TGIF, baby!

As happy as I always am to reach Friday, I truly feel wiped out every Friday afternoon.  If I'm going to lay on bed and read celebrity gossip and snack-even if I haven't done that or missed it all the rest of the week, Friday afternoon:  there I am.  I always feel this curious mix of exhaustion, relief that the school week is over, elation for whatever "free" time I now have.  I rarely schedule activities on Friday afternoon to reserve it for "R & R".  But in an interesting twist, the binging on snacky foods and celeb gossip make me feel like crap and I don't feel regenerated or happy.  I feel gross.  So how can I shake this up?  Today I scheduled the boys each a tennis lesson, and then we're picking the big kids up at school.  I will have to make dinner for them, and then S & I are going out for dinner with H & I, which I am definitely looking forward to.  So I'm not giving myself the afternoon to veg.  Is that the answer?  More activities?  Maybe :/  Somehow the anticipation of nothing to do is always better than the reality.  (If the reality equals binging on rice crackers & reading about the Affleck/Garner divorce).  Okay-that's the issue. I've managed to find time for myself that feels good to my body and soul the rest of the week.  I need to reframe Friday afternoons.  Friday Fun Day indeed.  I do need to acknowledge making it through the week of activities/homework/projects/driving kids/meltdowns/making breakfast & lunches & dinners.  I need a way to celebrate that actually feels good, not icky.

Scaling Back

I've scaled way back on my volunteer commitments.  I will be helping with Art in G's class, but that's once a month, and I'm scheduled for only 2-3 times to work in his class thru December.  I assume they'll have class parties and I'll be able to go in then.  But other than that-I'm turning everything else down right now.  Maybe later I'll miss it or feel like it's important.  But honestly-did spending time at Sisterhood events help anyone?  No-I just did it because J guilted me into it and I felt like it was good for me, or proved that I have "things to do".  I'm not going to get pulled into stuff at the Temple unless it's more Social Action.  If people want to be connected they can step out of their comfort zone and do something.  Part of my thing was to try and facilitate that.  I don't care right now.   I don't feel like arguing with Ellen, or trying to create a program for people to meet, or help with the environment.  I'm one person-I can't change the culture or make people participate.  If I get to the point where I feel like we need more Jewish connection we'll maybe join JC.  For right now, I want to spend time with who we enjoy and take care of my family and myself.  I don't need the calendar to be filled to the brim with activities.  I'm scaling back on the social thing too.  Only people we want to be with.  I feel sort of bad articulating it, but I'm happier without her in my life on a regular basis.  She's too much drama and exhausting.  The kids are not nice.  My kids don't miss them either.  I don't need to get into the vortex of complaining, and issues and eighty million things going on.  I like the simpler life.  I want this to be a great last year with the 6 of us at home.  That is my highest priority.  It means I will cultivate time for us doing things we enjoy.  When I think back to how we lived in Maryland, we had very few friends-we spent a lot of time with my parents and my brother, but there was something easy, comforting, nice and simple about that.  Our family life was definitely the center.  E was saying how she has no happy memories of Waverly, and that is kind of heartbreaking.  But she said our family life was always wonderful and we always did really fun things-so that made me feel really happy to hear.  That was something I could control.  I do like having a variety of people in my life but I don't need the frenetic pace of the last few years.  And going forward, our family dynamic is about to really change-I'm kind of girding myself for that-but also can appreciate there will be something really nice about that too.  G is a really wonderful person-and he's the one we will be spending the most alone time with.  And I can see us doing a lot with him.    What can we do this year to make it fun and memorable?  What are things that E likes to do?  She likes us just hanging out at home without a ton of people here.  She loves Disneyland.  She had mentioned Balboa Park before.  More Torrey Pines hikes?  Yesterday morning was great-all of us at the Y.  Of course if we make our life too E-centered she may not want to leave!!!!  There needs to be some element of wanting to get the hell away from us-that's a natural desire in the late teenaged years.  And really, it's to be encouraged.  You don't want them living with us forever and being so dependent on us-that's not emotionally healthy either.  They're supposed to move out and move on.  There's some kind of quote about mothering-like if you're doing what you're supposed to, you're working your way out of a job.  They need to take on more and more responsibility for their own lives.  It's gradual but it's important.

I have been on a self care mission for one month.  I have my journal with my checklist of things for myself, and for the day.  I do think that it's helping me keep things in perspective-particularly the gratitude section where I need to pick new, specific things-I find that really easy to do.  I also like the Doubler of taking 2 minutes to think (with details) about something wonderful that's happened.  Also-the reminder to meditate and even if I don't get to that-the 2 minute breathe.  The nutritious food (primarily paleo) and lots of exercise-giving me more energy, fewer weird stomach issues.  All the water-I think my skin is looking better.  I also appreciate the things that don't relate to my body-the Conscious Act of Kindness-I don't just do the email/text, but I also include verbally saying things or going out of my way to be kind.  I also like the intellectual challenge of Duolingo.  That was a "new thing" that I've incorporated into my list of daily activities.  I think I've been calmer and happier.  Because I'm staying on top of things (i.e. bills) and I was making a lot of head way on my "Project List" during summer I'm not feeling so out of control and then as a result, cranky.

Why I continue to read the FIAR forums even though I haven't used the curriculum in 8 years and only homeschooled for 2 1/2 years:

I like learning about their lives.  These women, for the most part, are so different than me.  For the most part, they're conservative and very Christian.  But they're kind, and family oriented, and educated.  They're not rigid or extreme.  I find it a way to understand how other people think-they're anti-abortion, pro-gun, anti-big government.  But when I read about their everyday lives, their struggles, their families, I see how their opinions are formed, why they feel the way they feel.  There are no debates or big discussions about why they hold the stances they do-so it's a low impact way of understanding their views.

The older I get the more I see the world in grays-but I also understand the appeal of seeing things in black and white:  it seems simple, easier.  There are good guys and bad guys.  There's right and wrong.

Surviving the First Week

Friday.  Why the heck am I this tired when it's been such a (fairly) mellow week?  Getting half of them back on the school track perhaps?  Yet there have been no other activities.  S & E were gone most of the week so I didn't have to prepare "real" dinners.  I think I am mourning the end of summer and the looser schedule.  However I'll admit to being glad that they're at school learning/socializing rather than quibbling over whose turn it is on the computer.  It's peaceful which I am appreciating.  They both love their teachers and seem to happy with their classmates and friends.  I am going to focus on that.  It's all good.  And I planned NOTHING for this weekend.  I knew S would be exhausted after the Boston trip and then having to get up at the crack of dawn to be up in Irvine or Newport or wherever he is.  Big kids go back on Tuesday.   Yay!  I'm really excited for them.  Last year and first years of high school.  It's insane when I think about my original playgroup in Bmore.  If we would have stopped at 2 like most of them did, I'd be looking at an empty nest in a few years.  I cannot even wrap my head around that.  How much I would have missed out on if not for them!

5 Years Ago

Five years ago we were just moving here.  In some ways it feels like yesterday, in other ways it's like we've always been here.  We had so many wonderful things happen to us while we lived in Baltimore-we had our children, bought our first house, built our lovely house, went on some amazing trips, enjoyed time with my parents and brother, established ourselves financially, went from being a newly married couple to a big family.  Yet our time in San Diego has been the creation of a wonderful life for all of us.  We have such a wider, deeper circle of friends, we are settled in with a great Jewish community, the kids have wonderful, diverse schools, S has been able to start a successful business.  It has felt "right" from the moment we got here.  And now-we're on the precipice of some huge changes-E and B in high school, with E starting her senior year.  Deep breaths.

New School Year

The past several years I will admit to feeling anxious by the time summer is coming to a close.  I'm usually feeling a combination of regret that we didn't "do" enough to fully enjoy the time off, and nerves about what the new school year will bring.  I decided to go on the offensive this time around.

To feel like we fully enjoyed ourselves I wrote up a bucket list with suggestions from the kids and myself of things we'd like to do.  It was a mix of experiences (mini golf), restaurants (Curry House) and movies (Minions-ugh.)  I taped it to the refrigerator and we checked things off as we did them.  We've gotten to almost everything-save Disneyland.  In all honesty, we've probably done the same amount of fun activities every summer, but something about seeing it on paper, in the kitchen, has made me (I don't know about the kids) feel like the summer has been well spent.  We had a great long vacation back in MD and DC to kick things off.  They each did a variety of great camps (highlights would be skateboarding for G, Mt Chai for A, and jazz for B.  E did her internship with the political campaign.

The other thing I did a few weeks ago was start a notebook.  Notebook.  It really should be capitalized or decorated in a lovely way to demonstrate how much I love it.  It contains a daily list of to-dos, which include the mundane like watering, or who needs to be where when.  The best new thing is my Happiness List-which I got off Mara's post on FB (3 Acts of Gratitude, Fun 15 of Cardio, 2 minutes to just Breathe, Conscious Act of Kindness, the Doubler-wherein I take 2 minutes to think of a positive experience with bullet point details.)  To this I added "try something new every day", Meditation, Journal, a few stretching times, reminder to eat 3 full servings of greens, and 6 glasses of water.  I want to feel aware, and positive, and looking for the good in myself and others.  I want the specific reminders of how to nurture myself.

In my Notebook, I also created a ginormous list of projects that mainly relate to cleaning, sorting, donating, dumping and organizing.  I've been going gang busters on this-of course I still see some big projects ahead of me (hello, master closet) but I feel so good about how much I've been able to get done.  I also made a Dinner Ideas section for when I'm drawing a blank.  Also some fun lists to refer to:  Places to go with Kids, my bucket list of fun things to do in the area-in fact, the Torrey Pines hike is a new favorite for myself with E & B too.  (It remains to be seen if we can get A to join our enthusiasm.)

All of these things together have made me much calmer and feel like I have a handle on myself, and the house.  I'm not feeling overwhelmed, then procrastinating, and then feeling guilty and cranky.  I think that's helped me feel "rested" and ready to face the new school year.  I was thinking that I wasn't as "nervous" as I usually am because I don't have the kids in a million different, potentially conflicting, activities.  And there's an element of that-I am happy to only have 2 schools, and glad that E can drive she and B.  But I really think it's because I'm feeling good where I'm at.

Happy last few days of summer!  It was a great one!