Not a Wasted Word

Yesterday sucked. It sucked at work and it sucked at home. I went to the dojo and it felt like I shouldn’t be there. My husband is struggling with some very real mood stuff. We’re trying strategies to help him manage it, but I don’t think I can handle providing those supports at home, my regular shit at home, and work, and training for my test. And if I don’t train for my test, and everyone in my cohort moves up and I don’t, I think I’ll be done at the dojo.

It just sucks. It sucks to see my husband suffer. It sucks to have to do more, and have it not be enough. It’s sucks for my son to get sick on a Thursday night (yes this also happened). It sucks that I can’t easily take a day off, which means my husband has to which means I’ll owe him time over the weekend so he can get caught up at work.

It just sucks. And yes, some of this is weird and a one off, but there is always weird, one-off shit complicating things. That is life.

I slept horribly last night. I maybe got four hours of sleep. I’m sure my son will have me up multiple times tonight. I should probably go to sleep.

I guess I’ll go do that.

Boo. Sorry for this super downer post. Things have been rough, maybe rougher than I realized, and it sucks to feel like maybe I can’t have some things that are important to me. That maybe the timing just doesn’t work for something in the short term, which can affect things in the long term. It’s just a bummer.

If you have any advice for dealing with a spouse who is trying hard to pull himself out a dark place, who is already doing everything he supposed to be doing – exercising, eating well, not drinking, trying to get enough sleep – I would appreciate it. I’ve been in dark places myself, but I don’t know what else he can do to turn this bull shit around. Mental health stuff is so hard.

This week my daughter gets out early for conferences, so she has been taking the bus to swimming. Not having to drive her has been a gift – a gift of three extra hours, during a week when I really needed them.

I haven’t had to rush out of work once this week. I’ve gotten quite a bit done – including my Spanish 2 recommendation letters, which are a monumental task.

Today I even got to run. And despite the closure of the trail I planned to visit, I still found a spot that wasn’t too muddy, and allowed me to enjoy the sun! A few times I even felt warm! Outside! It’s been so long since I’ve felt warm outside.

And I’m glad I made it out because the weather is going to be dreadful for quite a while.

Only two more days until the weekend.

I’m in an irritable head space right now. I find myself being judgy, towards others and towards myself. I find myself muttering “it must be nice” a lot. So many people have it easier than I do! Except I know that’s not the case. (98% of the world has it much harder – so, so much harder!) than I do, at least). I know that when I start to feel this way, it means some part of me is not happy with some part of my life. Now I just have to figure out what that part is.

I’ve been feeling down about this space too. Or, better said, unsure about it. It’s hard to articulate to myself why I keep writing here. What does this place have to offer? To myself or others? I’m really not very sure. And I suppose I never am, it’s just sometimes I care than I’m not, and sometimes I don’t.

And… I wrote those two paragraphs over a week ago, but never added anything or posted. It’s still true, but maybe less so. I think part of my issue is that the few blogs I still read are not really “working through life” blogs, but are instead “here is what I have to offer” blogs. And they have a lot to offer! And I do not. And I do find myself wishing I could afford more of what other people have. Even just a house cleaner would be amazing, but that feels out of reach. Even my friends, all of whom are struggling in some way or another to get by, have house cleaners. Some of them also carry credit card debt, so we clearly have different ways of managing money. And that is okay! I’m sure if I started having one, I would do all kinds of financial gymnastics to keep one. Maybe that is why I’ve never had one come regularly, because I know I’d quickly feel like it was a necessity.

But I do read some blogs and I never read about how they manage chores. Work. Kids. Exercise. Passions. Child care. Sure! All of that is there. But laundry? Grocery shopping? Driving kids around? Vacuuming? Dusting? Cleaning toilets? Changing bed sheets? None of that is mentioned. But maybe it’s just too boring so they don’t write about it. It feels like those tasks take up my entire life (especially the driving kids around). How does one not mention that stuff?

But maybe I feel overwhelmed by that stuff because of who I am (someone who struggles mightily with executive functioning), and for other people it just gets done.

I think I just need to read some different blogs, ones that don’t make me feel like my life is lacking. Except where does one find new blogs these days? Pretty much impossible.

Things are really busy right now, and I’ve become the family chauffeur. It’s gotten so complicated that my husband and I create a weekly spreadsheet with everyone’s activities and who is taking and picking up. My daughter is swimming three times a week downtown, near where my husband works. I drive her there and he takes her home on BART. It’s only like 2.5 miles away, but because of traffic it takes as long to get there as it does to drive to work every day (30 minutes one way). Many days I get in my car at 3:15 and I don’t pull into the garage until after 6:30pm. It SUCKS.

I’ve tried to see if anyone wants to carpool, but so far I haven’t found anyone. I even lost my carpool to the dojo (for my son), because the kid quit martial arts. So now it’s back to me taking him all the time.

There is one day a week we can’t make the activity Tetris work without my in-laws taking my son one way. It’s that crazy. ‘

And sometimes, even if we spend 30 minutes planning everything on Friday, it doesn’t work out anyway. This week is parent-teacher conferences at my kids’ schools, so they get out early. It shouldn’t matter, because we pay (exorbitant amounts of money) for aftercare, but there are some “field trips” taking place that our son suddenly can’t bare to miss, which means we have to move everything else around. So now, after I write this, I have to sit down with my husband for another 15 minutes to retool the next three afternoons. Boo.

Sorry to be such a downer. I know this is part of life. But it sucks. I hate spending hours and hours in the car. It’s just not how I want to live my life.

But I do want my kids to participate in just ONE ACTIVITY EACH! Especially activities that are beneficial to them physically and mentally.

But there have been some highlights lately too. This weekend our son was invited to a friends’ house last minute and our daughter was at her grandparents’ house so my husband and I went out to lunch together. We walked 3 miles into the Mission and then walked 3 miles home, with our nine year old! And the sun was out! We’ve had some much rain and cold weather (for us), that an afternoon outside was GREATELY appreciated.

My son and I watched Godzilla vs. Kong, which was super fun (he loves that stuff, and it’s a treat to watch movies like that through the eyes of a here-for-it kid). We finished Lockwood & Co Book 1, and we all loved it. Sitting quietly in the living room in the evenings, listening to a book together, is amazing, and I can’t wait for the next book to be available on the library lending apps (the kids are super stoked to keep going too!). After we read the second book we’re going to watch the show on Netflix (it includes both books in the eight episodes).

Speaking of books, RF Kuang’s Babel finally came available after a two month wait at the library. My son and I went to get it on Sunday. I read it for over an hour that night and am so excited to have something I really want to read on my nightstand. I’m also 3/4 of the way through Robert Bolaño’s 2666, which is long and, uh, a little hard to tackle. I’m reading it in Spanish. This is my third attempt. The books is all over the place, but this time I stuck with it and I think I’m finally going to finish it. It’s been on my list for over a decade and I’ve very excited to have finally conquered the 1200 page (45 hour) tome (I have both the hard cover and audio book copies, but I’ve been mostly listening to it on audio book at 1.1x speed). It’s a lot.

(Let’s not talk about the fact that RF Kuang is a bad ass, 26 years old, multilingual woman and has written a trilogy and this book. Nope, not going there.)

Hey, but I worked out today (while I was writing this). And I do think the driving this week is going to work. And I may even get to enjoy happy hour with a fledgling friend this Friday! I have to take the little wins when I can.

Well, my mid-winter break is over. I pretty pleased by how it went. Some highlights:

• We had a fun, family trip that wasn’t even ruined by one of us having Covid!
• Nobody else seems to have gotten Covid!
• I saw my friend quite a few times and she even got to see my kids once (we met her in Chinatown yesterday for a quick visit).
• I bolted my son’s bookshelf to the wall, which absolutely should have been done when he was toddler (because he could have pulled it over onto himself) or anytime after that (earthquake preparedness), but that I was only motivated to finally do because of KITTENS! They like to climb up to the highest shelves and they would absolutely knock it over eventually, so I finally got that done. Feels good too – it always filled me with a little dread when I looked at it.
• I relearned my last form in martial arts, which means I can start learning the new form I need to test.
• I prepped work for my possible absence (though it looks like I won’t need to be out!? Fingers crossed!)
• My kids both got to see friends this weekend (because my daughter started testing negative Thursday night! Might have even been early – I didn’t think to test her before that. It took us so long to stop testing negative in May, but this time she tested negative less than a week after symptoms started.).
• We got some free Covid tests (4 each from Kaiser, plus 4 from the feds) which means I can take back one of the five-packs I bought at Costco.
• I washed a repacked all the snow clothes.
• I graded two sets of quizzes and one test.
• I finished all of the forms I need for Wednesday and Thursday of next week.

Things I didn’t get done:

• I didn’t organize my daughter’s desk with her (though that might happen this afternoon – UPDATE, it did!)
• I didn’t categorize February spending (though I copied my credit card purchases to the spreadsheet).
• I didn’t do any bigger organizing projects around the house, like the contain drawers, or the hall closet.
• I didn’t get the bags put away, or the snow clothes and boot boxes back into the shed (hoping to do that this afternoon – UPDATE, I did NOT because it didn’t stop raining until it was dark).
• I didn’t do any work in my grade books (our second trimester ends this Friday, 3/3).

All in all, it was a pretty good break. A couple people mentioned how well I was taking my daughter getting Covid (“She finally found her zen!”) which I was a little annoyed by because of course it’s not that stressful to have a kid home from school all week, or to wonder if I’m going to get Covid and have to stay home myself, when I’m not coordinating who will stay home with my kid, or wondering if I need to leave work every day prepared for a sub. I’m usually stressed by shit like that because being out when you’re a teacher is a giant PITA! I really do not think people who can work from home regardless understand how hard it is to be out when you teach K-12. It turns out I’m not just a stress case, my job makes me one (or a much bigger one).

I still can’t believe none of us got Covid from the 12-year-old, because we were all together SO MUCH, not just at the cabin, but in the car with all the driving to the cabin, and then to and from the Sno Parks every day. It I didn’t believe that who gets Covid and who doesn’t is a total crap shoot, I do now!

I also wonder when we’re going to move into the next phase of Covid-positive protocols. We obviously can’t ask people to stay home when they test positive forever. At some point that guidance will have to change. At this point, it feels like a bit of a fool’s errand. How many people have symptoms and never test? How many people have symptoms, and test a ton, and never get a positive? I think next (school) year we should be asking people to mask if they have symptoms (lingering cough or runny nose) and let them carry on with their lives. That has been my strategy (I also test, but I don’t think asking people to test is fair, unless they have access to free tests). Of course a lot of people don’t wear masks correctly, so maybe even asking for that is ineffective. I know you can wear a mask well, so that it effectively protects yourself and others, but I know very few people actually wear the right kind in the right way, for the right amount of time. I can’t tell you how many times our own principal has pulled her mask away from her face to talk to us. She was doing that back during the mask mandates! I wanted to scream at her! Yes, it sucks to talk to a big group with a mask on – WELCOME TO OUR WORLDS! But if we have to do it right, so do you!

If only we had invested in effective air purification! But we didn’t! At all! Oh well!

(((ALL THE FACE PALMS)))

Okay, rant over.

Back to the grind. Let’s do this.

*I had my last post titled “When all goes according to plan” (because it really felt like that trip was doing just that) but I changed it at the last minute. If I hadn’t today’s title would have been so much catchier. 😉

We made it home Tuesday with no issues. Actually, the entirety of our trip did go according to plan. I was quite pleased. I realized once we got up there that I hadn’t adequately packed for cold weather, but luckily it wasn’t that cold so what I brought up worked just fine. This week the lows are supposed to be around 20, and we would have suffered if it had been that cold while we were there.

But we didn’t and it was all fine. Everything went according to plan. Except weirdly, that is didn’t…

Because then we got bone and tested our daughter, who’d been coughing all weekend, and sure enough, she had COVID.

Honestly, I hadn’t been worried about it at all. Her cough sounded like my cough. She otherwise felt fine. I never once worried she might have COVID. But she did. She had. The whole time. And we didn’t even know.

I’m honestly glad we didn’t know. And I can say that because we were so isolated all weekend – we didn’t even eat at In-n-Out either time. Besides a two minute dip into a gas station store we were never inside anywhere. Or at least she wasn’t. So we don’t have to feel bad about exposing anyone. And we got our fun family trip, without wondering the whole time if we were all going to catch it.

Of course now we’re wondering. My son and I tested negative this morning. Neither of us have any symptoms. My son went to school (with a mask on) and I ran errands and briefly saw my friend (whose has family members that are also testing positive right now). My husband started feeling bad today. We haven’t tested him yet because he hasn’t needed to go anywhere and tests are expensive. We’ll probably test him in the morning if he feels worse.

Honestly, the timing of this is pretty decent. I don’t have work so I am not stressed wondering every day if I’ll start to feel bad, or test positive. I don’t have to go to work each day wondering if I’ll be there the next day. That is so stressful. Hopefully by next Monday I’ll either have it or I won’t and I’ll feel sure about that. And yes it would suck to miss a week of work, and burn through all those sick days, but next week wouldn’t be an awful week to be out. I could make it work.

So we’ll wait and see. We spent so much time together in such close quarters that we aren’t isolating our daughter now. I guess we’ll see what happens. I spent one of the nights at the cabin sleeping between my children, during which time my daughter coughed all over me. If I’m going to get it, it should be relatively soon.

I have to admit, even with all the notices and close contact emails, I’m surprised we’re back here again. I know I shouldn’t be but I am. I’m just glad we don’t have to worry about giving it to anyone else.

SATURDAY

Saturday went pretty darn well. We made it out of the house by 10:15 (my dream departure time was 9:30am). We didn’t hit too much traffic leaving the Bay Area. We got In-n-Out near Srockton and then were at our cabin 80 minutes after eating. We unpacked, put on our snow clothes and headed up to the Sno Park.

The cabin we are staying at is actually a little below the snow line, but there is some snow on the porch and around the house. The kids are very happy about that.

We got to play in the snow (at the Sno Park) for about 90 minutes, which was all our kids could handle. We also learned how many layers we need.

We got home and made dinner. We packed breakfast, lunch and dinner for three days and I am pleased by how well we did. It was a TIGHT fit in the trunk so we didn’t feel like we had space for anything extra and that forced us to be pretty discerning.

We watched The Rise of Gru as a family on Netflix (the only service on the cabin’s TV). The kids and I had seen it, but my husband hadn’t. He loves dumb humor so he was laughing the whole time.

The kids passed out easily, and my husband followed their lead not long after. I stayed up too late and finished a Spanish series I had been watching.

SUNDAY

Sunday went even better than Saturday. We left the cabin around 11am and made it to the farther away Sno Parks by noon. We found a great bill to sled and just ran it for 90 minutes. It had a couple little jumps, which felt great in our weird inflatable sled (which somehow is still going strong 5+ years later).

We ate lunch in the car and then drove across the freeway to the other Sno Park. We found another great place to sled, but this one required a lot more trudging through deep snow. We were all pretty tired but the sun was out and we ended up staying there for another two hours.

We left the Sno Parks around 4pm. My husband had put a hold on the first audiobook of the Lockwood series (now a series on Netflix) and the kids (and adults!) were super into it on the hour up to the parks, so everyone was eager for the drive home. Having that to listen to for the remaining drives of the trip will definitely add to the joy of the experience.

At home we made dinner again. The kids played games on their devices while we took turns (and spaced out) showers and baths. I got to enjoy a drink in the big bathtub, which was fun.

TODAY

Sleeping was a little bit challenging last night – my daughter has a cough and my husband snores – but a futon bed downstairs (and melatonin) saved the day for my son and me.

Today we’re planning on heading to the closer Sno Park and then trying out a sledding hill we’ve seen people parked at off the highway. We’re not in a hurry to leave this morning. We’ll pack our lunches and then make dinner when we come back. Hopefully we’ll watch something as a family.

(The AieBnB wasn’t super cheap, but everything else about this trip has been very economical. Besides the two meals at In-n-Out we’ve made all our own food and brought all our own snacks. We only spent $10 at the gas station store on stuff the first night).

TOMORROW (AND THIS WEEK)

Tomorrow we’ll pack up and head home. We’ll probably get In-n-Out on the way back. We’ll definitely keep listening to the first book in the Lockwood series (The Screaming Staircase).

Hopefully I’ll post again later in the week. I have Wednesday, Thursday and Friday off. A friend is in town so I hope to hang out with her at some point. There will be lots of laundry to do and some papers to grade. The kids’ rooms could use some work. It probably won’t feel like a break, but it will provide the ample margins needed to maintain my sanity after last week. And this has been a real break! It’s been really fun.

This week at work has been very weird. Two classes were very easy; I only had a few students in each and I had a decent plan to do stuff with them. One class was super weird; I had my own 8th graders plus 13 from another class and I was trying to get each group to do something different (you can imagine how that went). Then two classes were the same as always, except I was never quite prepared for them because of the rest of the day being so odd.

I hoped to get a ton of stuff done at work this week, and I did use my preps (the ones that weren’t taken over by subbing or IEP meetings) and those two easy classes relatively wisely. I dug myself out from under the pile of free-reading checks, which is no small feat. But I am taking a fair amount of work home with me to complete over the break. At least I shouldn’t have to come to my classroom over the break. I consider that a win.

And I feel relatively prepared for our trip. The amount of work required to spend 2.5 days in the snow is not (in my opinion) worth the actual time in the snow, but I’m trying to get excited about it. The things making that somewhat possible are:

• We’re leaving Saturday morning, so I can spend tonight packing up the car (which I just exchanged with my mom).
• It’s only a three hour drive to where we’re going
• We had most of the snow clothes we needed, despite not going to the snow in many years. My son can use my daughter’s old stuff and my daughter is borrowing some pants and boots from a friend. Somehow the jackets I bought them two years ago still fit well enough (I always buy big, thank goodness).
• The person watching our cats doesn’t want to sleep at the house, so I don’t have to have a bedroom cleaned up, just the common areas, kitchen and bathroom. Ditto on a bed set up with clean sheets.
• This week wasn’t “regular” at work so I had a little more mental and physical energy to prepare.
• We’re coming back on Tuesday so the kids are missing one day of school and we are hopefully missing the President’s Day Weekend Traffic.
• I am off the whole week so I have Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday to unpack and do laundry and repack all the snow clothes for the next time we go.

The first and last items on that list are the most important ones. My husband wasn’t so thrilled about going Sat-Tues instead of Fri-Mon but I was adamant. I cannot be ready for a trip like this on a Friday afternoon. I just can’t. I’m so glad I insisted. I absolutely need this evening. I’m also so glad we aren’t doing this during my kids’ spring break when I would have to have been at work the day after we got home. No thank you.

I don’t mean to sound ungrateful that we get to go to the snow. My kids are so excited and I’m excited for them. It’s just A LOT of work for such a short amount of time. But now that most of the work is done, and I feel relatively confident that I haven’t forgotten anything important, I’m trying to get excited. Once I get all the snow clothes and regular clothes and food in the car, I will feel even better (I’m not confident it will all fit).

I’m going to post this now because if I don’t it will sit here until Tuesday and wouldn’t that be silly.

I hope everyone had a nice long weekend (if you get one)!

I swear it’s never my intention to just ghost y’all for so long. I clearly need some kind of posting schedule I’m at least attempting to stick to.

My husband follows Reductress on Instagram and he’s always sending me their posts, because they are hilarious and he knows I love them. When he sent me the post about this mug, I asked for it for Valentine’s Day because it really spoke to me.

This is me to a T. Every week I think, I just need to get through this week! Next week will be better! Next week thinks will finally feel manageable!

Of course, next week never comes. Or at least that feeling I’m chasing never does.

This week is that sentiment on steroids. The 7th graders are at their outdoor Ed experience so I’m not doing much with three classes a day. I have so much backlogged work I’m expecting to get done. But of course, I’m able to tackle far less of it than I hoped, and it takes longer than I expected. Yesterday there were three teachers out and no subs so I covered during one of my prep periods. Today I had an IEP that took an entire prep period. I did hunker down during my second prep and chipped away at my towering pile of papers (I start teaching at zero period and teach until 6th period so I have two prep periods during the day).

This weekend we’re going to the snow, so I have tons to do at home too. The good news is I have next week off, so I’ll have a couple days to unpack. And if I really do get as little done this week as I’m afraid I will, I can spend a day of my week off in my classroom.

In the meantime I just need to get through this week…

{I wrote this on Saturday night, and I’m posting it on Monday morning. Apologies!}

I was supposed to be hanging out with my girl friends tonight, while our daughters hung out too. But the last pair just cancelled so I guess it’s just my daughter and I. I’m realizing that I missed the last two events my friends spent together, which is why I haven’t seen a friend since before the holidays. They all went to a Warriors game together, and I just couldn’t bring myself to spend almost $200 dollars just to hang out with them (I really could not care less about basketball) and they all went to one of the girl’s theater production last weekend, when I was at a comedy show with my husband (again, this was a show that was rescheduled last year, and we never cancelled our tickets). It’s a bummer and I miss them, but none of them are as eager to make plans work right now as I am, because they’ve seen each other a couple times.

And yes, I know I could try to make shorter, smaller, plans with just one of them (I did try to do that tonight, after two cancelled, but the last one ended up canceling too), but that can be hard. We all have a lot going on and finding a night when we can meet up is challenging. I’m also not very good at initiating things like that, because I’m always so exhausted after work and ferrying my kids around the city.

I also don’t really have any other friends (who live in the area), which surely isn’t helping. But even if I did, I’d probably be just as bad as getting together with them. I mean, I don’t really have many friends because I’m so bad at making time for them. It’s absolutely my own doing, to a large extent.

A great friend of mine is coming into town in a couple weeks, so hopefully I’ll be able to see her while she’s here. That is something to look forward to.

Things with my husband are better. He clearly feels bad for what he said. He was exhausted and I caught him at a bad time. We both recognize that our daughter’s schedule blew up seemingly over night and we have not adjusted to that yet. Between all her new commitments, and my being sick, things came to a head.

We’ve created a spreadsheet to help us keep track of who is picking up and bringing home which kids when. I think that will help immensely. Hopefully our daughter will be able to get herself to swimming on the bus at least one day a week soon. It’s too tight some days, but on Wednesday she could probably do it. Even one trip I don’t have to make will be much appreciated.

As for martial arts, I’m still trying to figure it out. Unfortunately it’s more complicated than just, I love it but it’s hard to get to enough classes. If that were the case I’d never consider quitting! But I’m definitely at a level now where a lot of what I’m working on is hard, and committing to 1.5-2.5 hours at the dojo after a long day in the classroom is not always something I want to do. And yes, many times I’m very glad I went, but sometimes it doesn’t feel like the best use of an entire evening. Prepping for my test will require an incredible amount of time, and most of it won’t be super enjoyable. I need to memorize a lot, and keep reviewing it once I’ve memorized it so I won’t lose it, while also tackling more things. I’ve definitely been a green belt for too long, but the idea of testing is daunting. I think once I get to blue belt I’ll be okay just hanging out at that level for a while – a lot of students seem to do that – so maybe I should just get there and then lay low for a while and decide how to proceed later. I do love sharing this one activity with my son, whose other interests (::cough:: video games ::cough::) do not align with mine. But it’s really hard to know what to do, because while I feel pride and accomplishment after I test, I don’t enjoy the stress and time commitment required to test. It’s not just physical, but mental as well.

The dojo can also be a reminder of how much I suck at building community. Everyone there seems to know each other better than I do, even people who started much more recently than I did. They are all young and can stay for multiple classes, and then grab a meal after they train. I just can’t do that. And I never will be able to do that, at least not for several more years. And if I’m being honest, I probably wouldn’t want to do it that much anyway. Social situations where I don’t know anyone very well are hard for me. I’m not good at them. They are stressful and exhausting. I’d usually rather be at home where I don’t have to work so hard.

I think I just have to recognize that friendship is not something I’m ever going to have at the level I want to have it, and be incredibly grateful for the times in my life when I have friends at all (like right now!) I have no friends who actually lived in the city for many years, that is why the ALI blogging community of a decade (plus!) ago was so important to me! Those were my only friends! And without my blog and the people who read it and commented (whose blogs I also read and commented on) I would have felt so incredibly alone.

I guess I don’t have much else to say. Thank you for your thoughts on my last post. I was so upset that night, because I’ve been trying so hard to work on the guilt I feel about committing time to myself, and I’ve worked so hard on believing my husband when he says I should go do something, and his comments just seemed to confirm what I’ve always feared! That even when he’s saying I should do something, he’s actually resentful that I’m away and keeping tabs on who is doing more. But I think it’s more complicated than that. I do believe he genuinely wants me to see friends and train at the dojo and go for a run. But he also needs some down time, and if the delicate balance that works for both of us gets pummeled by sickness or some special events, he can start to feel resentful. I’ve felt myself doing the same thing. We’re both just doing our best, but the margins are so small that it can fall apart really easily.

My husband and I have some serious work to do. Our kids are suddenly very busy (mostly our daughter) and our afternoons and weekends have become incredibly packed. A lot of transporting kids has to be done, which means a lot of communication has to happen. It’s a game of life tetris that right now, we are losing.

I haven’t seen a friend since before the holidays. I carefully planned the few visits I had with my sister so they would minimally inconvenience my husband. I have been at the dojo about half as much as I originally planned, so I could run errands and take the kids to various things. And yet my husband thinks I’m doing all my own shit, without a care, while he sacrifices at the alter of family commitments.

It really sucks. I’ve been making conscious choices to not do things I want to do, in an attempt to keep him from feeling overwhelmed. And what I get is, Well you’ve been doing all your shit. And I’ve been pulling back to make space for everyone else.

Except I’ve been pulling back from my own shit to make space for everyone else too. I just think that when I’m gone for three hours while my daughter tries her first art class across the city – running errands and killing time because it doesn’t make sense to drive all the way back home – then repeat the trip to get her, it seems like I’m off doing my own thing. Except driving across the city, and then driving to another part of the city to get cat food, is not actually my own thing at all.

I have been sick. I did need significant coverage at home on Sunday and Monday nights, because I couldn’t take off from work. And I did take my parents to a comedy show on Friday (tickets that were delayed a year because of the omicron outbreak). And I have been at the dojo once a week for my own training. And yes, one of those days was a longer 3 hour session, but it was just ONE time in the entire month of January. I was gone another Saturday morning, but instead of going to the dojo like I wanted, I drove to Oakland to get medicine for our kitten because the pharmacy at his old vet fucked up and gave us half as much as they were supposed to in December.

I can tell the something will have to give this spring, and I think it’s going to have to be the dojo. There is no way I can train for my blue belt test with my daughter swimming three times a week, my son at the dojo two times a week and my daughter at art once a week. And if I can’t train for this test I should just quit, because I’ve been a green belt for way too long, and everyone else at my level is testing this spring and I don’t want to be left behind again. If I can’t do this now, it means I can’t do it, period.

And maybe that is what I’ll have to do. This is when most people quit anyway. I’m certainly most people. And my commitments at home mean the dojo will never be the community I want it to be for me, or that it already is for other people.

I suck at community anyway.

Right now there is camp sign ups to figure out and a ski trip to plan for, while learning my new crazy afternoon family taxi schedule. February is going to suck. Maybe March will be better.