Time Track Tuesday: A TUESDAY

 These godforsaken TUESDAYS this semester, you guys. I knew they were going to suck early on, and for a while, I worried that my Tuesday attitude was actually making them suck, but no. That's not it. TUESDAYS ARE REALLY HARD THIS SEMESTER.

I am hopeful that they will be less hard in the Spring. When I am teaching a new-to-me 250 person lecture with brand new content that I need to cover. Erm. Maybe not. But! I do not actually teach that class on Tuesdays, so maybe I can use Tuesdays to get ahead for the following Monday, fresh off what will surely be a flop-sweat-and-imposter-syndrome-inducing Monday lecture. Is it imposter syndrome if you actually don't know what the fuck you're doing, though? KIDDING. I do know. It'll be great! Every public speaker needs a good dose of ABJECT TERROR to get the old adrenaline flowing. IDEAL CIRCUMSTANCES, REALLY.

ANYWAY.

TUESDAY 11/18:

My alarm goes off at 5:15 am. Usually, this is the cue for Ben and me to spring from our beds and run together before Ben leaves town for Peoria. This Tuesday, though, as soon as we politely asked Alexa to STFU, we heard pounding rain **whomp whomp** Plan B: Drink coffee in bed and work on the answer key for the final exam in my 60-section course that I supervise but do not teach. My iPhone tells me it will not be raining in the afternoon, so I plan to come home early and run then. Alexa tells me it will rain until 7pm. I HOPE SHE IS WRONG. Ben starts laundry and starts getting ready for his commute.

5:15-6:30: Work on answer key in bed

6:30: Jump up,  strip both of our beds, switch the laundry and start a new load, think I actually should have gotten up earlier and done a strength workout, and really quick go wipe down all 3 bathrooms while Ben takes Annabel for a walk before he leaves.

6:45-7:20: Get Minnie dressed and supervise breakfast and bag packing for all. Well, all but Jack, who was sleeping in and whom I forgot about or else I could have woken him up. Oops.

Luckily she slept in tiny braids (her call) so her hair is already crimped and ready to go.

7:20-8:05: I realize as I am walking Minnie to school that it is actually NOT RAINING, so I hurry home after I say goodbye to her and grab the dog and my headphones and some poop bags and holler at the big kids to be nice to each other and run!

8:05-8:15: Walk Dorothy and Cooper to the bus stop, which is a nice cool down. It starts to rain pretty hard the moment Annabel and I get home, and I feel Very Smug

8:15-8:30: Do a fast tidy of the house. The kids did a half-assed breakfast clean up, so I finish that up. I collect stray socks and towels from various paces and gather random water glasses, but, really, everyone's bedrooms look fine. Except mine. Even though I have extra sheets for both beds and an extra blanket for my bed, Ben's blanket is more of a blankie situation, so I have to wash and dry it before I can remake his bed. I also wash all the pillow shams in our room because I only have one set of those for each duvet cover. Weirdly, I wash the kids' duvet covers every week, but I rarely wash ours. I think because we never lie on our beds midday? And they are too tall for the dog to climb on? Or I just think everyone is gross but me. THIS IS PROBABLY IT. (Everyone in our house sleeps with a bottom sheet, a top sheet, a blanket, and a duvet cover with an insert inside it. I almost never wash the inserts, if I am being honest, but all the rest of the bedding gets laundered every week, and every kid bed has a complete set of all of these things as a back up. Ben and I also both have 2 different duvet covers and sham sets, but I just... don't change them very often-- I do the sheets and blankets every week, though)

8:30: Realize I have LITERALLY 15 minutes to pull myself together and leave for campus, since I am giving an exam at 9:30. So, naturally, the first thing I do is make another pot of coffee to fill up my travel mug.

8:45: Leave for campus with exactly the right amount of time to park and make it to my classroom (NOT in the same building as my office) to give my exam. Which is why I brought the exams home with me. Only I see when I get in my car that I did not bring the exams home with me. I spend the whole drive to campus (about 30 minutes to go like 6 miles) troubleshooting. First I cal every secretary in our department to see if someone can swing by my office and make sure the bag of exams is in there. If it's not, then I am going to just put the whole thing on Canvas in the 3 minutes I will have before the start of class. I definitely do not have time to park and go to both my office and my lecture hall, but I would do it and arrive a few minutes late to class if I knew for sure the exams were there. NO ONE ANSWERS THEIR PHONE. I am on campus and slowly slowly slowly inching to my garage thinking that maybe I should just sprint to the lecture hall and put the exam on Canvas without checking my office for the bag of tests when I notice that the media center parking space outside my building is empty! GAME FREAKING CHANGER YOU GUYS.

9:12-9:18: Haphazardly park my car in front of my building and race into the media center to beg for the parking pass. Get the pass and literally run up 3 flights of stairs to my office where I find this glorious sight:

9:18-9:30: Swipe the exams and run to my lecture hall, hoping I don't get lost since the rooms are numbered nonsensically and I went in a different door than I usually do and the building is a labyrinth.

Also! If you ignore the fact that my bun is off center and lumpy (and it moved a little more to the right all day), I managed to look TOTALLY FINE and maybe even cute in under 15 minutes! Buuuuut I should have worn a warmer coat.

9:30-10:55: Give an exam! Wait for everyone to finish! Walk back to my car because it needs to go in the garage-- can't use the media pass all day.

10:55-11:05: IT TOOK ME TEN MINUTES TO PULL OUT OF THAT SPOT and turn around so I was actually going the right way. My god.

11:30-2:30: Just a BLUR of work, mostly in my office after I move my car to my garage, but also at home, mostly on stuff for next semester and the answer key I started my day with.

2:30-Pick up my favorite kindergartener and KEEP WORKING.

Minnie procrastinated on coloring the turkeys on her November reading log, so she had the daunting task of coloring 18 of them. She got... a few done.

I finish my answer key, which took 2 days and is 28 pages long. It is hard to get 30 people to have the same grading standards on essay questions, you know?

I FINALLY do the strength workout I should have done in the morning.

3:45-4:15 Light tidying, fold laundry, get Minnie ready for dance, pack snacks for Dorothy and Cooper.

Cooper requires two different protein drinks (talked about the lead study with his doctor and was very reassured, FYI), plus all of this crap, plus a burger (not pictured). (Ben grills a bunch of burgers on Mondays for Coop to eat during the week).

4:15-5:30: Drive all the hell over Madison, WI, in the dark and rain. 75 minutes for like maaaaaybe 16 miles of driving FML.

First I drop Dorothy and Minnie at dance (Minnie has jer jazz shoes crammed under her Crocs)

Next, I drive through horrible traffic to campus where I drop Cooper off at diving (he is in charge of the team snack bin)

Then I claw my way back to the dance studio where, if I am lucky, I arrive in time for acro and get 45 minutes to sit on a bench and read a book or do any work I couldn't do earlier in the day. Last week, I made a spring syllabus. This week, I read The Names.

5:30-6:15: Read, blissfully, at dance

6:20-6:35: Fight our way home in the very last workday traffic

6:35-7:40: Make (ridiculous leftover/sandwich) dinner, clean it up, pack NINE lunches (Wednesday and Thursday lunches for 4 kids, plus a dance dinner for Wednesday night Dorothy), tidy the kitchen.

7:40-8:15: Minnie bed and bath, plus reading. She reads to me, and I read to her

8:15-8:35: Remake our beds, put away laundry. I have to sneak into Minnie's room with hers because she fell asleep FAST.

8:35-9:30: Everyone showers and winds down.

9:30-11: Dorothy and Cooper go to bed, and Jack and I stay up way too late watching All Her Fault

11-4am: Sleep

4am: MINNIE COMES INTO MY ROOM because she had a bad dream and spends the next 2 hours kicking me and stealing all my blankets. She wakes up at 6 because she is too hot, and I am starting my second day in a row without a pre-dawn run *sob**. It's fun to wake up next to a life-size Cabbage Patch Kid, though, and I eneded up running mid morning on Wednesday, after a meeting and before another one.

Case of the Mondays

When I get busy-- which I do EVERY SINGLE SEMESTER, particularly in November and in April, my planning capacity falls apart. JUST WHEN I NEED IT THE MOST. Like, I go days without checking in with my planner, which is BANANAS because I usually open and close each day with it. WHY AM I THE WAY I AM?

I will say that this is exactly why I need an undated planner-- I feel terrible when I see blank pages, which makes me even less likely to return to the planner-- it's a whole cycle-- I am a very don't-break-the-chain kind of person in just about very area of my life, and this is no different.

And! I gotta say! It is not just that I don't do my opening/closing ritual and miss it in a, like, meditative way. (But it is also that). I am missing important things that I need to do! Gah. The other day, for example, I found myself with a chunk of time to grade exams... AND NO EXAMS. (They were hanging up in the laundry room at home **whomp whomp**).

I wonder if this tendency to ignore my planner and then feel behind and then actually fall behind and then start to avoid dealing with stuff even more and then fall behind more and then avoid my planner more, etc-- I wonder if this cycle follows any other kinds of cycles in my life. Hormonal? Maybe? 

Is anyone else like this? How do you make sure you make time to check in with your calendar instead of just relying on Google Cal notifications to get you through like? (This works marginally well).

Apropos of nothing, I am going to close with this pic of Ben and Minnie working hard. She was doing a sight word app on her iPad, and he dresses like that to run.

Pic of the Week

 Minnie!! Is! A! READER!!!!!!!!

Slow Down Saturday: Strike Solution!

 I may be a basic suburban middle class middle aged married white cis het mom, but I AM NOT A SCAB.

Do I miss my beloved holiday drink menu? Of course I do (see above). But! Yesterday! Trolling Whole Foods with Minnie (mainly for bread cubes for my stuffing-- theirs are the best-- and a couple of subtle winter/fall transition candles (the 365-brand candles are also really truly the best and only TWELVE DOLLARS!) I FOUND THIS STUFF. Life changer, guys.

With a dollop of chocolate milk, it is for sure a peppermint mocha at home. (And the coffee beans are from our local wine/cheese/coffee store, she says smugly)

Yes, I get it. Amazon owns Whole Foods. Amazon is the worst. My tiny act of not crossing a picket line (my stores are not even actively on strike) is pretty much bullshit when that's where I spend my dollars. Does late stage capitalism/ neoliberalism on steroids make all boycotts bullshit? I think maybe. I guess I need to switch my allegiance to my local organic co-op, but real people who live and work in my real town also really work at Whole Foods and Starbucks. Bah. I am not as vapid as I come off on this blog sometimes, my dear friends. I've just sort of... already analyzed the situation and made a choice that might... be a shitty one sometimes because nihilism.

The coffee creamer, though, is A GOOD CHOICE.

My little consumer capitalist

5 on a Friday: Things We've Made Lately

 1. Minnie, mostly: A quick batch of cut out cookies that Minnie ate pretty much by herself. We used this recipe because, like Minnie, it has NO CHILL.

2. Me: Kind of a mess of my hair. I was overdue for some gray coverage-- Madison Reed to the rescue! Am Very Dark now, but whatever-- there's anew season of Wednesday after all.

3. Also me: A lasagna without red sauce, which I didn't even realize was a thing until I started going through the steps of the recipe and was like when is it going to tell me to make the sauce and it never did.

4. Dorothy: This charming color poster that I adore, misspellings and all (she is her mother's daughter).

5. Jack: Another college visit day and an oratory final at a tourney in Iowa-- is he getting closer to a college decision?????? I hope so!

Thoughtful Thursday

 I am going to take a hot second today and tell you about how much I adore having a dog again. It took us awhile to be ready for a new dog after we lost Beatrix because we just loved her so darn much. Annabel, though, has been a total joy.

I guess there was that time when she was very little and Ben missed the call from the vet's office telling us she had worms and we thought she was just going to defile our deck in the most horrific way for the rest of her life (POWER WASHER FOR THE ABSOLUTE WIN), but then she took meds, and she's been really truly delightful ever since.

She IS kind of a biter (just your achilles tendon!)  and a jumper and I don't usually let kids pet her at the playground (which! PARENTS! It is so nice that you have taught your kids to ask if they can pet a strange dog but also SOMETIMES THE ASNWER IS NO and stop being so JUDGY ABOUT IT) because of the jumping and the biting (it's just a nip! I swear! she thinks we're all puppies together!)

BUT. Like I was saying. UNQUALIFIED delight (ignore those qualifying paragraphs).

She loves to hold my hand (with her teeth. gently!) and walk on 2 legs like a toddler or a circus dog.

Wherever Dorothy is, ANNABEL IS THERE TOO

She loves to lounge on the girls' beds like one of the stuffies.

She adores a run in the dark.

Somedays she gets 3 runs-- 30 mins with me, 30 with Ben, and 30-ish with Jack, but most days she gets 2. Plus 4 15-minute walks. She is an excellent girl with this level of exercise.

I freaking LOVE her silly pigtail bows from the groomer

And! She tolerates our bullshit VERY WELL.

In short, she's perfection, and I am so happy we have her.

Also, we are thinking about letting her have puppies. That's bananas, though, right?

whiny Wednesday: lunch rut

 We have been in a GROOVE with school lunches. 

They have been easy to shop for on autopilot, simple (ish-- the scale prevents the task from being totally simple) to pack, and well received. 

But! In the last couple of weeks the kids stopped eating their lunches. And then came home all crabby and snackish. 

And sure, this is the point where you tell me to just make them handle it themselves. But! Then! I say MINNIE. Dorothy and Coper and Jack were all fending for themselves at the beginning of the year, but then Dorothy and Cooper saw me packing for Minnie had started asking me to just pack theirs, too or delaying the task and then freaking out in the morning, and I would throw stuff in a bag for them. And Jack started spending all of his money on fast food. 

Sooooo, I took on everyone's lunch. (With Ben's help).

BUT THEN THEY STOPPED EATING IT.

New plan! New food! New me! (J/K same me.)

(BUT I did buy yellow opal apples because I AM A FUN MOM)

 

New fruit options! Like cherries!

New bar and cookie options like RX and Milano!


Yoggies and fruit snacks to augment Jack and Coop's beloved applesauce

BLUEBERRY MUFFINS! Because I AM A FUN MOM

And! No more boring old sandwiches. LOOK AT ALL THESE LUNCHABLE-LIKE OPTIONS

I also got everyone (not Minnie) their preferred flavor of Bubblr because-- do I have to say it again-- I AM A FUN MOM.

Cross your fingers that all of this NEW FUN LUNCH FOOD gets us out of the rut...

Time Track Tuesday-- some more details

 1. Multiple people commented about shopping on a Sunday, that is sounded not fun, they'd never go to multiple stores at once, and I just... cannot relate. I LOVE shopping. Even Costco when it's slammed. BUT ALSO. I do NOT have time to do it at all right now so I am making tons of carts with holiday wish list items in them in advance of cyber Monday sales. I would adore spending my time going from store to store in search of the best gifts and deals, though. IT'S SO FUN. Does anyone else love shopping?

Look how happy we are to head into a totally packed Saturday afternoon Costco

2. I got a couple comments last week about my lack of showering after working out, and you guys. IT IS SO GD COLD HERE IN THE MORNING that I WISH I would sweat. SWEATING WOULD FEEL SO GOOD. I bet I will end up needing to take a super fast morning shower when it warms up. I almost did on Saturday because it was in the low 60s, but I just sort of walked around looking gross for the rest of the day instead.

But! Speaking of showering! I require everyone in my entire family to be nighttime shower people because I am the one who changes the sheets, and I think if people went to bed w/o showering, I would want to change them MORE than once a week because I am clearly a weirdo.

Speaking of sheets! I am finally on a sheet changing schedule for this semester. AND THE SEMESTER IS OVER IN 3 WEEKS. Geez. I hope it does not take me as long to settle into spring.

3. The general theme of the comments I get when I talk about a daily breakdown is OH MY GOD THAT'S TOO MUCH STUFF and WHOA YOU HAVE NO MARGIN. I mean. You guys. YES. Also, it does not seem like I am doing very much in the moment, I swear.

Next week, I will share a Tuesday with you-- this has typically been the very worst day of my week this semester-- although we have done a few things to make it smoother. But then! Jack started his dive season, and it got WAY WORSE.