Not a Wasted Word

By the time I post this my spring break will be half over. So far, I have no complaints. It’s maybe not much of a break, but I’m getting good stuff done. And I’m finding moments for self care. I think I may reach my main goals of feeling good about my test, feeling good about the house, and being ready for the final two months of school. While I may have tried to pack a lot into this week, right not I’m feeling pleasantly productive.

Some self-care highlights:

I ran Monday, and while the fog was rolling in, I did get to enjoy plenty of sun.

I got a one-hour Thai massage on Tuesday and saw my chiropractor on Wednesday.

I’ve gotten so much done! Still haven’t written those personal one steps yet. Blerg – it’s so hard!

I am feeling pretty good about my test coming up. I do think I will be as prepared as I can be, and that is a big win. I’m sure I’ll never feel 100% about a test, but I am confident that I know everything as well as anyone else testing at my level.

I’m about to pick my kids up for their dentist appointments (Wednesday is an early release day for them). Tonight will be a long session at the dojo. Tomorrow I plan to run down by my parents’ house, then shower at their house before my own dentist appointment. Then I’ll run some errands on the way home.

Friday I plan to take it easy, since I’ll be at the dojo testing for 5-6 hours on Saturday. My husband and I will grab lunch (he works from home on Friday), and I’ll putz around. Maybe I’ll even watch a movie (anything streaming I should see?)

After a very busy weekend, I’m officially on Spring Break. I have lists of what I hope to accomplish in four different areas of my life, and every night I plan to look at it and write down the specific tasks I hope to tackle the next day. I hope this keeps me from feeling too overwhelmed, and helps me take a couple of breaks here and there.

As you can see, the Relax+Reboot column is pretty short. I honestly can’t think of much to put there, which should probably be concerning. I do hope to get a massage, which is a very big treat. Part of why I wrote that is because I had so little to write there. I guess that is a happy result of separating tasks, so as to be sure I was taking some time for myself. If I hadn’t done that I probably wouldn’t be trying to get a massage at all.

And of course the test prep list is super long. I have a lot of test prep to do. I cannot wait for this test to be over.

More will be added to the lists too. This is just a first pass. I’m at my allergy shot appointment right now, and I forgot to write that down.

I have a fair number of appointments and errands to run this week, which is partly the result of me pushing things back, knowing I’d have more time whilst not working. It’s impossible to take an hour or two off for an appointment when you’re a teacher, so we tend to schedule things during our breaks. It makes regular weeks more manageable, but it also means breaks are less restful. Oh well.

My hope is to end this week feeling good about how I tested, pretty happy with the state of the house, prepared for the final two months at work, and starting fresh with my list of upcoming errands. We shall see.

I’ve been super in the weeds this week. Thank god I gave myself the grace of doing review games and watching a movie with my 1A classes this week, because even with that I’m way, way underwater.

There is just too much going on. I’m at the dojo all the time. And it’s not the fun, away from home getting my exercise kind of dojo time. It’s the stressed out, how much do we have to know?! test prep kind. I’m realizing that one hard thing about getting ready for a belt test is that not only is martial arts causing a fair amount of stress for me, it’s also taking away my main go-to stress management tool – exercise. The kind of time I’m spending at the dojo is not emptying my brain, or raising my heart rate, or releasing endorphins. But I’m using my workout time to be at the dojo (and then some) so that means I’m never getting to empty my brain and raise my heart rate and release endorphins. I went for a run last Sunday and it felt so, so good. I’m really missing that time right now, and it’s kind of when I need it most.

Having said that, I had a moment at the last green belt class where I felt like I got it, and it was even a little fun. Usually green belt class, which is at the end of the night, is challenging and interminable, but last time I barely looked at the clock and even enjoyed myself a bit. So that is probably a good sign.

But most of the time, I’m just really stressed out. And I know it’s for something I’ve chosen to do, but it’s still hard. Work has been stressful too, because our principal is out (her father just entered hospice) and they are asking us to do a lot of coverage. We also have a ton of high school transition IEP meetings, and I’m going to a bunch because they put a lot of kids with IEPs in my classes (I teach in a way that allows kids with IEPs to be very successful, despite the more academic nature of my elective classes). So I’m giving up prep time to sub and go to meetings, which means I’m getting less done during the week when I was supposed to catch up.

This weekend is busy. It’s 8pm Friday night and I’m just leaving the dojo. I assisted in the kids’ class and then went to open mat to do test prep. Tomorrow I’m at the dojo from 11:30 to 3pm, then we’re seeing the Mario Brothers movie. Sunday morning is Easter at my parents’ house, and then maybe the Cherry Blossom festival in Japantown (though we may punt that to the next weekend).

The only reason I’m not panicking about this weekend is that I don’t have to go to work on Monday. Man am I ready for this break.

I hope you’re all getting a little break some point soon too. And some sunshine. It only rained once this week (today actually) and it was so nice to see some sun.

I’ve been super discombobulated lately. I can’t keep my focus. I can’t complete multi-step tasks, or a series of simple task. I thought it was because of all the brain space my test prep was requiring, but now I’m wondering if it’s something else. I finally learned my form and I’m not thinking about test prep as much, and yet I’m still struggling.

I’m truly a hot mess these days.

The time change is really throwing me too. I’m always thinking it’s much earlier than it is. I’m feeding the cats late. Starting the kids’ bedtime late. Doing everything later than I intend to. It’s been a couple weeks so I’m not sure why I’m still not accustomed to the new time. I wonder if it’s because it’s still so cold, maybe my brain can’t reconcile the fact that we’re still have days with highs if 51 in the spring.

Yesterday was beautiful though. The high was supposedly 58, but in the sun it felt much warmer. Maybe if the sun starts coming out more my body will figure it out.

This week was a little rough. The kids were home for Spring Break. My husband and I got sick. I couldn’t take off (I stayed home on Tuesday to be with the kids so I couldn’t take off again), so I had to just power through. Luckily I wasn’t as bad as my husband. He still feels awful and we’re wondering if he has a sinus infection. We’re also wondering if allergies are playing a part in making us feel shitty, because they seemed to get bad really quickly.

The good news is I am giving myself a break next week at work, and watching a movie with my 1A classes. That just might get me through to Spring Break. Then I have that week at home while my kids are at school, and hopefully I can use that time to do the final prep for my belt test, which is Saturday the 15th. I really want to get it over with.

And I think my back will hold. And my knee (it’s also been acting up lately). I ran yesterday (very slowly, as I still don’t feel great) and neither feels awful now. I really hope I can test in two weeks and move on.

A big thank you to everyone who shared their thoughts on my last post. I think it’s true that I’m feeling overwhelmed and under appreciated right now, and I believe having more discretionary income would ease some burdens. Also, it’s spring and we’re having to make hard decisions about how much childcare we can afford over the summer, and what traveling to visit family can look like. My son got into the much cheaper Rec and Park camps, but we’re putting our daughter in more expensive art camps, in the hopes that more formal training will help her get into the public fine arts high school she wants to attend. People evidently pay many thousands of dollars for private help producing portfolios and we don’t have that kind of money, so a few art camps will have to do. But even those camps cost $500-650 a week. So far camps this summer are running us about $3.5K. And air fare has gone up substantially, at least our flights to St. Louis have. Everything just costs more now, but ya’ll know that.

This weekend was jam packed. Both Saturday and Sunday were sunny! Hooray! I walked a lot Saturday and got in a short run on Sunday. Being out in the sun, even if the air was frigid, helped my mood immensely.

Saturday our son had a long play date so my husband and I went out to early dinner and drinks. We walked to the dinner spot, but we didn’t walk home because it was windy and cold.

Sunday we got to see a sneak preview of the new Dungeons and Dragons movie. We aren’t hard core D&Ders, but we play occasionally and we have been looking forward to the movie since last summer. It was going to be hard to fit a showing in next weekend (it comes out this Friday) but then my husband found a sneak preview showing on Sunday at a perfect time and we went for if! It was a ton of fun. We liked it a lot.

It was a nice weekend, and I had a lot of fun. I also didn’t get much done and am feeling stressed out because of that. But I guess you can’t have both a lot of fun and time to do boring stuff (like chores and grading). So now I go into this week a little less stressed for all the fun of the weekend, and a little more stressed for feeling behind.

Tomorrow I’m staying home with the kids. It’s their spring break but it’s not my spring break. I have mixed feelings about the times when our breaks don’t match up. I’ll probably write more about that later this week.

This past Tuesday, LV summarized the Best of Both Worlds podcast topic for the week as: hiring hella childcare. And I’m struck again by how I don’t quite know where I belong socioeconomically. I read people who seem like me, but have a quarter million dollars saved for college – for each child. I read people who seem like me, but can pay two mortgages while they renovate a new house. I read people who seem like me, but have giant houses with beautiful interiors. I read people who seem like me, but go on incredible vacations to far flung places. I read people who seem like me, but send their kids to expensive private elementary and high schools. I read people who seem like me, but can hire full time child care.

And the reality is, people who have full time child care, especially while their youngest kid is in school, are not my people. I can barely make my own finances work; the thought of providing someone with their livelihood is insane to me. We have always paid for aftercare, which works because I am a teacher and get off early enough to pick up the kids by 6pm. But we had to do all kinds of crazy shit to make mornings work over the years. When my son was a baby, my FIL watched him from 9:00am to 1pm. I taught from 7am to 12:10pm straight (no breaks) and pumped in the car on the way to pick him up. We couldn’t even afford full time care when we actually needed it.

And yes, I know how lucky we were to have someone willing to watch our baby for us (those years are SO EXPENSIVE), but no one was providing full time child care on a schedule that worked for us. I was waking up all night with a newborn, then leaving the house at 6am to teach five classes in five hours, and then pick up my baby at lunch. We were making it work with FOUR HOURS of care a day. My husband got in late to work and left late, which means I was with the baby alone (after teaching full time) from 1pm to 7pm. And I had to get my daughter around 5pm. It was nuts. Once they started school I had to ask for 1^st period prep for years, so I could drop them off at 7:50am and book it down to my job. If I hit traffic I had to call a friend to cover for me. It was horrible. And I spent my prep commuting so I had not time at work to get anything done, which meant I stayed up late every night to do prep work at home. It was awful. No wonder I had no ambition during those years. I was just trying to survive.

And yet. We live in one of the most expensive cities in the country. And we own a house in that city (or a mortgage lender owns one in our name). I suppose that is where the comparisons just seem to fall apart. Our mortgage is 2-3x that of mortgages for a similarly sized house in most other parts of the country. (And our house would probably sell for two times that now). We choose to live here for a number of reasons, and high on that list is grandparents, who do provide support (and provided more when our kids were babies). I sometimes wonder though, if being as house poor as we were is actually worth the grandparent help (it probably is, but only because of how much our house has increased in value). Paying for a full time nanny here probably costs 1.5x or 2x what it costs in other parts of the country. So maybe I don’t really know what I’m talking about.

So yeah. I just don’t feel like I understand where I fit, who my people are. I do fit pretty well with my real-life friends, the ones I know now, which is part of why I think we get along so well. But they all live here and again, I wonder if living in the Bay Area skews things so much that you can’t really compare yourself with people elsewhere. All the metrics are off. I think many of the blogs I read have similar-ish incomes (many have much higher incomes I’m sure, but some I think are comparable), but their mortgages are so much less than mine. If your monthly mortgage payment is cut in half, that’s a big difference in disposable income.

And sure, we get to go to Hawaii this summer, for the second time, but only because a friend invited us. And they get to go because a friend invited them. We could never afford the trip on our own. We went to London last summer, to visit my sister, but only because my parents paid for the AirBnB, and a massive tax return allowed us to cover the air fare. Our other two big trips were to very cheap countries, and we rented our house out on AirBnB to help cover the expenses.

{I forgot to mention we had to rent out a portion of our house for 8 years, just to cover our mortgage – that is why we got the massive tax return, because we took a loss being landlords for so long.}

Yes, we own a house that is worth a lot, but we struggle with basic upkeep, let alone renovating parts of it that we don’t like. We’ve wanted to replace our garage door for 5 years (you have to get out and swing it open manually), but whenever we save up enough to do it, a plumbing or electrical emergency requires we divert those funds. We can’t use an entire room because of water damage from this year’s storms (the walls are COVERED in mold).

We have very little saved for our kids’ college education. We’re considering halting our contributions to our son’s 529 to pay for a house cleaner. (We only just started contributing to his 529 a couple years ago, when we started contributing to his sister’s 529. She is 3.5 years older.)

And yet, I’m assured, we are solidly upper middle class. Are the people who seem to have more, wealthy? Or is upper middle class just such a big, nebulous category that we both exist within it? Or is it again, where we live? Is upper middle class in the Bay Area just look different?

It doesn’t really matter. I’m just trying to understand why my experience seems so different sometimes. I guess I shouldn’t expect to find a lot of similarities with people in the private sector, finance, law or medicine. We are a public middle school teacher and a city employee. Of course it’s not the same.

It’s funny because generationally I feel adrift as well. I was born in 1980, so some articles declare I’m Gen X and others a Millennial. I always identified more with Gen X, but now that Millennials are getting older, much of what I read about their experience also rings true. Again, it doesn’t really matter, but I do find it frustrating that I don’t seem to fit anywhere, that it’s so hard to feel like I belong.

Even with my friends, because I had kids early (relatively, in the Bay Area having a kid at 30 is very, very early) it’s hard to find my tribe. (I think this part of me identifies as Gen X). Most moms with kids my daughter’s age are a full decade older than me. (Sometimes I’m grateful for my DOR because I’m going through perimenopause with them, even though they are 10-12 years older). I can find moms about 5 years older than me with kids in my son’s grade, but that kid is their oldest (and there aren’t many of them). My friends from college have kids 8-10 years younger than mine, if they have them at all (many don’t). And of course in my profession I feel alone, seeing as I’m the only foreign language teacher in my entire district. Even at the dojo I’m one of the only adults over 35, and one of only a small handful that has kids.

So yeah, I’ve just been noticing it lately, as my blog roll whittles to a group of people that I thought I could identify with, but that are actually living very different lives, and managing very different concerns. Maybe most people feel like this, like everyone has it different enough that it’s not really comparable. Or maybe I’m just focusing on the wrong things, because I’m burnt out and other people’s problems seem easier to manage than my own. (Surely the real issue is that I just don’t want to manage my problems, and I’m feeling salty about them.)

I actually started a post about realizing I’m burnt out today, but then I came back to finish this one first. I hope I don’t come off like an ass. It’s really not about people having more than me, because I have so much and honestly don’t need more. I probably couldn’t even manage more, or it wouldn’t make a difference. That’s probably it, because I have more now than I did 5 years ago, but I’m still coming up against the same kinds of problems, so maybe this is just how I operate. (But also, everything costs so much more than it did 5 years ago, I don’t know how much “more” I really, in effect, have. Certainly not as much more as the numbers on paper would suggest.) It’s just about feeling like I don’t really fit in, like I can’t find my people. It would be so nice to meet someone, or read someone and think, oh yes! This person is just like me!

But maybe no one ever feels that way. Maybe I’m just looking for something that no one ever truly has.

How about you? Do you feel like you look around and see people like you? Or do you always feel just different enough for it to be noticeable? Does anyone feel like they belong anywhere?

{Posting this at work, where the internet is back up! – Also, I realized I never thanked everyone for their comments of support, and advice, on my post about my husband struggling. I REALLY appreciated all of them. They helped me feel less alone, and gave me some ideas for how to proceed. Things are still rough, but this past week was better than previous weeks. Just wanted to put some gratitude out there, before this super down post. ::face palm::}

I’m writing this in a Word document! Because the internet it out at our house. At least we have power.

Remember how it was sunny yesterday afternoon? Well, that was short lived. Today it poured all day. And then the wind picked up. We lost power at work again. It came back within an hour, but the internet didn’t. The internet probably won’t be up again tomorrow. At least this time we can make photocopies if we can’t use the computers.

The wind was really brutal today. By the time I was driving home there were trees down all over the place. I counted 11 while I was driving to and from my kids’ activities.

So much driving today. So much traffic. I guess a big rig blew over on the Bay Bridge which meant traffic from that was spilling over into downtown. I got into my car at work at 3:11 and did not pull into my garage until 6:42. I spent all but 15 minutes of that driving (and 10 of those 15 minutes I spent waiting in the car).

Most of that 3+ hours of driving in the rain, wind, and gridlock traffic, I was fuming about work. I found out today, from one of my students, that the high school we feed into is having a Spanish 2 entrance assessment NEXT WEEK. On Wednesday. They have never administered an assessment in the spring like that. Not in the 19 years I’ve been teaching at the school. This year they are, and they didn’t bother to reach out to one of the two middle schools that provides most of their students. I even reached out to them in September, expressing concerns about their ever-shifting Spanish 2 enrollment processes, and they assured me I knew everything I needed to know. I’m so furious at myself for not double checking a couple months ago. They’ve never afforded me the courtesy of an update when they change their process. They’ve never reached out to me one time, about anything. And when I reach out to them, they make it clear that I’m a nuisance they just want to make go away.  

I’m going to look like such an incompetent asshole when I tell parents about this. I JUST sent home recommendation letters explaining how students would be assessed in the fall (this is what they did to students who enrolled in Spanish 2 last year). Now their students will have less than a week to review for a test that I know nothing about. I’m so upset. I feel like no one gives a fuck about me or my program. I feel like I’m left to fend for myself. I feel like a fool for thinking I could manage all this, when no one is willing to support me.

So yeah. Today sucked.

All day, I looked forward to watching something on the elliptical when I got home, but instead I’m writing about my shitty day in a Word document. Sounds about right.

I can’t believe it’s already mid-March. Next week my kids have spring break! And after that it’s two months until their summer break starts. (My spring and summer breaks start two weeks after theirs.)

And we’re talking about summer break a lot these days. Saturday was Rec and Park’s camp sign up. We got all five camps we wanted for our son! And the one we wanted for our daughter! Last summer we got NO camps, so it was a very pleasant surprise to get all of them this year. Especially after we got an error message on the check-out page and assumed we had to start over.

We also bought our tickets to Hawaii, using the $150 a person vouchers we got last year because of the debacle getting home. Our friends are hoping to make Hawaii a yearly event and as long as we’re invited we will be going!

I still haven’t nailed down St. Louis travel yet. The tickets for that are crazy expensive ($600 a flight!?) because of where July 4th falls and the fact that I’m not interested in stretching that trip out over two weeks anymore. We’re also trying to stop in Charleston, South Carolina on the way home, to visit my cousin and her kids. But we have the kids in camp on either side of those two weeks, so I’m sure I’ll be spending more than normal for those flights.

I think one reason I’m surprised it’s mid-March is that the days are still pretty chilly around here. Usually by mid-March we are reliably in the mid-60s, but this week it’s all mid-50s again. We had some mid-60s days last week and I was reminded just how cold (relatively) it’s been all winter here, and how much the weather affects me. It’s just such a relief to not be cold all the time, to go into a part of the house that isn’t heated and not feel frigid air.

And of course it’s still raining a lot. I know we need the rain, desperately, but I wish we could space it out over the years, instead of suffering through droughts and then months of non-stop rain. I could definitely use some sun.

{It was sunny this afternoon and I took a walk with my son and it felt amazing. So, so needed a little sun on my face, especially since it rained all Sunday and is supposed to rain all Tuesday.}

But it’s also a bit of a relief that it’s still been so grey out, because my back is still jacked and it would hurt my heart to see sun and not be able to run. Today my back feels a smidge better, so maybe I’m on the mend? I’m really over whatever this is. The original pain was in my mid- to lower-back, but now it’s spread across my shoulder blades (probably because I was holding myself weirdly, and sleeping weirdly). I’m so impatient when I’m hurting and healing. And it happens more and more now that I’m solidly in my 40s.

Going to post this now because a poorly concluded post is better than a never-published post!

After a brief reprieve from the inclement weather earlier this week (I felt the sun on my face), we got pummeled by a gnarly storm on Tuesday. It rained hard all morning and then the gale force winds picked up. A giant branch broke off the tree in front of my classroom. And then the power went out.

Without power I had to completely retool my plans. The kids were of course totally out of their minds. Of all the classes I’d prefer to weather storms with (ha!) my last two are the last on my list, and yet 5th and 6th period is always when this kind of stuff happens.

I honestly assumed the power would be back on Wednesday. Or that they’d cancel school if it wasn’t. But when I drove up Wednesday at 7:30am it was clear that neither was true. There was no power, but parents had been assured that school was on!

It sucked. I don’t really understand how it’s okay to have school without lines of communication open (many of us had cell services that were completely down because of the power outage – I couldn’t even send text messages), or working fire alarms. None of the bathrooms have windows, so they are all pitch black. And because of our reversed block schedule we started Wednesday with 6th period, the same period we ended the day before with (also in the dark). It was also really cold that day, and the classrooms were frigid without heat. I did not dress warmly enough and I felt like it took me all evening to finally feel warm again.

Some teachers were really, really pissed. It’s going to be something we’re working through for a while.

The power did eventually go on Wednesday afternoon, so today was fine. I’m just really ready for tomorrow, which is Friday! I’m always so, so ready for Friday these days.

My back is feeling better, though the hour plus in the car every afternoon is brutal. Driving is definitely the most painful; sometimes I kind of want to cry. I’m starting to worry that, while my back is not as acutely painful, the current situation might linger for a long time. If that is the case, I’m going to be very grumpy.

Some positive notes:

Both my classes got their video skits filmed this week, despite the power outage (one of them was 6th period! I’m so impressed we powered through!)

I LOVED the two-classes-doing-video-skits-and-two-not set up. I’m definitely going to continue that at least for the next one. The only downside is that we do them every three weeks, so if I’m switching off who does them, I’ll only have one week in every three that I’m not doing them at all. But it might be okay since I don’t feel so frazzled when it’s only two classes doing them at a time.

The weather today was GORGEOUS. Sunny and in some instances it actually felt warm. I am so ready for warmer, sunnier weather.

Lockwood & Co 2 because available and we’re going to make an event of starting it tonight. Popcorn with candy in it!

My girlfriends and I are getting together for a movie this Saturday.

And I should post this now or I never will. Not the best reason to, but reason enough.

This weekend required a series of unforeseen tweaks. Plans changed, but we tried to make the best of everything.

The biggest unforeseen tweak was that I tweaked my back. Kind of badly. It was feeling twingy on Friday, but I wasn’t worried about it. Saturday morning it was so bad that I couldn’t ignore it. In fact, I couldn’t do a lot of things, especially movements that required I bend forward or put out my arms.

Luckily the crap weather meant we weren’t planning on doing much. I obviously didn’t go to the dojo like I planned (I’m actually pretty sure that I did this to myself at the dojo on Thursday night). I didn’t work out at all actually. I spent a fair amount of time lying on the floor or on the firm couch. I did some stretching. I took a lot of Advil.

Sunday it felt better right when I woke up but felt worse fast. After making pancakes for my son and his friend (my son’s illness turned out to be food poising because he was fine after he threw up on Thursday night), and cleaning up the kitchen, I had to lie down for a while.

The good news is I don’t think this is just “lower back pain” flaring up. I think I was tight before martial arts on Thursday and then I compensated in weird ways when we did high knee jumps during warm up, which led to a pulled muscle on my right side. I actually was able to find the spot with my little massager and I think that is why it felt better Sunday morning. I have a few little gadgets that help with back pain and I’m using them all to help release the muscle and the area in general. I think that if I give it some time to rest, and keep taking anti-inflammatories, it will be better soon.

But it sucks to lose this training time for my test. Sometimes it feels like the world is telling me to quite martial arts.

Right now I’m on the elliptical, plugging along at a very low resistance, just trying to move my hips a little. We’ll see how it feels tomorrow.

Remember that mug with the text, “Woman foolishly thinks she just needs to get through this week,” that I posted about? Well, I found myself banking hard on “next week will be better” until I realized I had way too much planned at work and I had to make some changes. So instead of doing a really fun, but super tine consuming thing in all four of my 7/8 classes, I’ll only be doing it in two of the classes. The other two classes will be doing what I planned for the next week, and then the next week we’ll switch. I may do this for the remainder of the year, because creating stories with them, and then making video skits of each story is super fun, but also incredibly time consuming and a massive energy suck. I just don’t think I have the bandwidth to do them all in the same week, and I’m proud of myself for recognizing that and taking steps to do remedy the situation.

The weather continues to be awful. My husband said that weather.com showed a full TWO WEEKS of nothing but rain cloud and storm icons. It’s starting to weigh on all of us. I especially hate it because I have to open my door on rainy day lunch with means I lose that time to work, and also add time I need to be managing discipline and making kids clean up their own messes. (Because it’s usually nice here most of the year, the majority of our eating spaces are outside, and uncovered, so when it rains teachers have to open their classrooms so kids have enough places to eat). It’s amazing how trashed they will leave my room if I’m not watching them like a hawk. On Thursday, I was trying to be on a zoom with the tech guy, who was showing me how to post the grades for my semester classes that switched during trimester 2, while also managing some dumb shit 7th grade boy behavior. It was super exhausting. The idea of two more weeks of that is demoralizing.

And of course we sprang forward this weekend. Springing forward is really hard for me. I already struggle to fall asleep at a reasonable hour when my body doesn’t think it’s an hour earlier than it is. I’m definitely breaking out the melatonin tonight.