Where do we go from here?

My current status is with glass of La Crema Pinot Noir and a hummus plate in an airport. I’m working on some work billing, waiting two hours for my flight to come and ferry me home. I have an audiobook on my headphones, although I’ve paused to type through this. What waits for me at home? Husband and son will be at baseball practice, younger son will be riding his scooter around the fields, I have fundraising orders to pick up and organize, dinner to make (not gonna lie, I’m thinking veggie ramen). I’m in the middle of reading or listening to five books and I stalled in the third season of The Good Wife.

I haven’t been here. I’ve been around; I’ve been reading and commenting and twittering. My Instagram is up to date (today is a timehop photo of Henry fighting the Dark Side naked! Classic!) I’ve been trolling the LulaRoe facebook groups and watching the political races with fascinated disgust. I’ve been somewhat wandering around in the dark, feeling around for a lightswitch.

Personally, I think there are some things I could use working through, but I can’t figure out how to talk through it. How to write through it, how to type through it. Words haven’t formed in my head yet. C keeps asking me if I’m okay, and … I don’t know. I think I am? I think I have hit the point where I’m ready to accept needing a therapist. That’s a big step, right? I was a psych major for a bit, and us psych majors – we have all the answers. We know all the right words to pretend everything is okay. “I know such and such isn’t my fault, I know it’s an ebb and flow sort of nonsense ….” Ad nauseum. I can fix other people’s problems. I’m a fixer. But I don’t know what’s wrong with me to fix me.

Unfortunately, I don’t think meds are the answer for me anymore. It would be nice, right? I was on meds for a long time. I still have the scripts, just in case. I have nothing against prescription meds, and I won’t hate being on them again. I stopped because even though it tempered my anxiety, it also dulled every feeling good and bad. I stopped caring.

Over the next three months, I have thirteen work trips. S has 15 baseball games and twelve practices and somehow I need to get H doing something extracurricular. Or I think I do. Do I? There's laundry and dinners and cleaning and cat litter and homework and so much actual work.

I know that my marriage has taken a backseat to the rest of our lives. I know that’s dangerous. I don’t know how to turn that around. I love my husband. I know he loves me. I know we are solid. But I also know neither of us are trying very hard right now.

I feel on the verge of crying, all the time. I find myself zoning out like it's my job. I'm feeling constantly over-emotional and yet I think I'm emoting at a level zero. I feel like I’m playing fast and loose with my life and with so many balls in the air, something is going to hit the ground. I'm lost.

I haven’t had the time for here. This has been a ball I’ve dropped. Hopefully I can find a place for my blog, but in the meantime, I’m here. I swear it. And in the meantime, I'll stop weeping in airports.

                

Books I read: February 2016

This was a weird month for reading for me. I had a hard time settling down with words on the page ans spent a lot of time watching The Good Wife and Fuller House and other such nonsense, but I listened to a lot of audiobooks. I have an influx of good books waiting for me on Overdrive that I need to get to, lest I have to wait 10 months to see them again though.

reread:

4. Shiver - Maggie Stiefvater (audio)

5. Linger - Maggie Stiefvater (audio)

6. Forever - Maggie Stiefvater (audio)

7. Sinner - Maggie Stiefvater (audio)

New:

(finished The Goldfinch - audio) BLAH.

 10. Manners & Mutiny - Gail Carriger Oh, cute fun. I love these books.

11. Shattered Past - Lindsay Buroker I feel like my wonderful Lindsay is getting a little formulaic in her "rough but earnest misunderstood male lead falls for the difficult woman and vice versa" thing she's been doing, but I still love her and will still read anything she writes. I just hope she gets back to the magic that kept us reading for 6 books before there was even a kiss. We don't need romance all the time, I swear it.

12. Wolves (Bring the Fire I) - C Gockel OOOOkay. I didn't realize "Loki series" meant Thor and Loki fanfic, and that's not what I signed on for. DNF.

3. 99 Days - Katie Cotugno I did not read the other book, I saw this in Target and thought it looked cute, didn't realize there was more to the story. I thought it mostly stood on its own though, and I liked it.

14. Court of Fives - Kate Elliott (audio) I loved this.

15. Black Wolves - Kate Elliott I'm having the devil of a time getting into this book, which is so strange to me because I have devoured her other books as easy, fun interesting candy. This one is more disjointed and I can't see to follow it. Will hope to finish in March though. I'm hoping to get sucked in late (I stopped to read All the Light bc of Overdrive expiration deadlines)

16. All the Light We Cannot See - Anthony Doerr I'm enjoying this but I'm not reading fast enough which is giving me anxiety because I had this on request since MAY 2015. It is beautiful though, I just need to dedicate myself to my craft of reading with more purpose. I'll finish in March.

photo friday

It’s been a busy week between work and home and baseball practice so I’m feeling far behind on life these days. I was invited to a friend’s house Thursday night and I didn’t even realize I didn’t confirm I couldn’t go until 20 minutes after I should have been there and I still haven’t made my apologies and I feel wretched about it (that’s next after I grind this out) (it’s not as bad as all that, it was for an essential oils class/party, but I feel bad about not giving her a firm yes or no, and I did want to see her)

So. Anyhow, here’s a few pictures that make up my week.

lunch with the birthday boy.

birthday cupcakes at the ball field

new bike

birthday time at the local arcade

hide and seek - can you find S's friend?

dress up is still a favorite activities

Francine cleaning my plate.

Okay, it's Florida and it's not snowing but shoot, COLD.

Target Valentines FTW.

What I read: January 2016

I meant to get this up on the first, as I'd like to get these up on every first, but man, life happens. Today was my due date, eight years ago. We went to a Superbowl party. Spencer stayed put.

Here's what I read in January:

 reread:
1. The Raven Boys - Maggie Stiefvater (audio)
2. The Dream Thieves - Maggie Stiefvater (audio)
3. Blue Lily, Lily Blue - Maggie Stiefvater (audio)

new:
1. Soulblade - Lindsay Buroker 
2. Fates and Furies - Lauren Groff (audio)
3. Kitchens of the Great Midwest - J. Ryan Stradal 
4. Bridge to Terabithia - Katherine Patterson 
5. Big Little Lies - Liane Moriarty 
6. Six of Crows - Leigh Barduga
7. Simon and the Homo Sapien Agenda - Becky Albertalli
8. Case Histories - Kate Atkinson (expired before I got too interested, but I was a good 80 pages in. I'll try again)
9. The Goldfinch - Donna Tartt (audio) (still listening to in February, 32 hours is a lot of hours)

It was a good month for audiobooks, apparently. Good month. Good books.

Currently...

This week I’m going to do this currently thing from Katy ON the currently day! How about that? It also just so happens that I have half a Friday Five from last week that I never finished and I thought I’d get on this before I let any more time slip through my fingertips. You know how that goes.

Loving

My favorite work lunch currently.

Reading

I’m listening to The Goldfinch by audiobook. I kept putting off reading because everyone told me what a tome it is (it sat from the library on my nightstand for a while last year) and yes, it is 32 hours long, it’s good so far! (I’d tell you how far along I am, but Overdrive just updated and looks completely different. I shall investigate.)

 

I never got through Case Histories before it expired. I finally got more into the story but it never really grabbed me. I have the next Finishing School book awaiting me on the library queue and I downloaded Lindsay Buroker’s newest book so I’ve got plenty of fun books to keep me company. I also downloaded a couple 1.99 books that looked promising last night in a fog of exhaustion when I couldn’t sleep.

Watching

Did I tell you we got rid of cable? We so rarely watch television, we pared down to the basics until baseball starts again. So. I’m not watching anything? I started Making a Murderer last week but I haven’t picked it back up after turning off the tv to do something. My coworker handed over the Bluray of the sixth season of Downton Abbey, so maybe I’ll start that tonight.

Listening to

Besides The Goldfinch, we’ve been listening to a lot of Hamilton. There’s one specific song that I skip for the kids all together, but mostly I hope that they don’t pick up the sex parts and enjoy the rest of it. Spencer likes to read the liner notes though, so I’m sure he knows all the words, including “it’s hard to have intercourse over four sets of corsets”.

Thinking about

Pony baseball started! I am again, team mom, and so I’m currently thinking about how to get new dirt on our field, getting the ants taken care of, ordering pants, what kids weren’t at first practice. I need to write out one of my notoriously long emails to the parents spelling out times and dates and points of note.

Anticipating

I have to be out of town a couple days this week for work, and I’m anticipating that trip. I need to pare down my packing to basically a change of clothes, a toothbrush since it’s one of those small planes. Side eye, right here. I don’t want to go.

Wishing

There were more hours in the day. I’d devote some of the extra to work and some of it to sleep so I could enjoy the current time with my family without something in the back of my mind.

Making Me Happy

I’ve made some late night impulse purchases of Lularoe and Stella and Dot, so those impending packages make me happy.

Francine and that scary boy child

We got a cat because of Henry. Not exactly, I mean we got a cat because we went to the pet store to replace the deceased gerbils and got sucked in by the charity cats, but Henry has a huge tactile response to soft creatures. He adores stuffed animals, the softer the better, and the thought of a kitty cat was just overwhelmingly wonderful to him. My MIL has a cat and he spends the better part of every Monday playing and touching and running after poor Cami.

So now that we’ve had Francine for nearly six months, I would have thought she would have warmed up to him but she hasn’t. It frankly hurts his feelings, and I don’t know how to explain to a five year old that she doesn’t mean to.  Last night we were reading and she came up to the bed (she likes to come visit during reading time) but when he went (slowly, calmly) to pet her, she ran. Again. His eyes welled up, his voice cracked, he was just so SAD.

So besides getting a new kitten for him to snuggle and name George, is there anything I can do to help their relationship? She’s not fond of catnip.

Celebration Part Eins - Disney!

For Spencer's eighth birthday we have a number of celebrations planned and not yet planned (mostly not yet planned, due to baseball uncertainties) but what I really wanted to do was spend one last weekend at Disney celebrating before our passes went kaput. So honestly, this one was for me.

I picked the kids up at noon (this was fraught not only for my own school-guilt, but because the kids were weird about it. Henry was upset that it meant that he wouldn't get an award for no early pickups and Spencer was upset to miss math. They both got over it quickly though.) and we headed straight out of town. S's teacher sent his math work with him so he worked on that in the car and played with his Pokemon cards since he got them back after being grounded from them for a week.

 

We got to Port Orleans- French Quarter around 1:45p and after we checked in, the kids immediately donned their bathing suits and hit the pool. It was rainy and cloudy and was going to get COLD so I knew it was then or never. I got in the pool too for a bit but it wasn't my bag. The kids really enjoyed it and I was glad I got them out of school early to do so. We were out by 4:30 because of the rain so they would have completely missed out otherwise.

Unfortunately I have very little photos after this because my phone slipped out of my hand and shattered. The regular camera side was okay but the shattering covered the selfie side of the camera so there were no more fun shots of me and the kids unless I specifically asked my husband to take a photo (I told him he needed to take photos but he did not).

 

After cleaning up and sharing a pizza (the kids did, anyhow), we headed over to Magic Kingdom. This was probably my favorite part of the whole weekend. C met us there and we had fast passes but it was also not particularly busy so we got to ride A LOT. The train, Barnstormer, Dumbo, Thunder Mountain, Space Mountain, Winnie the Pooh (and while in line someone gave us FP they had for being on Haunted Mansion when it broke down so we also did HM by passes), Peter Pan, Small World ...

(source)

We also ate at Tony's Town Square Restaurant, and I have to say I was underwhelmed. I was actually underwhelmed at most of the food this trip which is very odd for me - I love Disney food usually. I got the Pasta Primavera and it was quite salty. The veggies in it were good though. The kids' bodies completely shut down before 9 usually, but we got them on Space Mountain at that time and it revitalized them enough to get out of the park and to the car (and for S, even back to the hotel!) before falling asleep. I made sure to procure my Starbucks MK mug so that I wouldn't forget.

Saturday was COLD. We had breakfast at the hotel because BEIGNETS (they were okay) and headed to Epcot for the day, all parka'd up.

  

It was a good day; we didn't expect to stay all day but we did. We had lunch at Coral Reef (it was gorgeous and I had my best meal of the weekend, trout with canneloni beans and greens) and we rode every ride available, let the kids decorate Duffys and go around to every country and get stamps, and ate dinner in Morocco (Restaurant Marrakesh) which we wouldn't have normally thought to do but it was pretty tasty. I wasn't super hungry so I had a goat cheese appetizer and a bowl of lentil soup. Spencer was struck dumb by the belly dancer and the drummer came over to play his drum for S for his birthday and they sang and gave him some sort of pistachio baclava pastry thing.

Sunday was even colder. COLD. (FYI: I do not want to hear "at least it didn't snow". I know it didn't snow. It was misty and cold and uncomfortable except during nice stretches of sunlight) So we went to Hollywood Studios by way of Cracker Barrel. It was a nice end to the long weekend, we rode all the rides (Spencer and I spent an hour an HOUR an hour in the single rider line of Rockin' Roller Coaster and that was a little less than ideal) but missed all the shows. We let the kids design light sabers that we then didn't let them buy (Henry made a Kylo Ren one, I really wanted to get it for him) and ate at the 50s Prime Time Cafe which was adorable and kitchy but the food was kind of sub-par and premade. We saw the Star Wars Launch Bay which had all kinds of neat things in it but didn't stand in line to meet Chewie or Darth Vader (the kids aren't really into meet and greets).

 

 

We left at a reasonable time and then got stuck in horrendous traffic and ended up still eating dinner out, but near home at one of our regular haunts. And then we were back home in time for our regularly scheduled programming, and by that I mean sleep. In our own wonderful beds.