Today my husband and I went to a tailgate in Berkeley before the Big Game (Cal vs. Stanford).
We met at this tailgate 16 years ago. If it weren’t for this group of people, meeting before football games season after season, I wouldn’t be living this life.
I was thinking before we left, that 26 year old me, the one who went with her friend to these tailgates because she didn’t have anything better to do, would be really happy to see where I am now. So happy and so, so relieved.
I wish I could tell her that it was going to be okay. Better than okay. But I can’t. But I can imagine how great it would be.
And that’s pretty cool, that I can take a nostalgia trip, but recognize that I’m happier now than I was then.
Today felt like I was hitting a wall over and over again. Finally I recognized that even though having kittens has been easier than we expected in many respects, it’s still really hard and stressful. And we knew it would be, but I think when so many things weren’t an issue (sleeping at night being the biggest one), we stopped recognizing that it’s still a lot of work and kind of stressful.
But today I published my Trimester 1 grades, which felt good. I also ran, and went to both my kids’ parent/teacher conferences.
And I found out we need a new washing machine, which means we need to order a new washing machine soon, so that I can do laundry.
I’m really tired. Things feel untenable right now, but hopefully the Thanksgiving break will help.
Today kinda wrecked me. It felt like chaos all day at school. Between the end of Trimester 1 and the start of Trimester 2 and my absences and the Thanksgiving break… it was a lot of running around and not feeling prepared. I really just need this week to be over.
But it’s not yet. It’s only Tuesday. And there is still much to get done. Especially if we want to give the kittens more space starting Saturday. Peeping the house for two tiny chaos agents that can fit literally anywhere has been quite the reckoning. I’ve had to deal with all sorts of shit I just pushed into corners. We’re also realizing how few of our doors really shut properly. Our house is, at its core, pretty shitty. It’s a bummer to be reminded just how many things don’t work right, and won’t ever work right unless we spend hundreds, probably thousands of dollars to fix them.
It’s sobering. But it’s not like we didn’t know these things. We just got to ignore them for the last ten years.
But tomorrow someone is coming to see if the downstairs heater can be fixed. And someone else is coming to fix the washing machine, which is leaking yet again.
When does one just give up and buy a new washing mashing? I’ve easily spent as much fixing it as it would cost to replace it. And it’s 10 years old. But it’s so bad for the world to throw it away. Sigh, I never know what the answer is and the decision fatigue is real.
Let’s just hope we’re not throwing too many hundreds of dollars away tomorrow. I put in the paper work for my dependent child care account reimbursement, so that will help.
This morning my eye looked as bad as it ever had, but by this afternoon it looked much better; the swelling was way down and the redness was only noticeable if you looked closely. My face looked almost normal!
So I’m going to work tomorrow.
It’s for the best. We have Thanksgiving break next week so I don’t need to take a bunch of days this week. And because of our block days, the Friday holiday and the fact that I took Wednesday off last week, I haven’t seen my 8th grade class since last Tuesday.
Today was a good day, a nice mix of checking items off my to-do list and chilling out. I’m ready to go back to work tomorrow, probably because I know in four days I’ll have a week off. 😉
I’m honestly just so relieved my eye looks better. It was really rough for a couple days there.
And I also got antibiotic drops for the pink eye. I expected that since I had two more full days in the weekend, there would be no problem going to work on Monday.
But then on Saturday afternoon, 24 hours after I’d started taking the eye drops, my eye looked a lot worse. And then Sunday morning it was so swollen I could barely open it.
So I scheduled a video appointment where the doctor looked at my eye and prescribed me different antibiotic drops, along with oral antibiotics to deal with the swelling. She also mentioned that I might be allergic to the first drops. When I asked about the possibility of the (more common I think?) viral conjunctivitis (which will not be affected by all these antibiotics), she brushed me off. I found that kind of frustrating, but I went and got the new eye drops and the oral antibiotics and now I can only hope for the best.
Luckily my friend is able to sub for me tomorrow. I’m hoping I can go back on Tuesday but the thing about viral conjunctivitis is that you’re contagious until your symptoms go away, which could take a week! I really hope the new antibiotics work, because this is uncomfortable and I can’t see well and it sucks to look like this.
I had to drive down to work to be ready for the sub tomorrow. I just spent 45 minutes on the elliptical machine writing sub plans. All told I spent over 4 hours working so I could not be there for 8 hours of work. I hate being out. It’s the worst part of teaching.
Please welcome to our family, and thus the blog, Lynx and Panther, our two new kittens. They are not siblings, but they’ve been raised together and are a bonded pair. They’re about 4-5 months old.
Lynx (on the left) and Panther (on the right)
We have given them different names, but since you can tell which one I’m referring to with those names, I’ll use them here on the blog.
We’ve been arranging their adoption from a program that rescues feral cats and kittens and fosters them until they find a forever home. We’ve also been keeping it a secret from the kids, who had no idea about their impending arrival until my parents brought them home from a sleep over this morning.
It’s been a ton of work getting the house ready, and making our living room a safe and fun kitten holding pen (where they will stay until we’re off next week for Thanksgiving Break). I still can’t believe they are finally here, and that the surprise wasn’t ruined. Our kids hoped we’d get a new cat at Christmas, they had no idea we were adopting two kittens in November.
We pulled out the old screen to block the double doors and stacked old baby gates to block the door to the hall. Panther immediately slipped through the gate, but luckily this piece of cardboard fit snuggly into the door jam. It’s holding for now.
So far it’s been an incredible 24 hours with these sweet little additions to our family (they are using their boxes and didn’t wake us up once during the night!). Our kids are over the moon. They keep saying this is the happiest day of their lives.
I’m sure these two will be the subject of many more posts. I hope you enjoy their cuteness as much as we do.
And this one did too, with a trip to Walgreens to get my son’s bivalente booster at 7pm.
I HATE getting vaccinated at Walgreens, but the appointments at Kaiser are always several weeks (usually over a month) out and and walk up lines are long (at least they are when we can stand in them).
It feels like it was really hard to get all four of us a flu vaccine and bivalente booster. It required multiple trips over many weeks. It shouldn’t be that hard! No wonder so many people don’t get a flu shot or a booster. I can’t imagine how families with more kids, and fewer resources, get any vaccinations at all.
I’m so glad we’re all finally up to date on our shots. Hopefully they last us for a few months, and keep some of the crazy sickness circulating away.
