoot. There are no reliable signals to follow.
Add to that, moderation was always a special sort of hell for me.
I want to do more. I know I shouldn’t actually do it but I always want to do more and usually telling me “you can’t” is like pitching a lit match into a hay bale and saying don’t burn. Before my pain became chronic, pushing myself was a treat.
When I walk a quarter of a mile, I want that next quarter. If I run a half, I want another half. That was how I worked up to my first mile under 8 minutes, was how I competed in my chosen sports, was how I fought my way up, professionally. I still remember learning about building stamina from my first great P.E. teacher. Youth was on my side back then too, but the regimen was sound. Performing exercise to failure (also known as: until you can no longer maintain perfect form) was the first of many steps to building strength and endurance.
“No pain, no gain” was my actual motto. Fool.
My body doesn’t respond to that tearing down of muscles the same way anymore. It doesn’t work normally anymore. It stopped being normal half a lifetime ago.
I was never a quick study, though heaven help me, I’m some kind of stubborn. At first, the trade-off for pushing through, even if only by 15 or 20 minutes, was “only” days of crippling pain. Later on, crushing fatigue joined the party. An afternoon running errands cost two days of bed rest. A couple hours of exercise cost a week of mobility. Three weeks, once, when I was particularly boneheaded. If -no, when- I challenge myself, push myself just another eighth of a mile, just another five minutes, “just another” crashes down around my ears. It becomes a choice to sacrifice all other life activities like feeding myself or bathing. It should have been obvious, but it still took more than a decade before I accepted it.
Having accepted that fact, now, it’s a whole other struggle.
It’s battling my own instincts to get up and get out because to do otherwise is lazy except that to do so is to hamstring myself because I’m down to my last Energon Cube. It’s trying to parse the muddled and confusing signals correctly so that I don’t cross the line, but “stay active!” How do you tell when enough is enough if sometimes you’re feeling as close to fine as I get, don’t feel like you’re overexerting, but only crash the moment you stop moving? What do I go on, if I can’t trust how I feel?
To make things even more confusing, once every several months or so, for a couple hours it’s like the sun is shining on me. I have energy and only medium pain, the fatigue has backed off and I’m like unto a Tiny God of Getting Shit Done. For those brief magical hours, anything seems possible. That’s not today’s problem though.
As usual, I’m not the only one who’s had a rough few days. Abby has, as have a few other friends. I call a do-over on a crappy wasted weekend!
August 21, 2015
This is a bit of a brain dump.
It’s Friday and on the one hand, holy crap, what have I gotten done this week?? I made it through 4 week days with unusual probably fibro-related brain fog and 4 bouts of my glucose levels bottoming out leaving me shaky, dizzy, and almost gasping for breath. Got some work done. Didn’t get any of my real writing done.
On the other hand, THANK GOODNESS it’s Friday.
I am grateful beyond measure for Fridays right now. This level of relief’s normally the sign to quit my job and move on, most people TGIF because work is so very onerous, but that’s not precisely my problem. I am at odds with my job, it’s true, but it’s manageable even when I take on too much. Usually I just power – or muddle – through but it takes more of a toll some weeks than others. This week more than last. Frazzled is not usually my thing and it’s usually a sign that something is twirling off the axis.
It’s the short break from being Juggler and Timekeeper Extraordinaire that I crave. There’s a sense, during the week, that every single minute has to be used wisely. During naps, between naps, I have to be Getting Everything Done. That go-go-go feeling is draining.
On the weekend, it’s ok to clock out of Mom duty and hand the Adorable Creeper over for a break. We can take turns, it’s not just a hamster wheel of work / child / housework / child / work / child / housework.
We didn’t do much on our weekends, in the pre-LB era, except when we did too much. I like that our weekends are a little more even keeled now. I like that I actually want to take small outings occasionally. It makes me feel human again. We went to the Ferry Building and you all know how much I love doing that. We might even go so far as to take the family to a little farm and meet farm animals. For FUN.
My days, since last month, are a little less hectic than before but they remain nonstop. LB needs a third nap now and that’s great. I get quite a lot done during naps and late into the evening but I haven’t made the time to work on my extracurricular projects as much as I ought to. I need to do more writing. A LOT more writing. I need to test some business ideas and determine my next steps after this job is over.
I do have time but it happens in bits and pieces so it’s not useful for tackling the bigger chunks of either project. The trick will be to figure out how to smush those bits together to make a usable large chunk, like the ends of soap. Until then, my anti-stress mechanism is, as always, planning so that’s where my little time chunks go. I research our next trip, our next investment, our next credit card.
Under the good news column, PiC insisted that I take some real me time, and I caved. So I’ll do that.
Also, I stretched out of my comfort zone agreeing to do an interview on Jessica’s podcast. It won’t come out for a while yet so now I have far too much time to think about how silly I sounded, or how much I rambled, or any number of things.
I blinked and it’s near the end of August. Did anyone see that coming? Before you know it, we’ll be into Fall. And into my birthmonth! I might take a leaf from a good friend’s book and celebrate all month. Low key, but all month, in little ways. Because why not?
Summer is winding down, are you planning any last hurrahs before fall rolls in?
July 3, 2015
We’re in between childcare helpers, still, so these days my schedule is a really weird non-routine routine. It’s not terrible, but it’s a really incredibly full day. I still log at least 8 hours of work, not continuously, but thank goodness my work allows this kind of flexibility.
If we’re really lucky, LB actually stays asleep after we put hir down at least til 8 hours later. Someday, I dream of this someday, maybe ze will even sleep 10 or 12 hours. In the meantime, every weekday is looking something like this:
Between 4-4:30am: get up, change diaper, feed, PiC gets up and tries to get hir back down to sleep, while I collapse in bed.
Between 7-7:30am: If I’m lucky, ze did got to sleep and is still sleeping which means I have time to brush my teeth and get to work. If not, ze probably got me up again and PiC is too beat so it’s my turn to play with hir for a couple hours til the next nap because ze is up for good.
Between 8-9am: Zip through some work before PiC leaves for the day. PiC makes me breakfast, I absentmindedly scarf that down with one hand, the other hand still working. LB lands in my lap to “help” for a while. If ze’s cooperative, ze will play with toys. If less so, ze will attempt to take over typing.
10-12pm: Try to get LB down for a nap. Wash dishes, wash bottles. Work like the wind while ze is sleeping.
If I get a 3rd hour of nap, I can do some household stuff: Pay bills, update tax filing info for 2014, get the laundry going, put food in the crockpot, follow up on weird things with billers.
1-3:30pm: feeding/diapering, play with a very awake Wiggle Worm. Read books, dangle toys. Take hir and Seamus out for a walk. Let hir “crawl” on the floor while I catch any easy to answer emails.
3:30-4pm: feeding, convince The Angry Inchworm to take another nap if ze is tired. Sometimes it’s a 30-45 minute third nap, sometimes this is the second nap of the day and lasts an hour or two. Seamus will start angling for his medications because after he takes them, he gets dinner. Whip through any dishes, knock out some more work.
Between 5:30-6:30 pm: LB will be up and at it again so I’m all hirs. Feeding, diapering, and playing again. Feed Seamus. PiC gets home at some point and takes over for an hour of daddy+baby time. Sometimes they go out for a walk with Seamus.
7 pm: I start gathering a change of clothes and we’re blasting some tunes for hir bath. We’ve got this down to a science, now. Ze was terrified by the big bathtub but with music, toys, and a super efficient routine, ze’s cool with it now.
7:30-8 pm: If we’re in good odor with the baby gods, ze is finishing up the bedtime bottle and nodding off. If not, ze demands another bottle and is wide awake.
9 pm: Adult people dinner. Talk through anything we need to discuss, if we still have brainpower. Sometimes PiC can get in a workout before dinner. Sometimes we BOTH get to take showers. Sometimes I’m still catching up on work. Other times, I’m trying to arrange travel or figure out what’s up with our commitments.
11 pm: Remember that thing called sleep and stumble to bed wondering why the hell we didn’t do this earlier.
February 24, 2015
My baseline for “tolerable pain” has inched up yet again. At least half my body is always aching, on fire, swollen, immobilized or whatever fresh indignity has dropped in for a visit.
But I’m living on pain meds just to stay at that baseline. When “not screaming in excruciating pain” is your new “I’m OK”, you start questioning life / choices.
Getting up to 4 hours of sleep per 24 hours, in half and one hour increments feels amazing.
I’m forcing myself to drink as much water as I can hold. Since having LB, and pain shooting up as dramatically as a game winning ball getting spiked, I’m struggling to eat and drink normally. I even made up a little ditty about water to remind myself but I’ve already forgotten the song.
My fingers were dislocated this week and apparently this isn’t surprising to my doctor. Hmm. They just keep on popping out everyday now. Worry when they turn blue, she says. Well….. OK…. I will.
I’ve been alternating between a headache or nausea for days. What’s up with that?
I’m really impatient with my slow healing. Like I needed a whole other heap of pain to make life interesting.
I’m even more impatient with my brain fog. It’s frustrating that I can’t comprehend the numbers in a brief accounting sheet, that half the emails I read have to be saved for later rereading. And re-rereading.
Seamus needs room to play and I hate that we don’t have a yard for him. Expensive way to be able to toss a ball for the dog but it makes me want a house and respectable yard for him. Most days I’m shuffling by inches so PiC does all the walks and more than we’d like are more functional walks than fun. We’d like to do better by him. And since I can’t take him to the park… A park should come to us. In the form of a house and yard.
On the other hand, while I wouldn’t want to buy a house in our current area, I can appreciate the convenience of the location. We have a fair number of grocery stores and food choices, and a decent array of transit. We’re not a good place to visit but it’s a decent starting point to get to somewhere interesting if you know what I mean.
January 9, 2015
“You don’t tell me ‘No’, you say ‘No’ to your parents!”
When I was nine, a landlady was prescribing the weirdest diet to fix whatever she thought was wrong with me. The details I remember involved raw eggs, sounded terrible, and possibly was meant to plump me up but I distinctly remember politely hearing her out and then answering truthfully when she wound up the unsolicited diatribe with the demand: so are you going to do it?
“No.”
She nearly burst with indignation! How DARE a scrawny child say she wasn’t going to follow her sage (and totally bogus homeopathic) advice?
She followed up with a lecture on how totally inappropriate it was for me to decline to follow the instructions and how out of line it was (I stopped listening around here to ponder on why someone who was basically a stranger would tell a little kid to defy her parents or feel the right to dispense “medical knowledge” and tell her off for trusting her parents better than a stranger in matters of…. Anything.)
I knew I hadn’t done anything wrong when I looked at Mom’s bemused face. After all, there was nothing wrong in saying No. I hadn’t called the lady a quack or been rude to her. But that was also the first time I’d ever said no to an adult. I had no idea it was going to become such a habit 🙂
In my teens, a dear friend’s dad told me something about parenting that really stuck: one of the hardest moments for kids growing up is to realize that their parents are actually human too, they make mistakes. They’re not gifted with omniscience just because they’re parents. And the moment you, as a child, realize that, your relationship evolves… And that can be painful.
It’s so true.
R-E-S-P-E-C-T
In our culture, “Respect your elders” is one of the highest tenets.
To this day I still can’t call teachers who have become good friends by their first names. It’ll always be “Mr./Mrs./Ms. [X].”
Learning to manage my relationships with adults, including parents and parental fugues, required a great deal of learning to reason, to accept that we will disagree about things –fundamental life changing things– and still love and respect those who are important and disagree with me while walking my own path without their help or approval.
Heck, to this day, my dad still doesn’t know what I do for a living. It’s just completely outside the realm of normalcy in our family. They understand going into medicine (as a doctor or a nurse), engineering, and accounting. And some entrepreneurial things. But I’m the weirdo who went the Humanities route and then even further off the tracks into the professional world. I might as well be a lawyer, it’d make more sense to them 😉
By and large, I always respected my parents and what they taught me based on their life experiences.
As a first generation kid, though, there were more than a few situations in which it would have been a big mistake to follow their guidance. Oftentimes, it seemed to just be down to personality or cultural differences, and it wasn’t always clear who was right, but it was valuable learning when to trust my own instincts and seek other sources of wisdom.
When it came to functioning in the American workplace, the generational gap was the overriding factor and it became most obvious that there were ropes I’d have to learn on my own.
This isn’t a revelation, every new generation has to learn to manage adulthood without training wheels on, but even after years of standing on my own, some lessons still take time to learn. These were my two biggest though:
Don’t stand up for yourself
Then: Dad was always the pacifist in the family, the salve after Mom’s fire, and I had trouble relating to him. I was always frustrated by his lack of action or motivation to act when someone wronged him. When an employee embezzled and basically put them out of business, he felt that it was better to turn the other cheek or “take the high road”. So instead of possibly recouping some of that lost money and staying afloat, my parents had to declare bankruptcy and shut down what had been their livelihood for years. That embezzler screwed us and our long time employees over and I was outraged that Dad refused to fight.
Now: I realize I didn’t know enough about their recordkeeping to know if they could have made a case but it still bothers me that he didn’t fight.
Then: When my sibling was bullied at school, I’m pretty sure the advice was the same: take the high road. By the time it was my turn to get bullied .. Well let’s just say I never waited to get advice on the matter. Even as an 8 year old, I knew I wasn’t going to stand for being literally shoved around and hurt, especially since there were never any official consequences and he never got caught. When our class bully tried to throw me off a platform, he got the biggest punch in the gut I could muster. Years of fighting with my sibling had given me a pretty good right hook and I’m sure the kid, who had at least 30 lbs on me, didn’t have an inkling that was coming. He never laid a hand on me again. My reaction to unwelcome touching, with guys twice my size who would try and force themselves on me when it was clear I didn’t want someone hovering over and hugging me, remained the same throughout the years. No one ever had the temerity to repeat their aggressions after getting a sharp elbow in return but I could NOT understand why they thought it was OK to put their arms around me, uninvited and without permission. (Actually it was clear why they did it, it was a stunt to show off to their friends what they could get away with. Joke was on them, really.) Obviously, I’m not a natural hugger.
Now: Dad recently related an anecdote where he sharply told off his sister for advising my cousins to take the high road on some bullying situation, pointing out that if her grandchild was being pushed around and hurt, would she honestly advise turning the other cheek and keeping quiet?
Either he’s changed his stance or he only wouldn’t go to bat for his own. I don’t know what it was but he’s certainly never advocated standing up for yourself to me, he’s always tried to talk me out of it.
Trust your bosses: they mean well
Right.
Then: When my manipulative boss tried to give me cash for personal use, my parents guessed he was just trying to be nice. But my gut said there was something not kosher in being handed cash out of pocket by a married male boss with tendencies to hold unvoiced expectations over your head. He made it very clear he considered this money a personal gift, but it wasn’t so clear what he expected in return. He certainly wasn’t saying he wasn’t expecting anything nor that it was OK to decline, so from his position of authority over me, it was an incredibly awkward place to be in.
Now: I don’t know if trusting someone in a position of authority is a cultural thing or if it’s the habit of deferring to authority because they can make trouble for you (mine certainly did) but I don’t think I ever asked for their advice when it came to workplace dynamics ever again.
Are you a product of both a culture or generation gap? One or the other?