Not a Wasted Word

Well it’s already January 3rd and I feel like I’m WAY late to the new years blog post party. Everything these days is either a retrospective of the past year or resolutions about the next. I’m not super interested in either (for myself, I like reading other people’s). The look back part takes so much time, and while I do think it’s important to remember what I wanted to accomplish and think about why it did or did not happen (usually the latter), I also recognize that doing that in the past has not gotten me any closer to my goals. Mostly looking back on a year just reminds me of why I abandoned my goals, and reaffirmed their abandonment.

Having said that, there are a few things I want to focus on. Again. They are all ideas I’ve already visited a million times, but have to revisit for attempt number one million and one because I know they would make my life better.

Mostly I want to get rid of stuff because man how it has crept in again. It’s every where and again I feel like I’m drowning. And while it’s still easier to clean up than it was back when I was desperate enough to get rid of so much stuff, I’m realizing that knowing where everything goes isn’t enough to improve my life. I need to have less stuff if I want to spend less time managing it.

My kids got a ton of new toys for Christmas and I so want to get rid of some of the older toys my inlaws gave them long ago. Part of me wonders if I should give them back to my inlaws, but then they will know I am getting rid of them. Of course, they may get mad if they find out later that I just gave them away. They know I don’t like the big toys, so I suppose it won’t be a surprise for them either way. I will check in with my husband to see what I should do. Having his support in whatever I decide will help.

On other fronts, I have a few goals, but I’m not going to write about them yet. I have put some other “accountability” safe guards in place on the biggest one, and I hope to write about it soon, when I’ve actually made some progress.

Not really sure what else to say at this point. I felt like I couldn’t post anything else until I acknowledged the new year and let you all down with my stubborn refusal to participate. Maybe I will go back and look at some older posts and return with a different mindset. We shall see.

My son snatched my phone and hit post before I was done with the last one. I wanted to ask how everyone’s holiday was. I hope you or your family weren’t sick! And if you were, I hope you made it through.

This was me Christmas Eve morning :

You’ll notice the bowl on the ground, just in case.

This was my husband on Christmas Day:

His father and sister also got it, so we didn’t see them yesterday. Instead we limped through Christmas morning at our own house (we’ve never done that before!), trying to keep up with our kids (who thankfully never got sick), then headed to my parents’ house for the afternoon (where my husband slept on the couch most of the time).

I even felt well enough last night that we made it to the crazy three blocks of lighted houses near my work (without my husband of course).

We’re hoping to do Christmas with my in-laws today, we just have to check in and see if they are well enough. If not we’ll try for Saturday (my husband works both tomorrow and Friday).

It sucked being sick on Christmas but we made due. And the kids were well and had a great time, so that’s all that really matters. Us adults can suck it up. 😉

I spent the past two hours throwing up. Not how I envisioned spending the holidays. Today we are supposed to be at my parents, and I’m not sure how we’ll play it.

I’m worried because I was snuggling a lot with my nephew yesterday. I really hope he doesn’t get this!

I’m also worried about my kids and my husband (and my in-laws!). Maybe this is what my daughter has and she’ll be okay.

Man, this is a real bummer. So much for happy holidays.

Today is our last day of school before break. While I will admit that I like Christmas to be earlier in the two week break, working until the 21st is kinda rough. The kids are totally checked out and crazy, and it’s hard to get anything productive done. Today is a short day, and it’s basically glorified babysitting. I’m even leaving early to participate in my daughter’s holiday party.

Yes, she is back at school. Her weird stomach bug has passed and so far it doesn’t seem like anyone else got it. This is the second time she has gotten a stomach thing that lasted 48 hours and only struck at night. She pukes at night, then can eat all during the day, then feels bad again before bed, then pukes again a second night, then is fine by the afternoon of the second day. It’s weird. I hope she isn’t making herself sick with anxiety or anything. When her brother was born she threw up in the evenings like this for three nights, but no one else ever got sick and eventually she got better. At the time I thought she just got a bug and thanked god the newborn didn’t get it, but looking back I assumed it was psychosomatic – that the intense transition to having a sibling made her sick. I wonder if that is what’s happening now too.

The new year is coming and I’m trying to think about what serves me in my life. I notice I still read some blogs that definitely don’t make me feel good about myself or my life, or that simply annoy me, and I know I would never keep those people in my life, so why do I invite their words into my mind? It’s interesting how it can be hard to let go of things that don’t make us happy. I used to tell myself that I should expose myself to stuff that annoys me or gets me down so I could work through those triggers but I’m realizing that I just don’t mesh with some personalities and that is okay. It’s not making me a better person to read their words, it’s just bumming me out or aggravating me, so I’m going to let them go.

There are other habits I want to let go of that will be harder. I guess we shall see.

I’m definitely feeling better than I did when I wrote that last post. I think making it through the work week, as I pushed to get my kids ready for a test they took yesterday (I did not wait for today! I learned my lesson!) was wearing on me more than I realized.

My daughter is sick and we are scrambling to figure out coverage in these busy final work days before the holiday and break.

We’re also not sleeping much, because of the puking.

I’m feeling a little down these days. The holidays can do that to me. I miss friends who are no longer in my life. I miss family who has distanced themselves. I wonder what is wrong with me that I push so many people away. I know my loses are relatively small, but they still hurt. It’s just a dull ache in the background, but it’s there.

I’ve really struggled to stay focused at work this week, and then I can basically get nothing accomplished at home. I’ll have a lot of work to do over the break to get caught up. But today is basically my last real day of teaching as tomorrow is a short day with assemblies so I don’t have much of substance planned.

Not much else to say today, but at least I said something.

 My husband has developed a really horrible case of Adult Onset Eczema (Atopic Dermititis). His arms and legs are covered in large, red, extremely itchy patches. It looks horrible, and feels worse. He’s never had eczema before; while he would develop dry patches on his skin from time to time, they always went away with a few days worth of lotion.

He finally (after weeks of the rash spreading all over his body) sent pictures to his doctor, who offered to make him an appointment with a dermatologist, but also suggested it was probably eczema and ordered him an ointment that should be here later this week.

I feel bad for my husband. He is dealing with a fair amount of discomfort. And from what I know of eczema (both my kids had it so I’ve done some research and seen some dermatologists), its really hard to get rid of. The stuff I’ve read online about adult onset atopic dermititis is really disheartening. Its very possible he could be dealing with this for the rest of his life.

I wish I knew why it showed up so suddenly. I haven’t changed laundry detergents. He hasn’t changed his soap or shampoo. He hasn’t changed his diet or eating habits. He did travel overseas in November (to Bogotá), but we went to Colombia this summer too and he didn’t have a reaction then. I just can’t fathom what caused him to get such an intense case of eczema when nothing, really, has changed.

If you have any experience with adult onset eczema and have any suggestions for managing it, please let me know. If you don’t want to write about it in a comment, you can tell me you have more to say and I will email you. Thanks.

Sorry I was away. I’m not going to do a full re-cap right now because it wouldn’t be very interesting anyway. I think I’ll just back in with a short post.

It’s been five years since I had my second child and ended my journey through pregnancy loss and secondary infertility. I honestly don’t think about it that much any more. My experiences with both were not nearly as difficult and painful as they are for most people who deal with either, so it’s not surprising to me that I am mostly over it. And yet, I am still very weird around pregnant people.

Two women on my staff are currently pregnant – one with her first child and one with her second. They are both due in the same week, going out on maternity leave over the break, and staying out for the rest of the school year (with the new baby bonding time they can be out for the entire six months).

I will be the first to admit that I have not handled these pregnancies with grace. Not only do I not initiate the small talk surrounding how the expectant moms are feeling (both physically and emotionally), but when conversations veer toward those pleasantries I excuse myself from the conversation. Pretty much immediately. I just don’t want to talk about it, or hear about it, at all.

But why is that? I tell myself it’s because pregnancy terrifies me, that I grew up watching my mom lose three late-term pregnancies, after burying my sister who died after three months in the NICU (when I was two) and the whole pregnancy thing just makes me scared and uncomfortable. And maybe that is what is happening. I kind of hope that is what is happening, otherwise it feels like I’m just begrudging people their happiness during one of the most exciting times of their life.

I know for sure that it’s not some kind of wistfulness for those years, it’s not jealousy or envy at where they are in their lives. I am happy to be past the pregnancy, new born and toddler years. I am a happier parent now that I have ever been, so I really don’t know why I feel the need to totally disengage from people when they are pregnant. 

{To be clear, I was never very close with either of these two women, in fact I’ve had kind of awkward social stuff with them before: One was half of the two person planning committee that didn’t invite me (and I swear, only me) on a staff rafting trip. And I was one of very few people who were not invited to the other’s wedding (and all the other people who weren’t invited were relatively new to the staff, while I had been there longer than many people who were invited). So it’s not super weird that I find a reason to excuse myself when the conversation settles on pregnancy, but I’m guessing it’s been noticeable.}

I’ve just been pondering this again, as pregnancy has been unavoidable at work this fall. I hate to say it but I’m looking forward to the break, and not seeing either of them again until the next school year. Of course I wish them the best, but I’ll be relieved when we’re not all talking about pregnancy all the time.

I just lost an entire post and I’m feeling frustrated and don’t want to write again. The most frustrating part is that I swear I copied the text, but then I guess I didn’t because when I went to paste it, my clipboard just had a tracking number I’d copied long before.

There is something so dispiriting about a blinking cursor on a blank page, when just moments ago there had been so many words. Where did all the words go?

I can’t really bring myself to write another post right now, but I wanted to put it out there that I tried. Sometimes technology f*cks with you, and there’s nothing you can do about it but shut the f*ck up and move on.

Also WordPress automatically updated and now I don’t even recognize the publishing page. What is this?! I’m so confuzzled.

I think it’s time for me to sign off now. Until next time (if wordpress doesn’t eat my words)…

It finally got cold here, well San Francisco cold. In the mornings when I was getting up the inside house temp was hovering around 57* and man was it hard to get out of bed to turn on the heat. So I finally braved the complications of the thermostat and corrected the time and set the timer. Now the heat starts pumping at 5:30am so by the time I have to get out of bed at 6am it’s not so frigid. (It also comes on in the night if it dips below 58*.)

We keep our house pretty cool (at 63*) because our gas bill is always so high. It means we all have to wear multiple layers, as well as slippers, when it’s that cold (usually by the afternoon the sun has warmed the house to at least 64-65), but man do I appreciate having the heat to at least get us to that point. And oh boy am I loving how much easier it is to get out of bed now that the heat turns on by itself. Thank you central heating!