Escape Dream and Such

I had a dream last night that Bobby signed us up for a research study that would fly the two of us to a sunny, warm beach somewhere to fill out surveys about ourselves for a week! In my dream, my parents would come care for the kids and it was an obvious and easy solution that didn't worry me in the slightest. I found myself at the grocery store trying to get groceries, but distracted by the flip flops and beach bags I would want for our research trip in a couple days. I usually hate non-grocery shopping, but it was a thrill in this dream to consider the possibilities. Then I woke up.

*siiiiiiiiiiiigh*

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When I was in high school living with my parents in American Fork, I fell hard in love with a band called They Might Be Giants. I've mentioned them once or twice on this blog already. Some of the songs they write are just plain brilliant and clever and intuitive the way they describe a phenomenon or feeling. Or the melody and harmony twisting together just so. I get the feeling John Linnell and I experience the world in some of the same ways. In a conversation I had with Erin once, she described They Might Be Giants' music as "cerebral" and the term stuck in my brain. I wondered if that was a category I could just look up and subscribe to. Well, I looked for "cerebral music" in Spotify and it took me in a completely different direction...new age techno instrumental that's supposedly good for your brain waves. I raised an eyebrow, but gave it a try on a few of my runs and bike rides. I kinda like it. It's backgroundy enough to ignore and pay attention to as I like. It creates a steady beat to keep me going. And the lack of lyrics means my brain gets to process whatever it likes while my body is busy. Who knows what it does for my brain waves, but it's a pretty good way to turn a workout into some solo thinking time.

And what do I think about?

Everything. But mostly relationships. I think about my relationships with my kids, my spouse, my friends and ex-friends. I think about my relationship with God. I think about my relationship with myself...am I happy? Am I doing and becoming what I want to do and become? 

But, if anyone knows of any other bands that write cerebral/intellectual/introspective lyrics like They Might Be Giants, I'd love to hear about them.

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James' teacher gave his class an assignment to write 5 correctly-structured sentences with a single sight word that she assigned them. The expectation was 1)capital letters at the beginning, 2) a variety of punctuation at the end, and 3) the correct use of quotation marks. This was her example set:

I've written the principal about how sad this situation makes me. She assures me that they are doing the best they can to fill the vacancy with a permanent teacher. I also wrote the principal about how fantastic Matthew's kindergarten teacher has been...using the technology smoothly, developing a warm and trusting relationship with my child despite the virtual distance, making her expectations very clear, and giving him all the training he needs during class to complete his offline assignments confidently and independently. She's amazing!

Team Axlotl!!

 

Good Day

We had quite a few meltdowns today....emotions running hot and loud. I found myself remarkably patient through it all. Mostly because the kids were having fits over things outside of my control. They were angry, frustrated, confused, tired, hungry, lonely, or disappointed with all sorts of things besides me. I think my anti-anxiety meds helped, too. Anyway, it was a rough day, but nothing personal, and I feel good about how it played out. A good day, I suppose.

Bad news, though. The elementary school principal just let us know that the round of interviews last week did not result in hiring a 2nd grade teacher for James' class. We've had a sub for 4 weeks. Who knows how much longer? 

The school is clearly doing the best it can with what it has. The sub has come a long way from the first couple days of school, too, but it's not enough. Every day is a lost opportunity. Class time is too much and too little and a lot of nothing all at once. It makes me sad. Could I do more/better with James one-on-one in a fully home-schooled framework? Not if I wanted to remain available to the other 4 people who live here. Argh!!

Anyway, it's the new normal. We'll get through it.

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Alice cut her own hair today. That was fun. I evened it out a little at the end. Yes, it's still a little blue and purple :)

Walter the Farting Dog

The other night at bedtime, Matthew ran off to get a story and came back with something I hadn't read to him in a long, long time: Walter the Farting Dog. Erin gave it to us many, many years ago. It's a cute body-humor-centric story about a family that adopts a dog from the shelter and soon discovers that he has a problem with gas. No matter what they do or feed to him, the gas remains. Sometimes it makes the gas worse. The kids love Walter anyway, of course, but the parents have had enough. They say they'll take him back to the shelter the next day if he doesn't stop passing gas. Walter, not wanting to leave the family he's come to love, decides to hold it in from then on. Forever. That night, some burglars sneak in to rob the family and Walter is writhing in pain on the couch. Just as they're about to leave, Walter can't hold it in anymore and he ends up stinking the burglars away. The parents discover his deed and decide that Walter should stay no matter what. 

Why share this with you?

Because the last time I attempted to read that book out loud, I was in the thick of my anxiety/panic episode of Christmas 2018. I couldn't read past the first few pages without choking up. I was Walter. I felt broken, no longer like everyone else. Repulsive and ashamed. Change/progress felt impossible. And, like Walter, simply deciding to stop being broken was as laughable and impossible as someone holding in gas for the rest of their life. Before the panic/anxiety, I had read Walter's book a hundred times with good humor. Something had changed in me. I just couldn't experience the world the same way anymore. 

My friend once asked me to try and write down my thoughts and feelings when I was having a panic attack. I think she was trying to see exactly what I was afraid of. The honest truth is, I wasn't afraid of something, I was just afraid. Everything was on high alert.

Emotions were really close to the surface back then. Empathy was painfully close. I tried to read a harmless spy novel set in peri-WWII England. No go. The potential peril in the first chapter alone was enough to get my face flushing and my heart racing in panic. I think the undercover agent was just getting on a train to go to his new assignment. Things that wouldn't normally bother me in the slightest became far too much. Once the panic/anxiety episode had passed a month later, I went back to the book and read it all. It was dull, kinda preachy, and very British. Nothing like the first time.

So, as I read this Walter book to Matthew recently, I could remember Walter both ways. 

I thought about how lucky I am to be free of that panic right now, knowing full well that this state of mind is not guaranteed for any amount of time.

I thought about Alice who is so, so sensitive to certain forms of peril. How she can't get to sleep some nights because she's scared and she can't pinpoint the source of her fear. It's just fear. And it's so real. 

I thought about other people who experience life this way and how they might choose to cope with it. 

It was a sobering reminder. A moment to be grateful. A moment of compassion for others. I wanted to remember it, so I wrote about it here :)

Mulling it over

1.

A friend and I were walking the other day, talking about current events. She's pretty liberal, even for a left-leaning sort of gal like me. We were talking about how the university in town had to go on lock down because some students were throwing big parties and ignoring the very specific rules and regulations put in place to minimize the spread of Covid-19. I felt like the university had done EVERYTHING imaginable, and then some, to make an onsite college experience as safe as possible: all staff and faculty had to get tested twice a week, everyone had to use a tracking app on their phone to access buildings (great for contact tracing and keeping people out who weren't tested on schedule), everyone masked at all times, and spread out in classrooms. No parties. From my perspective, those students were clearly breaking the law and the rules they said they would keep. My friend saw it differently. She felt the university was irresponsible and reckless for bringing students back on campus at all. She said 19-year-olds are incapable of the kind of responsibility and foresight to make the right choice in this environment. "They're going to throw frat parties. They're going to break the rules." She feels it was a setup from the beginning for university administration to collect the kids' tuition and send them home packing.

I've been thinking about this ever since. Deep down, it feels wrong to blame the university for the students' behavior. And yet, I believe that institutions and governments should take responsibility for for things like systemic racism. So, I'm revisiting this conversation over and over again to try and figure out where I draw the line between personal responsibility and institutional responsibility. Writing this out has helped me tease out the first bit...an individual should be held accountable for poor choices, but only if they had another option to choose from. Maybe that's it. It's making my brain hurt.

2.

Robert talks 90% of the time about video games. Usually only about his current favorite(s) that he's been spending his computer time playing (Astroneer and Minecraft these days). He talks about what he's already done in them. He talks about what he wants to do in them the next time he plays. And today, a new dimension appeared: he followed me around the house excitedly telling me about YouTube videos he watched where someone else used Minecraft to act out hilarious stories like a comic strip. He was so, so excited. I'm tired of it. I banned video game talk from the dinner table a couple nights. I've also had to tell him straight-up, "Robert, I care about you and I know this is really important to you, but I just can't retain any more information about video games right now. If you want to increase the chances of me remembering what you're telling me, you'll have to hold off for another time." He's been pretty good-natured about that approach. I think this situation is a direct result of not spending time with his friends at school. He doesn't have any other outlet for these exciting discoveries! His peers would care a lot about this stuff. So, I'm mulling over 1) how much to let him chatter away at me (in one ear and out the other) just because he needs to talk about it and 2) how much energy I should actually invest in learning to care about his video games, too. 

 

3.

My virtual cycling team made it all the way to the finish line! We biked 3703 miles across the country in two months. I still can't really believe it's done. I am so grateful for the community I felt in that team. One teammate is putting together a "group photo" for us. I'll post it here when I get it :) At this moment, I'm savoring the relief that comes from finishing a big project well-done, while also allowing myself to feel the twinge of sadness that comes when something big is all over...when the team goes back to regular life. I've been mulling those feelings a bit.

4.

I've been mulling over my kids a lot, too, but nothing more than the usual stuff. School at home is slowly building a routine. On my mornings at home, I sit somewhere unseen and attend some Kindergarten and some 2nd grade. It helps me know better what the teachers are expecting from my kids (on my mornings at the farm, Bobby manages the school routine). School ends at 11, we have lunch, and Robert gets to work right away on his at-home-school assignments and chores and piano practice. That usually takes him all the way until 3pm when the kids can play video games if their work is all caught up. Robert earns his video game time EVERY day. He can't stand not to. James and Matthew, however, will eat lunch, run a couple errands with me, and dawdle until the very last second before video game time. Then James rushes through his work and Matthew whines and complains and wilts and stalls through his work until video game time is half over. Then he finishes and the house is quiet. I make dinner and Bobby comes "home" from his office. I marvel at the state of things, mulling over which aspects of the day I will need to change and which I can live with.

A couple of pictures from our recent activities...

James and Robert contemplating a downhill run.

 

A super foggy bike ride got my glasses dripping this week.

Robert caught a really lively large-mouth bass on Labor Day.

James discovered fossils around Colbert Park's pond!

Shadow Cycling

 

Week at a glance

In my efforts to understand where all my time and energy are going (and why on earth I feel so drained when I'm trying so hard to find balance), I decided I should put down on paper all of my regularly scheduled activities.

 

The activities in blue are especially important for "recharging my batteries". Or they have been in the past. It feels lately like they're not working as well. Maybe there's more stress overall (I'm now a mom, a part-time teacher, and an enormous portion of my kids' social lives)? Or Covid has forced me to change how I perform those activities and therefore decreased their potency (chatting on the phone is NOT the same as face-to-face). Probably both: higher demand on energy and a less effective recharge mechanism. Good sleep is a major factor in my mental health, too, but I'm not sure how much of it counts as "recharge" time in these calculations.

Last night, I lost it. After a long day, James needed to login to a math website for school and the teacher had given terrible instructions on how to access it. Absolutely terrible. That was the last straw. I didn't want to do ANY of this anymore...momming, schooling, Covid. I went to my room, curled up into the fetal position on my stripped mattress (laundry day) and cried into the ball of clean sheets. A few minutes later, I heard James skipping down the hall towards me. I heard Bobby tell him to leave me alone for a while. Then I heard careful, quiet steps up to my bedroom door, the doorknob turn a little squeak, and the door open just a few inches. I didn't move. I didn't speak. James half-whispered, "Mom?" I didn't hide the emotional quiver in my voice, "Yes?" He caught his breath half a second before backing out mumbling, "I'm...just...going...to go now...". Whatever he told everyone else, it prompted Matthew to come to my door carefully, crack it open, and ask, "Mom?" 

"Yes?" 

"I love you." And he slipped away closing the door again.

I was in despair. I would never get to do anything I wanted to do ever again...friends, farm, guitar, cycling, being absolutely and completely alone in my house...I would be trapped in this infinite Blursday of need and coercion and negotiation and bickering and guilt and confusion and constant drain forever. And ever. I cried for some time until strangely I realized I didn't feel that way anymore. I caught a second wind, somehow, and felt fine the rest of the evening. Fine enough to email the teacher and get the info I needed before bedtime. James' school day went a lot more smoothly today.

One crappy-hard and unpredictable day at a time, my friends.

Anyway, back to my time chart :) It's funny to see that food and housework add up to 2 part-time jobs just on their own! 

The daily breakdown is a little sobering: 34% sleeping, 34% food/housework/tethered to kids, 32% for absolutely everything else on this entire planet.

I spend 15% of my time on recharging activities. Is it enough? Not lately. Will more time spent on those activities make everything better? I don't know. That is the constant debate raging in my mind. 

The chart misses some very important factors to my week. For example, all the housework and food prep and errand-running (and even blogging, at times) is accompanied by the noise of four kids being kids. Matthew, especially, will follow me around with his constant chatter and conversation. It's lovely on good days, okay on regular days, and draining on hard days. Robert and James pretty much hen-peck each other all day, despite our measures to teach them civility and patience. The chart also misses the additional helps I get every week from Bobby and Erin...Erin has a couple kids over to her house two afternoons a week and Bobby goes into work late two mornings a week so I can work at Sola Gratia. Then Erin has ALL the kids over to her house for a few hours every Saturday, and an overnight sleepover once a month. Seriously. These are gifts of time from Bobby and Erin that I can't repay. Ever. What would my life be like without those gifts? I count on them. So, I feel like I have NO room to complain about how hard these days are, and yet, they're still hard. 

I'll finish this blog post with a few pictures of our recent activities (recharging and otherwise) ;)

A pirate's dream come true: $3 in brand new 2020 pennies. So shiny!

My errand-running buddies.

Playing around with the camera.

New shoes for school and church!

A sunrise I saw on one of my early morning cycling adventures.

James writing a story in the morning fog. 

The first day of school.

A snippet of the Saline Branch on one of my cycling adventures.

Matthew looooooooooves dress up.

 

Matthew pretending to "rock out" with gaming headphones.