Monday Menu Week of 5/25/2020

I realized that I haven't posted one of these in a while. Life's been busy. Yesterday was Beloved's birthday. We were busy doing stuff and I didn't exactly have time to blog. Saturday was equally busy. On one hand, it was all a good kind of busy. Beloved got to have a chance to relax and enjoy some RPG fun with some friends via the internet. The kids have made significant progress on cleaning their room. (Snuggle Bug's paper mess is starting to get under control and you can actually see the floor.) Cuddle Bear has been throwing a lot of "what if...?" questions around and some of them stumped me. Like "What if the Yellowstone super volcano erupts?" and "What if the Yellowstone super volcano goes dormant?" He's been really interested in it since watching an infographic video a few weeks ago.

Enough rambling, here's the menu. I lost the link to the chart generator, so it's going to be a list.

Breakfasts have been stuff like cereal and eggs. It's kinda boring, but it's been difficult to come up with something more exciting that doesn't drain my energy first thing in the morning. Lunches for the boys and I have been provided by the school. They're random but mostly tasty. Beloved has been having his usual sandwich and ramen noodle soup for lunches. I anticipate this will continue through the week. I think we have enough ramen.

Sunday dinner: Pizza

Monday dinner: Burgers Takeout because it was so hot today.

Tuesday dinner: Tacos (meat cooked in the crock pot)

Wednesday dinner: Chicken stew with biscuits (cooked in the crock pot)

Thursday dinner: Pasta salad with tuna

Friday dinner: Breakfast for dinner

Saturday dinner: Chicken nuggets with fries.

I don't think they pause to breathe.

My kids have been talking all day. It's distracting. I don't think they pause to breathe. If they're not arguing, they're doing "what if... ?" scenarios and sort of coming up with shared stories. I try to just ignore it but those shared stories turn into arguments pretty damn quick. It's really frustrating.

School stuff has been challenging this week because they're getting more work that's challenging them. It's hard to provide the academic support they need because there's only one of me and two of them. And they're working on different subjects at different levels at the same time. It's exhausting to keep switching between material. The school has started entering what they call phase 4 of the distance learning work. This is where the students are to demonstrate compentency in the subjects.

I got a letter all about it in the mail. It was detailed about what the expectations are for the elementary students. I'm pretty sure the letter about what the middle school is doing will be arriving in the near future.

I am having an incredibly vexing day. I just want everyone to leave me alone for a little bit so I can get some stuff done but I can't make that happen. My youngest child got himself grounded on the basis of his poor judgment and apparent lack of safety awareness. I have to basically monitor his behavior through the day to make sure there isn't another lapse. This is stressing me out. The fact that I'm juggling their academics and trying to make sure that they get their work done for the week is stressing me out.

I worry about the fact that Beloved is out working while COVID-19 is flying around. Fortunately, he is not in a position where he has to meet the public, but I still worry. I have my anxiety ratcheted up by the fact that all of our neighbors work in jobs where they meet the public. I find myself concerned that we might get sick because of the shared space of the entry way. My anxiety is just this side of out of control. There's not a damn thing I can do about it because all of this is stuff beyond my control.

So, I'm honestly pretty miserable right now. I'm at a bad headspace for doing stuff on Keen right now because I am distracted by the question of what bad decision is my child going to make next? I had thought that we had the basic safety awareness nailed down. Then he decided to go and try to get into the cleaning chemicals. My anxiety spikes when he goes into the bathroom because I worry that he's going to get into a cabinet with medicine in it or something, ones that we can't lock or secure in a way that he can not get past. Thankfully, he's too short to get to my psych meds, even with the step stool. But that doesn't stop me from going "Oh, dear gods, what is that boy going to get into next?"

Obligatory COVID-19 post (part 2)

New York state is still under the PAUSE order until June 13. The Finger Lakes region and Central New York are in phase one of reopening. That means manufacturing and related businesses are going to be opening up once they have proper safety protocols in place. The recent decision by the Governor to allow businesses like construction to resume with proper safety protocol measures has lead to an increase in traffic along my street because we're just up the road from a lumber yard / hardware store. I'm honestly not sure how well this is going to go.

Since the decision to allow my region to initiate phase one of reopening, I have noticed my neighbors have relaxed their personal safety measures. A lot less people are wearing masks and they are not as vigilant about social distancing. It's being enforced to some extent by retailers (although I have not yet heard of stores refusing service to people who arrive with out a mask yet). I am concerned that my community naively believes the danger has passed.

Our death statistics in my county are low. Part of this is because we're not a heavily populated county like what you find downstate. Part of this is because when PAUSE went into effect, people were relatively ok about following safety protocols (unlike people in some neighboring regions who were holding block parties as soon as PAUSE went into effect). I've been monitoring the situation with the infection rate, recovery rate, and death rate for my region. It's deceptively positive. Deaths in our county are in the single digits. Recovery is around 70 people versus the 100 or so who have caught this (making the total 170 infected, excluding the 7 deceased). It's dangerously deceptive numbers when you compare them to the state's over all percentages.

There are neighbors using our local statistics to justify relaxing safety measures because they have decided it isn't that bad. It is horrifying and nerve wracking for me. I have had people telling me that it's not as polio. That's been the worst thing they can think of and I sat down and looked up the death statistics for polio. This is exactly as lethal as polio. Instead of having to worry about paralysis, you have to worry about unknown laundry list of possible long term complications to the heart and other vital organs, if you're lucky enough not to be reinfected. If you're reinfected, you are even more likely to have the fatal complications.

The WHO says that there's a good chance that COVID-19 is not going to go away. While there's a lot of desperate research going on to find a vaccine, there's a lot of shady politics that I fear is going to get in the way of the distribution of a vaccine when it is found. I fear that the US is going to continue to lead in the number of cases and deaths. When you have people screaming that they're being oppressed because they're told to wear a goddamn mask for THEIR safety and the safety of the community, there's something broken about the system. When you have these people showing up with weapons to protest and their legislature decides not to hold session because of the sheer volume of them, there's something seriously wrong. That's not peaceably assembling to demand redress of grievances. That's a riot waiting to happen. And it's been encouraged by the goddamn PRESIDENT.

I honestly don't think the US is going to survive COVID-19. Not because of a great dying (though I believe that will happen as bad policy decisions are made and people take reckless risks because they're ill informed or just morons) but because the fault lines in the nation are laid bare by the gaps in basic necessities. And I think this is going to stress them to the point that the US is going to collapse. And I don't know how we're going to get through it.

Dreading this week.

I have an IEP meeting Monday morning. I looked over the draft IEP and feel like I'm reading gibberish. I try but I don' really understand the test scores. I can't tell if they're "good" or "bad" numbers. I can't gauge where my son is at academically and this leaves me unsure how to advocate for him. What is particularly frustrating is the fact that within the parameters of his IEP he is performing at honor roll levels. It leaves me wondering if his IEP is keeping him back from success in a more mainstream classroom setting.

And yet, I see the difficulty he has with the mainstream classes that he has and the amount of one-on-one support he has needed, and I realize that the IEP is part of the reason why he is having the success that he is. It's just all very confusing and anxiety provoking because I worry about how he is going to perform without the supports that he has right now. I worry about how he's going to do in life after high school.

Do I take some time during this mess with COVID-19 and the distance learning to teach him how to balance a checkbook? Do I spend some time trying to teach him more about how to cook? I don't know. It's hard because it is so exhausting to get through the distance learning work. Cuddle Bear does ok on his own and is pretty much on top of his class work. Snuggle Bug, on the other hand, needs a lot of assistance unless he is playing math games.

As it stands, the boys get through most of their work for the day by around lunch time. I'm then left with the question of how to keep them occupied so they're not fighting and driving me insane for the rest of the day. We've been adhering to the social distancing protocol and spending a lot of time indoors. Part of that is because the weather recently has been bonkers. Last weekend, we were coming off of a week where it was cold enough to snow at random. This weekend, we're heading into a week where there's supposed to be a fair amount of rain.

We can't go to the park because I can't just wipe down all of the playground equipment and let them run around. We don't really take walks because we don't have enough masks for everyone to wear one as we take a stroll. So, when the weather's nice, the kids stay in the yard and ride their bikes in laps around it. But, not for too long because I don't want them to run up to every neighbor who is out walking their dog and ask to pet the cute pupper. I've noticed people relaxing their protocol measures as our county is going into phase one of opening up. This is deeply concerning for me, because COVID-19 hasn't gone away.

I'm not sure how many of my neighbors will be going back to work. I'm not sure how many will still be home and wandering the neighborhood. I know that we need to get out of the house some. I just don't know how to manage that and my work in the house at the same time. Snuggle Bug's safety awareness has taken a nose dive. We've taken to locking up the cabinet where we keep the cleaning supplies and controlling his access to things like scissors because he's done things like tried to clean the bathroom unsupervised and cut his own hair. It's vexing because I thought he had grown past this. It's even extended to outdoor play. We were just supervising the kids from the front window of the apartment as they played in the front yard. But, Snuggle Bug somehow has found busted glass and metal which he started using to build with. Fortunately, his big brother tried to stop him and when he was unsuccessful, he got me. But, because of Snuggle Bug's reduced safety awareness (which we suspect is due to the lack of structure from not being in the pretty rigid format of the school day), he needs more supervision when he's playing outside.

I feel like we've taken several steps backwards for each step forward we have made. I talked with his teachers and it was both a relief and a disappointment to notice that Snuggle Bug was struggling with the reduced safety awareness and impulsivity at school during the day as well. I'm waiting on a call back from the autism center with any suggestions for how to manage this. We've locked up things that can be locked and haven't let him out of our sight. I'm not looking forward to trying to juggle the level of direction that Snuggle Bug needs versus the level of direction that Cuddle Bear needs versus my responsibilities and needs.

It is exhausting. I am trying very hard to keep them engaged and entertained. But I am running out of ideas and spoons. Throw in the effects of stress and the weird weather, I've been having high blood sugar related exhaustion and headaches. It's just been miserable. And it looks like the weather this week is going to be another weird weather week so I can pretty much plan on having at least one migraine. I have other things on my mind as well, but that'll be a separate post.

Diabetes can die in a fire.

My blood sugar has been running high today despite my best efforts. It could be because this home schooling / distance learning stuff has me stressed out. It could be that my body is generally just being difficult because of the medication change that happened a few months back and we can't go back to that combo pill of metformin and agloptin because the manufacturer is still out of stock on that dosage. All I know is that this is a source of high irritation and frustration right now.

I spent most of my morning exhausted and struggling to stay awake. I generally failed. Why? Not because I didn't get a full night of sleep but because my blood sugar was high. Here it is in the middle of the afternoon and I am several hours behind schedule. I am frustrated with the kids because they spent most of the morning on cat videos instead of school work because I was unconscious. Now, one has caught up on his work but the other is insisting that his work is "too hard" when I know if I asked him to list out the steps to make one of his lego creations he'd be able to do it. All he has to do is write out the steps for how to make a pb&j sandwich but apparently it's too boring/hard to do it.

I'm frustrated because I hit this wall with so many assignments. I'm tired. Some of this being tired is the stupid diabetes. Some of this being tired is because I just want him to do the rather simple tasks he's been given with out fighting me. I know that distance learning sucks. I did it back in the late 90s when it was beginning to be a thing. The tech they have now is superior and more responsive. It helps a lot. But they just have times where they don't want to do the work because they're at home instead of not being at school.

Meanwhile, I am here having my blood sugars swinging back and forth between high and normal. They're not going dangerously high, but they're high enough that I get sleepy often. I struggle to have the energy to keep up with the housework. I struggle to have the energy to keep up with this distance learning stuff. Gods only know that I have a lot of my own stuff on the back burner because of the distance learning whilst in a crisis happening.

It'd be easier if I didn't have the diabetes messing up my day. I know my problems today were set up by the burger I ate last night, which while within my carb load was apparently too high. I hate the fact that I am going to have to go back to batch cooking everything I'm going to eat during the week. The school is trying to help out with meals, but I've come to realize that my condition is such that I have to make all my own stuff. I'm just stuck with this situation. I can't eat 'normal' bread. I have to limit the amount of anything carb in a fairly big way or my body says 'fuck you' and I go to sleep.

I'm angry and I'm sad. And there's nothing I can do about it except all of this pain in the ass extra work to prep meals for the week on days where I don't have time for it. I just don't have the time to do all this prep work and it's a struggle to get it done even to a partial extent because Sundays get eaten up by familial things. Chores, laundry, and just a pile of other stuff that needs to be done gets to eat Saturdays. Then, next thing I know, it is Monday and I am too busy with the home schooling stuff to be cooking for the week. I just get to a point where I want to say 'fuck it, I'll eat normal food' but I can't because this exhausted business happens if I even have a little bit of it.

So, in all sincerity, fuck diabetes with a chain saw.

Ugh, stupid polar vortex go home.

It's been a long week. I've had several migraines and felt generally miserable since this polar vortex moved in. It has been exhausting. I'm running low on spoons because I am not sleeping that great. All of the stiffness and aches of my body because of the weather just makes it impossible for me to get comfortable. Add on top of that the fact that I am having night sweats and hot flashes during the day, I'm just not thrilled with this whole perimenopause business.

Despite the birth control medication that I am on, my periods are getting irregular again. This stuff is such that I generally shouldn't have one unless I go off of it. I started going off it once a month because I was experiencing break out menses about two years ago. I had a regular menstrual cycle for the first time in my life by the force of medication. It was a pleasant deviation from the norm. I knew exactly when I was going to have it and how long it was going to last.

I was lulled into a false sense of security. It's been almost a year now since I have been having perimenopausal symptoms and now my menses are getting unpredictable despite the medication. I feel like an idiot for daring to buy light colored underwear. I am going back to black all the time now. Along with the hot flashes and the night sweats, I get to feel paranoid that I have Covid-19 because my body temp is elevated and I'm having cold symptoms. I know that it's actually my hormones being stupid and the fact that there is a ton of pollen flying around in the air bothering me.

The cold weather has the animals confused. They're here but they're not doing their spring things. I'm hoping that it's decimated the stinkbug population because they're an invasive species and a problem. It's beating the tar out of my plants that are outside. I would be a bit more upset about this but the thing that I am truly bothered by is the fact that someone decided to pick my lone daffodil as soon as it bloomed and they did the same with my purple hyacinth. I don't have many flowers out there in that flower bed. It just is a bad spot to grow things. I have two tulips attempting to grow but I am concerned the cold is going to kill 'em off. I've pretty much given up on flowers right now.

I just want the weather to warm up so that I can plant the rosebush that Beloved got me for Mother's Day. As he handed it to me he said, "A knock out for my knock out." The rosebush variety is known as Knock Out and has a double blossom. It's quite fragrant and pleasant. I don't dare put it outside because I know that the cold will kill it off. And my greenhouse frame doesn't have a cover over it so I can't put anything in there that will have it protected from the frost/freeze that we've got going on in the evenings during this polar vortex.

Since I can't do my walking, I have been doing stuff in the apartment. I'm about half through this 1lb bag of semi-felted fiber. I've been spinning it on my Ashford student spindle. It's the heaviest spindle I own and I'm attempting to make yarn that's closer to the commercial medium weight acrylic that I use for a lot of my crafting. I'm making progress on that goal. I still have a small portion that I have aside that I am using with one of my drawer pull drop spindles to make thread. It's been slow going on that front but I am making progress. If I remember it rightly, they say that hand spinning is slower by the hour and faster by the mile.

I feel a touch annoyed with this fiber. I was going to use the drawer pull drop spindle for this stuff and make a mile of thread. I loaded my distaff and was ready to set to work on it when I discovered just how felted it was. So, I have been getting something of an upper arm work out ripping out the felted fiber into semi-fluffy strips and using it with my bigger spindle. I haven't touched the bunch upon the distaff. I'm going to have to get it all off and repeat the process of fluffing it all up. I would just abandon it but I'm halfway through it. I feel bad about the idea of abandoning a project in the middle of it all.

And then there is this shawl that I'm working on that is possibly going to turn into something huge. I have a crochet wingspan shawl pattern. It said work it with medium weight yarn and a 'H' hook. I figured I'd go up two sizes and use my 'J' sized hook. I thought I'd get the project done faster and have it a bit more open fabric. Well, that theory isn't matching up with the results I am getting. It is working up a LOT bigger than I anticipated. I have decided that this is my 'crazy' pandemic project. When it gets to the halfway point, I will post a picture of it. I'm still working on the first third. I have gone through approximately two pounds of medium weight acrylic yarn. This is still the beginning of it and I'm not finished with the third triangle. I may be half done with it, I'm not sure.

Once I get that third triangle done, I'm going to sit down and do some math to figure out how much yarn I am going to need to finish this thing off. I am working each triangle in a color of the spectrum. I started with red and used about 1/3rd of a pound. Then I did orange which was one pound. I'm now on yellow and I'm almost finished with the first pound ball and nowhere near finished with the triangle. I had Beloved pick up two more pounds of yellow. We'll see if it is enough to finish it. Once I get the yellow triangle finished, I can do some math based on the three triangles to calculate how much yarn I am going to need for the remaining colors. I have a feeling that this thing triples by size with each triangle because the base of the triangle is on the hypotenuse of the triangle before. But I still have to check.

We're joking that this thing will probably be an evening gown by the time I get done with it because it works up in a spiral. Other people are doing the pandemic hair thing and I'm doing pandemic crochet.

I hate migraines. (And other stuff)

There's a big front in the process of coming through. [...] I started this post two hours ago as the front was coming in. I had a real bear of a migraine that had been building all day. When the rain started, my head started to hurt less. It was a relief. The aleve that I had taken about an hour before the storm came wasn't doing much for it. I had been drinking coffee and water in alternating great quantity in an effort to make my head hurt less. I was resisting the urges to eat everything sweet. It was just plain rotten.

~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~*~

My youngest son is a sweet kid who tries really hard to be good. At the same time, he has poor safety awareness and a difficult time remembering the rules. It's something that has become a problem. I don't think he his back-sliding in his sense of safety awareness. I think I just didn't see how much of a problem it was until the last week.There's some developmental delay that is keeping him back from having enough safety awareness to recall that broken glass and rusty metal is not good materials to play with. It is something that keeps him from remembering that he needs to be supervised when he is doing things like attempting to clean the bathroom or science experiments.

As a result, we've re-implemented some safety measures that we thought were no longer necessary. I am disappointed. I am not disappointed with him as much as I am disappointed with myself for not realizing this was a problem before now. Viewed in this light, his past behavior makes more sense and his responses to things makes more sense. As does some of his anxieties. Mostly, however, I am disappointed with the situation because this means we have to re-institute some restrictions on his behavior that we had begun easing up because we thought he  was ready for it. Now, we realize he is not and the transition back to a more restrictive situation is going to be hard.

Now, I am going to be bringing this up with his school counselor and we're going to be bringing this up with the specialist at the autism center that we work with. We're at a loss for ideas to help him make the transition to the less structured scenario of middle school when he is struggling with the somewhat less structured environment we've provided him.

We'll figure out how to make this work. We've got a good team of people we're working with. At the same time, I can't help but be scared for the future because I don't know what is a head of us.

Not sure what to write.

It's been a long day in my household. The weather was dreary just about all day and chill. I have been not entirely focused today. Despite that, the kids got most of their school work for today done. I have been struggling to focus over the last few days. I am just at a loss for words. I am working on incredibly simple projects in an attempt to at least keep my hands busy while my brain is spinning and coming up with nothing to keep the kids occupied.

I want to be writing more than this but I keep hitting a wall. I am mildly depressed and exhausted. I feel like I screwed up someone's reading on Keen earlier this evening because they decided to end the session. I had my monthly appointment with my psychiatrist over the phone. The boys decided that was the time for the cacophony of fart noises. And to follow me as I tried to find a quiet place in the apartment to do the call.

I am anxious about my blood sugar test that I had taken last week. I fear that my A1C has gone up. I keep forgetting to log what I am eating. My eating schedule has been thrown out of wack. As a result the blood sugar numbers don't look good. I don't know if my A1C is up or of I am just testing at the wrong time after I eat.

It looks like I have to go back to eating nothing but salads and preparing low carb everything separate from what I am making for the rest of the family. I am tired. I don't have the spoons to make two or three separate meals. It is exhausting and depressing. But, I suspect that my A1C is higher and I have to double down on being severely disciplined in my eating and cutting just about all processed food out of my diet again.

I lack the words to express how disappointed and disgusted I am with this situation. I feel like I can't just eat like normal people. I have the suggested portion of pasta (as suggested in the diabetes care magazine) and my blood sugar spikes. As such I am eating pasta substitutes if I am eating pasta at all. And sitting in the 'pantry' is a box of lasagna noodles. I want to make and eat lasagna but I can't because it is way too carb heavy.

I have had to give up all of my comfort foods. It makes me sad. I can't just snack with out counting every last carb. I have to constantly do math to make sure that my blood sugar doesn't go too high. I am not great at math and here I am trying to find away to make stuff that I can just portion out and eat with out too much thought. But that's a ton more work and I'm tired. I am attempting to keep to a strict schedule and plan for everything. That's just as exhausting as keeping the kids on their schedule.

And school won't be back in session officially until September. We're doing the distance learning for the remainder of the school year because our school district doesn't want to abandon the students and their academic goals. The number of Covid19 cases in my county jumped by a significant number over the last few days. I expect that it is the beginning of it really making its presence known here. I am trying not to be afraid.

Meanwhile, my eldest child was jumpy today because of the unexpected noises of the work being done on the apartment next to us. And he asked me if the noises were due to Covid19. It took me several minutes to get him to understand that this work wasn't because the virus was coming to get us. It then took me several minutes to get him to understand that the workers weren't going to start knocking down walls in our apartment. It made for an exhausting afternoon.