About sixteen years ago, I met him for the first time. My trainwreck sibling brought home this adorable puppy he had no business adopting because he had not one thing in his life that wasn’t a mess. I was furious at my sibling – he didn’t even take care of himself, how could he drag
This is my weekly list of things that were good this week, even if they weren’t all unadulteratedly good things. Please do share your good things in the comments!
1. Friday: There’s nothing like a Friday afternoon – two whole days of freedom (or social obligations and chores but whatever, it’s not work) ahead. I’m glad I already did the week’s laundry. Thanks, Wednesday me!
2. Saturday: Everyone slept in, today, a little bit and I was glad for every minute. My body is doing weird stuff (assume constant pain and fatigue as the big picture) and I’m deeply exhausted so PiC and JB ditched me at home after swim lesson to go off and meet his friends for a playdate. I cleaned a couple small items, walked the dogs and gratefully went to bed. Thank goodness for a partner who sets up playdates and goes on them without me so I can rest when needed, and then texts me to remind me to rest lest I be overcome by my need to do things anyway.
3. Sunday: A Good Day. We got some sleep, got a little child free time to talk, went on a bit of a walk, played, rested, ate, pulled some weeds, then I rested some more while JB and PiC went to run errands. I missed the library but I desperately needed that nap to feel partially human again.
With a promise of a movie from the library, JB zipped through dinner and zir bath with hardly a single complaint, whine, or balk. Ze was sent off to the bathroom to start the bath routine and ze got it all started without being told, through gritted teeth, every single thing to do three times over. A small miracle, the miracle of bribery. Never doubt that ze would have lost the movie privilege if ze hadn’t.
4. Monday: Rough re-entry into the work week and a big reminder I’m not really feeling all the warm fuzzies for my job despite all the benefits from it. But I remind myself I have an extraordinary amount of freedom here that I would be hard-pressed to find elsewhere. And if occasionally I feel useless, I don’t have to put up a mask to hide that from judging corporate eyes the way I once had to.
5. Tuesday: Someone thanked me for taking care of a personal thing for them while I was off. It’s a small thing but it was impinging on my rare private time so it’s nice to have those things be appreciated.
6. Wednesday: I thank Sunday me for making tonight’s dinner.
7. Thursday: I’ve needed to go to the DMV for months to correct a typo on my paperwork. I go to AAA instead so it’s less agonizing but even that’s been a chore that I couldn’t find time for. It took a grueling 45 minutes on my feet, and triggered a pain cascade but I got it done today!
I love hearing how separate finances work for people. We started out separate and I assumed I’d want to keep it that way (pride, independence, etc) but our money set-up evolved as we matured as a couple because part of that process was me admitting unabashedly that I’m a control freak and so separate finances made me unhappy. PiC wasn’t bothered either way but he does appreciate the fact that I’ll go great lengths to grow our money and it just requires communication on his part to keep things working well. I relish my role as the CFO and controller of all monies and think it’s funny I ever deluded myself into thinking I wouldn’t want to be. It makes a huge difference that we earn almost similar salaries, though. It’s tough when there are great disparities in incomes and also disparities in what each part of the couple wants to spend.
We also agree that if we ever get divorced, we split the money down the middle, period. Doesn’t matter what we brought into the marriage or who did what with how much during the marriage. We will split equally and prioritize our child’s needs if ze is still a minor. Discussing things like this when we still love and respect each other will, I hope, help us behave as a mature adults should we ever have to split.
Ginsburg’s iconic status with women, in particular, and her leadership of the liberal wing of the Supreme Court mean any health news involving the tiny, 86-year-old justice can cause something of a panic in certain quarters.
Ginsburg is not oblivious to health concerns, but she waves away worries about her future.
“There was a senator, I think it was after my pancreatic cancer, who announced with great glee that I was going to be dead within six months,” she recalled. “That senator, whose name I have forgotten, is now himself dead, and I,” she added with a smile, “am very much alive.”
Casting of Shang Chi
I really like Simu in Kim’s Convenience and look forward to him as Shang Chi. I’m much less enthused about Awkwafina.
This vacation was desperately needed but the timing was awful for me, for several reasons. I won’t get into all of them, just that the worst was that I was going through a terrible horrible no good very bad fibro flare up the entire time we were gone.
It sucked.
By the second day I decided to look at it this way: If I had to be in excruciating pain, at least it was in absolute luxury, where most of us had not much else to do but eat, drink, swim and be merry. I still had to work but it was minimal and that meant that I could take naps almost every day. That didn’t help my recovery, something was driving that flare up and I couldn’t put my finger on it, but it did mean that I was able to survive and actually enjoy parts of it with my family. If I’d been home, I would have had to work long days, cook meals (or we’d do take out), get JB to bed, all the usual parenting things we share, as normal. PiC did all the parenting on this trip so that I could rest and survive and he didn’t mind one iota.
This trip was for PiC – it was a reunion for his side. When I agreed to go, I accepted that due to the tastes of our travel companions, we’d be treating this as a once in a LONG time luxury vacation. I was pleasantly surprised to find that they were ok about keeping down a variety of costs while over indulging in others. It balanced well enough that we didn’t go over the $3000 mental (!!) marker I had in mind for how high this could go. I did my absolute best to bring the flight costs down and we economized as much as we could without forcing everyone else to be cheap. It was definitely still both expensive and the priciest trip I’ve been on in a very long time but he was really happy that we took it and we had some amazing views. It was almost surreal – they were so gorgeous.
It was the level of activity I would have wanted for a vacation even if I wasn’t in pain – lots of poolside hanging out and lots of food, a little adventuring to paddle around beaches and to see a really weird tree, great weather. It is possible that the heat and humidity made the pain worse but it felt great otherwise. (more…)
This is my weekly list of things that were good this week, even if they weren’t all unadulteratedly good things. Please do share your good things in the comments!
1. Friday: JB received a gift of a new Star Wars coloring book and it’s a beauty. This is going to be great to either keep zir busy or for our Sunday arts and craft time.
2. Saturday: I walked so much yesterday my feet were about to revolt but I made some good decisions about bedtime and medications (I assume) and was able to walk again today. Woo! This year has been all about people watching and collecting stickers, pictures, and temporary tattoos.
3. Sunday: We found a tick on Sera (gross!). The good news is I spotted it early, it hadn’t gotten any blood, we were able to get it off safely and JB got to squish zir first tick. Milestones!
4. Monday: We’ve had a lot of fun in the past week but I miss my bed and I miss my home so I will be glad to be done with this trip.
I’m also fully embracing my “f*ck it, I don’t care” mentality towards the people in my life I can’t ditch and bother me.
5. Tuesday: My head is fit to burst today, and half a dozen joints are swollen like marshmallows. I made a call to force them to do fine motor control chores and after three hours of misery, the swelling went down!
6. Wednesday: I felt categorically terrible (sleep deprivation) today but I powered through to: clear 150 emails, do two loads of laundry, take care of the dogs, challenge an incorrect bill, reschedule a vet appointment, pay a correct bill, make a new to do list, and eat lunch. Getting things done is the distraction I need from the feeling horrible bit of the day. Also I needed clean clothes and to pay the bills.
7. Thursday: It’s been a SLOG but I’m thrilled that I’ve gotten a ton of my backlog cleared away and I’m even getting back into the dinner making groove. Weeks like this, it’s hard not to daydream of a day when we can travel and not come back to work. I’ve also started tweeting my little bitty decluttering efforts to keep myself motivated and moving: #TinyDeclutter
Oops. Little known tidbit: I did multi-lingual wedding invitations for our ‘do and misspelled a couple words.
Parenting strategy: I wonder if JB likes cars enough for this analogy to work or if we can come up with a similar one. I actually have been doing something a little different – when I discipline, I also ask JB what ze could have done differently and after months of that, when I least expected it, ze offered up the “what I should have done was…”
US birth rates are at lowest levels in 32 years. I had to look up why not exactly replacing a generation matters when we’re also concerned about too many people and not enough resources on a planet that’s been strained by human use. It’s a weird dichotomy. I have friends with 3-5 kids and also a lot of friends without any or who stopped at 1, across spectrum of regions, ages, and races. I assumed it would average out to an equal replacement rate.
Your Professional Decline Is Coming (Much) Sooner Than You Think. I had no data on it but this is kind of line for what I was expecting for myself: “But the odds are he won’t be able to. The data are shockingly clear that for most people, in most fields, decline starts earlier than almost anyone thinks.
According to research by Dean Keith Simonton, a professor emeritus of psychology at UC Davis and one of the world’s leading experts on the trajectories of creative careers, success and productivity increase for the first 20 years after the inception of a career, on average. So if you start a career in earnest at 30, expect to do your best work around 50 and go into decline soon after that.”
There’s this thing my family does. When a new baby is just big enough to sit up and grab things, there’s an age ceremony where they’re all dressed up and given a tray of symbolic things to choose from: a comb, a mirror, a wrapped chunk of mung bean dessert, a pen, several other things. Whatever they grab and hold onto predicts their future interests and life path.
Obviously this is a bunch of hooey but it’s a fun little tradition. We didn’t do it for JB because at 3 months or whatever the appropriate time was, I was too exhausted to even think about it.
But the sociocultural obsession with your future life path is one that dogs our steps every step of the way. A kid with an interest in writing Must Be Destined to be a writer, if someone enjoys art they Must Be Destined to be an artist or no! An architect! And so on. There’s no ability to just enjoy the kid enjoying something for the sake of doing the thing. I remembered being exasperated by the constant predictions and the need for every spark of interest to become something productive. It bothered me endlessly and yet somehow I eventually became a person obsessed with efficiency and productivity. I don’t understand paying money to have fun, I think hobbies should be things that can be monetized (for myself).
As an intentional parent, I see that urge replicated in myself and I challenge myself to shut that voice up and just wait to see what kind of person JB can be, free of the endless predictions and expectations.
This is my weekly list of things that were good this week, even if they weren’t all unadulteratedly good things. Please do share your good things in the comments!
1. Friday: I’m surveying my office. I’m making good progress! I can see the floor! I still need to get rid of, organize, or find homes for five large bins’ worth of stuff all while fending off the acquisition of any more stuff except for my coveted digital piano (someday). Can I do this?? Maybe! There’s also a ripple effect here – to achieve the elimination of those five boxes, I’ve got to organize more than just my office because some of this stuff should just be rehomed out of this particular area, not necessarily our lives. That will be good. It’s inspired me to cherry pick small areas to spot clean in anticipation of the big cleaning binges and it all helps set the groundwork for a really satisfying clear out.
2. Saturday: I’ve only been talking about wanting a robot vacuum for three or four years, so of course we finally just got around to talking about why I want it, why he doesn’t and where we stand on the matter as a family. After discussing my whys, PiC is on board! Now I just need my budget to get on board 😆 I’m going to be stalking the sales for a good pet-fur-geared robot vacuum. Let me know if you have one and love your model?
3. Sunday: JB had a rare cousins day, with PiC, and I got to work for as long as I could AND lay down for some rest. Everyone was happy except for that bit where everyone was still awake at 10 pm.
4. Monday: my early riser woke up at 6, gave me zir blanket to snuggle, then fell back asleep for another couple hours. Much needed rest for all. Why can’t ze do this on weekends??
5. Tuesday: Auntie broke out an age appropriate set of softball equipment and JB was FULLY into it. It was also lots of gentle fun for us adults though there was more running after the ball than I had planned for, except when I threw the ball overhand and my wrist abhorred that.
6. Wednesday: Homemade mango salsa (not by me) on my eggs this morning. YUM. I also got pointers on how to make my own. I will need to try it.
7. Thursday: What. A. DAY! We did “and beyond” walking (JB parlance meaning: way too much), saw many-many cool things and finished up with the most amazing zucchini lasagna I have ever eaten in my life. I had three helpings. There’d be regret but it was That Good.
