Life Right Now

This post probably should include bullet points, but I don’t like how they are formatted so I’m just going to write a bunch of disjointed paragraphs. Enjoy!

Life is crazier than I expected this month. Even without all the holiday parties everyone else seems to have, we’re still busy. This is my kids’ last week of school but I go next week until Thursday. Everyone is taking a day to cover the kids. I get Monday, my parents are taking Tuesday, my in-laws will have them Wednesday and my husband is taking Thursday. We are very lucky to have family to fall back on when my schedule does not coincide with our kids’.

I’m doing a lot better than I was last week, when I wrote that super down post. I realized not long after I pressed publish that my boobs were really sore, which meant my period was coming. I seem to have about a week of feeling sad/depressed/angry/hopeless before every period, which wouldn’t be so bad if I didn’t get my period ever 20-21 days. I don’t want to go on the pill because that will just make me worse (I’m a hormonal mess even on the weakest progesterone pill). It’s totally manageable, it just sucks to spend 1/3 of my life feeling down because of hormones.

Riding the bike at night has been great. The kids love seeing all the lights on the houses, and I know any car that comes within 200 feet can see us. We look like a low-flying UFO the way all the different lights flash.

It has been raining a lot, which we desperately need. I hope it keeps up, even though it makes mornings and afternoons a total PITA. Yay for rain!

We made reservations for an VRBO cabin in the snow over New Years weekend (with my parents, who are paying). I’m really excited because this year there should actually be snow on the ground everywhere, not just a 20 minute drive away. My daughter is going to be stoked, but my son might not be; he keeps talking about how snow it too cold. I hope he has fun too.

Last year we stayed at a cabin owned by a colleague of my mom’s and they had snow clothes and boots in an array of sizes, along with any sled or tube we could ever hope to ride. This year we won’t have that so I’m trying to piece together enough gear to get us through three days up there. The local consignment shop had some boots that my daughter can wear, and can double as rain boots so that is good. I think my son’s high neoprene rain boots will work well enough. I found some used snow pants that should fit my daughter as well, but the used pants in my son’s size were too expensive. (All the gear I got at the consignment store was bought with credit accumulated from selling my own stuff there). Both my kids have puffy jackets but they aren’t waterproof. I asked my mom to put something out on her school’s listserve about borrowing gear; her school is a K-8 so there is a good chance someone can lend us something. I hope so! I’m certainly not going to buy new clothes for a three day trip.

Speaking of lending, a woman who was only kind of a friend back when our daughters went to preschool together (1.5 years ago) just sent a text saying that it was time for her to go to the snow again and did I have gear in these specific sizes? I was like, no, I do not. And even if I did, I wouldn’t lend them to you because I never hear from you except when you ask me for shit like this. (She has texted multiple times to see if I have shoes in her son’s size recently!) I don’t know why it chafes me so much, but I just don’t feel like inconveniencing myself for someone I am not friends with and never see. A couple of days later she asked if I had a car seat for a 4 year old that she could borrow for three weeks in late December/early January and I said no even though my parents do have a car seat that would probably work at their house. Am I bitch for not wanting to coordinate getting that from them and then handing it off? Ugh. No. Just no. I’ll be the bitch of that’s what it makes me.

You know, I used to love being the person who had stuff other people could borrow. I would not get rid of things just in case someone might need them some day. But you know what? Lending things to people takes a lot of work. It requires a very real commitment of time and energy. Since we started purging things with more regularity, there have been many times when I felt a pang that I didn’t have something to let someone borrow. But almost always, a minute or two later, I am relieved. My life is simpler now that I’m not a one-woman lending house. I’m glad my days of having what everyone else needs are over.

My sixth graders are driving my absolutely up the fucking wall lately. I am NOT meant to be a sixth grade teacher. Having three periods of that age level is my main grievance this year; I would change that before trading in the commute between campuses. I don’t know how I’m going to make it through two more semesters with them. I am slowly going insane.

Things with my husband are better. Last week was a hard one for him because of the devastating fire in Oakland that killed over 30 people, many of them musicians. My husband knew a few of the people who died (tangentially, they weren’t close friends) and the fallout has been making life at work hard for him (it affects his department, also tangentially). I made the efforts necessary to reconnect over the weekend and now we’re doing better. I’m thankful for that.

I’ve been struck lately with how much we have and how lucky we are. Now that my kids actually play together, and enjoy each others’ company (most of the time), I actually see the life I hoped for playing out around me. I know I should have seen it before, when things were harder, but honestly, I didn’t. Now I am keenly aware that I’m living my dream life, and I am so very, very grateful.

So life is crazy, but it’s also good. And I’m happy.