Not a Wasted Word

Tonight we fall back. Maybe for the last time? I used to always argue that we should stay in DST, but after reading articles about the implications of that possible reality, I changed my mind. And for real, it’s kind of a big deal (for me) because I had STRONG feelings about this. I vehemently supported spending the whole year in DST. Now I’m worried Biden will actually sign it and this really will be our last time falling back.

I do hate changing the clocks twice a year, but I obviously like falling back more than springing forward. I can always use an extra hour! And I’m ready for it to be a little lighter in the mornings. It’s been so dark when I drive to work at 6:45am.

So tonight I’m going to embrace falling back. Who knows, I may miss it some day.

It’s Friday night and I just spent an hour scoring assessments. It’s definitely not the way I wanted to start my weekend. But I realized at work that a project I punted to January can’t actually be punted and has to happen next week. So I spent all my prep time getting it ready, and not scoring the assessments that I didn’t get to last night.

The stack of assessments was stressing me out. I thought about them the whole time I was assisting at the dojo. They were weighing heavily on me, so I decided when I got home to sit down and score at least two classes’ worth.

It sucked to spend my first hours of weekend time at home score assessments, but I feel so much better now that they are done. I know I can knock out just one class pretty easily tomorrow.

Sometimes when I’m trying to decide how to spend my time, I have to take into consideration how doing (or not doing) something will make me feel. It sucked to sit down and score those assessments at 7pm on a Friday night, but it would have sucked to go to bed with three classes’ worth weighing on my mind. Which would have sucked more, doing it or not getting it done? I don’t know, but I’m pretty pleased with my choice.

And now to really start the weekend…

I had all manner of plans for tonight, the biggest one was scoring my students’ assessments. But instead I spent the evening helping my daughter identify and finish missing assignments, because evidently their grading period ends tomorrow.

It’s so hard to guide an ADHD child through middle school. And I’m a middle school teacher! I should know all the tricks of the trade but instead, when it’s time for me to help my own kid, I just feel exhausted from helping my students all day. I’m swimming in middle school hormones and attitude literally all day. It’s as challenging as you might imagine.

She is figuring it out. And learning a lot about how to manage different teachers with different policies and procedures. These hard, sometimes painful lessons will serve her well in high school and beyond. But right now it really sucks.

And it’s exhausting.

I also think I’m coming down with something. My ears hurt and my throat is twitchy. I’ll probably wear a mask tomorrow even if I test negative.

Im glad we have almost no plans this weekend. I need to rest and recharge.

And score those assessments.

Yes, yes I do.

And I play them ALL THE TIME.

I am on a level of Two Dots that I refuse to publish here. If I did the math, and multiplied the level I’m on by 3 minutes (a conservative estimate of the average time a level takes to beat a level) I would get an obscenely high number. It boggles the mind how much of my life I’ve spent playing Two Dots.

I’ve also spent tons of time on Solitaire. And Wordscapes. And now I have two other puzzle games I play daily.

I don’t really watch TV much these days. And sometimes I listen to audiobooks while I play. But really, the amount of time I’m spending on phone games is… way more than I want to admit, to myself or others.

But I’m not doom scrolling my news feeds. So that is good. Maybe some puzzle games are not so bad…

You got games on your phone?

It’s November 1st, and blogging every day is a thing people do in November.

Shall I attempt it this year?

I do not yet know.

Today was a pretty good day. I used the students-finishing-Coco time really productively and got most of my Spanish 1B free reading materials prepped. Last year was the first year I did it, so I could use the same materials for 1A and 1B, but this year I needed something new for my 1B class and I spent several hours today getting that all ready. I am so pleased it’s almost done!

I was at aftercare to pick up my son by 4:15pm, but he wanted to stay later so I went home and worked out while watching the final 30 minutes of Stranger Things Season 2 with my daughter (I’ve already seen it so I was able to keep one Air Pod in and follow an exercise video while we watched). I was VERY pleased to use that weird 45 minutes so wisely, and was also excited that my son wanted to stay at after care (they were building a LEGO town and he’s been watching LEGO Masters so he wanted to stay and participate).

I got dinner going while I ran back to school to pick up my son, so it was ready when he got home. The kids watched some TV while I showered, and then my son took a bath while my daughter and I listened to our book (currently Trevor Noah’s Born a Crime). It really was an incredibly productive use of after work hours.

And now I should get a little prep done for work tomorrow.

Happy Day of the Dead tomorrow. I know I’ll be talking a few moments to remember those who are no longer with us. Maybe you can too.

I’ve been struggling to show up at martial arts lately. Part of the reason is that really I should be training for my next test, but when I think of how much I have to review and relearn (and learn for the first time!) I get totally overwhelmed and shut down, and if I’m not doing the hard work of preparing for my next test I’m just stuck on this plateau where I feel like I’m not making any real progress. The other main reason is that martial arts takes up a lot of time. With the bus ride both ways, its at least a 2.5 hour commitment, and if stay for sparring or a higher belt class it’s 3-3.5 hours. That’s a lot of time to be away from home even once a week, let alone twice. So when I’m trying to decide if I should go, I let the feelings about “fairness” in our marriage help me make the decision.

And man do I seem to have a lot of feelings about fairness in my marriage. I am ALWAYS mentally calculating how much time I’m asking for away from home, how frequently I’m asking my husband to cover a drop off or pick up that I usually do, where the tally stands on dishes, etc. This Saturday I left for martial arts at 10am, and wasn’t home until after 1pm, and then my husband took our son to get his flu shot (they both still needed it) and to get groceries at Trader Joe’s. This meant I got another two hours at home alone after I’d already been gone most of the morning. This really stressed me out, and instead of just parking my ass on the couch to watch some TV, I cleaned both the showers, and the rest of our bathroom too. I just felt like I needed to be doing something to make up for the fact that I got so much time to myself that day.

I can guarantee you my husband does not think like that.

So why do I? Is it just insidious patriarchal messaging, that I have readily assimilated for all these years, telling me that I NEED to show up in various ways at home and with my kids to be deemed WORTHY? Is it that I don’t think I deserve so much of my own time because I haven’t achieved certain goals (like a clean, clutter free home)? Is it just that I really appreciate all the ways my husband has stepped up since the pandemic and I don’t want to take him for granted? The latter would be the least problematic interpretation, but even if it were true, it would be tinged with sentiments from the first two.

It’s something I really need to work on. I do a lot for our family, and for years I did WAY more than my husband did. If there really were some kind of running tally I would be WAY ahead. And yet, when my husband gets up twice with our son on the weekends, I feel a lot of guilt, even though they play video games together, an activity that I do not participate in.

I did end up watching about 30 minutes of a show on Saturday, while I was folding the laundry. But I also mentioned to my husband (multiple times!) that I cleaned the showers (the upstairs shower was very much in need of a cleaning). I know my husband never mentions what he gets done when I am out with the kids, and I don’t expect him to! So I guess I just need to stop expecting myself to either.

Well, it’s Friday. Again.

I have an okay day planned at work. The stations I had planned actually went well and most of the kids got the two big things done, so today won’t be too stressful. On Monday and Tuesday of next week we’re watching Coco to end our Day of the Dead unit (and to get through Halloween proper and its aftermath), so I have that to look forward to. I need a break and that movie should provide it.

This afternoon I’m running a table at the Harvest Festival at my school. I don’t usually volunteer for stuff like this, but I like the teacher running it and I don’t really have many friends at work anymore so I said yes. I’m not actually dreading it, so there’s that.

This weekend is pretty low key. My daughter js spending the night at her grandparents’ house on Saturday and my son is going to a birthday party that evening, so my husband and I get to go out to dinner. It will be a short, but hopefully sweet date night.

Sunday my daughter has a birthday party and the grandparents will pick up my son so my husband and I can run some errands without the kids. So many birthdays in October, but I appreciate that we can use these two to our advantage (thank you grandparents!)

Monday my daughter and her friends will Trick or Treat without adults in tow for the first time. They will all have some kind of communication device that also provides tracking, and they’ll be walking a route we’ve gone together for years. I’m excited for them, if it’s also bittersweet because I actually enjoyed walking behind them with my mom friends, and now we won’t be doing that. It’s definitely a metaphor for the ways our mom friendships are changing as our girls get older and need us less.

Luckily my son’s friend’s family is okay with us tagging along on Monday, so he has someone to Trick or Treat with. He has a big group of friends now and it’s definitely time for him to do more with them, and less in the shadow of his sister. Again, this simple change on one night feels like a harbinger of the future with older, more independent kids. It’s definitely butter sweet.

And I suppose that is it. I woke up before my alarm today, and was able to fit in this post. I’ve been using a sleep aid pretty much every night since my cat died, because laying in bed inevitably leads to me thinking about her and crying and I’m trying to avoid that. I don’t love that I’m using sleep aids consistently, but I have been getting a decent amount of sleep. That is nice.

Happy Friday.

Yesterday was a weird day. My mom responded to an announcement with totally unexpected vitriol. I wasn’t sure if I should be upset at how much my feelings were hurt, or the fact that the only possible explanation for the outburst was mental decline. It left a heavy weight on me that I couldn’t shake all day.

(She later apologized profusely, but the anxiety had already been caused.)

Today was better. We didn’t have our regular Wednesday staff meeting (you called it P&R!) and I was able to fit in a short run before taking my daughter to a swimming assessment downtown. She qualified for the pre-competition team! But it won’t have openings until (maybe?!) January. Still, at least there is the chance she’ll be able to swim. She’s been wanting to since before the pandemic, but most teams in the city never came back after the shut downs, so a glimmer of a possibility is a huge improvement.

We got home early enough to watch a couple episodes of Stranger Things season 2. It takes a long time to finish a season of Stranger Things because our ADHD asses struggle to stay focused on the show (and we can only watch it when the 9yo is not around).

Also some plans came together for this weekend, which I’ll talk more about later.

All in all it was an okay Wednesday. I really needed an okay day.

October 2022 has not been my month. The first week was the roughest parent conference role out my school has seen. The next week I was grieving the cat I’ve had for 13.5 years. (I grieved so hard for that cat. I still am.) And last week I was managing a yeast infection that ravaged my unsuspecting lady bits. (I have not had a yeast infection in years, and holy shit was it horrible, especially the Monistat which made sleeping for two nights almost impossible). I was also preparing for my son’s 9th birthday weekend, which includes a three hour party at Dave and Busters (full disclosure I am writing this sentence there, the most horrendous of child entertainment spaces).

About half way through the week I realized that at least some of the overwhelm I’ve been feeling is hormone related. My skin is a mess, half of it is red and itchy, the other half is oily and broken out. I’m sure the yeast infection is hormone-fluctuation related. Even my under arms smell different! So my hormones are clearly doing some perimenopause related dance, which probably explains why everything feels so hard right now.

But things are looking up! Thursday was a pretty good day. I even attempted a run after work and I felt okay! I was also able to get an Rx for Diflucan filled Thursday so that is when I started feeling better ::cough, cough:: down there. Right now I’m 20 minutes away from this birthday party at Dave and Buster’s…

…and it’s now Sunday night and we got through it! Saturday night was Lucha Libre in San Jose for my son, husband and I (our daughter was at a birthday party sleep over). We bought the tickets for Lucha Libre back when we thought the Dave and Buster’s party would be on Sunday, and when we had to move the party to Saturday, we couldn’t get our money back, so we just went for it. It was a late night, after a long day, but it was a really epic two hours of Mexican wrestling.

Sunday we slept in! (Thank god!) My husband and I picked up the house for the family birthday party. The grandparents arrived right when our daughter was dropped off at 11:45am. We ate lunch, opened presents and hung out. By 1:45pm everyone was gone and my son was building one of his new LEGO sets.

I hung out with the kids for a bit while my husband worked, then he hung out with them while I ran. It was good to run. It was what I needed after all the hosting and socializing.

This week should be pretty low key, though my daughter came home with a new cold, so we’ll see how that goes. I swear my kids have been sick ALL FALL. It’s exhausting. I guess wearing masks really does prevent the transmission of most viral transmissions. Now that we aren’t doing that anymore at school, they are transmitting the shit out of every respiratory infection in the vicinity.

I really ready for a quiet, uneventful week. I feel like October owes me as much. We’ll see if it can deliver.

How has October been treating you?

This fall has been a tough one. Everything feels really hard. At the very least, everything is taking a lot of time. I’m bringing work home now, almost every day. I get to work at 7:30 (or earlier) and have over two hours of prep time during most days, and I’m still bring home work to grade, and plan and prep. I don’t even have a new class this year! I can’t figure out why I feel so underwater at work always.

My house is a mess. I can not get out from under it for more than 24 hours. I’m mad at myself for letting the stuff accumulate to the point where it’s unmanageable, because there is no way I can do a real purge anytime this school year. Maybe when the kids have a different spring break than I do, but by then the school year will basically be over.

Parenting feels hard these days too. My daughter is 12 and in 7th grade and of course that is hard. You’d think I would excel at parenting a 7th grader, since I spend all day with 7th graders, but I honestly think my job makes it harder. By the time I get home I don’t want to deal with middle school stuff anymore, but I can’t avoid it. I’m swimming in middle school angst and disorganization and attitude ALL DAY. I knew these years would be hard, when I had a middle schooler at home, but honestly I didn’t realize how hard it would be.

It feels harder to take care of myself. We have meetings every Wednesday now so I can’t run during the week (and I especially won’t be able to run once the time changes). I miss running. The dojo changed its schedule so my son and I can’t really go at the same time anymore. Martial arts, like everything else in my life, just feels like so much work.

I just want something to be easy.

The one thing I have going for me is my marriage. Things aren’t always great, but it’s definitely not the hardest thing in my life right now, and for that I’m very thankful. There were many years where my marriage was really difficult, and I’m glad those years are (currently, though I’m sure not forever) behind me.

And now I have to go because I have so much work to do and not many Sunday night hours to do it. Blerg.