Year 4, Day 24: The kids have been deeply into building JB’s old magnetiles set and a bin of 40 year old Legos handed down from our friend last summer. This is tempting me to buy a larger set of magnetiles that are on sale. But do I really want another set of magnetiles in the house? Yeeess … we could build taller! wider! more!
Do I want more stuff in the house that I’m constantly decluttering? Dammit. No. The answer is no, self, no more magnetiles. Even though it’s a lot of fun.
~~~~~
My fibro flare continues. It feels like I’m a walking lava monster. I’m currently theorizing that this is a reaction to the cold-like virus that Smol Acrobat brought home last week. I haven’t had symptoms other than my own green snot, but Smol’s been a dribbly snot factory this entire time. Not that it matters a how or why this flare-up started, I’m just speculating while grumping about pain that drains all my daytime energy and doesn’t let me sleep at night. Rude.
My therapist had offered me this link to guided meditations and we tried a short one. I’ve been pretty jumbled up recently. I know things are ticking off my anxiety (less alone time than usual, my routines have been and will stay upset for at least a month, anticipating an unpleasant upcoming week with unpleasant people, I’m covering for absent staff, etc).
I know that all this transitional stuff knocking off my routine is putting me off my stride. I know what the problem is. But knowing doesn’t dissipate the tension it generates. The stuff still fundamentally sets off my fight or fight reflex which cannot be satisfied, so there’s a self sustaining feedback problem going on. The guided meditation helped a little bit so I’ll be trying to do a short one each day to see if it reminds my body how to let go a little.
~~~~~
I didn’t know that Smol Acrobat knew how to say: handbag, castle, medicine. That was a surprise!
They’ve been trotting around for the past few days saying ohhhkay (in a really mellow tone) to everything and it’s weirdly cute.
Year 3, Day 25: Whoops. So it’s Picture Day for Smol. We don’t usually care about school pictures but in the spirit of fairness, agreed to get a small package for them like we did for JB. One time in their daycare “career” per kid. We had to pay for the package ahead of time (which I thought was sort of silly, and that was foreshadowing for you).
JB absolutely loved their photo shoot but that was pre-COVID, we were able to be there, and toddler JB was a total showboat for the camera.
Poor Smol Acrobat found the whole experience frightening. We couldn’t be there for it. The big flashbulbs were popping. They were separated from their peer group and taken to a strange room with strangers behind big cameras. I was 0% surprised that they cried and refused to take the picture. Poor kid. We decided it wasn’t worth distressing them to try again. We get plenty of candid photos.
~~~~~
I’m happy about two food treats we splurged on: a po’boys and beignets lunch and a stack of banh mi that’ll make three meals for everyone. That cost $109.
I’m equally happy about a surprise Poshmark sale. A perfectly new-with-tags dress I can’t wear leaves my closet and $16 comes back to me. This only thrills me down to my toes so I suppose it’s fair that it’s not much money compared to our spending on food.
Year 3, Day 26: Our wind feels like getting ice water dumped over your head. *shiver*
Testing my physical limits today, to see if I’m through this flare, and the results are mixed. My muscles are still upset, my bones are less so. That’s a bit of progress but I’m still relatively sidelined. So even though I got through my critical work early enough that I could have gone with JB to their library activity, my body was staying planted right here.
I used this time to process an Old Navy return. I’d bought myself a shirt, in addition to clothes for gifts, but it didn’t fit right. Organized more clothes for the Lakota Giving Box I’m filling, I’m hoping to stuff it to the brim with jackets the end of next month. Sent a Coffee on Ko-Fi to an artist because I want to support them a bit but I can’t afford their super high quality jewelry. It’s amazing art but the pieces that are my style are wildly outside my price range.
Who doesn’t feel this tired? While I’ve always had prepper tendencies by nature, after all we’ve already been through, I’m not volunteering to navigate through a post-apocalyptic world.
I posted this on Instagram and it may be the most shared clip of my stand up ever and that’s fun… but also disturbing because thousands of people are saying “SAME” we are not well pic.twitter.com/DVX3FDtS80
Year 3, Day 27: I feel ~100 lbs denser this morning. As if every part of me is exponentially heavier and thus requires more energy to move.
But the good parts of this morning: one load of laundry, done! one dental cleaning, done! (I love the dental chair, it’s so soft and cushy) one UPS drop off return, done!
After a couple hours of intense work (and an ill advised 2/3s of a delicious chocolate hazelnut piroshky), naturally, I crashed. Since I couldn’t actually tap out, so I just kept slumping down further in my chair.
Year 3, Day 28: This tweet gave me a good laugh today.
I disagree. Wealthy people might spend less money on attire proportional to their income/cash flow but I do not think that wealthy people, as a group, spend less in absolute dollars consistently enough to make this a rule of thumb. I think spending on clothes is much more related to each person’s inclinations and career and a whole host of other things that aren’t defined by their money.
I have a handful of wealthy friends. The ultra-wealthy think nothing of spending $500-1000 on a single high quality piece of clothing. Or they DO think about it and it’s worth it to them.
If I look at myself as an example of being relatively financially comfortable, my conclusion is the same. I came from being deep in the hole, paying off so many tens of thousands of dollars of debt for my parents, to being reasonably comfortable on our two salaries. Mostly, I dress the same as I did back then. Jeans, t-shirts, and a sweatshirt. I still wear the sweatshirt my cousin gave me back in 2006.
Yes, we can both afford to dress better. No, getting to this level of “rich” did NOT give either of us better taste. We do have a few very high quality pieces. I bought him a nice watch (nowhere near $1000), I bought myself a few pieces of clothing from Elhoffer Design. We both have very warm coats. I do own more cute earrings but that’s more about being able to wear them without an allergic reaction and less about having money.
But other than that? We are walking proof that how you start is often how you carry on. Making enough money to make ends meet and a little more did not come with a magic style boost for either of us, and we don’t mind! He likes his free t-shirts and I like my three identical black sweatshirts I bought during pregnancy and a pair of athleisure pants from ten years ago. Money =/= magic.
Related thought: more generally, if you’re poor and hope to succeed in higher income fields (barring computer / tech because that’s probably a weird industry for dress norms), you probably need to dress more nicely than you might normally. My friend who entered the i-banking field from a non-wealthy background had to drastically upgrade her wardrobe in order to look like she belonged. When I entered management, I had to dress up much more formally to look my age and be taken seriously. Now that I’m senior management, I’m back in my preferred uniform and my reputation speaks far louder than my hoodie.
Anyway I’m not trying to make any academic points here. I just think it’s as silly as the proclamations that only poor people buy new cars or buy new phones or whatever the current faintly derogatory declaration is.
If you earn enough, that’s what is going to make you wealthier, not just abstaining from new technology and looking like a slob.
~~~~~
It was a beautiful sunny, even warm!, day and that went a long way to boosting my mood. I’m soaking it in and holding it as a hedge against next week when I will be dealing with some Unpleasant People TM. Wish me luck?
Year 4, Day 17: Sunday was a perfect beautiful weather day. Smol Acrobat and I took a late morning walk with Sera, and that was the last time I’ve felt close to ok.
I’d missed my Friday’s medications and assumed that’s why I felt off balance Saturday but that was just the beginning of a fibro flare. The rest of Sunday was agonizingly painful. It very much felt like my entire lower body was molten lava and I needed to lay down for hours and nap for an hour just to maintain consciousness all day. This morning was 50/50 whether I’d be plunged back into the lava so I restricted myself to sitting at my desk with extremely short ventures to the kitchen and bathroom. My bones were on a low-medium simmer all day but thankfully the sitting helped enough that it didn’t flare up beyond that.
JB and PiC went on a BART and museum adventure. I was mildly jealous in the abstract but definitely couldn’t have gone. Any walking veered dangerously close to Doing Too Much. I had to rest.
Year 3, Day 18: I hate how I feel in my body after Smol’s arrival. I feel lumpy and heavy. Specifically, I’m carrying too much extra volume in my belly. It’s weird. After JB I also had this problem but it didn’t bother me as much.
Going no or low carb might help. But I don’t wanna. Pretzels! Girl Scout Cookies! English muffins! They have a firm grip on my heart.
I should do it this month if I’m going to do it. It’d be the easiest time to do it. PiC has some time off this month and is using it as a staycation so he’s running all the errands and doing a lot of cooking.
~~~~~
Speaking of food, Safeway had pork shoulder on sale for $1/lb. We always jump on that. What I didn’t account for was that Safeway doesn’t package them by halves (about 8-10 lbs each). They do the whole shebang, at 16-20 lbs each. We went for it anyway, thankfully it was cut in half at least, and one went into the slow cooker and one went into the oven for a slow roast. Now we just have to make space for some of both in the freezer. I really wish we had room to have a deep freezer.
We kept our old fridge when we moved. That is really luxurious! Buuuut…. my hoarder self, along with my realistic chronic pain and fatigue self, really wishes we had a deep freezer too so that I could stock up on sales and freeze more than a few meals ahead for bad weeks. We can keep about 3 entrees in the freezer along with all the other foods we normally keep in rotation. I tried reminding myself that, without one, we don’t have to worry about the additional energy costs but that is small comfort when we run out of prepped meals. Ah well. We pay in other ways, like for prepared meals from Costco or take out, so it’s not like that saved costs are a strong reason not to. We just don’t have the space for it.
Year 3, Day 19: It’s probably not a good thing that I’ve passed on my mild-to-moderate obsession with Hello Kitty to both kids. This could (will) get expensive.
~~~~~
I thought my fibro flare up was over yesterday but the brain fog effects are lingering. My short term memory is either not encoding or incredibly hard to access. I’ve missed two scheduled plans this week already. Our lives are a touch too complicated for my taste and current ability but I’ve not forgotten about a therapy appointment in years so that got under my skin.
~~~~~
Using the AT&T Fiber advertising as leverage, I negotiated a reduction in our internet bill that has been steadily creeping up since COVID started. It’s now $55 a month, down from $76. This will help cover my increased pledge for Shep’s move to escape anti-trans legislation.
I also calculated precisely how much I’d need to charge to my Wells Fargo Active Cash Card to redeem the $200 bonus plus the 2% cashback in increments of $25. Between our two cards, we’ll get $450 in bonuses. Most of that’s already been sent out to support friends and folks in crappy financial situations.
On that subject, I’ve been pulling in direct aid support from a wider circle of people back to my primary contacts because so many of my main people are going through very rough waters right now. I may keep the direct giving circle tighter going forward. Many of the wider-range people that I give smaller amounts to haven’t been acknowledging it. I don’t mean thanks, I don’t need that. I mean there’s zero reaction, emoji, anything to indicate the money was seen and received. It makes me wonder if the money is noticed/received/going to the right hands. Rather than worry about whether they’re getting it, I’ll adjust our giving strategy to those who do confirm receipt. It’s a minor thing but it matters.
Year 3, Day 20: Smol Acrobat’s got a fever and green snot and I am also infected. This is the pits. They sleep terribly when they’re sick and that means I don’t sleep with all the wake-ups.
~~~~~
We’ve been defending against multiple ant invasions this year. Several weeks ago, I stopped one incursion into the kitchen. This week, the ants pressed their advantage by invading three fronts simultaneously, eating holes right through our walls. I watched one push chunks out of the wall in horror and fascination. I hate them in the house so much! I’ve put down boric acid in several places hoping that it wards them off again but am not holding my breath. I’ve wiped down our outlet covers with vinegar in hopes that it’ll deter them from that point of entry. Their three room attack, spread from the front to the back of the house, makes me think that our walls are full of ants. *shudder* 😭
PiC’s pointed out that other people pay for a regular exterminator service and I really don’t want to have to do that. Cross your fingers for us?
~~~~~
In other massively underappreciated efforts, we cleaned Sera’s ears. One of them was a bit infected so I also medicated it. She drooped for an hour after, as usual, and it’s pitiful! But I’ve got to make time to clean them more often.
I’ve been trying to brush her teeth most days of the week, some weeks are more successful than others, but she especially hates the ear cleaning. Smol Acrobat tried to “help”, so they were entrusted with feeding Sera treats to mollify her while I did the dirty work.
She was unmollified.
We’re going to be at odds for the several days of her ear medication course. I can deal with that.
Year 3, Day 21: All week my stomach has been on strike against breakfast. No matter what I ate, or how little, it transformed into a belly full of knives within half an hour. Just awful. It’s putting me off even trying to eat in the mornings until I’m too hungry to wait any longer.
~~~~~
I had been paaaaaaatiently waiting for our CPA to confirm that our taxes had been filed. We reviewed final details last week, made some tiny corrections, and it’s been silent since then. I assumed she was swamped – though most Californians have an automatic extension – and figured I’d hear soon enough. Instead both CA and Federal refunds landed this morning. Too swamped to email but not to file. In a choice between the two, that’s the right priority!
Uncharacteristically, I dumped them both into our checking account. Usually it goes straight into investments, however, I am looking at the year’s income and outflows plotted out and the spending estimates are currently outstripping the income estimates by A LOT. I didn’t revise the credit card spending (on food and other household supplies) down when I added the $2000+ daycare bill, so that’s one root cause. The overage amount is greater than the total daycare will cost, though. I didn’t really feel like doing the legwork. *hides face*
Correcting the projections isn’t worth the work; our monthly spending fluctuates a lot from month to month. My compromise is to leave it as is, adjusting the amounts in real time, and trusting that we will ultimately spend less than my rough space-holder projections. Meanwhile I’ll keep trimming fat and creating little bits of extra income too.
Fancy birthday parties are back. JB recently attended a birthday party at a place that charges $500/2 hours for the venue and services. Parents provide the food.
PiC texted me notes and pictures from the party. I’m estimating the party ran about $800. It was for two siblings, so in a rare turn, they saved a bit since this spread would have cost the same whether it was for one or two kids. The siblings have enough overlap between their friend groups for it to work. I have niblings where the siblings are 2 days and 6 years apart so there’s no overlap and the parents have to do two separate events in the same week.
It’s not like we were super frugal for JB’s birthday, I just opted out of having to host 18 kids for the price. We spent $300 on delicious Mediterranean food because we were mostly feeding adults and I wanted enough leftovers to send food home with our guests. Food is love.
Ain’t nothing but the truth (in my life) ⬇️
JB’s current exercise of their independence is insisting that they bathe Smol most nights. Not at all sure why this particular thing struck them as The Thing To Do but whatever. We let them do showers mostly supervised, no standing water for anyone to drown in, and Smol seems to enjoy the sibling time as much as JB enjoys being in charge in a tangible way.
Life with Smol Acrobat
Like JB’s early years, we haven’t done anything beyond some cake for Smol Acrobat’s birthdays so far and I don’t imagine we intend to change that for a while. JB’s first party was age 4. Then the pandemic happened so even if we were willing to do a 6th birthday, it couldn’t happen.
I’m curious to see how Smol feels about parties if and when they start for them. If I remember correctly, the kids start having hosted parties around age 3 in daycare and they’re “invite the whole classroom” affairs. It’ll be interesting to see how this changes (or not) in these days of COVID.
JB was an enthusiastic participant in parties at this age but they were also always making friends anywhere and everywhere they went. Smol has just started making friends but they seem to really be enjoying the small pack they run in at daycare. It’s funny seeing them with humans their age and size, I’m too accustomed to them being the tiny odd one out.
~~~~~
This describes my life with JB and Smol Acrobat not sleeping pretty damn well.
~~~~~
Smol is now very into taking their COVID tests. They ask for a rapid test every time they see a box out. Since they are the most exposed at daycare, I always oblige the request even if it’s not at the most convenient time.
Pupdate
Sera has been so gassy these past few months. I forgot to ask the vet about this at her check-up.
She remains exceptionally clingy when the kids are loud. I think she’s really nervous about not being able to tell if they’re playing or in pain or in danger. Their shrieks really do sound the same, no matter the cause.
I suspect she’s also conflicted. Her reaction to JB yelling is to hide with me. Her reaction to Smol yelling or crying is to check on them. When they’re both yelling, she has no idea what to do.
Precious Moments
JB: Smol!! Swim lesson! Put it back!
Smol: ??
JB, deepens voice: PUT IT BACK.
Smol *chirps*: Back?
JB: GOoooooooo!
~~~~~
Smol is being screechily uncooperative in the cleaning up so JB is retaliating by singing “Smol is a baby and will be a baby foreverrrrrr Smol graduated from baby school but they’ll always be a BABYYYYYY….!”
~~~~~
There was a joke in All American where Spencer tells his mom they’re going to celebrate her and she needs to be ok with or else he and Dylan will “mom” her to death. Then they start: Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom. Mom.
1. I very much relate to that.
2. Smol is doing it to JB now!
Year 4, Day 10: Is this all the anxiety from last week landing like a lump of clay in my chest? Maybe. Or maybe it’s fresh anxiety for the week. Who knows?
The past three days, I’ve been randomly dizzy through the day and night. Standing, sitting, laying down, nothing stops the dizzy. It’s not enough to make me fall over, it is enough to make the world spin badly and requires a few moments to try to steady up. That’s a known side effect of the naltrexone they prescribed for off label pain control, but I’m taking such a low dose it seems implausible for it to be the problem. My fingers have also been sausages for a week, that might just be a flare-up situation.
I skipped my dose this morning anyway but it doesn’t seem to have reduced the dizziness, lightheadedness, and now nausea. Not a fan!
~~~~~
I applied for the Wells Fargo credit card for PiC three weeks ago to get the $200 bonus on $1000 spend. They said it would take a little time to approve and approved it a few hours later. The card arrived soon after and I’ve already met the minimum spend.
I applied for myself last week and they again said it would take a little time to approve, but I still haven’t heard back. EXCUSE me. My credit is excellent, what’s the hold up!?
It’ll be some kind of irony if they approve PiC’s but not mine.
This is a confusing and complex sort of thing. This may be something that was a long time coming, or not. We don’t know yet.
In the middle of the pandemic, it felt like a collective discovery was happening as a striking number of folks were joining the ADHD club. With the loss of their systems in a world gone topsy turvy, they came to realize they’d been compensating for ADHD all their lives. Their coping mechanisms had masked it until everything fell apart.
Rewind further back past this trio of hell years was my personal slow discovery of anxiety and depression, and how they feature prominently in my life alongside my chronic pain and fatigue. The awareness of depression came first, acutely, suicidally, and faded in time.
But the anxiety! Gosh, the anxiety was probably my companion since I was in kindergarten and I simply never knew what it was. A good friend, Sarah, has both autism and ADHD and stunned me when she shared this tidbit: “There’s a saying that a child with anxiety doesn’t say “I have anxiety” they say like “my stomach hurts” because that’s what they know. ADHD and gastro issues are often related.” That describes me to a T. My memories of my earliest years were: avoiding socializing or talking at all, getting sent to ESL because I wouldn’t speak, and having a stomachache every single morning. For years I blamed them on eating breakfast. Now, I think that it was anxiety eating me up inside.
Yet I was 35 years old before it occurred to me that these had anything to do with anxiety: edginess, tightness in my chest, difficulty breathing normally, impending doom. It took years of friends talking about their anxiety to spot the similarities.
I’m a slow learner.
When I was 18, I experienced severe chest pains and my coworker told me that I was having a panic attack. I didn’t know what to do with that information. We didn’t really have Dr. Google back then. What is a panic attack? Why would I be panicking? What’s there to panic about? (Other than working full time to pay for my college tuition, the $6000 a month in monthly bills at home, the $1000+ a month in debts incurred over the years as my parents eked out a living from their business while supporting family, and my dad keeping most of it together with cons and Scotch tape? What indeed? /sarcasm)
All of these bits cascaded together like tiny bits of sleet, glacially slowly, until Abby’s post made me ask myself questions that I’d missed for a long time. When I did, and when I realized I had checked an awful lot of boxes, my first reaction was: I didn’t want to be diagnosed. I was kind of embarrassed, to be honest. I don’t want to be “more broken”.
But talking through it with Sarah and other friends who are on the spectrum and/or have experience with ADHD helped immensely, and helped me start to see how the puzzle parts of my history might fit. I have been forcing myself to mask and manage all this time, punishing myself for being lazy and/or incompetent. Insisting that I had to force myself through with willpower and grit.
The scattered brain feeling, being easily upset/emotionally on edge, hypoactivity that I’d assumed was chronic fatigue. I avoid making certain commitments for fear of not finishing them. I take on too much, daily. I can’t remember names unless they’re dogs’ names. Hypersensitivity to criticism…woof, yes. More on that below. I force organizational systems on my life specifically because I’m not good at staying organized. I can’t listen to someone at work talk for a minute without zoning out. But it’s not because my brain is busy with other thoughts, many times it just feels empty.
Sarah shared the following thoughts, among a lot of other really useful thoughts, during our chats:
“I can always tell when I’m overstimulated because everything and everything is literally the worst and I can’t handle it” (This accurately describes my six months before March.)
“When answering questions be conscious that you’re not masking when answering. “does x cause you trouble” it’s hard but try not to be like “Well no not really I manage every day-” you probably shouldn’t have to “manage” to do something.” (Sometimes I don’t even realize I’m masking! It’s just that I’m so used to coping, it’s become second nature.)
“There’s zero benefit to agonizing over something inconsequential or something you can’t personally change all day and yet…!” (On bad days when I screw up something and my RSD kicks in something fierce, it feels like trying to move boulders to move my focus)
So many of these things rang too true for me.
Related, around this time I watched Douglas on Netflix. Hannah Gadsby’s bit about the dog park had me in stitches. One part down to her delivery, two parts down to recognizing that same tendency to misread social cues. Of course, she was referring to an autistic characteristic but the incident itself made perfect sense to me. I’ve got at least three embarrassing memories of fixating on entirely the wrong detail in a conversation and walk away from them concluding I really should never speak to people again, it’s for the best.
Finally I bit the bullet and emailed my doctor who promptly sent a referral and the Psych department immediately set up an appointment for me.
That was both startling and appreciated. My consult, however, did not go as anticipated. They had me fill out the anxiety and depression scales ahead of the appointment and it turns out that I scored too high on both to be evaluated for ADHD yet. That was quite the surprise to me. In hindsight, it shouldn’t have been. In many of my therapy sessions over the past year, I’ve been struggling with how overwhelmed I feel, how angry I feel, how much I’m numb to joy and unable to appreciate the small moments of good. At some point you’d think it would have occurred to me that perhaps I was able to connect as an involved parent in the years after JB was born because I was on antidepressants. This time around, I didn’t go back on the meds immediately after Smol Acrobat was born. I’m trying to cope through COVID, having two young kids, a full time job, a partnership that gets very little time, constantly feeding everyone, and wondering why I’m always irritated and prickly.
Like I said. Slow learner!
One problem is I’m a very high functioning depressed person. I get a hell of a lot done even while feeling worthless or hopeless or angry at the whole world. My survival skills are strong. I still worked as normal when I was feeling suicidal because dead or alive I had (have) obligations and I won’t stop for anything. That’s less of a commentary on my workaholism and more on how we live in a capitalist hellscape where even planning my own death ten years ago, I was also equally concerned about leaving enough money to cover the bills.
Anyway. During that appointment, we agreed that I’d go “address the depression and anxiety” and then come back for an evaluation for the ADHD later. I had a ponder, talked to some friends, and decided to try medication again. I’d used it before to treat chronic pain but as an antidepressant that worked for my pain and PPD, the odds were good that it would work again for the depression.
The first three weeks on the antidepressant was agony. Everything resulted in the weight of the galaxy landing on my shoulders. I felt anxiety ramped up to 11 over everything. Every tiny difficult thing threatened to send me down a terrible spiral. One weekend was consumed with passive (suicidal) ideation. I was walking on mental eggshells for weeks. But I hung on. 8 weeks after starting them, I am feeling the benefits.
My mental health on the antidepressant is much improved. I start my days with a much lower level of rage than had become normal. I feel less like Sisyphus emotionally. It’s even mildly reduced, by just a touch, the physical fatigue that weighs me down so dramatically. For the first time in years, I’m feeling mild interest in doing fun things. I’m not actually doing them yet, logistics are still way too much effort, but I haven’t felt “hey I want to do that” in a real way since the pandemic started. That shut down with COVID and stayed shut tight with depression.
A certain amount of anxiety remains, which isn’t a surprise. My inability to remember names is still a huge frustration. It took me an hour and a lot of mental flailing to remember Nicole Cliff’s name, for example. I loved her on Twitter but could not for the life of me remember her name. I am still feeling what seems to fit rejection sensitive dysphoria (RSD) pretty intensely and have to work hard at avoiding that spiraling.
A fun new problem, maybe related, maybe not: severe orthostatic intolerance – my world spins wildly when I stand up, or my BP drops precipitously, or both. I have come near to blacking out several times.
It might be time to reschedule that ADHD assessment. Maybe in a couple weeks.
Year 3, Day 354: Weirdly enough, the time change knocked us for a loop more last night and this morning, not on Sunday morning as expected. Probably because Smol needed soothing at 4:30 am, and went back down for another sleep cycle or two before getting up at the equivalent of their usual time instead of an hour earlier than that. Getting everyone to bed an hour later than usual last night was partially a function of how exhausted we were after a long day with two kids playing and fighting all day long. Our heads were ringing with the endless screeches.
~~~~~
All the confusion about my antidepressants refill has finally been straightened out, I think, and my refill for 100 days worth of meds is FINALLY on the way. It took two false starts and three phone calls.
It might be time for me to try that off label naltrexone prescription for my pain. It’s startling to realize that I keep thinking I’m not in that much pain anymore so it’s not worth trying. In reality, most nights my marrow feels like lava. That’s not being pain free.
~~~~~
My first (or the last one was so long ago that history has been erased) successful dinner!
I made a triple batch of chili, baked cornbread, and served both with a spinach salad that PiC picked up. The kids – BOTH OF THEM emphasis mostly for Smol the pickypants – ate up everything I served! No fuss, no fidgets, no frustration.
What do I have to sacrifice to which kitchen god for this to happen every (or most) night? Two thirds of the chili went into the freezer for easy dinners in the next couple of weeks. We’ve got just enough leftover chili to have chili dogs for tomorrow night.
As I once predicted, when it comes to kid activities, I hate having to leave the house first and foremost. I hate the other parents as a close second. There’s an obnoxious sideline dad at JB’s self defense class who just talks to talk, constantly chattering and saying nothing of substance because he keeps cycling between bragging about his kid, commentary on the attendance and reasons it’s either high or low, and commenting on JB’s ranking. And he can never actually use JB’s name, it’s always “your kid”. As if JB doesn’t exist as a person except in relation to me.
There are other obnoxious sideline dads but he’s the worst by sheer volume of chatter. Can we not just observe in silence, for the love of (my) mental health?!
~~~~~
On the one hand, I don’t want JB to replicate my refusal to ever ask for help until things are dire.
On the other hand, it makes me a little batty when they ask for help when they have all the tools to figure it out at their disposal. Answering a worksheet of questions about a story they read, for example, they asked me what a specific job title’s responsible for. I ask where the story is (it’s right in front of them). “Oh yeah!”
🤦🏻♀️
~~~~~
Parent teacher conferences went well this month. Their grades for math, language arts and behavior (respectful, attentive) are all good. They’re happy to be in school and they’re enjoying the material they’re learning. They review it far more favorably than their first grade experience. I think it’s because their second grade teacher is very nice (not in a fakey sort of way) and they like that.
Life with Smol Acrobat
My aunt was right. Two kids is not just double the work, they are exponentially more work (and more frustrating) than one.
JB was tough. It took both of us to keep up with their entropy in motion, and we were much younger then. Then along comes Smol Acrobat and honestly, my worries that it’d be even harder were all justified.
This kid doesn’t eat well, doesn’t sleep well, clings to the wrong parent in all situations making it twice as hard to get through a day because you know they’re going to decide they need the parent who isn’t in charge.
And yet, sometimes parents just need to get the laundry done or attend a work meeting, and screens can feel like an effective distraction. For very young children, it’s probably still best to avoid screen time, Harrison emphasized. Instead, try to involve the child in house chores, she said.
JB was a very willing “helper” at very young ages but that was absolutely not a good way to keep them busy so I could take a meeting.
~~~~~
Smol DOES have a few chores now that they love: feeding Sera and refilling the toilet paper in the bathroom. They even knew how to go fetch and deliver a roll to PiC when he asked for one. They’ll assist JB with the laundry sometimes. I’m enjoying the little wins. (Except when JB demands that the 2 year old have the same attention span as they have for their chores.)
Pupdate
Sera continues to be very stalkery this month. She starts to hover around noon, anxious for JB school pick up time. She used to go with me to pick up JB. Since they changed some rules so it’s too much of a hassle, we’ve switched to walking her together after we get back home from school.
Precious Moments
Will I ever get to use the toilet alone again? If it’s not one kid, it’s another, or the dog.
Smol opens the door: Mom.
Me: Smol. I’d like some privacy please.
Smol: yes. *Comes in, shuts door*
Me: wait, but you’re inside …
Smol: *hands me water bottle* eat.
Me: you want me to drink?
Smol: yah.
Me: *sigh* … Ok. *Pretends to drink*.
Smol: bye.
~~~~~
I usually leave the kids to their own conflict management but sometimes BOTH of them act like 2 year olds.
JB grabs the blanket: Smol it’s MY turn.
Smol: ‘dactyl screech!
Me: From their POV, you just grabbed w/o asking. Give it back.
JB grumpily hands it back: Smol can I have a turn?
Smol: NO!
Me: Smol, it’s JB’s turn. When it’s their turn, what do you do?
Smol returns blanket.
Year 4 of COVID in the Bay Area.
