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!

Baking

What is it about baking that fills me with dread?  Is it the exact nature of the ingredients? There's no improvising?   That you need the proper tools:  parchment paper, springform pans, cake flour?  No making due with whatever you have on hand?  The capriciousness  of the oven-the temperature, the time?  It's not like braising/stewing/soups-the longer the better.  How do I know when it's really done?  Why is it too dark yet wet in the middle?  What causes that-too high, not enough time?  No clue.  My kind of cooking:  Seems dry?  Add wine.  Seems bland? Toss in some fresh herbs or more garlic.  There's no last minute save with baking.  Your finished baking product needs to look precise, pretty.  I'm a more rustic kind of girl.  I didn't grow up in a baking family.  There were the occasional cookies, or brownies from a box.  A bundt cake with mix, pudding, sherry, brandy: yummy in a sweet, simple, potlucky sort of way.  I am also, for the most part, not a huge dessert person.  Give me delicious, runny, smelly cheese with a slice of baguette.  I don't speak baking.  It's another language that I know a few, very basic words in.  I could make cookies.  A simple pie.  Basic brownies.  Nothing with frosting.  Nothing that involves layers.  Or pie weights.  Or strips of parchment or water baths.

Her death illustrates so clearly to me that mental illness and depression truly warps your sense of judgement and changes completely who you are as a person.  She was the most nurturing teacher any of my kids have ever had.  She hugged every kid as they left her classroom, she hugged the parents at every meeting.  She was devoted to her daughter-she told a million stories to the kids in her class about Dakota.  She was so anxious to have another baby-I know she must have been thrilled to finally have had a second child.  I cannot reconcile the caring, loving person with what happened.  To not only take her own life-but to do it in such a violent, horrific manner that would surely have traumatized anyone who witnessed it.  And to devastate her family in such manner??  She must have been out of her mind.  There is no way the person she was would ever do anything that would hurt others so deeply.  I truly cannot wrap my head around this.  And I'm guessing B will hear about it at school-and yet I cannot bring myself to tell him.  It is so awful.  Horrible.  Tragic beyond words.  I cannot process it.  Mental illness is as real an illness as cancer.  It changes who you are mentally and emotionally as surely as malignant cells devastate your physical body.

I thought that the spring forward of Daylight Savings was not that bad in the past.  Where have I been? Am I blocking it out?  Is is because it is combined with my icky allergy situation that appears around 1am causing me to snore and hack despite the benadryl?  Also combined with annoying cats? And a husband who is also having sleep issues-including sitting up in bed, flailing about and talking in his sleep?  We also had an incredibly full weekend without 5 things on Sunday alone.  I am slammed with tiredness currently.  I tried my newish trick of a guided meditation.  Usually that revives me.  Not today.   I didn't mindlessly snack which I sometimes do when I'm exhausted.  I really tried to meditate and nap.  Still.so.flipping.tired.  I need to retrieve children from far and wide, supervise homework, feed the natives and send them to bed as soon as is reasonable.  I know that in a few days I will be adjusted.  I usually love that it stays later longer in the evening-especially now that the kids are older (it was tortuous when they were small).  But the dark mornings that seem like the middle of the night are really tough for a bit.  Deep breaths.  More water.  Off to do the child schlepping/supervising/meal making/early bedtime arranging.

What's for dinner?

That could be the name of my blog and my current life's header.  Or, "Where's my blah-blah-blah?"  or the ever popular, "MOM!!!!!! "   "When's dinner?"  "Have you seen the blah-blah-blah?"  Those are what I hear multiple times a day.  So funny.  I just needed quiet today.  I had no music.  I was just enjoying the solitude.  I really needed the quiet.  And today?  I have no idea.  It won't be a quiet day.  Lots going on:  sick kid, doctor's appointment that will not be enjoyable, I already have music going on to perk me up.  And I'm forcing myself to do more writing.  That's what I need to do every day.  I'll feel better and more productive if I have something to work on all the time.  I live in dread of someone actually reading this because it seems so "journal-ish" and private, although I do try and monitor what I say and write deeply personal things only in my diaries.  This does give me renewed appreciation for good bloggers who can be authentic without revealing too much-it's definitely a fine line.  I like being able to work out my thoughts "on paper" but sometimes it's about other people (and shouldn't be shared publicly).  And things about the kids, even if they're not super personal, it's still "their" stories and I have definitely gotten to the point where I know it's not for me to share.  (Especially as they get older.)  So then that leaves my own thoughts-and again, some of them don't exactly reflect positively on me and I don't want to be judged.  Yet I really like this format-so sometimes I just write and then delete.