Anyway, for Fall 2017 I haven't had the chance to do much of anything with anybody all term. Rocket Boy takes the kids on adventures every weekend. I just plan class, write assignments, grade assignments, and repeat. When I do get a chance to do something else, though, I really enjoy it -- like being on a diet and then you get to eat a delicious meal. Here's a photo from Halloween, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Kid A and Kid B both chose to be the same thing they were the year before, which was REALLY helpful, since it meant I didn't have to buy anything new, make anything new, or spend even a moment thinking about costumes. Next year I think they'll outgrow these -- but next year is a long time from now.I got an email from my little sis today, about Christmas presents for the kids, and in it she said something like, "I see you don't blog anymore. That used to be your place to vent." I've been in desperate need of something or someone to vent to, so I thought, hey, even though I'm really busy, I'm going to write a blog post tonight, just to vent. I'm writing it in between preparing for class: the goal is to finish the blog AND finish preparing for class AND get to bed no later than 1:00 am or so.
So what do I need to vent about? The same old stuff, nothing special. I'm tired all the time, I don't sleep enough, I stress constantly about my classes, I'm worried about money. I've gotten in the habit of running up my credit card over the summer (especially right at the end) and then paying it off in the fall. But this fall I can't seem to pay it off, even though I'm earning a little more money this semester (I'm getting $5000 per class, up from $4500). Part of the problem is that I'm often too tired to cook -- not just physically tired, although it's that too, but emotionally tired, unable to face meal planning and grocery shopping and chopping and mixing and setting the table and making a side dish and getting everyone to sit down and eat together. So we go out to eat at Noodles or IHOP, at least once a week, and at other times we eat frozen stuff from Trader Joe's or grocery store sushi or pizza. In other words, we spend too much money on food and it often isn't very healthy food.
But that can't be the only thing affecting my credit card. I need to look at it more closely, try to figure out what's going on.
This past week was really hard for me. Over Thanksgiving break I tried mightily to grade all the term papers that had been turned in right before. But they were so bad, so very very bad -- and this is related to my unfamiliarity with the class, I didn't know how to help them do a good job -- that I couldn't do more than a few at a time. I charged $400 worth of "camps" to my not-paid-off credit card so that the twins would go away on that Monday and Tuesday and I could grade. I thought I could finish at least two classes' papers during that time. But I didn't even finish one class. I decided that I could not go back to class on Monday the 27th without at least two classes done, so I stayed up until 4:30 am Sunday night/Monday morning, finishing the second class. Every paper was agony. I got about an hour and a half of sleep that night -- and then I had to go to school and teach and be funny and interesting and convey important information that they needed to learn.Tuesday I desperately tried to finish the third class, but had the same problem, and so I stayed up until 3 am working on papers -- and still didn't finish. Again I went to school on Wednesday bleary-eyed, fuzzy-brained, and with all the usual requirements to fulfill. I finally finished the last class's papers on Thursday night and got to bed at a decent hour. But Friday had its own delicacies in store for me.
We had noticed over Thanksgiving break that my car's right headlight was out, and Friday was the first day we could get it in to be fixed. Thursday night we dropped it off at the garage, so I would not have it available to me on Friday. I take the bus to campus, so it's not a big deal -- except that Rocket Boy wanted to drive to Aurora on Friday to help some friends of ours move from one apartment to another. Since both he and I would need a car in the afternoon (me to pick up Kid A from his special school, him to go to Aurora), he spent Thursday getting his dad's old Mitsubishi Montero running -- bought a battery, had an oil change, etc. I had told him the week before that I was NOT going to go on paying insurance and registration on a car that didn't run. He said he would sell it or donate it -- but first he spent $100 on it so that he could drive it to Aurora. OK, whatever.
I got home (on the bus) from class on Friday at 2:15, grabbed the keys to Rocket Boy's Ford, and drove it to the garage, where I parked it on the street, picked up my own, now-fixed, Subaru, and drove it to Kid A's school to pick him up by 3 pm. Normally on MWF we also take a classmate of his home (whose mom returns the favor on TTh), but that day fortunately Nate was absent. So I took Kid A home, picked up Kid B (who had walked home alone, first time ever), and drove to the main library for a Lego thing they have on the first Friday of every month at 4 pm. Legos lasts until 5:30 pm, which is also when the garage closes -- that's why I had to get the car beforehand. After Legos we went to McGuckin's so I could buy some Xmas cards and also just because McGuckin's is fun at Christmastime. We got home around 6:00, the kids had a late version of their Friday afternoon computer time, we had a low-key dinner, and around 7:30 pm Rocket Boy staggered in. He had been helping to carry a couch across the parking lot when he stumbled over a piece of concrete, lost his balance, and the couch fell on his shoulder. He had injured his other shoulder a few weeks before, so he had been favoring it, and now the other shoulder was wrecked. He could barely drive, but we still made the trek out to the garage where I had left his Ford, because it wouldn't be good to leave it there overnight. Home, put the kids to bed, and made a quick trip to the grocery store to get RB some ibuprofen pm, to help with the pain and let him sleep.
Saturday morning I woke up feeling rested but very stressed out. That whole week had been so hard, Friday was so busy, and now Rocket Boy was injured. I felt as though I needed to keep being positive, not getting mad at people -- life is so much better when I don't get mad at people -- and yet, I had fewer and fewer resources to draw on. I don't know if that makes sense.
The twins have computer time again on Saturday mornings. I had breakfast, took a shower, and worked on the recycling and the dishes while Rocket Boy slept in. The twins were going to our next-door neighbor's birthday party at 11 and I suddenly remembered we didn't have a present. "Off the computer, we've got to go to Grandrabbits!" We dashed downtown, chose some very cute things for Z (more money than I wanted to spend, but whatever), dashed home, threw them into a gift bag, and got the twins over to his house in time to go to the party. Z's mom, upon seeing how Rocket Boy looked, asked why we didn't go to Urgent Care. So, what the heck, we spent the afternoon at Urgent Care (from about 1 to 4 pm), only to learn that nothing was seriously wrong, but the nurse did put his arm in a sling. Home by 4:30, we retrieved the twins from next door and I set about making a quiche, as I had promised Rocket Boy I would (he always worries about dinner). The Lights of December parade started at 6 pm and we would need to catch the bus for that by 5:30, so I didn't have much time. Rocket Boy went back to bed, the twins watched a movie, and I cooked as fast as I could. At 5:15 I wrote Rocket Boy a note about when to take the quiche out of the oven and what to do with it then. I made a quick bathroom stop, used the last of the toilet paper, went to get a new roll -- and discovered that we were 100% out of toilet paper! RB finds it hard to say the words "toilet paper" -- I am not kidding -- and so he had written it on the grocery list that morning but not actually mentioned it to me. Well, I couldn't do anything about it then. Kid A and I bundled up and headed for the bus (Kid B didn't want to come). We had an OK time at the parade -- Kid A got too cold, though, so we skipped the last third and went to have hot chocolate at Starbucks. Then we stopped at the Cheesecake Factory to buy two pieces of cheesecake to go -- our tradition is to eat dinner there after the parade, but since it's so expensive and I only had Kid A with me, I thought just getting cheesecake to go would be a cheaper way to observe the tradition. As we were riding the bus home, Rocket Boy called me on my cell phone to ask how we were doing. I said we'd be home in 10 minutes and he said OK. And when we walked in the door at about 7:30 he said, "Well, now we can finally have dinner."
I said, "You haven't eaten yet?" No, he said, he'd waited for us.
"But we were at the parade," I said. "We had a snack at Starbucks. We even considered eating out. Why would you wait dinner for us?"
"I don't know," he said, as he does when he feels I'm being too critical. But I was just beside myself. All week long, culminating in all that day long, I'd been pushing myself, pushing myself, pushing myself. I was working so hard to be nice to everyone, not fall apart, not lose my job, do everything I'm supposed to do, get everyone where they're supposed to be. I made a friggin' QUICHE in the little bit of time I had between Urgent Care (done for Rocket Boy's benefit) and the Lights of December parade (done for Kid A's benefit). I was being such a good person. And now apparently I had made things difficult for Rocket Boy and Kid B, denying them dinner, because Kid A and I went to the parade and didn't come home immediately afterward.
"Did you get toilet paper?" Kid B asked, apparently thinking I was going to pick it up on the Pearl Street Mall.
"No, but I'm going to," I said, in absolute fury. "I'm going to get it RIGHT NOW."
"What about dinner?" Rocket Boy said, as I grabbed my keys and purse.
"I'm not hungry!" I shouted, and stormed out of the house, off to the grocery store for the third time in four days, to get TOILET PAPER which no one had even told me we needed.
I spent some time at the store, getting food for the week ahead and trying to calm down. But when I brought it all home I got mad all over again, in part because Rocket Boy had no idea why I was mad. Not to mention the fact that he was still in terrible pain (the nurse-practitioner thought the muscle was spasming), so for me to yell at him was a truly horrible thing. I finally did calm down, in part because there was absolutely no way I was going to get any satisfaction out of being mad, and by then the twins were upset too. All that week of being good under such difficult circumstances, and it was completely undone by my pointless meltdown.
This morning the twins were in terrible shape, fighting and yelling and hitting and shrieking and crying, which was, undoubtedly, the direct result of my having lost it the night before. Rocket Boy was nice enough to take them to a park, even though he's still in pain, and that helped a little. I also took them on our usual library trip (postponed from Saturday). We had leftover quiche for dinner.
And now it's 11:45 pm and I still have to finish planning class for tomorrow. It's hard to be creative when I'm so stressed. There's a load of laundry in the dryer that I should retrieve, and I need to get the kids' backpacks together for school tomorrow -- I forgot to do that with them earlier. And sleep, I need to sleep. My alarm goes off at 6:50. Thanks for listening to the vent, anyone who did.
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