Not a Wasted Word

Or better said, where my head is at.

Actually, I’m not really sure of that.

I’m in a weird place right now. It’s not my normal feelings of hopeless that mark my usual bouts of depression. It’s something else. Everything feels frenetic and overwhelming, even though it’s objectively not. I have managed to extricate myself from the PTA enough to not being doing a lot of that these days. And while I did just test for my green belt – which was a significant time commitment, I was prepared enough that the weeks before were not awful.

We are keeping things really simple this holiday season. Each of our kids is getting a BIG thing they really want and that is about it. For my daughter it is a Chromebook and for my son a Nintendo Switch. We will almost assuredly regret the Switch, but since my daughter was getting her first BIG thing, we thought maybe we could pivot from lots of presents to just the one BIG present with our son, who is definitely they more present-obsessed of the two. He’s been begging us for a Switch for over a year, so he really, really wants one, and hasn’t asked for one other thing (having his birthday a couple of months ago definitely helps), so we’ll see how it goes. Not getting them much has definitely helped with the holiday stress – and having Thanksgiving be so late, and us traveling that week, also forced us to get less this year.

I still haven’t made the calendars yet – but since my grandmother is no longer with us I only have to make two. The good news is my inlaws aren’t in town so I can push that one back a bit anyway. I feel like as long as I get them printed by the New Year I’ll be okay.

My winter vacations start on Friday, which means I can go to my kids’ parties tomorrow. Part of me is sad I don’t get the day to hang out at home alone, but I know it means a lot to them for me to be there. My staff holiday party is this this afternoon, and it’s early which I appreciate because I’m fighting off something that is not fun. (So much horrible stuff has been going around at work, I’ll count myself lucky if this is all I get.)

I have spent the past three weeks being thankful that we’re not traveling anywhere or doing anything over the break, but now I’m staring 16 days straight with my kids and I know it’s going to be intense. My husband isn’t taking any extra days off because he had to take so many to go to my grandmother’s memorial. And my inlaws aren’t in town so I won’t get much help. But a couple of my daughter’s friends are around so if I can find friends for my son I’ll be set (if my daughter has friends over and my son doesn’t, things break very, very badly for everyone).

So yeah. That is where I’m at. It’s not great, and honestly I’m not sure why. I’m hoping once I’m officially off for break I’ll start to feel better.

We made it home again after our trip to St. Louis. It was a good visit – better than I was expecting. It was healing to be at the memorial, to see so many family and friends come together to remember our grandmother. It was sad, and I definitely shed some tears, but I didn’t ugly cry until I said goodbye to her house the night before I left.

I spent every summer in that house growing up. It’s been in my life far longer than any other house and it meant something very special to me. It was a house where only good things happened – where aunts and uncles and cousins I only saw once a year ate around a table, laughing and talking and sharing stories. It’s where my cousins and I invented and played elaborate games in the basement for hours on end, where we held so hard onto the underside of the player piano our finger tips turned white, where we each stood on a pedal of the stationary bike and bobbed up and down, up and down. It’s where we dressed up in our mothers’ old wedding gowns and built forts out of the cardboard bricks and carefully spelled out business letters on the typewriter. It’s where we positioned all my grandmother’s old perfume bottles so that someone might want to buy one, and where we wrote up the receipts when they did.

Saying goodbye to that house was really hard. Harder than I expected. My grandmother lived there for over 60 years. My father grew up there. I spent my summers there. It changed very little over those six decades, and it was a very special place for me indeed.

My grandmother evidently kept every letter or card anyone had ever given to her as an adult, and when we went through them the stack from me was by far the biggest. I wrote her letters and cards, typed and on fancy stationary. Seeing those letters was jarring – I wouldn’t have remembered that I wrote her so often. I have yet to read through them, but I did bring them home. My mom couldn’t understand why I would want to keep those old letters when I was so eager to throw away my journals and diaries, but it’s different when you write for someone else. I will definitely read through them some day, but not until I’m ready to work through some more grief, for both the loss of my grandmother and the loss of whoever I was all those years ago.

Coming home was hard and it’s been a tough week. I had a lot of things that needed to be done by Tuesday and Wednesday and now all of that is past and a weight has lifted and I’m finally ready to face the holidays. We put up our tree on Monday, did the lights Tuesday and finally put up the ornaments last night. My grandmother loved this time of year (for the past three years she kept a Christmas tree up year round!), and I’m trying to celebrate her as I celebrate the season.

Being with my grandmother always meant being with my aunts and uncles and cousins, and spending Thanksgiving with them this year was a remind of how amazing they are and how much I cherish them in my life. I was definitely thankful to spend the week with them, and now I’m so glad to be home.

How was your Thanksgiving?

I didn’t intend to be gone for so long, but I guess life happens. Tomorrow we fly to St. Louis for my grandmother’s memorial. What I really needed this week was rest at home, instead I’ll finally be working through my grief.

Only four weeks until the winter break, but who’s counting.

I wish I had more to say, but I don’t really. There is a lot going on right now and it’s hard to know where to begin, so it’s easier to say nothing.

I am so lucky that I usually don’t have to fly at this time of year to be with family. It’s stressful and expensive and exhausting. I wish I didn’t have to do it, but I must. I spent all weekend getting ready; writing sub plans for the Monday I’ll miss when we get back; doing copious amounts of laundry so we have what we need on our trip, AND when we get home; packing. I brought the tree in from the shed but it’s not going to be put up like I wanted. Maybe we can get it up when we get home. Thanksgiving is already so late, and we’re gone until the Monday after so we’ll barely have it up three weeks before Christmas. I guess this year, it’s as good as we’re going to get.

{On a related note, I am SOOOOO glad I bought a fake tree last year and I already have it and I know it fits and I don’t have to bother with any of the buying or transporting of a regular tree. So, so, sooooo glad. That fake Christmas tree was the best thing I ever bought for myself.}

One positive thing that has come from all of this: I was going through my Shutterfly albums looking for pictures of my grandmother and I ended up scrolling through hundreds of pictures of my kids over the years. It was so fun to remember how cute they were. At 6 and 9.5 I don’t take as many pictures of them these days; back then I took thousands! I very much appreciate that I could find everything so easily on Shutterfly – all the pictures of St. Louis are on there because I make the photo book every summer. If it weren’t for that site, I would have had to hook up my external hard drive and browse through literally thousands of photos. It was so much easier just going onto Shutterfly. I promise this isn’t some kind of paid advertisement, I was just pleasantly surprised by how easy that site made it for me to find pictures of my grandmother.

And I suppose that is everything for now. I need to do more packing, and picking up, before we go.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I used to be able to embrace crazy weeks and push through them without it taking too much of a toll, but I find that I don’t have the stamina anymore. This is true in other areas as well. I used to be able to grade papers or create assignments or plan in the evenings but now I really struggle to do anything productive after 7pm. I just can’t do that stuff anymore.

I’m not sure why that is. I don’t know if I really don’t have the stamina I once did, or if I just don’t care enough anymore to push past the lazier parts of my personality. All I know is that I used to do a lot of work in the evenings and I now I pretty much do nothing. I just want to watch TV, read or sleep.

Last week was crazy, and the crazy weeks used to not touch me so much but now they lay me out. We had our son’s birthday party on Sunday afternoon. On Monday I had to clean my house (the party was at a park) so that Tuesday we could host the grandparents for his actual birthday. Wednesday I had a meeting at school. Thursday we had a PTA meeting. Friday was the Latino Cultural Heritage Night at school so I had to rush home to make something to share for the potluck, then watch my kids perform. Saturday I spent 7 hours at a professional development (my inlaws took my kids) and Sunday, I had to do all the laundry and dishes that didn’t get done all week.

My husband is home now, and he’s dealing with bedtime while I work out on the elliptical. I’m behind on grading and planning for school, and I’d be super stressed out if it I weren’t showing Coco to two of my classes for the second half of the coming week. This is helpful because I don’t have to plan those classes, and my students won’t be creating anything more for me to grade during those classes, and maybe, just maybe I’ll actually get some stuff done while they are watching the movie.

I used to get through weeks like this relatively unscathed but now they do a number on me. Again, I’m not sure what has changed. Maybe it’s just being older. Maybe it’s just the collective exhaustion of a decade of busy-ness. Maybe I just don’t have anymore fucks to give. I truly don’t know. It’s why I barely write here anymore. It’s why I’m trying desperately to hand off the responsibilities of the PTA. It’s why I don’t read as many books as I used to, or see friends as much as I used to, or do really anything to the degree that I used to.

At this point I’m accepting of my new limitations. I don’t really care that I’m not producing at the rate that I used to, or that I can’t manage busy-ness like I used to. Instead of trying to ramp up to my old levels, I’m attempting to arrange my life so it feels manageable. Maybe one day I’ll be back to my old self, but maybe this is how things will be in perpetuity. At this point I’m okay with either.

My son’s party was Sunday afternoon and his actual birthday was Tuesday and it’s been decompression ever since. This week has been long and not very enjoyable.

My husband is out of town (he left the day after our son’s birthday) and I am equal parts enjoying the space and annoyed with the extra work and responsibility. I guess the good news is he really does do a lot around the house these days, which is good for me to recognize and appreciate.

It’s been hot this week. My house feels like an oven when it’s hot. It’s stifling. I’m using the box fan we got during an earlier heat wave a lot this fall. Definitely worth the $20. Box fans remind me of my childhood.

I yelled at my kids today. Mostly my son. It’s been a long time since I lost my cool like that and I’m trying to figure out what triggered it. I’m feeling underwater right now and I can’t unpack what specifically has me on the brink. It’s not a good feeling, but I’m trying to be curious about it instead of just disappointed in myself. I feel like I need a break, but I know I’m not going to get one, at least not the kind I really need, so I need to figure out how I can find some relief in the day to day.

Sometimes I end up back in this feeling I had for so long, this feeling of overwhelm, almost hopeless, that plagued me for much of my life. Part of me wants to scream at the sky that it’s so unfair that I always end up back here, but another part of me marvels at the how long it’s been since I’ve felt this way. Maybe I really am making mental health progress. I don’t think I actually believed I could do that, but here I am and maybe it’s done. Weird to feel shitty but also aware that I don’t normally feel shitty anymore. Weird.

I should go to bed now. Happy Friday.

I am listening to Atomic Habits. I really like it so far. It has me thinking a lot about the good habits I’ve created, and the good habits I have never been able to stick to, despite numerous attempts over many years. It also has me thinking about the myriad bad habits I would like to break.

I really like how the book frames habits, not as necessarily good or bad but just the answers we found for problems over the years. I was lucky enough to realize many years ago (my sophomore year of college) that I needed to exercise regularly to manage my depression and anxiety. I had a problem (a tendency to be depressed and anxious) and I found a solution (if I exercised I felt less depressed and anxious). Since then I have exercised 3-4 a week, except due to injury or illness. I am very lucky that I made the connection between exercise and improved mental health. If not, I would probably not make exercising the priority it is today.*

I also must have made a lot of other decent habits, because I made it into a competitive university, graduated, got a teaching credential and a job, then got a graduate degree. I also managed to find someone who was willing to marry me and have kids.

But there are so many good habits I still want to create. I want to make it a habit to pick up around the house every night for 5-10 minutes. At this point I think the best way to do that would be what the author calls “habit stacking” (plan to pick up the house for 5-10 minutes before brushing my teeth – which I do every night). I could also tell myself that I can’t do another thing I want to do until I have picked up the house. I think setting an alarm on my phone for the first week would help me with this, especially since I’m not eating after 7pm so I’ve been brushing my teeth early to ensure I won’t eat again (there are few things I hate more than having to re-brush my teeth). I wonder how many weeks with the alarm I’ll have to complete before this becomes a habit? Hopefully the reward of having a neater house will motivate me. It would be even better if I could remember to have the kids help too, before they brush their teeth but that feels like a much loftier goal at this point.

At the beginning of the book the author talks about 1% gains and how over time they add up to something incredibly significant. I am definitely someone who wants to see improvement, and the idea of striving for 1% gains feels difficult for me. But I also know that I am very motivated to maintain something I have achieved (another reason I am so good about maintaining my exercise regimen despite my busy schedule – I don’t want to lose the definition it’s taken me years to achieve). I don’t know why keeping the house neat is a habit I’ve never been able to maintain – probably because organizing my stuff is especially challenging to me and I’m lacking some of the skills that would make this habit easier to implement. But if I work on it every day maybe I’ll make some head way.

I could write a whole post about the many “bad” habits I want to break, but not today. 😉

What is one habit you are happy to have? Do you have any new habits you hope to form?

In SF we call it Indigenous Peoples Day. In most of the country it’s Columbus Day. When my school district started taking it off last year it was simply marked as Local Holiday. I guess they didn’t want to bother with the politics of it. No matter what it’s called, I’m very happy to have it off.

Saturday I assisted in my son’s martial arts belt test, then went to my own martial arts class then joined the dojo community for forms on the beach.

Yesterday I met my mom at the area Amusement Park with my daughter and her friend and my son and his friend (my husband was supposed to come but he’s on day five of a man cold). I spent the day with the boys and my mom went with the girls and everybody had a lot of fun. The amusement park really goes all out for Halloween so it felt different than all the times we went this summer.

Next weekend is my son’s birthday party and the weekend after my husband is out of town and I have an all day professional development. Today we have nothing planned and I am very much looking forward to lounging around all day. I even did most of my grading on Friday night. All I have to get done is some cleaning and some laundry.

I am very much looking forward to today.

Are you off today? Or is it a regular Monday?

This week was a hard one for me. I ended up being summoned for jury duty on Tuesday (in SF, you are on call for an entire week and every afternoon you have to check and see if your group has been summoned). Luckily I had left my classroom prepared enough to write some sub plans to cover the minimum day without going back when I found out (at 4:30pm). I missed two important conferences but left notes for the other teachers to share on my behalf.

Unfortunately we ended up being brought down to a courtroom almost immediately for jury selection. I was never called to the box, but I spent six hours listening to other people answer questions with the only outlet being my phone (which I wasn’t supposed to be looking at). For a girl with ADHD, it was pretty brutal, especially as I was constantly worried I would get called to be a perspective juror. It was the worst combination of anxiety and boredom. Restless does not even begin to capture how I felt.

They didn’t finish jury selection by 4:30pm so we were sent home with instructions to return on Thursday (Wednesday was Yom Kippur so there was no jury service). I appreciated having a day at work to prepare for yet another day away. I also appreciated going to martial arts on Tuesday night, instead of back down to my classroom.

Tuesday was really frustrating for me, and I struggled to figure out why I was so upset by the whole thing. I realized another stressor was waiting for our tenant to sign the buy out agreement we gave him almost two weeks ago. Despite multiple emails inquiring as to when we might expect him to return it, we heard nothing. I felt so powerless and everything felt so uncertain. I realized I felt the same way about jury duty, sitting in a florescent lit room waiting for my name to be called arbitrarily and the next few weeks of my life made immeasurably harder.

So yeah, I handle feeling powerless and being out of control badly, but there was something else at play, and then I finally put my finger on what it was. It’s one thing to manage uncertainty, but I become enraged and resentful when I feel that uncertainty is being caused by someone who I deem unworthy of having power over my life.

I believe our justice system is fundamentally broken and that the jury selection system causes undo stress and hardship to the small percentage of people who actually show up. The system is flawed and unfair and I am resentful that it can turn my life into chaos with no regard for the fact that I am trying my hardest to be a productive, law abiding member of society.

I could write a novel on my thoughts about the unfairness of the tenant rights situation but everyone’s time is best served if I don’t. Needless to say, I absolutely resent the power our tenant holds over us, when we have been responsible, fair landlords and he has not upheld the spirit of our lease agreement dozens of times over (I say spirit because it would be impossible, in a court of law, to prove he broke our agreement). The fact that we are at the whim of his inability to make decisions and commit to his agreements is infuriating to me.

So yeah, it was a rough week, and I’m working through my anger and resentment about it all.

Wednesday night I was up late writing sub plans and Thursday morning I was back at the “Hall of Justice” expecting to sit through another brutal day of jury selection. Imagine my surprise when the judge came in to tell us that one of the lawyers had a family emergency and he had granted a mistrial, which meant we were all excused from jury service. To say I was pleasantly surprised would be a massive understatement. I initially considered driving to work but I had spent so long writing sub plans that I decided to take the day for myself.

On my way back to the bus stop my husband called to say that our tenant had finally responded to our emails. He wants more money than we agreed upon (after weeks of initial negotiations). I wasn’t surprised. He has a long history of agreeing to something only to decide that he doesn’t actually agree to it a few weeks later, after we’ve already taken costly action. We immediately changed the contract and put it in his mailbox, communicating that if we didn’t find it there signed by Friday at 11:59pm we would be withdrawing from buy out negotiations. Even if he does sign we have 45 days of uncertainty ahead as he is granted that long to opt out of the contract without penalty. We’re hoping that if he does sign his habits of procrastination and inaction will finally be working in our favor.

If he doesn’t sign we are in for a long and costly legal battle that we may not even win.

I am trying to see the nuance of both the jury selection system and the tenants’ rights situation in San Francisco, as I know they both exist for good reason, reasons I can support when they aren’t wreaking havoc over my personal life with seeming reckless abandon. Getting an impromptu day off is definitely helping.

September was brutal this year. It felt very busy – lots of meetings and events. I suppose it always feels this way but this year it seemed to drag on forever. I was VERY happy when it was finally over.

I am relatively happy at work right now. I am SO GRATEFUL to not be commuting to the other campus, and the 4th grade class is very low key. They are squirrely and hard to keep on task but they are also enthusiastic and appreciative. It has definitely been a positive change for me.

I’m creating a lot of new stuff for work, which is my favorite part of my job. Most of it was inspired by the two-week professional development I did over the summer. We have first follow up for that later this month and I’m excited to share what I’ve done.

It’s officially fall which means HEAT WAVES in the Bay Area. September, October, and November are generally our warmest months. We are getting stretches where the mornings are cool enough to warrant slippers (at least in our poorly insulated house), but we’re also getting lots of 80* days (in the city – it’s generally 90+ on the peninsula on those days). This weekend it’s really warm, but by now we all know this is par for the course in our area.

We even had a short but intense earthquake on Saturday. I feel like those tend to happen in the fall, but maybe I’m just imaging that.

It’s also Halloween costume and planning my son’s birthday time. My kids both know what they want to be and I’ve purchased their costumes (mostly). My son is having his first birthday party and we’ve booked the park and bouncy house (and changed the bookings for both of those when most of his friends couldn’t make it on the original date and time). I definitely enjoy October and Halloween (and I LOVE teaching Day of the Dead), but this year I’m having a hard time finding the energy to decorate. Maybe next weekend, when we get Monday off.

The kids are fully transitioned into the new school year. They both like their teachers and classes. My daughter is in a 4/5 class at her school and initially I was really nervous because the teacher is new (this is only her third year teaching and her first with an actual teaching credential) and split classes can be challenging, especially in a school with so many students who are not at grade level. But the teacher ended up being awesome and now I know she’ll have her again next year which is a big relief because the straight 5th grade at her school is up in the middle school hallway and has been plagued with teacher turn over and other issues that have had me contemplating pulling her for her last year of elementary school. Now I don’t have to deal with any of that. My son has my daughter’s K teacher, and we love her, so I know he’s in good hands. After a year away from an immersion classroom his Spanish is flourishing. I am so glad my kids are at a Spanish Immersion school.

Martial Arts has been going well. I plan to test for my green belt before the new year and I’m getting myself to the classes I need to adequately prepare. You start learning a whole new kind of movement as a green belt and I am so ready to move past the straight-line punches and kicks I have (mostly) mastered to the elegant curves and hooks learned at the higher belt level. I continue to be invigorated by sparring; I find that I learn more about myself in sparring than anywhere else in my life right now.

Not much else to report. I want to say I think about writing here a lot, but that is actually the problem – I don’t! Well that’s not entirely true. I think about it during the day when I have no time to write, but I never remember at home in the evenings when I could actually sit down with my computer. It’s just not a habit for me anymore, and I doubt it ever will be again. I must admit, when it comes time to pay for this space again I think it’s likely that I won’t. I just don’t feel the pull to write here anymore, and throwing money at something I don’t love is hard to justify. We’ll see.

My grandmother passed away today. She was 93 and had severe dementia. We have all been waiting for her to slip away for so long – it’s been her time for a while now. Still, I’m sad. She was my only grandparent growing up and now she’s really and truly gone. I honestly thought, with all the time we had to prepare, that it wouldn’t be that hard. I guess loss is never what you expect.

Most of us grandchildren will need to fly in for the service, and the aunts and uncles aren’t in a big hurry to make it happen. Eventually we’ll come together to remember her life, but not for a little while. I appreciate that.

Goodbye Nai-Nai. Your favorite oldest granddaughter loved you a lot.