I guess this month is almost over.
I honestly have no idea how that happened; I feel like it went by so quickly.
Yesterday was not my favorite day — it began with a terribly rocky morning with the kids and was followed by a clinical day in which nothing felt easy (though in retrospect it was fine!). BUT then we got some positive house news, and bedtime went reasonably well, including a good talk with the child that had made the morning miserable, and I spent some time journaling in bed about how we can hopefully improve our mornings in the future.
And today I feel better! Even though it’s not a new month yet 🙂
Currently thinking about: 2022 planning systems. Hanukkah gifts (NEED TO GET ON THIS for nieces/nephews – the only thing I have identified is the Amanda Rach Lee doodle planner for my 12 year old niece — she currently uses and likes one I gave her from 2021!). Christmas gifts for friends (thinking maybe cozy candles this year?!). Getting a mortgage.
Currently reading: Close to the end of On Purpose, and I ordered 4000 Weeks as my next non-fic read. BUT I’m between novels! I’m either going to pick Great Circle back up, dive into The Lincoln Highway, or wait until one of these arrives:
Currently watching: The Babysitters Club Season 2! Annabel and I binged 3 episodes in a row last weekend. I had to pause explain about my job when they featured Stacey’s pediatric endocrinologist. (“You know that’s part of my job, right!?”). Seriously though . . . how many shows feature a peds endo?!
Currently experiencing: Caroline Girvan EPIC I. I have completed 2 weeks plus one workout! Every single time I survive one of these, it feels like an accomplishment. However, I am not getting in 5/week because I am mixing in running. And sometimes rest days (yesterday – just had to).
Currently wondering: How Halloween is going to work since it’s on a Sunday. I suspect we will trick or treat from like ~6:00 – 8:00pm and then cut it off? Monday Nov 1 is going to be rough!
29 Comments
I wonder if what makes things feel hard is that kid behavior is not something that you directly control, and humans are not inherently reasonable. So you have expectations of how a morning or a day or a weekend is supposed to go, then those expectations go unmet, and the reality seems terrible in comparison.
There are definitely things that can make life with kids go more or less smoothly, but maybe it would help to just surrender to the idea that you live with a lot of people who have their own issues and agendas and personalities. None of it is under your control any more than if you lived with the same number of adult humans, whether they were college-aged roommates or seniors with dementia or mid-career friends. People never act the way we think they should. They’re rowdy and annoying and disorganized and emotional and lovely and sweet and none of it means that anything has gone wrong.
Maybe that doesn’t help when you’re running late and someone is screaming with rage and someone else can’t find their socks and someone else is still playing video games after you told them 5 more minutes half an hour ago and then someone drops a jar on their foot and you end up in the ER for stitches.
On the other hand, even on a morning like that, telling yourself that it’s a terrible day probably feels worse than telling yourself that this is exactly what life with children is supposed to be like.
Of course, you probably feel more responsible for shaping your kids than you would if they were random adults, but as far as I can tell you aren’t abusive or neglectful, and your kids will be fine or they won’t but it will be because of who they are and not because of anything you did or didn’t do. Way more factors are out of your control than in it – which is frustrating, too, but also relieves the pressure.
I know that sometimes I sound a little preachy in the comments – I hope this is more helpful than irritating!
I so appreciate this. Thank you!
OH this is a good reminder! Especially for those of us that want to control everything, but we can’t always control those dang kids!!
So well put! Thank you for this much needed reminder. I’m actually going to screenshot it.
Dylan loves the babysitters club. I do like some things about the show but gosh is still manages to be incredibly gendered and prescriptive.
Very true!!!!
And yet I can’t get enough of Alicia Silverstone ~25-30 years post Clueless . . .
Love the next books on your reading list. I also have 4000 weeks and The Lincoln Highway on my TBR. Another one I have on my TBR is “It ends with us” by Colleen Harper.
I am really looking forward to your thoughts on 4000 Weeks. The perspective was so different from most “productivity” books. I really enjoyed the challenge to my conventional wisdom and I’m already working to implement some of the suggestions.
I’m curious why you guys have decided to buy a house. I thought you were firmly against ownership?
The solid and sad reason that our rent went way up and no longer seems like a stable cost-effective option 🙁
We are buying a house very similar to what we are renting and it’s not that I want to own but doing the math it just didn’t make sense anymore.
I think we also are getting to a place of acceptance that we’re unlikely to move out of S Florida anytime soon, which is .. . bittersweet.
I’m curious why you would not want to buy unless it was way cheaper…because it leaves the option open to move?
I didn’t trust the market, particularly S Florida. Climate change etc. I also hate how home ownership always seems to come with extremely expensive unpredictable disasters ($12K new AC, needing a new roof, etc). However, as the house we sold has since doubled in estimate . . . (AFTER we sold it) . . I guess I was entirely wrong.
I also get zero pleasure out of ‘decorating’ and ‘updating’. It just feels like a waste to me compared to other spending. (And I love spending on other things – so not a frugality issue n general!).
And yes, the option to move too. I don’t like feeling ‘trapped’ and the last two times we had to sell a house to move it went poorly (ie, over a year on the market each time and losing $ in the transaction). Timing was of the essence – this was 2008 and 2019.
oof that is brutal for sure (that your last two home transactions went poorly). I’ve only owned homes in very “hot” markets: Washington DC and SF Bay Area. we’ve made a killing on all home sales so I’m surprised and feel terrible that your transactions have not gone so well. I have definitely been in a bubble though I recognize. And I’m 100% with you on zero interest in decorating. We recently bought 2 homes within 2 months (inherited some family money and had to use it for a home in the case of the second home for tax reasons) so I’m dying under the responsibility to furnish/decorate. Thankfully my mom has offered to help. And I 100% recognize this is a ridiculously privelaged situation to be in. Just happy to hear I’m not the only woman that does not like to decorate homes!
We are in a similar position — our rent hasn’t gone up yet, but MI does not have laws limiting rent increases, and I suspect our landlord may jack the rent next year because I think we are getting quite a bargain at the moment. Our landlord is constantly concerned that he is getting ripped off, and can be very difficult to deal with, though we love the house and neighborhood. It would also be nice to have some control over what we got to do with the house, since I suspect we may be here for a while. I kept thinking that we could buy a house when daughter goes to college, but (1) she could live at home for college potentially, (2) that’s 13 more years, and (3) when that happens, the houses that we’d downside to would likely cost as much as what we want to buy now. Financially I think it’s a bit of a wash — I suspect we will have inflation and resultant fed rate increases in the future, which will depress real estate prices, and property taxes around here are kind of nuts, but also interest rates are currently really low, and it would be nice to be able to put money into the house while we have two incomes.
I am loving Caroline Girvan’s EPIC I- it is just the challenge/shake up I needed in my routine. I’m not huge into HIIT so I’m subbing runs on those days but her weight workouts are terrific. I love that there’s EPIC II and III to look forward to! Thanks for the rec!
So cool about the shout-out to your pediatric endo role in Babysitter’s Club. Such a fun way to introduce Annabel to your career, and it’s always fun to see something familiar portrayed on TV in a fictional setting.
I’ll be interested in your take on Four Thousand Weeks. As I was reading it, I didn’t feel particularly drawn in sometimes (I prefer Laura Vanderkam’s + Gretchen Rubin’s writing style on this sort of topic). But, I can’t stop thinking about it. It really was a different perspective in many ways. I definitely liked it A LOT better than his other book (The Antidote: Happiness for People Who Can’t Stand Positive Thinking).
His take home message – that there is never going to be enough time to do everything we want/could/should do and also his suggestion to pick something to FAIL at (the wording is important here) – really stuck with me.
And, when he suggested to pick a SINGLE project and finish it completely (instead of starting and maintaining a bunch of projects simultaneously) was the kick in the pants I needed to finish up a writing project I’d been working on for two decades and print it off without doing any other work on other projects in-progress!
The book summary and first chapter came across as so cheesy to me. Does it get better than that???
Good luck on the home buying plans! It sounds exciting, even though I’m sure that the acceptance of remaining in area is bittersweet for you. But think of the planning pages and projects that you can do, home ownership related 🙂
In book terms, I have 4000 Weeks and am looking forward to getting into it. I read and LOVED Great Circle!
The Ocean Vuong book is very good, elegant writing. Subjects are not easy, but treated with intelligence.
We’ve had rough mornings the last 2 mornings. Our toddler woke up in A MOOD both days and it’s impossible to usher him through the morning stuff when he’s disregulated like he was. He recently moved into a big boy bed so that has made bedtime harder so I think he’s probably tired. But gosh it is hard and makes me thankful that we have some flexibility in our schedule. My husband ideally needs to be in at 7:45 but he’s not seeing patients and can do some work at home before he leaves. But our mornings do start early because of our financial services jobs, so that probably makes the mornings harder than they would be if we could leave at like 8am? Who knows. Maybe everything would just shift an hour and he’d be disregulated at 7:30 instead of 6:30.
I haven’t read any of the books on your hold list! I tried to read the Ocean Vuong one but ended up abandoning it… I wasn’t in the right mood for a book that felt so bleak. I’m reading “Sorrow and Bliss” – I’m liking it so far. The author is very witty and wry and she deals with the heavy topic of mental health/depression. I’ve heard nothing but good things about it!
I don’t mind Halloween on a Sunday but don’t look forward to the stretch of years of it being on a week night! Week nights are just so hectic for us! Our block does a kid costume photo at 6 and then groups of kids trick or treat together so I am excited for that! This is our first normal Halloween in our new house so it will be fun to partake in the group trick or treating!
Good luck with the house stuff! Real estate transactions are so stressful! I don’t really want to ever move again!
They should move Halloween to “4th Saturday in Oct” and then do the time change then for an extra hour of sleep after, too! 🙂
I could get behind this!!!
I’d vote for you in a political campaign based purely on this idea. Brilliant! Why has no one done this, yet?!
I’m ready to wave goodbye to October. My coworker got Covid so I’ve had to work on my day off 3 weeks in a row. I’m exhausted. Plus I had a root canal. 😩
Oh I’m so sorry! Nov is here for you and it will be better! ❤️
Just commenting to say the babysitters club has been so well done! I was a huge fan as a kid and now, as a 4th grade teacher, I’m loving the update. That show is everything I want for our girls ❤️
I’m in the midst of the Apples Never Fall book – I was on hold for about 2 months, and I accidentally deleted the first hold and had to re-add (putting me at the end of the line again.) I was so annoyed, but all was well.
Good luck with househunting and that process! Remember you can possibly outsource the associated chores that you do not want to manage, if it eases the mental load of owning.
I find it difficult to separate my vibe if my kid(s) had not had the best day. With one with some developmental issues, it’s not a given any day that she’ll have a good report from school. It weighs on me. I’m glad you were able to talk through your challenging interaction(s)!
Oh, I loved ‘On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous’ – I read it almost a year ago and it still haunts me now.