It has not been a good week.

 I wish that I had happy things to share and fun pictures for you. I don't. This week has sucked. First, there was the business of being on tenterhooks waiting for my father-in-law's condition to change. He had been in the hospital most of last week (which wasn't a good week either) due to complications from fatty liver disease and a fall the Friday before. Fortunately, the fall just left him with some good sized bruises but there was no concussion or broken bones. About the middle of last week, he decided that he was done taking medication for his fatty liver disease and dealing with the side effects. So began our death watch.

To some extent I was on the sidelines for this. But it was still stressful. The kids were prepared for the news that he was dying, but they still were upset with it. They had a close relationship with the man. A day or so after my father-in-law decided he was done with treatment, we got a phone call telling us that he had anything between a few days to a few weeks before he died. At which point, Beloved called out of work and we all trooped up to the hospital. Snuggle Bug wanted to see his grandfather and say something to him. Cuddle Bear preferred not to go into the ward where the man was. He waited with me and we all headed home when Snuggle Bug had his say. For my part, I had nothing to say.

I had to restrain myself from saying when Beloved asked me if I wanted to step back and say anything "Naw, I've seen corpses before." To put it very lightly, I despised my father-in-law based upon his past behavior, politics, and general attitude. And he never knew the depth of it. My father-in-law would tease my Beloved and insist that I actually liked him. The old goat mistook my politeness for actual pleasure in his company.

 I didn't disabuse him of the notion but as time passed on, he started to think that there was something a bit off there. Perhaps it was the fact that I had my hair chopped after he fawned over a haircut that I had gotten, I think it was two or three days after it that I got a super short pixie cut. He made me uncomfortable, angry, and I decided to do something about it. But between the mannish haircut and my changing my clothing style to black everything with occasional splashes of color, I got suspicious looks from him and he started queer baiting me. I made a point of not getting into an argument with him over it because I was observing frith and sticking to my own faith's rules of good behavior in another's home. There were several times he said things that made me want to loosen his teeth, but I replied with a dry 'that's your opinion.'

All of this exposition is to explain the background for why I am not mourning the man. I'm actually somewhat relieved and glad that he's dead. He can no longer hurt anyone now. He can no longer terrorize his wife. He can no longer spread his brand of hatred. And, he's made himself semi-useful in death by donating his body to science. I have but one childish regret, that I didn't punch him when I had the opportunity. I, however, recognize that I have anger issues and do my best to keep that in check. And I recognize that punching him would have been breaking frith, done nothing to resolve all of the agony he has caused in the course of his lifetime, and would probably have netted me an assault charge. I still feel like he deserved at least one punch for how he behaved in life, though.

All of that aside, the old goat dying has left something of a mess that Beloved and his siblings are sorting through with their mother. Changes got made to important legal things which didn't get down in writing before my father in law went into the hospital. Palsy made it impossible for him to feed himself, let alone write something down. And I presume that when he made these changes to his wishes for end of life stuff, he expected that he wasn't going to die essentially immediately after. The extended family are in the process of converging on the town. This is going to be complicated and messy because feelings and opinions on what should happen next. 

I'm not looking forward to the next few weeks. I expect that Beloved and the kids are going to have a rough time of it all. I expect that Beloved's mother and his siblings are going to have a rough time too. I'm going to do my best to support them and disregard what others have to say, even if it makes me angry. 

No Monday Menu this week.

 It has been one heck of a weekend. Friday, Beloved was sick with the flu. The rest of us fell like dominos over the course of Saturday. Today, the neighbor's kid who came to visit Thursday has come down with it. I feel bad that he's caught it but there isn't much I can do about it. I may offer them what's left of the ginger ale to help settle his stomach. But if it goes like it did over here, they're all going to have it in short order.

Thinking about food is making my stomach roil still. I'm no longer getting sick to my stomach, thankfully. The kids have started keeping solid food down. It makes things easier. Beloved is just about fully recovered with the exception of some stomach misery and a lot of gas. We're all hoping that nothing was caught by his parents with respect to this.

As logically as I can figure it out, we picked it up when we visited the hospital for the kids to see their grandfather. Because all week last week during the kids' winter break, that was the only place we had gone. At first, we thought that Beloved had food poisoning from a bottle of flavored milk that had gone off. Then the rest of us got sick. It's made things exasperating. I have two sinkfuls of dishes to wash, food to prep for Beloved's lunches this week (one of his favorite things is tuna salad to have for lunch), and another pile of dishes to take care of on the stove.

I also have to still clean out the fish tank and get rid of the fish's corpse. I was waiting until the garbage went out this way the kids didn't get upset seeing Snap laying in the garbage. But it's going to be a challenge to catch up on this stuff. A part of me says that making two pans of brownies last week was a poor executive decision. But there was no way I could have known that we were all going to get sick. I'm trying to give myself a bit of grace and just be reasonable about it all.

Dinners this week are going to be tailored to what people can keep down and what will keep the blood sugar stable for us diabetics in the household Beyond that, who knows the things I'll be putting together. If any of it comes out particularly good, I'll make a post here.

Since the cat is out of the bag ...

 My husband's parents are not doing well. We've been doing our best to offer support and help out. But there are something that you can not avoid, help, or otherwise make go away. My father in law is actively dying of liver failure due to fatty liver disease. Now that I am aware that this runs in Beloved's side of the family, I can educate the kids about it. I'm probably going to wait until everything finishes unfolding for my father in law, to be honest.

So far, Beloved is doing ok handling complicated feelings about his father. I am doing my best to hold space for him and support him in whatever way that I can. I understand the complicated feelings that he's going through, having gone through them myself when my own father got a cancer diagnosis. (Dad's in remission thanks to an experimental treatment and will be declared cured if he doesn't have it come back by August.) It is rough to hurry up and wait for someone to die.

It doesn't matter how much you're angry with them, how much you hate them, or how you feel on any front. It's still unpleasant and difficult. You see the suffering of the people who love them and it gets to you. Or at least it gets to me. Grief isn't easy. Grieving someone as they're still technically alive is a paradoxical experience and painful.

Right now, my father in law is spending a lot of time sleeping and getting pain medicine. He fell last week and was in the hospital with respect to that when it was discovered that his liver enzymes were high. The old goat refused treatment after a few days because he was just sick of the side effects. Not long after that, he started spending a lot of time sleeping. The doctors think he has anything from a few days to a few weeks to go. 

It's odd. The idea that it can be that uncertain is just strange to me. Then I think about acute liver failure and how it kills you in 24 to 48 hours. It's been a surreal week. I feel like I should have more empathy for the grieving that my sister in law is going through because she is close to her father. I don't, however. I kinda feel like a bad person for that.

I have spent a fair amount of time thinking about death and coming up with no good ideas on how to talk about it. The fish died on Tuesday. I haven't been able to clean out the tank yet because of all the stuff stacked around it right now. As the fish had been acting strangely for about two weeks and he was old, the kids were prepared for it to happen. There wasn't really any wailing and gnashing of teeth like the last time we had a fish die. The kids were disappointed and sad, but they accepted it as a natural part of life. They've agreed that death is not cool and that it's a sad thing. By letting them come to their own conclusions about the matter, I have done my best to keep my opinions out of it.

Looking back on the last week, I think that the death of the fish prepared the kids for the coming death of their grandfather. My only concerns about all of this is how to help my immediate family navigate this process. Beloved, as I said, has conflicting feelings about it all. He has a bad relationship with his father for much of the same reasons why I have a bad relationship with my parents. But we're standing behind the kids and doing our best to guide and support them through this, because they have a relatively good relationship with the man.

My mother in law is obviously distraught. It has driven her blood pressure up and she's had medication changes which have impacted her in various ways due to it. I suspect her doctor didn't fully consider her situation when he made the change and put her on a high dose rather than titrate her up to it. Hopefully as the medication is adjusted, she'll be doing better. But her cognition isn't the best right now for a number of reasons. This has kickstarted my anxiety again about myself developing dementia, because that's in my side of the family.

I try really hard not to think about it but watching my great grandmother H. lose her mental faculties scared the hell out of me. It was somewhat traumatic to watch from the side lines as a kid and it instilled in me a deep fear of losing my memories. Hence why I started journaling to begin with. My thinking was if I wrote everything down, I'd have reminders about the important things as my mind started to go.

Then bipolar happened to me. After living with the facts of how bipolar effects my cognition, I have come to recognize that my frantic urge to save as many memories as possible is futile. I still journal. It helps me to get a handle on my brain and sort through my feelings. But the anxiety about preserving everything just kinda got pushed aside in the light of how this last depressive episode really messed with my memory and stuff. And realizing that the next depressive episode will likely do the same.

NaBloPoMo post no. 27: Shoppmageddon tempts me.

Beloved pointed out to me that I didn't have to make everything for everyone on my list. I hear the siren call of shopping and I am doing my best to resist. I suspect in the end half of what I have planned will be made and I'll be working on a shopping list in a week or so. Because there's a lot to do to fix the disaster of this apartment. 

It is my goal to have it all clean by Yule or Mother's Night. I'm not throwing a party or anything. I just want to have this place sorted out kinda like a present to myself. I don't know how I am going to get the kids to participate in this. It may be a temporary suspension of tablet time. I don't know. Snuggle Bug is very forgetful and I have to watch him like a hawk to keep him on task. (As much as he assures me he doesn't need the supervision, he really does.) Cuddle Bear is finally beginning to step up and start handling some of the chores.

I don't know what Beloved said to him in that conversation, but it's made for a turnaround in his attitude towards housework.

Some ramblings about life and potholes.

 Hey y'all. 

My street got 'fixed' by the WSA (Water and Sewer Authority) and has so many potholes that I feel like I'm playing Frogger when I'm driving and trying to avoid them. The last time they fixed something, stuff broke and we didn't have water for the day. I'm pretty sure these guys are a menace to society, not because they're bad people but because they put gravel into potholes instead of actually repairing them. I'm half tempted to get some driveway sealant from the hardware store up the road and fill in the gap around the pothole and the sewer lid.

Now, this fuckery is not entirely the WSA's fault. The highway department paved over all the manholes two years ago and screwed up the road so that it has issues on top of issues. And yet, for all of this work, the railroad tracks are a nightmare. The tracks are ok, but the crossing is just about nothing but gravel and two car eating potholes. The railroad is working on that this week. Here's hoping they're better than WSA or the highway department.

I have seen people loose mufflers off of their cars because of these potholes at the tracks. Fools and people who are not from around here will go over those tracks at full speed and damage their vehicle. It's been a hazard for a while and I'm glad it is getting worked on, I just hope that it improves the drivability of the street. Our speed limit is 35 mph but sometimes you have to go 15 because the road is just that bad. Oh, one more detail I forgot to mention. This part is sheer stupidity and someone is probably going to get hurt because of it. There's a small rise and at the top of the rise it says lane closed. You pop over it and the eastbound lane is closed for the space of about a car length. But it's a double solid and a blind rise. Murder on the eyes in the morning and you hope that nobody's derping in the road on that rise because of the sun burning your corneas to a crisp. Yeah, that's been interesting. Nothing like playing chicken because the WSA couldn't fix something properly.

I've been struggling to stay on top of everything, but I am slowing getting back into my groove. Tutoring Cuddle Bear has been eye opening. This young man is going into be a high school junior this fall. He's bright, he's charming (when he feels like it), and is really focused on learning as much as he can. Things we already know. It was realizing that through middle school they short changed him on mathematics. He and I have been working through a Spectrum Math workbook focused on algebra. We finished the pre-algebra chapter this week and it became clear that they were having him working on elementary school material, not grade appropriate work.

I understand a special education classroom is a juggling act when you have students at multiple grade levels in there and it gets even more difficult when you are dealing with  learning disorders and stuff like people who need communication aids. I did this work before I had kids. It's hard and at the end of the day you are exhausted. It doesn't change the fact that you have to meet the kids at their level. My boys are smart enough to pick up algebra and geometry. How do I know that? By how they whip through some damn complicated concepts (who here remembers the identity property of zero?). 

Now I am investigating things like how was he taught English, what Science classes did he get skipped over on, what are they refusing to teach my sons because they have autism. I'm mad as hell. In his IEP reports, his teachers were saying that he was struggling with algebra because he came into the class unprepared for it. He should have been prepared. That's why we're working on it now. Because I think he's going to get shuffled into a remedial geometry class or some similar grand bullshit.

He wasn't given a choice last year about going into BOCES exploration program. And it wasn't a thing that his entire class had to do. They were trying to pidgeon hole him into a shop class, because it was easier for them to throw him at the BOCES environment than to take the damn time to educate him. Cuddle Bear hated BOCES because it was a chaotic learning environment and he had no interest in what they were teaching him. We're watching the school like a hawk to see if they're going to try to put him back into BOCES or if they're going to honor what he said in the IEP meeting.

Right now, I know that one son is approximately 4 grades behind in mathematics and possibly in other subjects as well. I have suspicions that the other son is in a similar boat. As I get this figured out, I'm trying to decide what action to take. I can't do the chain flail thing, they're unreliable as hell. But a proverbial baseball bat of information dropped on the desk of the department chair and a demand for an explanation may start moving things in the right direction.

I'm sick of people telling me what a good mom I am. I'm a fucking educator by way of my education. I get that everyone has a different learning style and I adapt my teaching styles to be responsive to them. This is not a mere 'mom' thing. I'm dragging out material from college to teach them informally about the history of the country, math skills, and language arts. Language arts is challenging because they have difficulty with inferencing. I think, however, as we work in the mathematics area, they will find that they can apply some of the skills for breaking down problems into workable bits useful for interpreting inferred content.

I'm mad. I shouldn't be doing the school's job for them. I  have my good days and I can focus to get them through their work. I have my bad days where I struggle to figure out words. All of this is weaponized bullshit of the highest order. When my kids say they want to be home schooled instead of dealing with the uncertainty of what the next school year brings, I get angry. They shouldn't be anxious that they're going to get screwed academically because of their autism.

Is the fish dying or not? I have no clue.

 We have a dark blue betta with fancy name (Shimmer). He's been my youngest son's Lego buddy since I brought the fish home. Snuggle Bug will make a point of showing Shimmer what he's built, how it works, and the whole deal about how it fits into the play narrative that he's working on at the time. (Right now, the play narrative is robot Pac-Man vs. possessed animatronic toys. I blame Five Nights at Freddie's for this.) Snuggle Bug is Shimmer's biggest fan and the first to point out when he starts acting weird.

Well, as the kids were at school yesterday, I noticed that Shimmer kept coming to the top of his tank and floating on his side. I cleaned the tank and dosed him with some medicine. He seemed to be a bit improved in the morning but now he's doing it again. Snuggle Bug will be pissed off if his Lego buddy doesn't make it. He was making plans to build a robot version of Shimmer this weekend.

It doesn't help that Snuggle Bug is terrified of death. And yet, what did he pick for us to read for a bed time story but the Illustrated Children's Classics version of Dracula. (He did not like Renfield and the sparrows.) I don't know if reading about the Un-Dead is going to make him less afraid of death. But I know that despite his horror at Renfield eating the sparrows and his disappointment with the death of one of the FMCs (female main characters), he still wants to finish the book and find out how they stop Dracula from doing horrible things in the end.

We've talked about death on a semi-regular basis because we've gone through about six betta fish over the last few years. (It makes me suspect that there's something not right about our water.) Snuggle Bug just is afraid that death is going to be awful, painful, and terrifying. He's not afraid that he's going to blink out of existence. He's not afraid that he's going to be punished by an angry deity. It is death itself that he is afraid of. No amount of talking that I've done on the topic has done much to reassure him.

It doesn't help when there's this shit about mass shootings in the news. The Buffalo one was upsetting for Beloved and I because we have friends who live a few blocks away from the store where it happened. The school shooting in Texas was what got Snuggle Bug worked up for a few days. As they watch the news as part of their social studies class, I have a feeling that hearing about last night's shooting in Maryland is going to have Snuggle Bug upset again. So, this business of the fish is actually a pretty big deal.

I know some people will go 'It's just a fish, get a new one.' But to the boys, this fish is a part of our family and they love it dearly. They love to watch the fish get excited and zoom around the tank before feeding time. They will 'share' new toys with the fish by putting them beside the tank for the fish to investigate. They've been doing this since they were small. The fish is a big deal for them. Just like their pet snails.

So, I hope this business of the fish swimming sideways at the top of the tank resolves itself soon. I really wouldn't want to have to explain to Snuggle Bug that his little buddy is dead. Because then Snuggle Bug will perseverate on if Shimmer suffered horribly through his death. I'm doing my best to keep the kids calm and say 'well, Shimmer is a weird fish and he does weird things sometimes.' Because, Shimmer is an odd fish that will randomly attack the tank for no reason, start zooming around the tank because he saw something green, and generally be strange in the way that only betta fish can be.

Monday Menu is in the Past, Monday Rants are the Future!

 I don't really have much to rant about at the moment except puberty. My kids went from cheerful morning people to surly, half feral young men. This morning was a challenge. One insisted he didn't need to get out of bed until the last minute and was about to wear dirty clothes to school because "they don't smell dirty." The other was making sniping comments at his brother about how he was going to make them late for the bus from the moment he got out of bed until (probably) the moment they got on the bus.

Breakfast was met with suspicion. I was serving them what's previously been a favorite breakfast item. Today, they looked at it as if I was trying to poison them. Then came the aggravation of trying to get them to take allergy medication. It wasn't as awful as it could have been, but that suspicious reaction as if I was trying to feed them arsenic was there. It was exasperating to say the least.

Oh, and the son who was ranting that his brother was going to make them late for the bus insisted he didn't have time to brush his hair for a full half hour because he had to rearrange his army figures for the battle he was planning for in the afternoon. And the kids wonder why I have white showing up in my hair.

It'd be a little easier if they didn't argue quite so much. I don't understand it. They start arguing as soon as they're both awake and continue until they're out the door. And half the time, one of them comes in to announce that the other has called them an insult as soon as they're outside. It makes me think I need something stronger than coffee to keep up with these two.

Oh, one other quick note: how the hell did my son grow about four inches in the course of three months? I swear those pants fit him at the beginning of the school year. Now he looks like he's wearing cut-offs or something. And his brother is hording all of his old clothes but can't tell which pants fits him properly so it's a completely random game of "Will it Fit?" every morning. I sense that they're going to be getting clothes in the near to immediate future.

If they keep annoying me, they're getting socks and underwear for Yule. *rolls eyes*

My brain and heart hurts.

 Raising kids isn't easy to begin with. We've officially hit puberty and Cuddle Bear has gone from ... well, a cuddle bear to an angry young man half the time. It wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the fact that I haven't slept well in about three months. That makes me a bit hair-trigger with my c-ptsd. Throw in on top of that the fact that we've had a few screaming arguments that set it off, it's been rough.

Beloved spoke with him. I don't know what their conversation was like, I wasn't in the room. Cuddle Bear is not quite as angry, just moody. I know that puberty is rough. Hormones swinging like a pendulum is bullshit no matter why it's happening. He's chafing at the bit to get the privileges and freedom that he sees his older peers have. It leads to some friction, to put it lightly.

Snuggle Bug is looking at the way Cuddle Bear and I have clashed over the last few months and NOPED out of even trying to be involved by either defending his brother or trying to calm him down (which they've both done in the past). It's very confusing. Where Cuddle Bear has gotten angrier and more aggressive, Snuggle Bug has slowed down and become more deliberate in what he's doing. There's still maturing happening and there's still stuff that has to be sorted out, but it's like they switched brains right now. It's bewildering.

I've been struggling with my c-ptsd for about a month now. My doctor has increased my dosage on one of my meds to help me regain control over the flashbacks. I've been attempting to force myself to do my therapy writing but I just get real upset when I try. I've been catching myself struggling to stay present in the moment. It is hard because the age difference between my sons is exactly the same as the age difference between my brothers. And the boys, if you look at the right angle, look like their uncles did at those ages. 

So, I swing between being in the present and being Mom and being in the past and being the terrified older sister desperately attempting to keep her brothers 'in line' so that all three of us didn't get some sort of awful punishment. And I was punished for this behavior. I couldn't win for losing. On top of that, I had untreated bipolar which lead to being accused regularly of drug use when I was actually depressed. Hypomania just meant that I got loaded down with more chores and told to shut up more often. My parent's approach to kids was "children should be seen and not heard" and "spare the rod, spoil the child." They didn't believe in mental illness or chronic illness.

The whole business of my mangled upbringing makes living in the present hard. I have to take a lot of medicine between the diabetes, pcos, c-ptsd, and bipolar II. Having my parents criticize me for taking cough syrup when I had a cold and insisting that I was using drugs when I wasn't left a mental scar that leaves me feeling guilty and like the world's going to judge me as a bad person for all of the medication that I have to take to function and be alive. It's so upsetting that Beloved has taken over the management of filling up my pill sorter for the week. (I am eternally thankful to him for that. I could do it, but then I wind up just about crying afterwards every time.)

I'm rambling and I don't really know what to say. I am struggling to function. It seems like every time I turn around, there's a 'new' trigger that I wasn't aware of until now. And the old triggers that I had thought I had under control are bringing back up anxiety again. Seeing a pile of dishes in the sink shouldn't make you panic, but it does because when I was small I got beat for not doing the dishes properly and then made to wash them all over again in nearly scalding hot water. Seeing that something needs dusting shouldn't make you shake with fear, but it happens because my insane mother used the white glove treatment after we cleaned. If there was a speck of dust on her glove, you got hit and made to do it all over again. In some cases, it went on for a few iterations because we simply weren't tall enough to dust the entire area (like the top of the upright piano) and weren't allowed to stand on anything to get to it.

It's a whole bunch of stuff like that coming back up. It is painful. It is disorienting. I try to hide it from the kids because they get scared when I am not my usual self. Especially if I am crying for some reason. I think it's because they expect me to vanish for a few weeks off to the hospital. It's a heavy load to carry. It hurts.

Not really sure how to title this.

 There's a lot going on right now. I'm not sure if I have enough spoons to do everything. As a result, I'm not blogging across any of my platforms right now. I'm barely keeping up with my daily journal work. Actually, I'm not doing too great at that, to be honest.

My brother-in-law is in the hospital. He had a kidney transplant recently. He started out looking ok and then everything went sideways. My sister-in-law is just this side of having kittens because she doesn't know what to do. Beloved is doing his best to be supportive and the voice of reason. Things were looking really grim for a little while. Now, my brother-in-law is doing a bit better but his cognitive state isn't the best. The going theory is his problem is sleep deprivation. He's at the best hospital in the area and getting the best care that can be given. It's still a very stressful thing for the family.

The kids are not aware of the ongoing matter. They've been a handful all on their own since summer school ended two weeks ago. That ended on a contentious note due to a massive communication failure, which got resolved (?) the day before school finished. The kids got their first shot for the Covid-19 vaccine at the beginning of the month. Next week is when they get their next shot. Amazingly, my needle phobic boys didn't freak out. One of them actually high-fived the pharmacist who gave him the shot. I'm hoping that the second round goes just as well.

Cuddle Bear is currently doing talk therapy once a week to develop some behavior interventions for his tendency to perseverate on his imaginary world to the exclusion of things he needs to do. We got started on this path because of a teacher thinking he was suffering from psychosis. This lead to a full psychological evaluation back in April (I think, time's a blur). The result was the psychologist said that he is showing classic autistic behaviors and that he is perseverating on his imagination. The experts have consistently said this through out the entire business. We've made a point of keeping all of his care team in the loop and making sure that the school shares information with them. 

But, at the time of the teacher's panic, I called the autism center and got set up with their behavioral intervention program. I then forgot all about that until the behavior intervention program people called me to apologize for the wait and schedule his assessment. That was at the beginning of the month. We've hit the point now that the child psychologist that we're working with has developed a treatment plan and we're getting ready to implement it.

Less damn fights about what's real and what's not would be fantastic. Less fantastic stories about how his imaginary friends are causing trouble would be helpful too when the situation is that he is actually the one up to mischief. I don't want to snuff out his imagination and I don't have a problem with imaginary friends. But he has to learn when and where to let his imagination to run wild. I am hoping that the treatment plan is going to work and he learns what we've been desperately trying to teach him on our own - discretion in his imaginary play and better focus on reality.

If we're lucky, some of the skills and interventions that we learn from this process will be helpful with Snuggle Bug, who is beginning to demonstrate some of the same perseveration behaviors (obviously on different topics). I just want my kids to be able to navigate the world with some measure of success, I don't really care about their approach because everyone does it differently regardless of how neurotypical they are. The perseveration, unfortunately, is turning into a hinderance and I don't want them to struggle because of it.

I'm just still kinda burned on how we got started on this path. The teacher who thought that Cuddle Bear was psychotic is going to be Snuggle Bug's teacher next year. I'm rather dreading it. Because I have a bad feeling that she's going to find something else to complain/fuss over. Beloved and I are fairly sure her education in Autism is lacking. But, I know what I'm going to do if we go down that road again because of Snuggle Bug's fascination with robots and his occasional insistence that he is one. 

It's been a rough couple of months.

Building planners for the boys for school

 The kids are starting to think about when the school year begins. So have I. As the modified bullet journal system has been working really well to help me manage my executive dysfunction due to my disability, I thought that it would help the kids. I let them decorate the covers with all the stickers they wanted. Snuggle Bug went with almost a full page of Transformers stickers.

I set it up so that the 'calendar' has their week at a glance. The first day of the first week is highlighted because it is a day off from school. It's part of the same way that I code days off from school on the wall calendar and in my own planner. I used the bullet journal notation for an event 'O' to mark that it was Labor day. The second day of the week also has that 'O' mark with a note stating it is the first day of school.

On the extreme right hand side of the daily section, I note the calendar date and the letter for the school day. I've decided that I'm going to do something a little fun for the kids and put stickers in on the days they have off. I included at the beginning of each binder a copy of the bullet journal key.  On the first page of each section, I put a short note on a brightly colored post-it sticky note explaining how to use the section.  This is partly for the kids to use and partly to inform the teachers how it's set up.

And, if we go back to distance learning because of Covid-19, I've got that beginning of structure in place that meshes with what I've got going on so I can do a better job of supporting them and their academic needs.

There is one section that is not assigned yet. But this gives the teachers flexibility to assign something to that section. It it my hope that this will work better than the last planners that the school gave out which were much smaller and poorly organized. We're going to practice using the bullet journal system with notecards over the next few weeks where they have their tasks for the day written down and they mark them off according to the system. I bought some extra large notecards to make this a little easier.

Ah, gods, wtf am I doing, again?

 This business of my sleep not being sufficient despite getting around 8 hours of sleep every night is really wearing on me. I'm not sure what the solution to it is. I'm pretty sure that I'm having nightmares and that's the problem. I have a lot of unresolved issues surrounding 2010-2011 and the experiences that went with my postpartum depression. I think they're popping up because the anxieties that I had during that year are running around at the back of my head. It's hard.

I'm afraid to write about it because I'm afraid that someone is going to use my words as evidence to try to take my kids from me. Not writing about it, I feel as though I'm going crazy because this anxiety is rattling around constantly. It's making it hard to sleep for reasons that I can't fully express. I've been struggling with fear of sleep again. Those two facts are the basis, aside from my deep and overwhelming sense of exhaustion in the morning, that I conclude that I am not sleeping well or getting down in to deep and restorative sleep. I'm going to be bringing it up with my psychiatrist when I talk to him next week. I hate having complex post-traumatic stress disorder. It messes with everything.

There's a teacher at the school who is in the process of turning herself into a problem (as I mentioned in my previous posts). This is part of what is triggering my ptsd. At the same time, I am angry. I am concerned at the IEP meeting in April that they're going to try to use my disability as an argument to change the IEPs of both kids. I am equally concerned that they're going to use the findings from the psychiatric evaluation that was done of Cuddle Bear to change his IEP to mainstream him and kick out the academic supports he has in place right now. They're making noises about pulling Suggle Bug out of speech therapy. I don't fully understand why.

Snuggle Bug has a difficult time using parts of speech correctly. It's a marked difference compared to others. We're regularly correcting him on pronouns and tenses for verbs. I'm going to ask them in the IEP meeting if this is something that he was supposed to be working on with his speech therapist or his teacher. And then, if it is a thing for the teacher, I'm going to ask why we're not seeing progress. Same question for the speech therapist if it is their wheelhouse. Beloved is talking about taking the day off to sit in on the meeting.

A lot of this is hurry up and wait for the write up from the psychological evaluation to arrive. When I signed the consent for Snuggle Bug to be evaluated, the form did not say that his teacher or any administrator was going to be present for the meeting. I'm questioning the ethics and legality of their presence in that zoom meeting last week. I have to ask some questions of my psychiatrist regarding the evaluation of minors and who is permitted to be present when it happens. Because, when the school requests a physical evaluation of a student's physical fitness for their gym classes or sports activities, the gym teacher isn't permitted to be present. I want to know who the person who was identified by the string of numbers on the screen during that zoom meeting was. If it was the school psychologist, that's not a problem. If it was the CSE chair for the middle/high school, I'm questioning it.

I don't even know if I am doing the right thing right now with all of this. There's a lot of questions up in the air and I don't have any good answers. I hate IEP season because as we get farther along in the schooling, things get more complicated. I feel like I don't know enough to be in these meetings and properly advocate for my kids. And I don't necessarily trust the rando parent representative who could get picked to help with the process because I can see them pressuring me to just agree with what the school says.

Beloved is optimistic that this whole situation is a case of the one teacher taking stuff out of context and creating a mess. I hope that he's right. And I hope that this mess doesn't screw over my kids. It all makes me wish that I had the spoons and brain power to home school the kids. Because it was exhausting and maddening, but we didn't have to deal with people being asinine over the kids having active imaginations.

I am exhausted.

 First, the good news. My old meter was reading approximately 11 points off. I did my first test this morning with the old meter. That read 126. Not a horrible number, but higher than I wanted to see. I did my second fasting test with the new meter. That read 115. A much better number and made me rethink what I had planned for breakfast. (Breakfast was diet yogurt, biscotti, and coffee. Total carb load was 35 carbs. I still have to establish if I am doing my math right on total carbs vs. net carbs. Because the net carb load would be lower.)

Next, the meh news. I just haven't been sleeping well for the last month. The bags under my eyes have bags. I'm not sleeping so poorly that I am putting my mental well being into danger. It's been things like the rapid shifts in the weather causing migraines and my arthritis to act up and make it hard to sleep. Or in the case of last night, hard cramping due to my period making it hard to sleep. Mainly, I'm finding it difficult to remain asleep. My prazosin (aka anti-nightmare pill) wears off around 3 am. That's been about when I've been waking up. I don't know if I'm having nightmares too because I don't remember them. It's a surreal experience still to have gone all my life able to remember my dreams and now because of a little pink pill, I don't recall them unless they're especially horrific.

Finally, the wtf news. Cuddle Bear (I'm going to have to come up with a new nickname for him soon, he is 13.) is having some difficulty at school. He's been perseverating on his fantasy life to the point that it is impacting his dealings with peers, teachers, and his performance at school. The teacher is concerned that there's a disconnect with reality here. Beloved and I don't think that he's delusional but that there's something going on that needs to be addressed. I suspect that he is diving into his fantasy life to escape some sort of stressor. It's become more prevalent over the last three weeks. 

At first, I thought it was just a thing happening at home because school had stressed him out. It was the time when classes for that semester were doing final exams and such. I figured that was what had him going. But the teacher called me today to explain that he's having these difficulties. She voiced concern that he was not as grounded in reality as he should be. I didn't dismiss that outright, but noted that he tends to do it more when he is stressed out and as an escape from a situation.

I've no idea what situation he's trying to escape. We've been strict and not allowing boundaries to get pushed, but we're not traumatizing the kid. Beloved and I work very, very hard not to use the parenting skill set that we were handed by our respective parents. I don't know if the stress of Covid-19 is getting to him. I don't know if he is having difficulty with someone at school. I don't know if he is having difficulty with a subject at school. I don't know where the stressor is. If I could track it down, I'd be able to provide him with some guidance on how to handle it.

I allow him free reign to play how he chooses through the afternoon. I figure it lets him let off stress from school. But, I think I am going to have to put my foot down on some of his imaginative play and tell him that his desire to express his fantasy world is going to have to be via some medium other than spoken word and performative action. That's going to suck. And I am going to have to police his dress code for school because he is sneaking to school garments that he uses for imaginative play again. I'll be calling the autism center to ask for guidance on this. I'll be talking to my psychiatrist for guidance on this. And I'm going to probably be trying to find him some manner of therapist that isn't affiliated with the county clinic (who are sufficiently infamous that the school is telling people DON'T go there). 

This is just a huge headache and a mess that I don't know how to sort out. I know that my son is not disconnected from reality. He's not demanding extra plates be set out for his wives or smuggling food into his room for them. He isn't behaving in a delusional manner. He just gets very angry when you confront him when he is hyper focused on his imagination versus reality. (I.e. when he wants to play firefighter and has been directed to clean his room.) I don't want to remove things like the toys he associates with this stuff, but it might be a necessary step to box them up until he can play appropriately with them. I don't know.

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.

NaBloPoMo 1/30

I'm going to attempt National Blog Posting Month along side National Novel Writing Month this year. Blog posts are going to be short. But I'm going to try to get back into the habit of daily blogging on top of things like getting back into the habit of doing yoga twice a day. I'm hoping that daily blogging will be less uncomfortable than the yoga is right now.

There's big doings happening at the school right now. Cuddle Bear made honor roll for the first marking quarter. We're all really proud of him. He is more interested in pretending to be a cat and watching videos of angry cats today. Snuggle Bug's report card hasn't come in yet. I have a feeling it will be more good news.

Cuddle Bear's been very busy in tech class. He's brought home a bird feeder, a pumpkin basket, and a bird house. Honestly, I was surprised the pumpkin on the basket wasn't painted blue. But the blue painted pumpkin he brought home last week I suppose made up for that. It was our Halloween decoration.

Snuggle Bug has been making increasingly more complex lego creations. Just today, he figured out how to make a lego car that could survive being made to do a back flip by flicking the end of the car. He's been telling me all the facts he has been learning about crayfish in school right now. I'm hoping that he'll remember them tomorrow when he takes his big test.

Aside from blogging and working on a couple of novels (in sequence, not at the same time this time), I am working on yule gifts. I've been adding to Beloved's big ol' melty crayon blanket that I crochet for him a few years back. He asked for that to be made a little bigger, so I am. I searched high and low, every yarn store I could get to in my area, but I couldn't find that yarn I used. So, it is getting a border of black. The black really makes the clashing colors of the main blanket stand out. He's lucky I love him so much. I loathe this color combo in the main part of the blanket.

(Guess which is is favorite blanket? Yep, the loudest one in the house.)

Tide Pods and other noxious things.

I promised you a rant on the Tide pod challenge. It is part of the reason why I have been avoiding social media. There has been quite a few people posting memes about this. I recognize gallows humor. It stopped being funny a while ago, but the memes keep happening. The kids keep doing this and dying. It sickens me to see people laughing about children dying due to social pressure. That's what's driving the Tide pod challenge and a lot of the other assinine challenges out there. Similar things went on when I was that age. It didn't spread as quickly but it was still a thing and people did stupidly dangerous things to prove they were part of the crowd.

However, those stupidly dangerous things weren't lethal. Those stupidly dangerous things weren't being broadcasted for the whole world to watch. This would be like watching a group of kids playing russian roulette with an actual firearm, not a nerf gun, and when the likes for the feed hits a critical number, they load another bullet for the lulz. I carefully monitor my children's access to the internet to keep them away from this kind of garbage because they are the kids who'd be pressured into it due to how much they want to be friends with everybody. How many other children don't have parents who are able to do this for them? What of that number have died or been severely injured due to stuff like the Tide pod challenge? I'd lay odds that a good number of the dead and injured due to this meme are ones that their parents thought that Youtube was harmless.

The Tide pod challenge isn't the only thing that bothers me about popular memes right now. There's some stupid ones out there. That's not really a problem as much of an annoyance. But the memes that make fun of people with autism or treats people with mental disability as though they are subhuman really, really bother me. They dehumanize these people. Progressive dehumanization or othering of an already vulnerable part of the population is a step towards greater oppression of said group. If it was acceptable, I'm sure that such memes would be posted about African Americans by people who seem to think that Donald Trump^* is a good person based on what I've seen said by that segment of the population with respect to former President Obama.

We are living in times where Immigrations and Customs Enforcement are stopping Amtrack trains outside of Syracuse (a city that is known for salt potatoes and their basketball for the most part) and demanding to see papers proving citizenship. They're waiting at schools and places of employment to pick up potential illegal immigrants. Families are making plans for what to do if parents are picked up while kids are at school. There is an underground railroad smuggling people out of the United States to points elsewhere to seek asylum.

And yet, we should be happy with our bread and circuses. We should laugh as children are pressured to kill themselves. We should shrug off one child calling ICE on another as a prank or youthful indiscretion. (That one ended well, thank gods, the child who had ICE called on them and their family were not harassed because they had the good fortune of having all of their paperwork in hand. And the child who did that call got expelled for it.) We should look away when transgendered people are murdered for the mere offense of living. We should be hyped up about the winter olympics but not offended by the fact that school shootings are in double digits already.

If my anger and concerns about such things makes me a helicopter parent, then I'm not that fun/annoying news helicopter that's telling you about rush hour traffic. I'm the armored assault helicopter that's air support for my troops on the ground. I haven't figured out how to deal with it all yet, but if someone comes at my kids, they're going down. School yard fights happen and that is why we're teaching them how to finish a fight if it starts but to never start one. The other side of things, adults fucking around causing my children problems, I will find away to destroy them utterly. Once I thought I could count on the community to help. Now, I find my people and we fight for each other because the bonds of community have broken.

If they hadn't broken, this mess wouldn't be here. We'd be taking care of each other and nobody's babies would be dying because someone told them they had to eat poison to be popular.

Monday Menu.

No picture this week because I'm just tired of trying to find good lighting for pictures and stuff. It's a bit frustrating and I have been having enough stuff making me annoyed and frustrated. I have been having a difficult couple of weeks. So, I'm just going to make this post completely simple.

Sunday was scheduled to be pizza night, but the weather was too humid and warm. I just picked up some pre-cooked pulled pork and made Cuban sandwiches for lunch. I am probably going to be using the leftover pulled pork in Beloved's lunches this week.

Monday morning is going to be French toast with fruit. Lunch is going to be sandwiches for the guys and a salad for myself. My goals is to get back into the habit of eating salads for lunch. Dinner is going to be hot dogs with potato salad and fresh veggies. I'm tempted to cook them in the crockpot with some chili sauce. I'm not decided on the matter.

Tuesday is going to be a cereal day for breakfast. Beloved is going to be having sandwiches for his lunch (he requested turkey). I am going to be having some leftovers (if there is any) and a salad. If there are no leftovers from Monday's dinner, it will just be a salad. I may possibly do the spiced eggs on a bed of kale. It depends on how motivated I feel to be cooking tomorrow afternoon. Dinner is going to be hamburgers with tater-tots and a tossed salad.

Wednesday is going to be the leftovers from the french toast or I'm going to do something with eggs and toast. Beloved is going to be having another sandwich for lunch. It may be ham or it may be turkey, it depends on what he is in the mood for. I'm out of the sandwich style cut dill pickles but I don't think he'll mind much.  I am more of a fan of pickles than he is. I will be having a salad. I am going to try to make that thai chopped salad that I have on my cooking page on pinterest. I keep meaning to make it, I think this week is going to be the time I finally make it. Dinner is going to be chicken curry with rice, naan, and saag paneer.

Thursday is going to be waffles for breakfast. I have some fruit filled ones that I'm looking forward to. Apart of me says I should have whipped cream, but I think I'll be just fine with out it. My lunch is going to be a salad, or curry leftovers. Beloved is definitely getting curry leftovers. I'm going to do my best to make sure he has an extra portion of saag paneer. Dinner tonight is going to be crockpot tacos with fresh salsa an guacamole.

Friday's breakfast is going to be pop tarts. Lunch is going to be a taco salad for myself and sandwiches for Beloved. I'd try giving him something like taco salad but I know that's not exactly his thing. I may throw some corn chips and guacamole into his lunch though. Dinner is going to be pasta salad with teriyaki meatballs. I found a recipe for how to do it in the crockpot. Though calling it a recipe may be a bit much. It's premade meatballs and teriyaki sauce cooked on low for 6-8 hours. I'm also going to have fresh veggies out to round out the meal.

Saturday is going to be another morning of scrambled eggs. The kids apparently seem to love them. Cuddle Bear was six different kinds of proud of himself for helping me cook them for breakfast yesterday. I think he's going to be real happy to help out next Saturday too. Lunch is going to be something take out when I am out doing grocery shopping. I have a feeling that there are not going to be any leftovers from dinner Friday night. Whenever I make meatball anything, it goes really fast because the guys love 'em. Dinner is going to be macaroni and cheese. I'm going to give the kids apple slices to go with it. Beloved is going to be out doing social things that evening, so I won't be worrying about dinner for him. And the kids don't get to pick out dinner things that often, so this is kinda a special little 'mom and me' kind of thing.

One thing I have to add, menu planning has cut about $50 out of my grocery bill when I first started out doing it. As I have refined it over the last several months, it has lead to the bill going down to about $100 less than what it was towards the beginning of the year. Making Beloved's lunches for work has cut down a whole lot on food waste, which made me pretty happy. It has also helped cut down on how much money gets dropped into buying lunches and food from restaurants.

My goal is to get my total food budget down to $200 for the month, on average. This requires making some changes to how I am handling somethings. I have discovered, however, that packing lunch for Beloved is not as difficult as I thought it was going to be. I am cautiously optimistic that I can apply that type of preparedness to summer meals when the boys are home from school. I also want to do some food preservation this year. While the initial investment may be requiring some planning, I think if I do it right, I can cut down on some of our winter food budget and maybe even limit how much off-season produce I buy. And, when it is winter, off-season produce is kinda expensive even at stores like Aldi's.

Making Changes: Wk 1 - Organize.

So, I have decided that I need to make changes in my life. I have been disorganized and neglecting a good number of things because of this. I have sit down and reworked my mental health journal. I have a monthly page set up for tracking habits and symptoms. It is a large grid. Across the x-axis, I have the dates noted with a single initial for the date of the week (ie: M for Monday, T for Tuesday, etc.) and then on the line beneath it is the numeral for the date. On the y-axis, I have the things that I am keeping track of.

 If you look at this picture to the right, you will see how I have things oriented on the page. I highlighted Sundays because it was difficult for me to discern what day was what with out it. You may also note that at the head of the graph, I have a note stating what month it is for.

And yes, I know, I oriented everything differently than what most would expect. This, however works best for me.

If you look at this second image of the two pages above, you will see that I have a key written down. This helps me track what is going on and such. It is a re-working of the bullets suggested for most bullet journals.

I also have an affirmation for the month. The last space open on this two page layout notes what important dates are coming up during the month. This way I remember that I have appointments with my psychiatrist and such.

I also have weekly lay outs between the monthly ones. These pages are different from the typical bullet journal style pages. Most of the bullet journals that I have seen, the weekly/daily pages are set up for to-do lists and such. Mine in this journal are instead focused upon taking short notes about major details about the day. On the left hand page,I have my week noted down. The week is written down as a heading for the page. Each day then has a block assigned to it with the day of the week and the date (written in numerical month . date format). In a given day's block, I have any appointments for that day written down in colored ink. Then, the remainder of the block is used to note major details about symptoms, medications taken, and things like if I had a cold or was on my menses.

On the right hand page of the weekly lay out, I have a section to write down notes about what I am grateful for. These are literally one line of detail, such as chocolate flavored tea (which is AMAZING, I found it at Walmart.) or my kids doing their homework with out a major fight. Below this, I have six lined sections. They each have a date notation. They are where I get into a bit more detail about my symptoms. So, if I had a hard time sleeping one night due to nightmares, I would note that. If on another day I had flashbacks, I would note that down and the trigger - if I recognized what the trigger was. Below this is a section for me to write down notes about medication. Thus, if I had a migraine on Tuesday, January 3rd, I would write that down and that I had take Aleve for it. Or if I had to take some Ativan because I had a panic attack, I would note that. 

The final section is for my notes about appointments. I basically summarize what happened in my appointments that week. So, if I saw my psychiatrist, I would have a note about what changes were in medication or what we discussed. I would also note down when my next appointment is. I am probably going to be changing the format for the notes on the right hand page. I will likely be adding a line for the 7th day of the week in the symptom tracking section. So, that will probably change the size of the other two sections below it. As it stands right now, I think appointment notes will be losing two lines but with out any real problems coming from it.

I have been spending time over the last two weeks studying the whole bullet journal concept. I am in the process of applying it also for my home planning binder. I have my monthly calendar in there. After this, I had a check sheet for my daily chores. This was based off of what FLYLady had going on with her control journal concept. It sort of worked but I really needed something else. So, I have made weekly pages. 

Along the y-axis, I have the "To Do List" for the day, then I have a section for my calls, above this is a pair of blocks for my morning and afternoon time. On the x-axis, I divided everything up as equally as I could manage. As a result, I have eight columns. The columns 1-7 are for the seven days of the week. Column 8 has a section for notes. Then it has a section for noting what bills are due that week. This is where I would note what bill is due, the date, and amount. I would also have a checkbox to note if it got paid.

There are also two check boxes. One is for the list of stuff that Beloved is helping me be organized and do. We have discussed it and he has agreed to help keep me accountable for things like keeping track of my mental health stuff, getting exercise, and healthy eating (among a few other things but you get the idea). And because redundancy seems to help, I have a check box for if I completed everything on my mental health list. I think I'm going to be filling that in with tally marks.

On the opposite side of the page, things are in a similar layout physically. I just copied the boxes to the other side of the page. The x-axis the generally the same except for column eight. In the bottom two boxes, I have a space to note what my total spending on groceries was for the week and a note what that number means. The top row are my menu planning for breakfasts. The second row is my menu planning for lunches. The third row is my menu planning for dinners. The fourth row are my notes about where to locate recipes and what sort of snacks I am doing on a given day.

I have been doing this format for my weekly planning for two weeks now. It seems to be working better for me. It also helps me to stay on top of things like my grocery lists and such. On the side of the page that is for noting appointments and stuff, I did add a small couple of things. If a day has a bill due, aside from the note in the 'bills due' section, I also write a small $ on that date to remind me I need to pay something. On pay days, I write a small $ to help me keep track of that. My hope is that this will get me to where I am no longer having anxiety attacks over what bills need paid.

I am also presently in the process of figuring out what other sections I should add to my binder to have it make more sense. I am seriously thinking that I should have a section where I keep track of finances. I don't know if my printer still works. If so, I am going to print off a few excel sheets to keep a running ledger. I am also going to revise and update the page that notes what bills we have. Thus, I will have a page with a list of who we have to pay, why we pay them, what the billing address is, the customer service number, the account number with them, the date the bill is due, and (if it isn't a variable amount) how much is due each month. I am also going to make a thing to note what I pay via web-banking and what I am using checks for. The ultimate goal is to migrate everything over to web-banking and (if possible) set everything up for automatic payments.

For me to be successful with that, however, I need to have a very good grasp on just how exactly money flows around here. Fortunately, Beloved is handling the savings side of things. He also sits down with me regularly to help make sure that my math is good. I'm going to see if we can schedule a day every two weeks or so to just check in on the finances stuff. I get super anxious about money stuff. Because he handles a lot of billing stuff at work, he gets burned out and runs out of the energy to focus upon that at home. Which is why I handle most of it. But, we're working towards keeping everything as organized as we can. This helps me with my anxiety and it helps him with his concerns about things like car payments being on time and such.

I am slowly compiling a section in my home organizing binder that lists the recipes for everything I make for dinner. It is a combination of writing down recipes from Pinterest that have become favorites (The tatertot casserole is a HUGE hit with the kids and we have it every Tuesday, regardless of the season.) and writing down recipes that I have always made and never really put much thought into. The last few months of being sick and having Beloved run most of the household made it pretty clear to both of us that having stuff written down in such a manner that it was all really straight forward would make life easier in the event that it happened that he had to take over dinner stuff.

I also, unfortunately, need to update the section of the home organizing binder that talks about health stuff. I have had the joyfully enlightening experience that I have a fairly long list of medical allergies. So, I need to update that thing and write down all the medications I am allergic to, and my new food allergy. I am not pleased with this development, but I think it is something that I really should make sure is written down. My father in law suggested that I get a medical alert bracelet or something to note down my allergies. I'm thinking he's got a good idea but I don't know if it could fit the whole damn list. I need to figure out what the hell one is supposed to do when they suddenly have a list of allergies that are a 1/4 mile long.

And, on top of all of this stuff I am doing to try to make my home and such more organized, I am trying to figure out how to apply these organizational things to my writing. This is far slower going. I am researching several different methods of how to do so. I am setting my sights upon getting my work into order so that I can eventually start doing things like submitting stuff to magazines and what not. I am somewhat nervous, but I have told myself that this is the year I am going to sit down and take my work seriously. Part of my work is being a parent and keeping the household running. Part of my work is keeping myself healthy. And part of my work is building my writing career.

I have told myself that I am going to devote January to getting things set up and orderly. And then over the remainder of the first quarter of the year, I am going to make a concerted effort to keep myself on task and build the habits I need to be successful. Part of this is also going to require making sure that there is some flexibility built into it all because of the fact that I need to take into account the impact of my bipolar and related mental health problems. So, I am spending a whole month getting things set up and into place. If I take the time to do it right, I think I will be successful.

Also, I have a goal of posting in here once a week, at minimum. Three times a week was a little to ambitious. I have scaled it back to see if I can be more successful. In the meantime, I am going to focus on progress. Because Beloved is right when he says that progress is more important than having a pile of things I can point at and say 'I did THIS today.' It is kinder to treat myself as being successful when I get baby steps done rather than demanding I have a finished product in a stupidly short amount of time.

Indigenous People's Day.

I spend my day trying to figure out my new small sewing machine. I picked it up at Aldi's last weekend. It is the Easy At Home Mini Sewing machine. Upon inspection, it is surprisingly robust for its petite size. It seems to work well with most of the generic bobbins I have kicking around here. It also looks like it will take generic standard sized sewing machine needles.

I wasn't impressed with the needle threader. But it is a style of needle threader that I generally dislike. Unfortunately, it is the only one that will fit through the eye of the needle. My vision is such, now, that even with my glasses threading that is hard.

I took the boys out to the park this afternoon. Snuggle Bug picked flowers and gave them to Gregg the pizza guy over at Pizza Pauls (the pizza shop that is right next to the park). I brought my spinning with me. As the boys played on the swings and then played freeze tag with the other kids their age that were present, I did some spinning on my petite turkish spindle. I charmed people with my work and explained how it worked to the curious. I will say, spinning on a suspended spindle is a lot easier to carry with me when I am out and about. I even was spinning as I stopped in the hardware store to see if they had full spectrum light bulbs. (I think I will need to take a trip up to the city to get some. It is my hope that if I set up some lighting with full spectrum light bulbs, perhaps I will have a reduction in the severity of my depression symptoms over the next several months.

I did not do much for activism today. I wanted to do something for the oppressed peoples, especially the oppressed indigenous peoples, but my day got sucked up with domestic tasks and all that went into keeping the boys out of trouble today. Beloved and I, over the weekend, did our best to explain why Columbus Day was not something we celebrated or acknowledged in our house because Christopher Columbus did some awful things to the people that he met when he came to the Americas.

Cuddle Bear was having a hard time trying to understand it. Beloved was doing his best to explain that it was stuff to horrible for him to describe right now because Cuddle Bear wasn't old enough to understand, and, quite frankly, we didn't want him to have nightmares of invaders bursting into our home, killing us, and enslaving him. So, we just said Christopher Columbus was a man who did very bad things and we don't celebrate him. I'm pretty sure that there are going to be a number of discussions and angry conversations with the kids at school.

Who knows how the teachers are going to take it. We even had a discussion, briefly, with the boys why we don't support zoos. (Animal cruelty is not something we condone in even the remotest sense.)

Burning out.

Today was a long and exhausting day. I spent 90% of it cleaning and directing the kids in cleaning. After all of this work, the toys are now sorted out. The books are all organized on their shelves. The toybox is full and sitting in its proper location. The extra blankets are stowed in the kids' chests. We got a lot of stuff done. Looking around the room, though, it doesn't feel like we did. Thinks were relatively picked up this morning.

I tripped over a few toys as I was walking across the room and saw a bin full of just random stuff. I got angry. Then I started cleaning. The kids were confused when I dumped out the toybox. They were even more confused when I insisted that they couldn't just throw anything in there. It was a painful process to sort all of their toys. They didn't like it. I didn't like it. But it was something that hadn't been done in over two years. When things started to shape up as how they were going to get put away, it got easier.

I'm glad that I saved those stupid McDonald's halloween buckets. I used four of them. Two to hold dinosaurs and random animals. One to hold knock off transformer toys (which were in happy meals originally) and one to hold all of the action figures they've got. We have three gallon sized bins full of toy cars and an additional fleet stowed neatly beneath a shelf and a table, mostly. I have recycled a large box that held pullups to hold large dinosaur toys and large action figures. I also recycled a slightly smaller box to hold stuffed animals.

The big innovation was taking the box that Cuddle Bear's toy weed wacker came in and turning it into a shelf on the wall. Instead of holding the weed wacker, it is full of small stuffed animals. The whole affair is light enough that it can stay up with three anchor points. The other innovation came from taking a box that the electric grill came in and cutting it up to make a 'tool box' out of it. Between the two tool boxes they had to begin with and this third one, they have 90% of their toy hand tools put away underneath their toy workbench. Sitting on top of it is the rubber work belt that came with it (with tools in their respective places) and a handful of others with it.

I have folded up the extra blankets that the kids kept shoving around on their beds and put them in the base of their chests from Grandpa M. When they went to bed, they didn't notice the blankets missing. Maybe we can manage to get to the beginning of cool weather before they come back out. I don't know. It did make for them to have an easier time making their beds. (This is a new thing. The kids mess up the sheets on their beds and, in the past, we fixed them. Now they are taking responsibility for it. The results thus far have been mixed. Hopefully putting the blankets away, this will make for more positive results.)

Their brand-name Transformers toys are sitting on top of their bookcase. The extra large ones are in back against the wall. The smaller ones are towards the front, where they are easier to access. Snuggle Bug broke Cuddle Bear's new one this afternoon, so I took away his more complicated version of Bumblebee. We'll see if he bears this in mind when he is sharing with his brother. If he breaks his brother's brand new transformer again, I believe that I will have to put them up for a bit. As it stands, we are missing one somewhere. In all of our cleaning, we have not found it. I suspect it is under the couch, which we did not touch today.

I didn't get the kitchen clean. I ran out of energy for that. I didn't get any laundry put away. And I have a pile of mail that I really need to go through but I am apprehensive about it all. I look back over the day today and I realize that in some respects today's big business of going through the toys was a form of procrastination. Because why procrastinate in a small way when you can go huge, right? Thus, tomorrow morning, I think I will do a 'bad mommy' thing and let the kids watch cartoons as I go through the mail, balance the checkbook, pay bills, and make official phone calls.

I'm super anxious about looking for a new psychiatrist. I'm afraid that they're going to look at my file from where I have been getting services and take the abject nonsense that these people have written as gospel and ignore what I have to say about it all. Money anxiety is taking a backseat to this.

August. Woo.

The dry weather has been pretty hard on my plants. but, you can see that I did get a little bit out of my garden. On the left is a chocolate mint, in the center is an orange mint, and on the right is a sweet mint. And at the extreme right is Billy (aka Snuggle Bug) showing off his new trucks.

We have begun the process of acquiring school supplies. I am graciously sharing two of the super cute pencil erasers that I found out at the store. Going by the school's lists, we're all set for the first day. The boys each have new backpacks. because the bottom seams were looking worn. I discovered that I had a stock pile of supplies left over from last year when I was cleaning. So, I brought them over for Gin's girls to have.

I'm WAAAAY behind on my knitting stuff for the holidays. I am, however, pretty much set on what we're doing for the wedding present to Katie and Roger. I'm partially finished with the gift I am making for J&J's wedding anniversary. And, in the midst of all of this, I'm left struggling to think of something that would be a good present for Beloved.