Day six- sick day

 How I felt yesterday when I fell asleep at 8:30am was definitely a sign and I felt just as crudy when I woke up again this morning so I decided to take the day off to feel generally crappy in peace. I’m very bad at taking time off and there’s a distinct possibility that I will be working sometime during the day and/or cleaning my house but for now, veg veg veg. Francine is very happy to have me home today and my kids were not happy to be going to school while I did not get out of my jams.

  (this candle makes my room smell like cookies. You need it in your life.)

Somewhere in the 10 o’clock hour my stomach was rumbly and I made leftover cheese grits with a fried egg. Hoping it doesn’t contribute to my feeling of unwell because it tasted SO GOOD.

By 8am I was staring at my messy side of the bedroom. I’m a closet (heh) slob, and my slobbery is usually contained to this area. But what a mess it is. I got some coffee, snuggled more with Francine, and at 9am I needed to fix it. Have I mentioned here before that I’m not good at downtime?

It was a slow process and didn’t get completely fixed, but by noon it looked like this.

And MAIL CAME. So many good things in today’s mail, it helped my spirits by leaps and bounds.

 

New glasses!

New leggings!

My final Ipsy bag! Had good stuff …. Maybe I shouldn’t cancel …. Grrrr.

My amazon order had the kids’ Converse in it that I ordered for family pictures, so I also laid out the clothes I have decided on to see again if this is what I want. I have no idea what C will wear – he doesn’t like me picking out his clothes and he’s pretty good with fashion so I generally let him do his own thing.

 (this picture will not rotate to save my life)

All of this motivates me to get out of the house for a little while and I head over to Target in search of headbands and shirts that don’t make me look like Gigantor if I wear leggings in public (I don’t judge others in leggings in public but I feel super self-conscious) and the Petstore for information about Francine’s adoption/vaccine information (a bust) and cat food, and to the UPS store to visit with Elizabeth and return an Amazon purchase.

 

That’s about all the drive I’ve got, so home again home again, jiggity jig.

I made this for dinner, which was delicious and of course my kids wouldn't eat it.

Henry finished his Darth Vader turkey.

And Spencer had a baseball tournament game at EIGHT THIRTY. I’m exhausted just thinking about it in hindsight. C took him and H and I followed, but we didn’t stay long. Bedtime is 8:30 and the kids do not last long past expiration. Henry was asleep 5 minutes from the field after he asked to go home and told me he couldn’t give me one more inning before leaving. Good thing he knew.

The boys followed around 9:45pm, the game was called on mercy not in our favor. Spencer went off to bed and C and I talked (C ranted and I listened) and then I tried to go to bed but had an anxiety attack which made me take my first Xanax in a month. I was a disaster. About 20 minutes later I was calmed to HR of 85 and passed out. The end.

Day five was a surprise baseball day!

I’m not gonna lie, there’s a lot of baseball that goes on in these parts. Most of the time it’s great, but somedays I’m just over it.

I was dreaming of buying a house and changing it around – a basement becoming a bedroom, a bedroom becoming a pantry, some weird wall overlooking the ocean … and then my phone alarm went off and killed all that. Ho hum.

I did however get to work on time.

Not feeling good today so I kept my head down and worked through the ickiness, stopping to eat leftoevers at my desk a reading a little more of Carry On. Sadly, I tend to get a lot done when I’m not feeling well because I buckle down to keep my mind off feelings of unwell.

I headed out at 3:50 because I had a hair appointment and here’s where things went a little south. Not with my hair – hair turned out excellently! But I had forgotten that my stylist doesn’t take credit cards and I didn’t have enough cash so I had to run to an atm but then my atm card was in my jeans pocket from the day before getting gas … I ultimately had to run to target and get cash back from my red card and then pay my stylist all before heading home (afterward she’s all “you could have just mailed me a check, it would have been fine" HAHAHA) but anyhow. I was already feeling rundown and nearly fell asleep while she was cutting my hair. After all that I was just dead.

Through all this, there was surprise baseball practice and then there wasn’t, which I was so thankful for. Batting practice had been set for 6pm and then the batting cages were closed due to the tournament this weekend … hallelujah. No baseball. Surprise! Which is good because the drive home was a parking lot. 

I persevered. I didn’t want to cook and I had thought about going out, but then Henry was feeling sick so I was going to pick something up, but then he felt better and wanted to go out … ultimately I picked them up and we went to one of our regular restaurants, Surf Shack. The food was delicious but none of us were really feeling it. I had a martini that I could have done without even though again, it was delicious. Henry fell asleep in the car 45 minutes before usual bedtime and it turned out he had a slight fever so I felt like mother of the year dragging him out. Hindsight and all that.

But we got home and kids tucked in and the older one read for a bit before bed and I was asleep by 8:30 too. A preview of Friday? Possibly.

Veteran’s day Wednesday – day four

Since I haven’t been getting up on time even relatively and I was up late watching nonsense (okay, Grey’s isn’t nonsense), I set my phone alarm too so I would have THREE alarms. I got up 8 minutes earlier than yesterday. That 8 minutes was filled with whiny children upset that it was a holiday but they weren’t able to stay home and I wasn’t able to stay home and yeah, dude, I get it. I’d like to stay home too. But you get to go skating. Your life is rough.

I ate a honeycrisp on the drive to work and did manage to get there on time, which is a miracle though.

(I have not perfected the art of the car selfie)

My work morning was pretty productive and I went to lunch a little late. I sat outside at Jimmy John’s and read Carry On (which incidentally is taking me for-ev-er to get through) and pretended I didn’t have anywhere else I needed to be. It was lovely.

After I came back to reality, I got gas and stopped at Starbucks for a dirty chai and headed back to the grindstone. My phone tried to make me sad that I wasn’t going home midday.

I did take a minute to make an appointment. I’ve been making one appointment a day this week. Monday, my mammogram. Tuesday, hair appointment. Wednesday, cat’s nails trimmed. Stay tuned for dermatology and dental appointments. Slowly but surely I’m becoming a grown up. We’ll see if it lasts.

At four I left and took work home, however in my rush out the door I left my laptop at work so no work from home for me!

I helped the kids work on their turkey disguises instead – Henry’s is Darth Vader and Spencer’s is a volcano. S’s was due Thursday so he needed to finish, but Henry’s isn’t due until next week so we let the painted light saber dry and will finish tomorrow. I tried to straighten out the lines on the lightsaber for him so it didn’t look so much like a bloody sword.

Then I made dinner while the kids and C all played video games on different consoles – H played Super Mario Wii, S played an MLB game on the PS3 and C started playing the new Fallout on his computer. I had wine and Grey’s Anatomy and all these ingredients to make into shrimp and grits. We all play to our strengths.

After dinner Henry read to me and conned me into reading some to him too, and then after the kids went to bed I decided to take a bath and read my book some more. Baz finally showed up and it’s been much more compelling. I never take baths, ever, but it was really relaxing and nice. Francine decided she wanted to know what this was all about too.

And then! Bed, more reading and sleep at 10:30p. I’m *almost* getting enough sleep!

Rain Rain Go Away – Tuesday, day three

A week in the life of moi.

Tuesday began as most of my days begin – with me waking up late and struggling to get out the door while getting everything done that I need to get done. No need for a shower so I was reasonable okay, and I started a pork roast in the slow cooker before heading out. It was still raining. Rain rain rain. It rained all night too. Dreary and sad.

Work is from 7:15a to 4pm. I brought work home Monday night and didn’t do it, so that was first on the agenda. I decided to listen to Christmas music while I worked to get me in a happy mood. Yay Christmas! With headphones so my coworkers don’t want to kill me. My manager brought in bagels so I munched on a cheese bagel at the same time. I had a meeting at 9am but it got pushed to after lunch so I had my 10am meeting and then ran to the mall for some kid clothes shopping.

The sun came out. It is glorious.

I can’t seem to make up my mind at all so this may or may not end up being the shirts we use for family pictures in a few weeks but it’s a start. I also found PJ bottoms and a necklace for me and didn’t leave the one store I parked at. Score.

Since I had bagel(s) for breakfast, I ate what I brought for breakfast, for lunch. Two hardboiled eggs and a honeycrisp apple, and a Dr. P because I’m out of La Croix. Ho hum.

The afternoon passed pretty quickly with work and a 2:30pm meeting, and I was productive enough that I didn’t feel the need to bring home work. I only get it done at home about 10% of the time, but I often feel compelled to bring some home to be more productive. Working on that life/work balance thing.

It’s a very good thing I didn’t bring work home because there was no way it was getting done. I swung by the bank after picking up the kids from daycare to get money – I decided to donate the money Spencer’s baseball team needs for umpire fees for the upcoming tournament, and then headed home. It was a good thing I started that roast because we had very little time between getting home and going to the ball field.

Got home at 5pm, cooked up some green beans and corn and had dinner on the table at 5:15pm.

C took Spencer to the game and I was to follow a half hour later. I decided to use that time to clean out one set of cabinets in the kitchen and get rid of a bunch of things. I think the espresso maker needs to go and so does the sausage stuffer – we haven’t made espresso in 8 years and never have used the sausage stuffer. Adios, clutter!

I rarely go to the mid-week practices, but I try to make the games. Tonight I offered to bring the neighbor boy too so he could see Spencer play and Henry could play soccer with him too. I ended up scoring the game because one of the coaches was not there so C took over coaching and I took over scoring.

 

Home at 8:30! Sent neighbor boy home, trimmed H’s nails and threw him into a shower, C and S came home separately 10 minutes later and I followed the same routine with S – trimming nails and throwing in the shower. Spencer was hungry again so he had a pulled pork and cheese sandwich and C read with Henry and I had a glass of wine and SAT DOWN and both kids were in bed by 9pm. Whoo. Bedtime is 8:30, but there’s no school on Wednesday and baseball nights are tough to get in bed on time.

I climbed into bed and painted my nails while watching rewatching Grey’s Anatomy and then stayed up too late watching extra episodes. Sigh. 

Hey Monday, Monday - day two

Monday the weather was just plain depressing.

Look:

Depressing.

There was a lot of work, and a lot of rain and hey, new cute shirt though!

Mondays are my “less dealing with kids, more dealing with everything else” days. Or technically, my “me” days, as I have time to myself. Time to do grocery shopping and laundry and picking up the house with my headphones in, anyhow. So. I get off work at 4:00.

Post work groceries:

Laundry:

Beer:

Picking up random limp Ironman balloons and deciding not to take the Tervis sticker off the skull.

Cooking while watching Leap Year:

(clams casino over linguine)

Listening to Henry cry about eating spaghetti/not eating candy.

Post-dinner coloring session, again watching Leap Year because I didn’t finish:

The kids were around from about 7pm but they were doing their own thing and I forgot to take any pictures of them. There was some running wild and some video games and some arguing about video games, and then some reading time. I read with Henry while Spencer read his own book in the living room, but then he came into my room to read at the foot of the bed like a puppy while we finished up. They were in bed at 8:30.

And then I took a Unisom and said nighty night at 9:45pm while C stayed up watching football.

A whole week of my life - Day one

Stephany inspired me to do a week of posts regarding my day to day, so here’s comin’ atcha regarding my Sunday. She’s doing Monday through Sunday, but unless you want all-baseball, all-the-time, we’ll start with a non-baseball day. Sound good? Right. I'll try to keep these short because I tend to get long-winded, and I don't want to bore you. My life is truly not that interesting.

Sunday. Sunday was a freaking blast, guys. I didn’t have high hopes for it when I was yanked out of a dead sleep in the wee hours of the morning by a blood curdling screem because Henry had been sitting on a suitcase trying to zip it up and caught the zipper on his ….. inner thigh. Inner thigh. Whoo. He ended up with dark blood blisters where it caught but obviously it could have been worse.

I like to short order cook on weekend mornings. No one likes to short order cook, right? Well, everyone in my house likes their breakfast a little different and it’s not too hard to personalize because I have a wonderful massive egg pan.

Adults: alternative mimosa (I had these terrible leftover wine cups, so I mixed it with coconut la croix and orange juice and made them palatable) eggs scrambled with tomatoes, onions and brie, English muffin and bacon. And coffee. Coffee coffee coffee

Kid 1: bacon, plain scrambled eggs, melon but not watermelon, kale milkshake

Kid 2: bacion, scrambled eggs w/ American cheese, no melon but watermelon, kale milkshake

Momma happy, everyone happy.

The rest of the day we headed over to the Epcot Food and Wine Festival and guys, I had so much fun. I didn’t have high hopes when we pulled into the parking lot and it was ALMOST FULL but it was a great time and I ate so many good dishes and the kids were fantastic. We danced to BBVD and watched the Chinese acrobats and did a Perry adventure and I ate and drank and ate and drank and my kids even tried some things too (although they also got tried and true things like fancy nitro chocolate ice cream and Belgian waffles and German sausages).

I think that being off my meds, while harder to deal with the anxiety, makes me enjoy things more. I just had such a great time and because of that I know my kids did too. We fought less, I got annoyed less, I hope it keeps up, and I hope that whether it's all in my head (ha!) or is an actual physiological reaction, I hope I can feel like this more often than not.

That was our day. Just fantastic.

Books

Henry loves books but I hate to read aloud. This is a problem. But whenever I get a book for Spencer, I also get one for Henry. Book fair was this week, and S wanted the third Captain Underpants because they've re-released it in full color, so more of a graphic novel look. Whatever. I only had a minute to purchase before moving on with our 1,871 things needing to be done so I picked this book up for Henry on my way out of the media center.

Fabulous. Fun, rhymes (I don't know if that's necessary in your life, but if I'm going to read out loud I need a good cadence to keep my from ripping my hair out in boredom), great themes. And fun. Again.

Three ninja thumbs up.