Not a Wasted Word

2:35am – Up with son for an hour

5:45 – Up with son again

6:00 – Do some work, lose it when Word crashes

6:30 – Pack daughter’s lunch and snacks

6:45 – Wake-up daughter, read a book

7:00 – Morning routine: eat breakfast, get dressed, brush teeth, put on shoes, finish making lunches.

7:40 – Drop off daughter at school

7:55 – Drive to work (listen to music)

8:35 – Grab a couple groceries

8:45 – Arrive at work / Prep for day (no class at other campus today! Yay!)

9:30 – Start teaching

1:00pm – End school day / Eat lunch (Our school day ends early on Wednesdays)

1:30 – Prep for rest of week

2:30 – Change into running clothes / Make copies

2:45 – Sneak out early / Drive to trail

3:00 – Run 4 miles

3:45 – Drive home (listen to music)

4:05 – Pick up daughter

4:20 – Pick up son (No biting today! Yay!)

4:30 – Arrive home / Start dinner / Get in shower

4:45 – Grandparents arrive / Get dressed / Finish dinner

5:10 – Leave for Back to School Night

5:20 – Man PTA table

5:40 – Give PTA speech in Spanish

6:00 – 1st grade Back to School Night presentation

6:30 – Take down PTA table / Chat with friend / Drive home

7:00 – Back home / Get kids settled down / Daughter’s HW

7:15 – Son’s bedtime: Milk / PJ’s / Read stories / Snuggle

8:00 – Finish daughter’s bedtime: Read books / Snuggle

8:45 – Eat dinner (that husband made–yay!)

9:00 – Write notes for class tomorrow

10:30 – Pack Thursday and Friday lunches and snacks

10:45 – Snuggle with son who woke up crying

11:00 – Write this post

11:15 – Review lesson plan for tomorrow

11:45 – Go to bed

 

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 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.

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.

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.