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.

9 Comments

  1. FWIW – my son wears his non-waterproof puffy coat to play outside in the snow probably 75% of the time and it’s no biggie. If they’re not going to be outside for 8 hours in the snow, I wouldn’t even worry about finding him a different coat.

    1. That’s great to know. Thanks! My only experience in the snow is snow boarding, where you do spend 8 hours out there, and need something decent to stay dry and warm. So glad my mom stores all my snow clothes! And yay for not having to find coats for them!

  2. I support Josey’s remark about the coat issue. Kids don’t really stay out all that long and get really wet through normally on such a vacation. Bring indoor activities and improve your time that way.
    SO GLAD you are seeing the good times and that you made the reconnect with your marriage. It is SO HARD to have enough time to stay married when you have small children and demanding jobs.
    wishing you good luck and hoping you get a few extra days when your children are back on normal school schedule and you are not at your school at the other end of the holidays.
    Cheers and joy to you, your family, and all your readers!

  3. What a great post! Sounds like things are, overall, terrific! I am sad to hear about the fires impacting your husband. That was a real tragedy.

    Enjoy the snow! I’m not a big fan. 😆

    1. I’m sure I wouldn’t be a big fan either if I had to live in it. It’s more fun when you go just to play in it, and then you get to come home. 😉

  4. Just on the period, shortness, boobs etc these are totally perimenopause symptoms that I have been dealing with all year. I started seeing a naturopath to manage them because the BOOBS. OMG. the pain.

    Anyway she put me on premular x 1 a day (which is also called vitex, chaste berry) and after three months I noticed a huge difference. I have also been cleaning out my gut of the badness by taking parax x 1 a day. She said to take 2 but I only take 1.

    I started adding some organic flaxseed to smoothies or breakfast cereal as that gives me the good estrogen not the bad stuff E1 which is causing all of our issues!!

    The vitex though has been amazing at regulating and getting my body back and getting rid of the hormonal ups and downs.

    1. Thank you so much for these suggestions. I used to take Vitex when I was trying to get pregnant, and I take flaxseed here and there but not regularly. I will definitely start a regimen. I know I could be in full-fledged menopause in less than a decade, which terrifies me (for so many reasons). I would love to support my body so that maybe it can hold out a little longer, and to not feel like this.

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