Life

Time Logs – Days 1 and 2

Posted on by noemikjames / 10 Comments

I’m going to attempt to publish my daily time logs, even if they are sparse. I hope it will hold me accountable, and maybe at the end you can help me analyze the ways I can streamline and use my time more wisely.

MONDAY

5:30am – Up with my son

6:00 – Write morning pages

6:30 – Read with my son

6:45 – Wake up my daughter / Read a book

7:00 – Morning routine: breakfast, get dressed, brush teeth, put on shoes, finish packing lunches and backpack

7:45 – Drop off daughter at school

8:00 – Drive to work (listen to podcast)

8:45 – Arrive at work / Start teaching

9:45 – Drive to other campus

12:05pm – Work through lunch

12:40 – Start teaching again

2:30 – End school day / Make copies

3:00 – Drive home (listen to music)

3:45 – Arrive home / Change clothes / Get on bike

4:00 – Return / Check-out books at library (for daughter’s homework)

4:20 – Pick up son (talk about attempted biting)

4:30 – Ride bike to daughter’s after care

4:45 – Pick up daughter (talk about not taking art supplies without asking)

5:00 – Ride home

5:10 – Arrive home / Start daughter’s HW

5:30 – Start dinner / Get on elliptical (kids watch TV)

6:15 – Kid’s dinner

6:30 – Finish daughter’s HW

6:45 – Start son’s bath; wash his hair and body

7:00 – Get in bath with kids

7:30 – Shower (without kids)

7:45 – Start son’s bedtime

8:15 – Finish daughter’s bedtime / Start new book

9:00 – Revise story for work

9:30 – Dinner with husband (in front of TV)

10:00 – Create activity for story

10:30 – Get ready for bed

11:00 – Sleep

TUESDAY 

5:45am – Up with my son / Snuggle and read books

6:45 – Wake up my daughter / Read book

7:00 – Morning routine : breakfast, get dressed, brush teeth, put on shoes, finish packing lunches and backpack

7:40 – Drop off daughter at school

8:00 – Drive to work (listen to podcast)

8:45 – Arrive at work / Start teaching

9:45 – Drive to other campus

10:00 – Arrive at work / Get ready for classes

12:00pm – Work through lunch

12:40 – Teaching

2:30 – School’s out / Prep for tomorrow

3:00 – Staff Meeting

4:00 – SCTA Meeting

4:30 – Drive home (listen to music)

5:15 – Pick up daughter

5:30 – Arrive home / Start laundry and dinner

5:45 – Daughter’s HW

6:00 – Daughter watches TV while I respond to comments

6:30 – Dinner with daughter

6:45 – Son home from grandparents’ house / Kids in bath

7:00 – Move laundry / Start this blog post

7:30 – Son’s bedtime : Brush teeth / Read books

8:00 – Son uses potty / Wash daughter’s hair

8:10 – Snuggle son

8:40 – Daughter’s bedtime : She read’s a book / I read a book

9:10 – Fold laundry / Chat with husband / Snack

9:30 – Finish blog post

9:50 – Start PowerPoint for tomorrow

10:00 – Snuggle with daughter who is still up (WHY?!) / Fall asleep

10:30 – Wake up / Get ready for bed / Pack car / Schedule blog post

10:45 – Go to bed

Life

Controlled Chaos

Posted on by noemikjames / 15 Comments

Life is kind of kicking my ass right now. Most days I’m just attempting to hold it together. Duct tape and string.

My schedule continues to pummel me. I feel like I need a whole week of prep days just to get where I can avoid spending each period running around like a chicken with its head cut off. I’ll definitely have to take about 8 hours at school this coming weekend or the one after to make copies, score and input, and generally get on top of things a bit.

I have RSVPed for tours at two nearby locations of a Spanish immersion preschool I’ve heard good things about. The problem is that neither of the locations is particularly easy for my husband to get to on public transportation, and the tuition is a full $450 a month more than we’re currently paying (which is already $350 a month more than we were paying for our daughter). It’s a lot of money we hadn’t budgeted for for the next 36 months, but every placeI’ve looked into (that have long enough ours to accommodate our needs) costs at least that much. I’m starting to feel a fair bit of envy toward those that can afford a nanny. Not having to worry about restrictive hours and remote locations would be so helpful.

As far as the need for a new daycare, there was one biting report last week, but my son wasn’t sent home. Evidently he tried to bite someone today but they stopped him, thank god. I really don’t know what to do to help him get over this.

I took him to the pediatrician on Friday and, as I suspected, it was a totally useless appointment. After he made sure there were no hearing or speech issues that might be causing confusion or frustration, he basically told me what I already know, that there is nothing really we can do (that we aren’t already doing), and it sucks to be the parents of the “biter.” Yeah. Tell me about it. I’m supposed to contact Kaiser’s family psych department but I was underwhelmed by them when I took my daughter so I’m not sure I’ll even bother. It’s probably not worth the $25 co-pay and 2+ hours.

So yeah, the whole could-get-kicked-out-of-our-daycare-at-any-time situation continues to create a significant amount of stress. I spend all morning holding my breath, waiting to get a call from the preschool, and then I move at a frenetic pace to get out of work early enough to pick my son up before the second hour on the playground. I hate having no control, at the mercy of my almost-3-year-old’s behavior and my child care providers judgement. It’s incredibly stressful, and it’s eating away at my sanity. I don’t know what we’ll do if we are asked to leave before we have something else set up.

But there are some positive developments as well. My daughter’s homework has gotten much more manageable. There are still a lot of pages each night, but each one doesn’t take 10-15 minutes to finish. I also appreciate that the homework packet is due on Mondays, so we have the weekend to finish up if we get behind.

The AC in my modular at work was fixed. It’s been out for over a week, and with three days in the 90’s, it was really miserable. Classrooms in California don’t generally have air conditioning, but modulars do because they are basically giant metal boxes with no natural air flow. I already had a window fan because I generally try to avoid AC when possible, but it’s wasn’t nearly enough to keep a giant metal box filled with 33-34 people bearable when it was 90* out. The temperature in my classroom was topping out at 95* last week and there were moments I felt like I was suffocating it got so stuffy; I’m REALLY glad we have a working air conditioner again.

I found a new way to get to work that provides a higher chance if on-time arrival (and by on-time I mean within 1-2 minutes of the bell ringing, which is better than 5-7 minutes after it rings, which happened three times last week when the traffic was bad). Thank god I have a co-teacher in that class or I’d be panicking every morning on the way to work.

I started tracking my time today. I’m curious to see what I find, but don’t expect the results to be very enlightening (I think I have a pretty decent grasp on how I’m spending my time). Still, it’s a valuable exercise, especially as I attempt to streamline the tasks that are time intensive. I hope I learn something productive, or see some opportunities to use my time more wisely.

Finally, I’ve noticed that all the stress and uncertainty are really stoking my desire to buy things. It’s very obvious to me that I’m looking for something shiny and new to distract me from everything I don’t want to think about. I’ve kept a decent handle on it, but I’m so tired of rampant consumerism being my go-to way of managing intense emotions. It’s just hard to keep it under control, and I feel exhausted all the time when I’m in the midst of one of these “dreaming of a shopping spree” episodes. I’m just tired of talking myself out of a bunch of unnecessary purchases. It’s redundant and boring and makes me feel bad about myself.

This week is really busy, with a staff meetings at work, my daughter’s Back to School night and the monthly PTA meeting. My evenings are going to be packed, so I probably won’t post again this week. I hope things eventually settle down so I can return to writing (and responding to comments) like I used to. I hate when life pulls me away from this space.

Life/Work/Teaching

Streamlining

Posted on by noemikjames / 12 Comments

I finished up the first week and a half of work feeling like I was totally fucked and there was no way I could make it through the year with my sanity intact.

Then I listened to a four part series on Note to Self (it’s called “Taking the Lead” — sorry I’m not sure how to link to podcasts) about two women trying to create an app/service that helps working mothers fill in the gaps so they don’t have to drop the ball at work or at home when shit goes amiss. And as I listened to their story, and heard the sound bites from so many other woman struggling to make it work when there just aren’t enough hours in the day, I felt something inside me shift. And suddenly I didn’t need to come here to kvetch anymore. Because even though, at the end of the series nothing was solved and no one had any answers, just knowing that I wasn’t alone made me feel 100% better. It’s amazing how cathartic identifying with someone else’s narrative can be.

I was also reminded of how good I have it in so many ways. I chose to be a teacher because I thought the hours would promote a work/family balance that most office jobs can’t. And while the inflexibility of my job can be exasperating (no tele-commuting for me), I really have been very lucky for the past six years in find ways to work with my administration to create a schedule that works (at least moderately) well for may family.

Of course, the gains for my family have been at the expense of my work, or better said, my mental well-being at work. At best I’ve been coasting at work for the last six years, getting by on my years of experience and all the systems, and curriculum, I created. At worst I’ve been struggling and sometimes even dropping the ball. Being at home more with my family means I’m at work less to get things done. And while I have become more efficient, which saves time, there are hours I do need to be there, and that always means picking my kids up later than I want to.

And of course there are the things I need and want to do to stay healthy and happy, like working out or seeing friends. It’s just really hard to find the time for everything.

Yes, I know, I’ve written this exact post. Many time.

But truly, this year, with my insane schedule, time is at premium in ways it never has been before. The other campus that I start at is farther away and takes a lot longer to get to, except I’m supposed to be there earlier than before. I generally arrive 2-3 minutes before the final bell, which would be totally panic inducing if it weren’t for the teacher I’m working with, who is totally understanding and happy to start the class without me.

I don’t have much travel time between schools either, which means I arrive at my school only 10 minutes before I start teaching there, which doesn’t leave much time to prepare. All this to say, I have to make copies and do set up at the end of the day, and I have to take any grading home, where I’m also planning, answering emails, and inputting scores.

At this point, it feels my day is scheduled down to the minute; if I stop and talk to someone for 15 minutes before I get into my car, the whole evening could be thrown off.

Basically, I need to start streamlining. I’m going to spend this month looking hard at how I’m spending my time in an attempt to make more deliberate choices about what I’m doing and when. If I look at one day, things feel impossible, but if I have the entire week in mind, it feels more manageable.

This means I need to be more organized, I need to have systems in place so I can see the week in front of me and make intentional choices about when I’m going to work out, when I’m going to pick up the kids early (and when it’s going to have to be okay that they wait), when I’m going to prep meals, when the kids are going to take baths, when I’m going to grade papers and input scores, and so on.

Planning my life like this won’t leave a lot of space for spontaneity, but it might actually allow me to do all the things I need to do, while still allowing me some of the important things I want, like quality time with my kids and husband, and the occasional meal out with a friend.

I’ve identified a few areas that I know require large chunks of time, or generally take more time than I think is truly necessary: shopping (for groceries and household goods), house pick-up, meal prep (includes lunches), exercise, my daughter’s homework, bedtime routine, prepping for work. I hope to spend time here this month, writing about my current systems (or lack thereof) and brainstorming ways to streamline processes to make them less time consuming and more efficient.

I find that I spend a lot of time attempting to do two or more things at the same time, and then am surprised when quality time with my kids is lacking in the quality department, when I spent much of it folding laundry or picking up things around the house. At the very least, I hope by streamlining and scheduling, I can dedicate myself to one task at a certain time, so I don’t feel so harried throughout the whole day. This may mean that ultimately I don’t get as much done during any given time period, but hopefully that will be okay, because I’ll be using my other time more wisely.

Wish me luck as I try to figure all this out. I know there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to how effectively I use my time, I just hope I can make meaningful changes before this school year gets the best of me.

What is one area of your life you’d like to streamline more?

Life

And Me Makes Three

Posted on by noemikjames / 7 Comments

I ended up getting the bug two hours after I wrote about my son getting it.

He and I spent the night throwing up together. At one point I was on his bed, throwing up into a bucket to my right while I held another bucket for him to throw up in on my left. It was surreal. And awful.

{And yes, my husband was helping, but I knew he had a long day ahead of him and figured he could use the sleep, since I wasn’t going to get any feeling as sick as I did.}

My son stopped throwing up at 4:30am, exactly 12 hours after he started, and woke up at 8am feeling great. I was not as lucky. While I never threw up again on Saturday, I felt terrible and was stuck in bed for most of the day. I did try to help here and there, when I could tell my family was really struggling, but mostly I let myself rest, of necessity more than anything else.

By Sunday morning I was feeling better. I even met up with a friend for brunch (but didn’t eat anything) and took my daughter to the zoo. This morning I felt like me again.

We’ve had kind of a rough go of it in August. First lice, then my daughter started school, then I started school, then my son was suspended for biting, then three of us got sick. I’m really hoping September treats us better.

In more exciting news, our cat caught a mouse… in our entry way. I think they are coming inside because I realized they were eating the organic kitty litter I was keeping in the garage (it’s corn based!) and I removed it, so now they have nothing to eat. We are really and truly buying traps now, so if you have any recommendations, please share. We’d like the traps to kill them with as little suffering as possible, require limited touching of the the bodies afterward, and if possible be somewhat cat safe (our cat gets into the garage sometimes, despite all we do to keep her out).

One more question for you: Would you wear a shoe that you cat cornered the mouse in for a fair amount of time (say five minutes)? There is no visible trace that the mouse was in there, but you know it was, so yeah, would you wear it again? Obviously, I’m asking for a friend.

Uncategorized

If you’re going to spew…

Posted on by noemikjames / 2 Comments

…spew in this.

The thing about 2-year-olds is they never tell you when they are going to throw up, they just projectile vomit all over everything in a three foot radius. 

I never thought I’d look back fondly on the 6-year-old being sick, but I do appreciate how well she contained the mess. 

There is going to be a lot of laundry this weekend. 

I’m so glad we didn’t have any plans. 

Life

Tough Week

Posted on by noemikjames / 2 Comments

This has been a tough week. I’m relieved it’s almost over.

Monday and Tuesday my son wasn’t allowed at school. We were so fortunate that my in-laws were willing to take him because the 4th and 5th days of the school year are not great ones to miss. In my free moments, I spent those days researching other preschools in the area. I’m in the process of setting up tours so I can apply to a few places and at least get on some waitlists. My husband is looking into some places that are close to his work.

I spent all of Wednesday morning glancing nervously at my phone, terrified I would see the name of my son’s preschool on the screen. Thankfully they never called. Evidently things have been okay since his return. I found the chew toy dog tags that he wasn’t all that crazy about the first time biting was a problem–this time he is very excited to wear them around his neck. He still had them on at pick up and the spot on his shirt suggested he was using them a lot. I hope they help.

Wednesday afternoon I had to attend the ice-cream social at my daughter’s school as a representative of the PTA. I had dinner ready for both kids so they could eat in the car before they got an ice cream. We stayed for the requisite 45 minutes and then went home. My husband had a meeting so I had to manage bedtime alone. My daughter was upset because I wouldn’t let her watch TV (her teacher had called to let me know she had been “on red” and had to go to an “alternate setting” (another teacher’s room) because she was being so disruptive), and my son was tired after his first day back at school. Bedtime was long and arduous. Then my daughter said her stomach hurt. I didn’t think much of it until she complained it was getting worse. By 9pm she was throwing up all over the bathroom (so close to the toilet, and yet so much vomit everywhere but toilet).

My daughter and I were up all night. It was pretty awful. Luckily most of the rest of the mess was contained, or could be covered until morning with a hand towel.

I drove to work at 6am to get things ready for a sub. The traffic getting home was insane. Then I took my son to school and dropped some other kid’s homework off at my daughter’s school (why it was in my daughter’s backpack I could not ascertain) and then went home to take care of my daughter.

We watched hours and hours of Octonauts (the kids is obsessed), then some Planet Earth, then Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory since we just finished the book. I think she liked the movie. I fucking loved it (like I always do). God, Gene Wilder is a genius in that film. So many incredibly one liners. I’m sad he died. (I noticed that Roald Dahl wrote the screenplay for that movie–no wonder it’s such a wonderful adaptation.)

After the movie, when I couldn’t stand any more Octonauts, I picked up the house. It was super messy and driving me nuts, and I could just feel the stress melting away as I picked up each room. I cleaned the bathroom thoroughly and the smell of vomit is finally gone. I am so much happier when my house is somewhat organized.

My daughter passed out at 6:30pm and we haven’t heard from her since. I enjoyed the quality time with my son after she went to bed. He was also asleep relatively early (8:30pm) and I did a little creative project I’ve been considering. It involved my first foray into glue guns. I think it went rather well.

So yeah, it’s been a tough week, but it wasn’t all bad. I’ve been feeling good about how I’ve managed some of these harder issues with my kids. I appreciated the hour or so I had to think about how I wanted to handle the disruptive behavior situation with my daughter. If she had told me she’d been sent out of the room herself, it would have been a bad scene, but with an hour to think about it I knew exactly how I wanted to handle it. I’ve been proud of how my husband and I have talked to our son about biting; I think we’re toeing the line between “this is really serious and you need to stop doing it,” and “we love you always, you are a good kid,” rather dexterously.

Friday I’m back at work and my husband is home with our daughter. I’m sure we’ll lay low over the long weekend to let her recuperate (not that we had any plans anyway). I’m thankful we have three days to reboot after the various shit storms we’ve been weathering. I hope next week is much less eventful.

Uncategorized

Suspended

Posted on by noemikjames / 19 Comments

Yesterday, around 10:30am, I got the call: my son had bit yet another classmate–the third biting incident this week–and was being suspended for two full days. 

My husband picked him up yesterday morning. He can’t go back until Wednesday. 

At the meeting with the director we will discuss how to proceed. Part of that discussion will focus on when they have sufficient grounds to kick our son out.

I really don’t know what to do. He knows he shouldn’t bite. He can recite the text from “Teeth are Not for Biting” verbatim. He is constantly telling us that teeth are for eating, not friends. He KNOWS all of this, but when his friend won’t hand over the ball he’s asked for on the playground, my son bites.

The last time we had a problem with biting at school (when he was suspended for one day), he was also biting at home. We could watch when it was happening, intervene and help him through his big feelings. Now we don’t see any biting at home, even though he gets frustrated plenty. I have no idea why all of the sudden he’s biting every day at school.

This was already such a hard week at work, to be worried about getting a call to pick up my kid because he bit someone compounded my stress exponentially. Now I need to take a day off next week to stay home with my son.

I really don’t know what to do. I don’t agree with the preschool’s policy on biting, and I recognize that we should seriously consider finding another care provider (or that we may have to if we get kicked out), but there are so few quality daycares in the city, I doubt we could find a spot for him on such short notice. 

I’ve read enough to know that the next step is assigning our son a “shadow teacher” to watch him closely and interven when he bares his teeth. I don’t know if the school has the personnel for that kind of one-on-one attention, or if they will allow us to pay someone to do it. I want to believe they will be willing to support us, but I’ve seen them come to logger jams with the families of other boys who are having “issues.”

I hate feeling powerless and helpless, and potentially totally fucked. Sometimes being a working parent is so incredibly complicated. Between the guilt I feel for having to put him in care because I work, and how thoroughly we depend on our daycare to provide that service, I don’t know how to think about this rationally. The whole situation is crazy making, especially when I have no idea how or when it might be resolved. 

Identity/Life

Mom Jeans

Posted on by noemikjames / 26 Comments

Well, it’s started. One of the harder years of my teaching career is under way.

I have 250 students this year. 251 actually. How can that be? Because I see the 192 6th graders on an A/B schedule, which means I only see 96 of them on any given day. I see my 69 7th and 8th graders every day though. Blerg.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what I want to do and what I actually do. I have a vague sense that this isn’t what I want to be doing, but I also have NO IDEA what I might actually want to do. This is not just about my job, but extends to all areas of my life. I’m not sure I live where I want to live, or have the social connections I want to have, and yet I can’t really envision some other, idealized life for myself.

I marvel at the people who know what they want. Who just knew right off the bat, or eventually stumble across it, or worked tireless to uncover it. I feel like I’d do just about anything to know what I really want, even if that job or place or life were impossible to attain. Not knowing is excruciating to me. It makes me crazy.

And the silly thing is, it shouldn’t, because I don’t think I landed too far off the mark. While what I do for a living is arduous and undervalued work, it challenges me in ways most other things wouldn’t. For all my griping and complaining, it keeps me interested. And I think I’m pretty decent at it. (I can’t imagine not being good at what I do, that would be horrible.)

I’ve written this post a million times before, and I suppose it makes sense that I’m writing it now. I guess I just feel like, if I had some kind of true north inside me, a direction that felt good and true, all my uncertainty would fall away, and I would know what to do. Without it, I feel directionless. Paddling in this particular boat because I don’t realize there are other boats out there, trained in this particular direction because it’s as good as any other when all you can see is the horizon.

That is the problem, isn’t it? For so long, any journey is trained on some unseen point on the horizon. It’s not until you’ve covered an entire lifetime of miles that you get even a glimpse of where you’re going.

What if some day, I see my destination hovering on the horizon and I recognize that it’s not at all where I want to end up?

I guess there are worse things. And life is supposed to be all about the journey. We’re not supposed to be thinking about the destination, it’s how we get there that counts. That’s what all the inspiration quotes superimposed over soft-edged shots of waterfalls and then shared on FB say, anyway.

I know I’m only 36 but I’ve been feeling old lately. I went shopping for jeans and realized all the places I usually frequent only had four options: skinny, super skinny, jeggins and ripped the fuck up. I just wanted some normal, straight legged jeans, but evidently you can’t get those in the places I used to shop. The places that I guess cater to young, fashion-forward women. I guess what I was looking for was “mom jeans,” which I had heard spoken of but couldn’t previously describe. Now I’m sure they are straight-leg (or maybe boot cut) jeans in stretch denim, with some nice tummy control thrown in for good measure. Those, I realized, were exactly what I was looking for, and those, are most certainly “mom jeans.” (I’ve been told I should check Macy’s, which totally proves my point.)

{The same thing happened to me earlier this summer when I wanted capris and realized no one was selling them this year (it’s all cropped-leg now evidently). I ended up finding a pair I really like at Cost.co. Yep, you read that right, I found my dream capris at a wholesale retailer.}

It’s funny that this bothers me so much because I’ve never been one who cared much about fashion. In high school I bought my jeans at Abercrombie, in the boys section, because knowing I liked my baggy jeans in a 30×34 seemed so much more straightforward than trying to make sense of the arbitrary numbers they assigned to women’s sizes. Also, I was all stomach and no hips, so women’s pants never fit me very well (this is still a problem today).

The point being, I wore baggy pants and oversized t-shirts in high school, and my fashion sense was a shambles in college. I’ve never fancied myself a good dresser, always opting for comfort over anything else. There have been times when I’ve taken great comfort in getting older and knowing that I don’t have to worry so much about what I wear. And yet realizing that, as far as clothing is concerned, I am basically irrelevant, was kind of a demoralizing dose of reality. If I am not longer a part of the coveted 18-34 demographic, then what am I?

This isn’t make much sense, is it? Especially coming from someone who is trying to embrace minimalism and free herself from the shackles of consumerism. I should be elated that no one is trying to market to me or my (severely lacking) sense of style. Now I can finally be free!

Except I don’t feel free, I feel irrelevant. I guess I just need a complete change in mindset. I’m sure it’s just around the corner. And maybe when I embrace it, and learn to celebrate my place in aging America, I’ll figure out what I want to do with my life too.

{Why is this so hard for me to do?! Everyone else seems to have their epiphany, their revelatory a-ha moment and never look back, while I make wide circles around some poorly defined center, only making the most marginal of progress which each gaping sweep around the spiral.}

The truth is I’m probably obsessing about straight-leg jeans (or this season’s lack thereof) because all the other stuff in my life is too hard and complicated. Like the many overwhelming aspects of my job, or that my marriage is hitting a (totally understandable) rough spot, or that my son is biting at school again and is about to be suspended and then kicked out, or that my daughter is getting 20+ pages of homework a week in first grade, and I can’t decide if that is a hill I want to die on (I struggle constantly with being a parent to my own children as students, when my identity as a teacher is so much older and better defined–I worry I don’t, or won’t, advocate for them enough). All of that shit is all sorts of swirling shades of gray and should be receiving my full attention, but I don’t want to think about any of it, so instead I wonder why I don’t know what to do with my life, and lament the fact what I really want is to wear mom jeans.

I knew writing here was going to be an exercise in futility, but I was also in the troublesome headspace where I couldn’t even enjoy mindless TV until I got all this bullshit out of me. And now it is out of me, more or less, so hopefully tomorrow night I can enjoy some random comedy we’re currently watching, and look forward to Monday, when my recently ordered mom jeans are supposed to arrive.

What kind of jeans do you wear? Do you ever feel irrelevant?

Minimalism

In defense of two or more (A post about things, not kids)

Posted on by noemikjames / 13 Comments

Minimalism teaches that one of something is generally enough. One of the first steps in getting rid of stuff is to free yourself of any duplicates you may have lying around.

Of course, minimalism can mean whatever you want it to mean, be whatever you want it to be. I am trying to embrace minimalism, but I have come to accept that in some cases, FOR ME, one just isn’t enough. Here are just a few things I not only appreciate having more than one of, but think of more than one as a necessity.

My daughter’s lunch box. We use the BentGo kids lunch box with my daughter. I like that is a self contained way to give her a few different things to eat every day. It means fewer reusable containers going to school (and probably getting lost) and fewer things to clean. It also helps me keep portions reasonable–I would probably pack too much if had more space (she almost never eats all I pack as it is).

I first bought a second lunch box just to have in case the first one went missing. My daughter goes to an after school program off site every day and a lot of things get left at school that we can’t go back and look for when I pick her up. For my daughter routine is key, and I wanted to have an extra lunch box in case one went missing, even though I knew we could brown bag it for a few days if that were the case.

Half way through the year I realized I could pack two lunches on the same day and that was a total game changer. Last year having a second lunch box meant less lunch prep for me every week. I appreciated only having to think about making lunch three times a week so much that this year I got a third lunch box so now I only have to make lunches twice a week. I know this might seem like a silly way to spend money, and I’m sure minimalists and frugalists would cringe, but it saves me time and gives me peace of mind, and isn’t that whole point?

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She gets the same lunch every day: pancakes, pretzels, cookies and apple slices (which I add that morning).

Bedding. For everyone. When I first read the “get rid of any extras” advice, my mind immediately went to bedding. Surely they don’t mean sheet sets and mattress protectors, right?! You always have to have extra sheets!

Extra bedding absolutely feels necessary to me. Kids do gross stuff in their beds. Sometimes they throw up. Sometimes their diapers leak. Sometimes they sneeze and spray snot everywhere. Sometimes they spill their before-bed water (even though it’s in a no-spill cup! How?!) There are myriad ways kids can require a complete change of bedding, all the way down to the mattress pad, probably at two in the morning. I have three sets of sheets and two mattress protectors for each of my kids’ twin beds and my own queen (though I generally only use two sets of sheets, the third is for emergencies). If that seems excessive, your house has surely never been hit with a bad stomach bug. Or you haven’t had lice, which requires daily bed changes for up to two weeks.

Work out clothes. I have enough workout bras to last me six workouts. I have enough running outfits for four runs. (At home I usually workout in a bra and a pair of my husband’s boxers so I don’t need any actual clothes.) I only have three sweatbands but I can hand wash those in the sink and they dry in less than 12 hours. I generally keep my older pair of running shoes and use them on the elliptical so I can keep a complete set of running clothes in the car in case the opportunity to run presents itself. I only wash the “permanent press” clothes once every 1.5 weeks (because that is how long it takes to have a full load), and I could never reuse workout clothes between washings (they smell so bad!) I definitely need a good amount of running and workout clothes.

“Lounge wear” (including sweatshirts). I need to have enough loungewear to get me through one to one and half weeks while respecting my excessively inflexible need desire to wear clothing that match my body’s cleanliness (see last week’s post). This also applies to sweatshirts, though I’m able to wear them without adhering to the cleanliness rules, probably because they go over another shirt. I tried to par down my sweatshirts, but I still have four of them. The thing is, I wear a sweatshirt most nights, all year round (Yay for frigid San Francisco summers?) so four hoodies doesn’t seem that extreme to me. I also wear them out a lot. I have one from my: alma matar, current school, daughter’s school, and husband’s organization (that one is actually his, but I kind of stole it from him because it’s extra big and incredibly soft). Sweatshirts were specifically mentioned in more than one “get rid of extra” articles I’ve read, but I just can’t par my collection down any further. I love me a good, comfy hoody and I wear them all the time.

Backpacks. I didn’t think I’d need two backpacks when my daughter started Kindergarten, but then we ended up getting a second one (thanks in-laws!) and I was really thankful to have it on those mornings when my daughter’s water bottle randomly decided to leak all over the place before we even got out the door. Now we always keep two backpacks and while we mostly use one of them, the other is needed on occasion.

Nap Mats. My husband takes our son to preschool on the bus. It’s hard enough to manage a 2.5-year-old in his nice suit without a lot of other stuff, so Monday mornings with the nap mat were really challenging. I got a second nap mat so I could leave it on Friday afternoons when I picked up the dirty one, allowing my husband an easier trip on Monday mornings. I’m sure we’ll be even more appreciative of the extra nap map now that our son isn’t wearing diapers. I also always appreciate when I have a little leeway when it comes to getting things laundered.

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Kitchen utensils. My husband is in charge of all things kitchen, and he’s not exactly prompt when it comes to getting the dishes done. Sometimes I just don’t want to wash every single thing I need to make dinner. I like to have extras of most things in the kitchen, with the exception of appliances that require counter space and/or need to be plugged in. So when we got a Vita.mix (thanks mom!) I got rid of the Magic Bullet. But when we got a new rectangular pan for the middle range on our stove, I didn’t get rid of the smaller one that came with the stove itself.

And those are just a few things that I proudly own more than one of. I’m sure I could think of more, but it’s late and this is already a ridiculously long post. So I’ll leave it at that, and invite you to tell me what you have more than one of, or when you think just one is enough.

Work/Teaching

Better

Posted on by noemikjames / 4 Comments

Thank you to everyone who reached out on my last post. I have been in a rough spot this week, but things are getting better.

Yesterday I spent several hours at the campus of my one shared class. Seeing the rooms we’d be in, making a list of what we physically needed to get started, knowing the exact number of students (36, which is not nearly as bad as the originally quoted 45, and better still than the 40 we were expecting), making lists of specific tasks we will both perform to be ready for the first day of school and Back to School night (which is on our first day of school, I know it’s insane), all of it made me feel a lot better. I’m still surprised by the amount of anxiety I am managing, but now that I’ve laid eyes on some of the concrete details, I do feel better.

I think what is happening is that I hadn’t considered the regular, “beginning of the year” stress and how that would be compounded by the “new shit I’ve never done before stress.” You’d think after 13 years of doing it, going back to school would be  walk in the park, but it turns out it’s more like a climb up a mountain. Sure, I can do it and some parts are even exhilarating and fun, but in the end it’s still climbing up a mountain. When you change the mountain, and add a 40 lb back pack, the difficult level increases substantially. So yeah, this is hard, but that is partly just because starting the year is hard, and if you want to do it well, and right, it will always involve a certain amount of stress.

On Wednesday night, after I wrote yesterday’s post, I gave myself a little talking to. During this heart to heart I reminded myself that I am completely and utterly in charge of what I teach at the 6th grade level. There is literally NOTHING guiding that content. At the 7/8th grade level I have to touch on all the Spanish I grammar topics and a fair number of the vocabulary themes, but in 6th grade I can do whatever I want to.

I used to teach 5th and 6th grade together, and I switched up the curriculum every year so the 6th graders weren’t repeating what they’d done the year before. About 5 years ago they pulled the 5th grade from the Spanish program (which I’m thankful for, I’m less and less enthusiastic about teaching younger grades), and I stopped switching the curriculum. Then I gave the year’s worth of material I wasn’t using to a new teacher at the other middle school and it was lost (or taken) and now I don’t really have a choice about whether or not I teach something else, unless I make it myself.

So I don’t HAVE to teach the same boring stuff to the 6th graders this year, but if I want to teach anything new I have to create it from scratch. The thing is, I had grand plans to create some new chapters/units for the 7/8 grade class, and then put them up on Teachers Pay Teachers (a site where teachers can buy worksheets (in PDF or document form) and other materials from other teachers–it’s very cool) to see if I could earn a little extra money. Making new 6th grade material is less energy intensive (I don’t need as much) and I will use it more this year (I have six periods of 6th grade every two days, as compared to one period of 7/8th grade), but I don’t think it would sell well on Teachers Pay Teachers (lower-grade foreign language classes aren’t common). Of course, my other material might not sell well either, but part of putting it up was to see if selling original curriculum might be a way to bring in some extra money.

All this to say, if I don’t want to spend the time making new content for 6th grade I can always fall back on my old chapters. But if I don’t want to be bored I can always make and teach something new. It’s important to remember that–I have a lot of control in that one (massive) area of my teaching day. And I may just take advantage of that to do something unique, because I know that will help me be happier this year. (And yes, I realize the best answer is probably a combination of new and old, which is what I’m currently planning.)

I think I can honestly say I’m doing better today, with my concrete list of tasks, my mental imagine of where I’m teaching, and my realization that I can change things up if I’m really that bored.

In the end it will all be okay. I’ll make it work. And I can probably manage to do that without driving myself crazy. I’m glad I have three more paid days to get my shit in order. I hope I can bolster my enthusiasm in that time too.