We’ve got a lovely neighbor who is genuinely happy to take JuggerBaby for 10-20 minutes if we need, probably longer if we asked, in the evenings. We’ve exchanged kids a few times now, her family is great with JuggerBaby and ze is totally into hanging out with them. Ze isn’t in the least bit shy of running up and demanding a snack. (The well trained kid in me groans at this imposition. But we are happy to feed their little guy when he asks for a snack so fair’s fair?) Their little guy is much older but he loves the company of anyone at any age, so he’s hung out with us a few times too, sans parents, and he’s hugely entertaining when he’s not running around in circles.
It’d be the perfect arrangement but alas, they’re only here for a little while. It’s hard to find people we consider a good fit: trustworthy, patient and firm, very reasonable, willing to tell a child “no”, and just easy to get along with. We’ll stay in touch, I’m sure, but they won’t be just on the same block anymore and sometimes, we just need a hand from someone who can be there without a long commute or scheduling two weeks in advance.
I mentioned earlier that we found babysitters – yaaayy! But they are only available the occasional Saturday and run at least $25/hour – OUCH.
We’d originally imagined babysitting to be the solution of buying ourselves some free time, some guilt free time, where we happily paid someone to help out with JuggerBaby for an hour or two to do something for ourselves or just get some work done. It’s tough when we’re both timing almost everything on the weekend for hir naps. It’s even tougher staring down the barrel of hir phasing out the second nap. (Say it ain’t so!)
We work at making sure PiC gets his gym time, that’s as important to his mental health as my quiet no-people time is to mine. Thus far, I’ve gotten by with thinking of daycare days as double duty days: It’s when I get my quiet me-time, and I get all my work done.
Once in a while I think wistfully of a time when I wasn’t on the dog or the baby’s schedule. Mostly, I think I’m as rested as I can be given health issues, and as fulfilled on a personal level as I need to be, right now, but eventually I’d like a little bit more. Nothing scheduled, I hate the commitment of taking weekly classes. Just the odd hour once or twice a month where I am solely committed to just doing whatever I want.
I don’t want to say that it’s entirely down to JuggerBaby that we don’t get our time, in that blamey kind of way, because I don’t resent it. The reality is we chose to have a human puppy. That’s fine, it brings a whole load of work and compensates with fun and laughter and snot and drool. It’s relatively even. But ze just happens to be the reason this period carries extra scheduling challenges.
I know this is a problem everyone has to some extent with their families, friends, work, and all their other obligations.
:: Do you get enough time to yourself? How do you carve out time for yourself? Do you prioritize alone time and social time?
I leaned back against the side of hir crib as ze stealthily, unsteadily, inched away from me, leading with hands gripping bar by bar, heading for the opposite wall. No idea what ze was after. I couldn’t see from my position and I wasn’t trying. It was easier to peep through the bars and catch hir eye, then dramatically fail to hide behind this crib bar or that slat. Ze took the bait, reversing course, shaking with increasing ebullience after each of my faked gasps of horror.
A baby predator, more enthusiastic than skilled, catching the scent of weakness and running it to ground with cackles like fireworks, bright bursts of delight, a lopsided grin showcasing nearly five Tic Tac teeth. Dropping to all fours on final approach, ze menaced me like a tiny tiny bull, bobbing forward, backward, threatening to leap and smother me in drool and laughter.
Ze dissolved into uncontrollable chortles and I want it to last forever.
Who’s the boss?!
Ze clambers up, heedless of danger to life or limb, to plop into our laps or atop our legs with a book in hand, imperiously opening it to a page, and pushing it up to our faces with an insistent “‘ey!”
Read it to me!
When we’re both in the same room, ze insists that we share reading duties. I read one page, ze takes the book away and places it in PiC’s hand. He reads a page and a half, ze switches again.
I think ze learned this from Seamus. He used to insist on specific turn-taking when we played, too.
Temple of Doom
After an 11 hour daycare stint, I braced for impact. LB loves the place but an 11 hour day of playing and socializing with, in all likelihood, no more than a one hour nap had the potential to end in tears (hirs) and bruises (ours). This wise mama had dinner ready by the time they walked in the door, and what a grin it was on that child’s face when we said hello. It was hardly believable but not pushing our luck, we quickly started to feed the beast. Not quick enough. Within several bites, and ten minutes, the excitement of the day came crashing down, and ze flopped over sideways in hir chair, trying to navigate a spoonful of mashed potatoes into hir mouth, piteously crying. Considering hir aim when upright, that effort was doomed.
Ze sat up abruptly and alternately stretched out hir arms to me and yelling at PiC “Ma-ma! Pa-pa!” while he went for the bedtime bottle.
Once freed from the confines of the high chair, ze was all grins again, cackling for peek-a-boo and stood to dance in the bath when the joy was too much. Best moments of the night, I thought.
Dressed and damp, we three laid on the bed together, Seamus stretched alongside the bed to complete our set, and ze drank hir bottle. We normally put hir to bed solo, freeing the other parent to spend a few minutes cleaning up but it’d been a long day.
Hir drinking flagged, tiny fists curled around the bottle drooping lower and lower until I lent a supporting hand. The “enough!” push back never came. Ze drained the bottle but gripped it tighter. Tentatively, PiC produced a second bottle and we tried to extract the first but ze grabbed it back with both hands, insistently. We tried again. This time, the second bottle slid in place the split second after the first was released and success!
Then I realize we’re celebrating the tricking of a one year old so that does a little number on the self esteem. But only for a minute.
:: Do you triumph over children? Are you a mess when you’re tired or hungry?
A closet catastrophe in search of style with comfort
I read Katherine’s post on dressing as a new mom with a tinge of guilt. Never a fashion plate, I took some meanhearted comments about baby weight heard when I was still pregnant too much to heart, and went far in the opposite direction of refusing to give a hoot about worrying over dressing well when I had a baby to keep alive, a career to also keep alive, and so on. “Getting dressed” didn’t mean very much more than changing from one set of comfy pajamas to the next, on harder days, and into cargo pants and tees on the easier ones.
There’s a happy medium between not caring about how you look and being obsessed with your appearance to the exclusion of all substantive things. My life fits in the middle, caring when it matters to me, and leaving it the rest of the time, but I’d left that by the wayside.
The casual nature of my job didn’t help. The SF-standard CEO in tee-shirts and flipflops isn’t just a stereotype! To make matters worse, I’m digging through a wardrobe that still has clothes dating back to 1999. Because I might go somewhere warm again, someday! And it still fits! And… no, that doesn’t mean I should still wear them. For someone who came from having very little, discarding things that still “work” is a hard notion to wrap my head around.
Now that I’m out walking more, dressing down and even sloppily is my camouflage, protection against the street harassment. I can’t walk across the street with LB alone without being harassed, and this isn’t one of the worst neighborhoods in town.
I’ll keep dressing in “ugly” camo for those jaunts because life is too busy to waste time wishing fiery deaths upon that worthless scum that catcalls, stalks and harasses women on the street. For the rest of the time, though…
An essential part of being a professional, secondary to high performance, is presenting myself professionally.
It’s time to shape up. It’s never been easy to put together a wardrobe that looks professional but can be worn day to day. Like Cloud, I’ve never had lofty ambitions in the fashion arena. I don’t need to be fashionable, I need to be not frumpy. Finding where that coincides with my need for comfort and low maintenance level, is the challenge.
I’m starting the process by ruthlessly digging out the sartorial deadweight.
Those old sweaters that I bought back when I was cold all the time and was just desperate for warmth, any warmth. Like a bear facing winter, I was adding layers with cardigans that did the job but nothing for my appearance. Same for the long sleeve shirts that are now too tight in the arms. PSA: Lifting a 25 lb weight between 1-6 hours a day will do something to your biceps. I’m guessing that Hulking out of my sleeves isn’t the current look. But whatever the look is, I like my blood circulating, thank you very much.
Pants are problematic. I’m staring down a pile of pants, they’re all a little bit off. Those jeans are 19 years old and look like it. These jeans are a breath too tight. The newest pair of jeans are too long and loose. The older jeans are tight but the right length. It feels like the best thing to do would be to toss all the oldest and start over but I can’t bring myself to do that. I don’t have a good replacement yet and I’ve learned the hard way not to go purging willy-nilly. As Donna and her commenters pointed out, ever so timely with this post, it’s not a good idea to go overboard. Then again, I have a bit of history with breaking my pants with new jobs. It’d be better to lose an old pair than new when I move on!
There are about a dozen geeky tees that I refuse to let go of. These have a place in my life but we need to do better. This has sparked the thought that I need to design a business casual line of geek-inspired clothing to replace the geeky tees that aren’t interview or boardroom ready. Would I be my only customer? I could live with that.
Next… I need help!
If I were tall and willowy and Gina Torres: everything she wore in the first few seasons of Suits, get in my closet! Kerry Washington’s styling in Scandal is also impeccable. If I were way cooler than I am, I’d be cool with the wardrobe for Maggie Q from Nikita. But not their shoes. I can’t do any of their heels.
Then again, none of their clothes are kid-friendly. I wore a nice blouse and slacks to a parent volunteer thing and came home with three kinds of fluids on me from kids who used my shoulder as a landing pad for their drippy faces. There’s always one kid who thinks I’m their person.
Naturally, I’m none of the above. I’m short, slim to the point of being skinny. My knees (and every other joint from the hips on down) are a no-heels-zone. They need support and cushion, it’s not optional. The ideal uniform is easy to put together, baby friendly, me-the-klutz friendly, and travel friendly.
If we still lived in the southern half of the state, this Polka Dot Silk Wrap Dress and this silk chain link print shift would be in my shopping cart just waiting for a great sale. But if 60 degrees doesn’t feel like freezing anymore, it’s still not warm, I don’t care what you say. I know you’re laughing at me, Canadians – I’m at peace with that.
In truly temperate weather, I’m in a cotton shirt, jeans or stretchy slacks, a draping light cardigan or sweater. I love my Bobeau fleece and Caslon drape neck zip cardigans. They don’t sell the zip cardigans anymore so I’m glad I gave into the temptation to buy it in both colors. In cold weather, I have one great winter coat but my ability to go from light to heavy layering is limited.
Shoes are typically flats or flipflops or sneakers. I’d love more classic styles but loafers and other similar shoes often look like clown shoes on me. Alternate suggestions?
In real life, I adore Jean’s and Kelly’s styles. Also Wendy’s. They’re even close to my body type. But as you can see, they’re far more polished, and oftentimes fancier, than I.
On second thought…
It turns out the act of writing this out is clarifying. When I started writing, it was mostly a mess. But I’m starting to see that my ideal style looks put-together and feels great to lounge and work in. That’s not impossible! Right?
My idea of matching colors is appalling, let’s get that out in the open right now. I think the general rule of thumb here is to remove all pieces that aren’t in a complementary color palette and restrict any new clothes to a simple color palette. Does anyone know how you do that?
I gravitate toward dark greens, blues, black. They’re easy, combined with white, though white is not awesome for me with an over-active child to chase and feed. Is tan and beige a good alternative? I really like the look of a crisp white blouse but probably that life isn’t for me.
Every so often, a bright color grabs my attention and I can’t resist. That’s one root of my current crisis. For example, I went wild and bought dark red slacks a while back. I like them but they seem to go with exactly one blouse. Like pantry cooking, people will helpfully suggest several combinations, but I currently own none of those other pieces!
That means I need a list of acceptable colors that would go with the basics that I already own. Ideally, I should be able to mix and match all tops and bottoms.
Now that I have a semblance of a game plan, I’m eager to start making this work.
Sidebar: Though we don’t dress each other, PiC and I share a similarly relaxed approach to style but it’s so much easier for him to look effortlessly business casual. Why is men’s clothing so much simpler?
:: What’s your style, how long did it take to refine? How did you figure out the color and the matching pieces thing? Who do you rely on for advice about this stuff?
:: The comment was “She still has ‘baby weight’. It’s been two years! I’d kill myself if I still had baby weight two years later.” I’m used to hearing horrible comments about women and their weight but that got my goat.
Around 6 am, the snorfling starts. This kid is nothing like me – goes from asleep to wide awake in less than three winks – so any waking movement is The Real Deal.
PiC’s already up and initiating the daddy+baby morning routine so I pass out again, dozing until 7 am.
I brush my teeth and check email for any emergencies. Nothing this morning so I take over feeding LB, give Seamus his morning meds, and strap LB into the stroller and head out for a walk. PiC usually takes them for a walk before I get up but since I’m up early, he might as well get a head start on getting ready.
We come back 30 minutes later for blocks and song: ze stands at the block box handing me one at a time, bobbing hir head to my song. Ze hands me one block, I hand hir another. Rinse and repeat.
Ze spies PiC around the corner, not paying attention to either of us. Opportunity! Ze makes a crawl-dash for the dog’s water bowl. Seamus’s water bowl beckons to hir irresistably. We head off some dashes, the others result in flying hir to the sink after ze has a good splash in his bowl. Seamus is NOT amused.
Hands washed, it’s book time. I start to read Tremendous Tractors at the book bench, ze leans up against the bench to listen for half a page, then starts sorting. This book is for … you. This book is for … you. This book is for … Seamus. This book is for … you. Halfway through reading, Busy Hands has handed me the entire stack of books. Rinse and repeat for the second half of the reading.
Next up: musical toys. Some toys are for sharing, like the blocks and Legos, some are for pulling apart and flinging about. This is one of the latter. Ze prefers to fly solo as ze wrestles the rings off the stand and discards them over a shoulder. Naturally I very helpfully undo all hir work as ze finishes, placing the parts all back on the stand again. This is worth about 20 minutes.
One of hir other musical toys goes off. Over my shoulder, I see Seamus grin and tuck his paw under his chin. THANKS.
A frown, an eye-rub. Then a bigger frown and a double eye-rub. Ze won’t admit it but the fatigue is upon hir and it’s time to warm a bottle. We’ll be weaning off the bottle soon, so we’re in a transition period of bottles before naps and sippy cups after. We bounce on the yoga ball on the way to the sofa. Bottle clutched in chubby hands, tiny feet propped up on my lap, we relax for a few minutes. And I check email again. All’s quiet, just routine stuff, so I enjoy a moment of almost-cuddling with my squirmy worm.
Bottle polished off, ze hands it to me and contemplates hir full belly with a half smile. Time was, ze would finish bottle and throw it like a football. I like this new development. LB settles down after 9 am and Seamus gets breakfast. Now, it’s my time: get a glass of water, find my glasses, my computer, and dive into work. But first: sweatpants!
I get an hour and a quarter on Nap 1. I mowed down all urgent and important emails, jot to-do list for the rest of my work day. Caught up on some projects and even unexpectedly finish a call early so I process an Amazon return and package up the box to drop off at the post office. Prep the first load of laundry, it’ll be ready for drying sometime when ze gets up.
A wail. That’s never good. Ze normally wakes up and plays for a while, then yells for rescue, but ze has been running a fever the past few days and evidently ze’s miserable again. I hold hir for a while. Ze doesn’t want food or water, doesn’t want to be put down but doesn’t want to be held like that either. We sit on the ground with some toys, sadly looking at one, then another, until my silly song and toy rattling coaxes a smile to the surface. Soon enough it’s submerged under tears, again. This calls for a change in scenery, and we also need milk.
Seamus is appalled. We’re obviously going outside, but we’re not taking him with us??? It’s literally unbelievable. He walks out the front door to wait outside because surely we don’t mean to go anywhere without him. Except, we must. We’re going to walk to the grocery store and he’s not allowed inside. I’m certainly not tying him up outside, someone might steal him. And I can’t tie him outside with LB. I think that’s frowned on.
Heavy with guilt, I lock up, leaving him to contemplate the traitorous nature of Humans.
The outing helps hir mood. I pick up groceries, then we struggle our way back home. It’s a long bracing walk but I seem to have caught hir bug. Everything is heavier, more exhausting. It takes us 45 minutes, round trip.
I get a text from PiC as we arrive home and start coaxing some food into the somewhat refreshed baby. Between bites, we realize that he’d failed to plan his day all the way through and now needs to be picked up. He’s tried asking a few friends if they were in the area but I thought it unlikely so I dose hir up with ibuprofen (doc’s orders!), strap hir into the harness, and we plod back outside to the car.
Mom and baby to the rescue: we pick up PiC from the nearby transit stop, and we make a quick stop at the pharmacy for my meds before getting back home.Usually I have them mailed but the pharmacy screwed up this refill.
Snack time part two commences with a bun and a pinch bowl of raisins. These are perfect for letting hir feed hirself: small enough to fit infant-appropriate serving size snacks, the bowls are sturdy and flexible, ze thinks they’re toys as much as food vehicles. Ze upends the bowl, wears it as a hat, chews on the side thoughtfully.
It’s been 3 hours since Nap 1, so I prep another bottle for hir and peel my shoes out of hir hands again. Someday, this child will stop trying to lick my shoes. Until then …. I cuddle hir on my lap with a bottle. Usually ze lays on the ground snuggled into hir Boppy but today I’m too tired to pick hir up again so lap it is. NOPE, ze struggles back up. I push hir back and offer the bottle again. Well, ok. Ze drinks, pops the bottle out to show me hir progress halfway through, squirts hirself in the face with milk, and finally finishes.
Off to bed. There are some protests. There may be some bar rattling. But once I’ve initiated naptime procedures, I don’t look back. That ze knows of, anyway. *glances at the monitor*
2:11 pm: Silence. Ze has passed out. I might, too. But no, I have work to do. I could eat but am dragging-tired so peel a couple of clementines and dive back into work.
Ze sleeps two whole hours, waking in time to go on a walk with Seamus. As he chows down on early dinner, LB and I work on snacks. I cut up bananas and ze shakes up the yogurt cup. We have fruit, yogurt and some toast. Ze makes a complete mess of drinking milk from a sippy cup, again, so I mop up the milk spattered floor while ze pulls out the Legos for another pass at “building”. This means clapping them together and putting them back in the box, waving a special one at me every so often.
Hir patience seems unusually good for being under the weather so I take advantage of the free hands to prep dinner. He never expects it but the night feels like it goes so much more smoothly if dinner is ready just as PiC’s getting home. Most LB & me nights, that doesn’t happen, but ze is hanging out and entertaining hirself with the Legos so the stove and oven are fired up.
PiC rolls in a bit after 6, some surprise thing held him up, but we’re still on track for a quick dinner and put LB to bed by 7:30. Excellent! I hide in the bathroom to decompress for about 20 minutes, and then get back to work. Meanwhile, PiC puts together LB’s lunch for the next day. I usually do that but he’s got it today.
My concentration is excellent the first three hours, then call it an early night closing in on midnight. My aches are getting the better of me and I’ve cleared the day’s work, go go efficiency! It’s best to lay my broken body down for actual rest.
Being flexible is the only way to survive combo days. If I try to stick to a rigid schedule like I might set for a daycare day, my focus is fractured and I do nothing well. Being present in the moment means ze and I are fully engaged when ze needs me, and then I’m fully engaged with my work when I’m working.
PiC handles all the out of the house chores like dealing with all the auto chores, picking up milk or medication, or dropping off packages. This leaves me free to use my energy where it’s most needed. Don’t get me wrong, he does plenty around the house, too, but that’s for another post.
I used to think we should hire out some of the work at home but honestly as we settle into routines, it doesn’t feel like we need to anymore. Which is good because as it happens, there’s not much extra room in the budget anyway.
We had a long discussion recently about our routine, it gets a bit flabby when it seems like you’re doing the same things over and over, but you’re really slipping into chaos bit by bit.
We’re committing to an 11 pm bedtime and to carving out specific hours on the weekend for my work. Unrelated? Not at all. We rely on each other heavily but if we’re both sleep deprived, then we’re no good to each other. So, more sleep. And more dedicated time on the weekend to engage with my work because sometimes I just need more hours on that front.
:: How set is your daily routine? Do you prefer a set schedule or taking it as it goes?
For months after LB’s arrival, the sum total of my aerobic exercise was taking Seamus for daily walks with LB strapped into the stroller or the carrier.
I didn’t have the energy for more than that and, particularly when breastfeeding, there was no motivation for yet another thing in the list of things to do.
PiC and I have access to at least one basic gym as part of non-optional fees we pay, but taking a solo trip to the gym when you have two critters at home begging for your time and attention? They’re really good at the oogly eyes, thing. Well, Seamus is. There was that once I strapped LB to my chest for a jaunt on the treadmill. It was fun in that rickety roller coaster kind of way. Turns out wearing a 20 lb weight with grabby hands leads to unexpected (totally predictable) events like the Grand Yoinking of the emergency STOP pin, or *beep beep beep* Run faster!, or the equally stumble-inducing *beep beep beep* Slow it waaaay down!
But taking a ramble outdoors, that’s easy, right? It’s free, and more importantly, free of major dangerous opportunities for the kid to kill you. Bonus: the dog can come along.
That’s the ticket! Buuuut as a sleep-deprived and chronically fatigued mom, what really happens is we mosey outside and down the road, then shuffle our shanks back into the warm once Seamus has stretched his legs and done his business. Rather than trotting a brisk mile or two, a lot of the time we (ahem, I) ended up making a beeline to the nearest appropriate spot and then turning back like Eeyore. Seamus didn’t complain but he didn’t need to. My guilt prodded me sharply – you know he’d love to do more! and of course, anything for my dog, so in the later months of last year, I made it a point to stop working before I hit the mental wall and take him for longer and better walks. It’s gone well enough that I’ve made it a part of my personal goals this year to carry on and do a bit more training.
That was well and good but both PiC and I were still feeling the flobs.
Once LB was holding hir head up easily, we created the Little Workout Routine. Give it a try with yours, so long as you’re careful and don’t hold me responsible for hurting yourself! Need a baby? Borrow a baby! (I have one right here. Seriously, borrow hir. Please.)
Disclaimer: Know yourself, know your baby. My child thinks all of these are hilarious but yours may not. If your child does think it’s hilarious, be forewarned, you might pull something because the laughing is contagious. My child is also more wriggly than a kitten, so if that’s your baby, this could result in injury. Be careful!
ARMS!
Little-lifts: Brace our feet about two feet apart, lift LB under the armpits and reach for the ceiling. Bonus points if you can do this smoothly and toss hir up in the air without straining something. Repeat until your arms like cooked spaghetti noodles and the baby can’t catch hir breath from giggling.
ARMS + CORE!
Little-bell: Pick LB up under the armpits and holding hir straight out in front of you, do a deep knee lunge forward. Keep hir steady, even if ze is giggling and kicking hir legs, with a tight core. For the ambitious, add in a baby-curl: smoothly lower the baby toward the ground as if ze was a hand weight, curl hir back up again. Repeat until the dog looks at you disapprovingly for “dropping” his human sibling. (This will take longer and longer until he no longer cares so probably stop after a few sets.)
LEGS + CORE!
Little-legs: when ze is big enough to hold on (kinda), sit down on a chair or stool where your knees are bent at a 90 degree angle but your feet remain flat on the ground. Put the baby on your lower legs, probably hold onto their arms just in case if their grip is as bad as LB’s, then lift your legs up, straightening them out. This is a massive upper leg and core workout. I go to jelly in about ten lifts.
LEGS + ARMS + CORE!
Little-lunges: Pick LB up under the armpits and holding hir straight out in front of you, do a deep knee lunge forward. Keep hir steady, even if ze is giggling and kicking hir legs, with a tight core. For the more ambitious, add in a turn and baby-dip: turn your torso to the right or left, still maintaining the lunge position with the baby still extended, dip the baby down to about waist level and then bring hir up again smoothly. Repeat on alternating sides, until you’ve gone across the room or collapse. Tuck baby close to your baby as you collapse into a ball, protecting the hapless but usually cackling infant.
Enjoy? Those of you with older ones, is the toddler and child exercise routine half as fun or do we go back to doing normal adulty exercise?
We spend a lot on food. But we also eat a lot and I don’t have FOND memories of those penny-pinching days when I’d only eat one meal a day and that was leftovers from dinner from the night before.
So we spend on food. I wondered, though, could we feed all three of us for $75? That’s what our biggest Trader Joe’s and local produce shopping trip cost.
Mostly I’m curious. I am terrible at meal planning in any sane kind of way that saves time and energy so this is an experiment in making a meal plan and sticking to it. I’ve hit a cooking rut. I typically like cooking even if I suck at coming up with vegetable side dishes, but when my cravings are for take out it’s because I’ve gotten busy and stressed or more tired than usual and can’t spare the brainpower to come up with foods we like.
What we bought, roughly, was mostly stuff for this week, but some stuff for freezing and will be used later. In turn, I’ll be using ingredients we already have but the value is generally going to balance out. This week I bought 4 pounds of ground turkey for $2.99/lb. Two weeks ago we picked up a few pounds of chicken for $1.19/lb and pork for $1.99/lb. We use more chicken or pork in a single recipe than ground turkey so it’s an even enough trade.
The menu
Caveats: Cooking really only applies to dinners. Breakfast is almost always eggs, sliced ham, toast, or a simple bowl of oatmeal.
Lunch is (PiC) ham and cheese sandwiches with chips; (LB) some combination of banana, tofu, raisins, clementines, tortillas, cheese, ham, dinner leftovers; (me) leftovers.
Monday
Turkey burgers (made with ground turkey, minced zucchini, quinoa) on honey whole wheat buns served with tomatos, red onions, sprouts, mayo, ketchup. Plus tator tots. What happened? Success! Despite a major bump in the day, we got burgers on the table.
Tuesday Homemade pizza with tomato sauce, cheddar and mozzarella, chicken What happened? Fail! Turns out my yeast is super expired. It didn’t even put up a token fizz. Of course I discover this at 430 pm, so instead I recklessly tried a miso-butter chicken and bok choy recipe. This is what happens, I was looking for a green bean vinagrette and get a whole new recipe instead. I cannot be trusted. (Justification: We had leftover baby bok choy that needed to be used! And it’s not every day I have miso in the pantry.) It was delicious, soooo, yay improv?
Wednesday
Hainan chicken with ginger garlic rice (cooked Sunday), served with cherry tomatoes and cucumbers What happened? Fail! My brain shut down at 4 pm and this is where it would have been really useful to have cooked more on Sunday. But I had cooked enough rice and mashed cauliflower to go with the Trader Joe’s packaged chicken curry we had in the fridge from last week and that was served with a side of fresh green beans. I did cook ahead a pan of roasted red potatoes for tomorrow.
Thursday
Side roasted red potatoes with dabs of butter and lots of garlic. Um. A main dish of some kind. What happened? We had turkey burgers again because I’d made 6 adult patties and 2 baby patties.
Friday
Tuna or ham and cheddar sandwiches, salad and soup What happened? Cheese sandwiches and boxed tomato soup. I could make a good tomato soup from scratch but not all days are from-scratch cooking days.
Saturday Unplanned What happened? Turkey burgers again! We wanted to use up the burger buns and veggies bought specifically for this (sprouts, red onions, etc) and we did. Good thing we love our turkey burgers and enjoyed them down to the last bite!
Meal approximations are better than planning
Ironically, I did better in the three weeks after the initial challenge. Forcing myself to follow an exact menu plan, meal and day, just didn’t seem to work well. $75 was high for our perishables but our overall costs were generally in line with a $75-100/week budget. We pick up bulk staples irregularly so that’s the extra $25-40 in the weekly spend.
Some of my best dinners were…
A) Lemon baked tilapia served with brown rice and green beans
B) Mixed cavatappi and whole wheat rotini topped with a zucchini, carrot and turkey ragu sauce served with a homemade load of bread, baked bok choy and carrots
C) Crockpot lasagna
D) Tilapia fish tacos & burritos.
Warning: if you’re baking your fish with lemon slices, the rind might leave a bitter taste on parts of the fish. Also remove all the lemon slices before serving. I missed one and wondered why my fish taco was disgustingly bitter.
Ideas for future menus
Shrimp and grits with garlic, onions, and tomatoes
Poached eggs served with polenta, hash browns, veggie
Marinated Baked Pork Chops
Pork chops with caramelized onions
Lemon baked chicken with roasted potatoes and onions
Best Takeaways
I don’t mind using the occasional packaged or prepared meal anymore. First it was about the cost, then it was about the nutrition. But overall, we’re doing a lot better on both fronts just by virtue of this experiment, more so than expected, and a few conveniences are just fine by me.
Our stress over getting a meal on the table, previously disproportionate to the crime, is incredibly low now.
I did serve pasta so frequently it’s been put on the No Fly List for a while. That was predictable but oddly disappointing, nonetheless. It’s just barely fathomable that it’s possible no one can eat pasta every day for three weeks without complaint.
If you’ve got tried and true recipes that you’re willing to share, please do! I require simplicity, though.
This weekend was a trial, made slightly less grueling by having some access to the outside world. Last week I dragged along, trying to muster some good energy pockets each day but utterly failed. The best I could manage was being patient with an increasingly grouchy LB when ze was home and becoming one with the sofa when ze wasn’t. By Saturday, it was no use denying it: another round of illness had come a-knocking and we were fool enough to open the door. PiC was on nearly solo parenting duties, I simply couldn’t stay awake. He kept sending me to bed, and intellectually it’s nothing to feel guilty about, but it’s hard to shake the feeling of not pulling your own weight.
And it’s hard to shake the feeling of uselessness when random body parts stop working. Like the left knee doesn’t bear weight so “walking” is really “wobbling”, or three fingers are so swollen you can’t bend them. Or standing up makes your head spin, dip and swim.
Thankfully, I got a little work and household management done online, amid the brain fog, so that restless need to accomplish something more than having bizarre dreams and sustaining life was fulfilled.
Tetchy Toddler
Granted, it has everything to do with being sick but LB was prone to grouchy outbursts not unlike an angry, thwarted hunting velociraptor. Keep feeding the wee beastie, y’all, a sick raptor-baby is naught to mess with.
And can you blame hir? It’s miserable coughing all night. Poor thing wakes up in the middle of the night burning up, crying, because ze doesn’t understand what on earth is going on. I feel like a heel walking away from the piercing “maaa maa maaaaa!” when we’ve done everything I can for hir and ze doesn’t want to be cuddled to sleep. Rough times.
I don’t know how single parents manage, half the time ze was sobbing because ze wanted PiC. Seamus and I were on standby to fetch and carry, slather vapo-rub and administer Motrin, but ze wanted hir dad and only hir dad for comfort.
Moody Muttley
Seamus is off-kilter too. He’s been refusing his antihistamines and vitamins for weeks. He grudgingly takes them under protest.
It’s hard to tell if something is wrong or if he’s just in an extended funk.
Could be he’s worn out being moral support from our weeks of being sick. He always gets up to join us when LB is sick and being tended to.
Dad and delinquent accounts
Dad’s been missing utility payments.
I know because I am still remotely monitoring the accounts, not because he has learned his lesson about telling me the truth.
$100 here, $80 there. $400 for the electricity, another $200 for the water and trash. They pile up month after month as he pays what he can, saying nothing to me about the rest. Add that to the more than $1000 we pay per month for his rent and and it piles up. As does the aggravation.
I’m deep breathing through it lest the frustration eat me alive. Our budget continues to bear the monetary cost, I refuse to let the cost of his silence be my sanity. But it’s a little harder each day that feels like everything is subtly wrong.
One-horse home
We’re still a single car household and the inconvenience far outweighs the savings. On days when LB and PiC are out together, Seamus and I are limited to going only so far as I can hike, and if we have to run errands, well, we can’t. Unfortunately, he’s too popular with random strangers which makes it unsafe to leave him outside while I run in to run errands. He and I only run errands where he’s allowed inside. In case you think I’m being paranoid, someone just tried to steal our neighbor’s equally cute and friendly pup when they’d run into a cafe to pick up an order. 30 seconds is all it takes for someone to walk off with our dogs. What is wrong with people??
Shaking it off
I’m getting some work filed away to make Monday less painful, and by extension, the rest of the week as well. Maybe, just maybe, we can shake this funk before Tuesday.
How was your weekend? How does your week ahead look?
Theme: Adult time, me time
Rictussempra!
A closet catastrophe in search of style with comfort
Around 6 am, the snorfling starts. This kid is nothing like me – goes from asleep to wide awake in less than three winks – so any waking movement is The Real Deal.
We spend a lot on food. But we also eat a lot and I don’t have FOND memories of those penny-pinching days when I’d only eat one meal a day and that was leftovers from dinner from the night before.