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.

Reality Bites

You like how I posted on Sunday (well, Monday and backdated) with a Hey I’ll be here all month! And then promptly disappeared again?

via GIPHY

So here’s the deal. I … am off my anxiety meds. All of them. I harbor no illusions about my headspace and if this doesn’t work then I am perfectly willing to load back up on meds but I feel like over the last 18 months I’ve continued to pile on meds without a thought to changing meds or pulling off any meds. Just more and more. I was up to four including one specifically for turning my head off to sleep. If I didn’t take that pill, I didn’t sleep. Even if I thought I took it. So I couldn’t deal anymore, and when I went on vacation a few weeks ago I pulled myself off the night meds. There were a bunch of REALLY bad nights, but thankfully since it was vacation I could sleep in if I needed to, and eventually I was able to regulate. (however the time change has royally messed me up and I have spent all week this week trying to figure that insanity out).

Then over a week ago I forgot to take my day meds two days in a row, and rather than put myself back on them like a responsible medicine taker, I threw my arms up and said “let’s see how this goes!”

The truth is, it was fine for a week. Then I had two days of LBP and migraine and swimmy head and attacks of not being good enough for my kids. I almost cried when they killed off an extraneous character in my favorite audiobook series. That was rough. But last night I took a Unisom and got a full night’s sleep and woke up feeling like Wonder Woman.

I’m doing this to myself, I know. But I can do this, and if I can’t that’s okay too.

November is the month of challenges

I decided to go for NaBloPoMo this month to get me back into writing. Writing! Imagine that! Of course, in true Bapryll fashion, I decided this on November SECOND so today is backdated so I can think I did it instead of failing from the onset. Weekends will be hard for me as I don’t log onto a computer on the weekends generally. I’ll need to get back into blogging via iPad. Heh. We shall see. I’m also not yet on the blogroll for such things because Google Docs and my computer are frenemies and have decided to ignore each other in public. Basically, I have forgotten that this blog exists. I have a lot in my head that I’d love to get out, and I stopped remembering how that works. How does that work?

Challenge number two is that I signed up for a BettyRocker 30-day workout challenge. Here’s the thought process: I hate to workout. I hate it. So can I get 15 minutes under my belt and work toward kicking my butt back into running? The time change means that theoretically I could get up an hour earlier and work out and shower before readying for work (again, we’ll discount Sunday AND Monday when I couldn’t pull myself out of bed to save my sorry life) so there it is. 15 minutes. I can do this.

And hand in hand with a Betty Rocker Challenge is that I am challenging myself to keep myself accountable for food for 30 days via Myfitnesspal. Blargh. Except that Sunday I have to figure out how to log a handful of items from the International Folk Fair, ¾ a bottle of Prosecco and a meatball hoagie. Yeahhhh.

I’m sure that I’ll come up with more challenges during the month like it’s my very own pre-NYE intentions list. But three challenges in one month. That’s doable, right? Right.

Movies I’ve found myself wishing were on Netflix/Amazon Prime

Crazy Stupid Love

A League of Their Own

Forgetting Sarah Marshall

The Bodyguard

Housesitter

Mr. Holland’s Opus

Where the Heart Is

Sweet Home Alabama

Pleasantville

Election

Under the Tuscan Sun

The Sweetest Thing

Forget Paris

Movies I've watched more than my fair share: 

Leap Year

Friday Five plus some

Things are rolling along here. I had to pull up the blog to see what I had written about and what I had not, and let’s see. School: still chugging along. We’ve had some growing pains as a family trying to figure out what fits into what time slot and still leaves time for everything else on our plates. After the one crazy day of doing the wrong homework and being up obscenely late, we’ve settled into proper routine and school has been great except for one giant mess which I talked about on twitter but I won’t here. This feels more permanent and I just want to forget it happened.

1.       Henry’s social anxiety, while it was bad during the thing that I won’t talk about, has had an amazing 180 turn. Here’s how it usually goes. We go somewhere, somewhere that he knows and he knows some or all of the people. He cries and doesn’t want to go, and when we get there he hides and refuses to interact with anyone and generally impedes not only his own enjoyment but mine because I can’t interact with people and make him somehow comfortable. This has never really stopped us from putting him in that situation because we always hoped he would work his way out of it, but it’s been rough. When we occasionally go over our neighbor’s house, he has mostly stayed in the living room whine-crying and if there is dinner involved, I have to set him up in another room so no one can see him eat.

LAST NIGHT I went to one of those Usborne books parties at the same friends’ house. I dragged the kids bc they don’t like when I pick out books for them. Henry never had an issue, right from the first step in the door. There were strange adults there, a few loud kids. He played and talked to me in front of them and even picked out books from a catalog at the same table with people he didn’t know. I don’t know how to properly express how amazing this is. I noticed it, but also didn’t notice it because he wasn’t making it hard for me so I was just going about my business when my friend said several times how amazing H was being. He was being amazing by just being a regular, not anxious, not shy kid. It was HUGE. (also he talked me into buying him a lot of books.)

2.       I hurt my hip earlier this week and I don’t even know how but it hurts. Some sort of muscle problem. Really bad on Wednesday, better on Thursday but by the night I was hobbling again, and sore again today. This crap really needs to work itself out because pain just doesn’t work for me. It doesn’t fit in with my everyday life.

3.       I’ve been reading a lot again lately, but I’ve been stalling on a book. It seems to be a good book but my fun and exciting YA supernatural books are so much more enthralling. I think if I sat down and committed to this other book, I would really appreciate it. Maybe not. Maybe at least I’d know though.

4.       A friend from high school/college/worked with in college sent me this note on Goodreads. I hadn’t been on it in a while because I was really behind on updating but I’m back now and fully updated. It was so sweet and appreciated.

5.       First game of fall ball is tomorrow! It’s a double header! This is going to be … long, it’s going to be long. As team mom I need to figure out food between the games, and keep an eye on one of the kids whose mom is out of town. So two games, and also we have tickets to tomorrow night’s Rays game. We won’t be staying for the Sister Hazel concert afterward. Full day! Fun day! I’m excited to see Spencer play again.

• +1 My anxiety has been spiking lately, but I don’t know if it’s worth a separate doctor’s appointment to reevaluate my meds or if it’s just something to power through. No sobbing, no worrisome issues really (last time I held out too long for an appointment I was in really rough shape by the time I got to my previously scheduled appointment). Just a lot of that horrible can’t-breathe feelings, a few unprovoked panic attacks, a couple periods of the sads (depression is really not usually a problem for me). Nothing huge, just a lot of little stuff. Not remembering if I took my nightly anxiety meds and then worried to take what might be more but worried I can’t sleep otherwise; random insomnia despite taking my night pills. Ugh. I have an appointment for 10 days from now but I’m going to be out of town for work and have to reschedule. I can’t reschedule that particular appointment for earlier as it’s also my yearly, but do I go longer? Do I wait it out? Nothing feels particularly overwhelming by itself, but that’s what I thought before and I was holding on more tenuously than I realized. I also don’t really want to be on more meds. I need to find a way to chill myself out.

• +2  Fall colds and allergies really bite.