I feel so relaxed— how long could this possibly last?

We had lovely, boring weekend with kid activities and lots of nothing to do, too. Oh, what’s that? You want to see pictures of this total slice of mundanity? You betcha.

 She was showing off her ridiculous unicorn crocs here, but I like the dress/tights combo. The tights have foxes on the knees, and I am here for them

That feeling when if you want to have leftover pot pie, you gotta make 3 hashtag big family.

Coop went to his first dive meet of the season and got 2nd in 3M springboard and won 1m and platform with PRs.

I HAD to get a pedicure (BEAK FEET). Minnie did not have school for teacher professional develpment. Sooooo, that happened.

One of my fave kitchen hacks 

Date night

Cleaning and killing time

And! A triumphant return to swim lessons after being sick for weeks and weeks!

Yay!

She got out 3 times to pee, and it’s a 30-minute class. LOL LOL LOL.

Ok— that’s all I got.

My huge goal for this week is to figure out the rhythms of my asynch online students and also drink more water. You?

5 on a Friday: The Rhythms that WORK for Me Edition (3/52)

 1. Getting up early. Is there anything better than a nest on the couch with a big sweatshirt of Ben’s over my pajamas, a blanket from the storage ottoman, Wordle, and a steaming cup of coffee from the pot that wakes up 10 minutes before I do? I LOVE that little silent epoch before I exercise and start my day for real.

2. Using my elliptical as a standing desk when I WFH during preschool hours. I need to work on the lighting in the storage room where I stash my exercise equipment, but walking while I work is really fun and keeps me from doing housework while I am kid-free.

3. Using my portable waterproof speaker to listen to a book while I take a shower at night. I love listening to a book while I clean the kitchen after dinner, but this has become a luxury since Ben spends the time between dinner and bath doing the other half of the drop-off loop I do after school, plus hockey runs and carpools. Harry and Jack have stuff at night, too, so I need up cleaning up while loosely supervising Minnie, and I can’t wear headphones or get lost in a story. Listening in the shower is a great way to connect with whatever book I a in the middle of before I switch gears and hang out with the big kids before bed. This week, I adored The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store (which was a DNF for me in print), and I just started The Covenant of Water, which is 31 hours long, so even at double time, I need to listen OFTEN because it’s due in a week!!

4. Grocery shopping online in front of my Google calendar. Will I ever go back to trolling the grocery aisles for our big weekly shop? I really can’t imagine it. I load a giant car at Metro Market (our Kroger-branded store) while having some wine and contemplating the onslaught of the next week from the comfort of my couch on Friday evenings (WE LIVE A WILD LIFE) and crowd sourcing ideas for dinners and lunch snacks from whichever children trickle through the room. I also fill a simultaneous Target cart for random household needs and popular food item that the grocery store is running low on. We pick this stuff up on Sunday mornings, typically, maybe Saturday, depending on what the weekend looks like, and I supplement as needed throughout the week from the cute local place where we buy wine and cheese, or the co-op where I find my favorite coffee, or Trader Joe’s if Minnie and I need a way to fill an afternoon. If we are super low on snacks, I also shop Costco via Instacart— that way my in-person, one-off Costco shopping is pleasant, not onerous with a billion flats that I am loading into my trunk. 

5. Mixing colors and patters and dressing like the old academic I am.

Some videos from the week, just for fun:

Wednesday: cute and terrible

 Between pajama day and dance class, Minnie’s day was cuter than usual yesterday. MINE WAS THE PITS.

We have left the house in plenty of time for me to be pulling away from Cooper’s school at 8:34 am for WEEKS you guys. Even when I have nowhere to be! At the beginning of the year, I was taking Coop first and then Minnie and Minnie was ALWAYS late—- which is of course no big deal because it’s nursery school. But then! We decided to try it the other way, which I had always been reluctant to do because Minnie is a very firm drop off time, and Coop has a 10-minute window that runs from Minnie’s precise time to 10 mins later. It made more sense to me to make sure Coop was on time and then take Min, but one day I flip-flopped them, and they were BOTH ON TIME!! The key is to drop Minnie off 2 minutes before her time, the second her lovely wonderful teacher opens the classroom door. Then I am literally 4 minutes from Coop’s school, and assuming I can turn left, everything is great. 

Our routine has been SEAMLESS this way the whole time I was on break.

BUT OF COURSE. Yesterday morning. THE FIRST TIME I HAVE TO GO TO CAMPUS, we ran 17 minutes late **head desk** (And it wasn’t even my fault!!!!!! My shit was LOCKED AND LOADED).

Then my classroom was locked, and we had to relocate to a sub-optimal meeting space on another floor of the building.

Then! It took my TAs nearly two hours to amicably sign up for sections. It’s always harder to sign up in the spring than it is in the fall because we teach fewer sections in the spring, and this means schedules can be hard to finagle, etc. BUT TWO HOURS?!?! We also have a younger staff than normal, so most of them are still in coursework, and it’s harder for grad students to schedule teaching around taking classes than around dissertations. But still!

I drew on my mom skillz and walked away to let them handle it themselves. Which they did!!

I rushed to school to collect Minnie after my meeting and rushed home and rushed to take her to dance and then rushed to get Dorothy.

Then I just ran around and fed people and cleaned stuff up and then cleaned it up again when people messed it up and did laundry and did not have time to change sheets and drove kids all over town, etc etc etc etc. HASHTAG LIVING THE DREAM.

I decided these Uggs are practically high heels.

BACK TO WORK!!

 I don’t think that winter break does me any favors in the whole I-am-a-person-with-a-job department. It’s like by the end of the fall semester, the whole fam gets used to me dressing in people clothes and leaving the house and doing things with my mind and my hands that aren’t in the service of my home and my family and then bam! Winter break and I take the kids to school so I can spend 3 hours sitting in silence in an empty house or buying expensive things for myself because why not I am alone after all. And then I spend MONTHS slowly acclimating everyone to my person-with-responsibilities-outside-the-house identity in the spring and all the sudden SUMMER and every single day at the pool.

I am back on campus for a couple of days, and I forgot how hard it is to get everything prepped and ready to go and there are people who do this EVERY SINGLE DAY and you guys who work outside your house on the regular? Are awesome.

I have 3 new dresses and only 2 days of meetings, so I feel bad already for dress number 3 (still not sure which one is unlucky number 3 yet), but I promise I will wear it to a Monday meeting before the semester is over. I am teaching online (asynchronous), so my challenge is to dress like a person with a job even if no one sees me. And on the days I do see people, I am going to wear dresses!

We saw Migration on Monday. It was sort of cute. And I read the second Crescent City book on my Kindle most of the time. 

My sidekick and I are back on the drop off/pick up circuit.

Also back? SCOTCHAROOS!!

Dorothy is SUCH a tween all of the sudden.

OK, FAMILY! YOU GOTTA CLEAN UP AFTER YOURSELVES. (Lol)

How cute e is Minnie at the Post Office?

She kept telling me she made a B with popsicle sticks and I kept saying it’s a V, and, finally she screamed I KNOW IT IS A B. I CAN’T SAY B.”

While I cleaned up lunch today, Minnie played with cups because BENIGN NEGLECT is the best parenting hack in the world.

More unsupervised playtime

BLUEBERRY MUFFINS!

Speaking of benign neglect!! I haven’t touched my work bag in 6 weeks. Tonight, I moved everything from my mom bag (not to be confused with my diaper bag which I don’t even need to carry anymore!!!!) to my work bag.

SO MANY LIPSTICKS, you guys.

OK- I am ready for the busiest day we’ve had in months. I’ll let you know how it goes, so just stay right there on the edge of your seats.

   

Monday, Monday

 UGH the roads in Madison are TERRIBLE. Surrounding cities plowed and salted, but Madison… didn’t. Sooooo, for the next week we’ll all be driving on a sheet of ice. AWESOME. **eye roll**

Ben and I switched cars, and I made him help me clean his out and vacuum it in the freezing cold until I couldn’t feel my fingers through my gloves and complained THE WHOLE TIME about crappy cloth seats that don’t heat up.. HOW AWESOME AM I? But seriously, his car is SO MUCH BETTER on the snow than my van, and I am so glad to have a 4WD SUV to deal with roads that will be slippery until everything thaws— sometime many days from now. IT IS SO COLD HERE OMG. (Seriously, I bet the kids don’t go to school on Tuesday)

Ben also made a wonderful minestrone for dinner tonight (he said he googled a bunch of recipes and then made up his own) with Caesar salad and hot bread— like the Olive Garden at home. He was a super good partner this weekend, is what I am saying.

I have night cream analysis paralysis, just like I feared. I left Blue Mercury with samples of this, and I really wish it didn’t make my skin look so awesome. BUT IT DOES. 

I am having SUCH a hard time finishing House of Earth and Blood even though I like it a lot. It’s partially that I do not have time to read and partially that fantasy confuses me because I don’t know the rules of the world, so I feel like I have to read every detail carefully.

Minnie was actually not a super helpful shopping companion.

(I flat ironed her hair)

Look how dirty she got at hockey

Dorothy took a roll of tape out of the junk drawer in the kitchen, and I didn’t think anything of it until I brought laundry into her room and saw this

Mean Girls is great, BTW, and you should for sure go see it.

Let me leave you with this shot of Minnie feeling herself

Snowed in

 Welp. I am old enough to hurt my neck and shoulders shoveling snow and be, like, impacted by the discomfort.

 Also! I started tracking my miles to see if I could maybe go 2,024 for 2024, and… probably not? But! I think in a couple of years, I could match my miles to the year with some slow-burn routine tricks, so this year I will track, and maybe by 2027, I will be jogging across the 2,027 finish line. 

( i do not mean it will take me 3 years to go 2,000 miles. I mean it will take me 3 years to figure out how to fit 2,000+ yearly miles into my life. This year, I think I will be closer to 1800).

I think we can leave the house today, which is great because I need lotion for my face, a birthday gift for my MIL, a new broom, and some butter. All very specific and necessary.

Face lotion! I have been using THIS (I got a 1/2 ounce trial size in my giant makeup Christmas box), and I love it, but the price point is steep, which makes me think maybe I should explore other lotions at that price point because if I am going that far in, maybe I need to go all in, you know? But! This give-a-mouse-a-cookie thinking leads me to analysis paralysis, so I am going to Von Maur and coming home with at least the Absolue stuff. Unless Macy’s has a Lancôme gift or something. Then I wil go to there and not be distracted by my million other options, SEE? THERE I GO. (Maybe Blue Mercury is the place to start, actually?)

LONG STORY SHORTISH, I need to leave the house today.

Ben and his team of mini Bens are all outside shoveling right now, and a plow went down our street thank goodness, so I have hope!

Minnie didn’t like the blowing snow AT ALL and found it hard to walk through piles that went up to her hips, so she mostly had a craft day:

With many costume changes

Ben’s office decided to use their MLK holiday Friday since we had a blizzard, so the kids and I are home together on Monday when Cooper returns to FULL ACTIVITY SCHEDULE and dance starts up again. I suspect everyone will be home with me again on Tuesday because it is likely going to be too cold for kids to stand at the bus stop, meaning no school. And then Wednesday and Thursday, I have meetings on campus, so at least I will be leaving the house. I guess it could be too cold on Wednesday, too, but I have 2 built-in babysitters, so I’m not worried about it. It takes a village, even if you have to give birth to that village all by yourself, you know?

I would have taken pictures of the boys, but they were Downstairs People who wore Comfys and played video games all day long. They came upstairs when I was going to bed, hunting up a 4th for a euchre game. Hashtag bro life.

I was shocked the kids had Thursday school since the streets were so terrible it took me 35 minutes to take Coop out for our weekly coffee, and he ended up being SUPER LATE.

I went to Aldi after drop off, which was a fun treat since I don’t usually remember to go to there

Then I grabbed Minnie from school to find that she made me a book mark **heart eyes**

AND WE HAVE BEEN AT HOME EVER SINCE.

Cozy, yes, but I am ready to put on people clothes and do people things again.

Hope you are warm and well-snacked, friends.

5 on a Friday: The Still-Figuring-Out-the-Routine Edition (2/52)

 1. THIS BOOK finally came for me on Libby, and it is SO GOOD. Even if you are not on social media, the way she so neatly explains intersections of mothering, neoliberalism, feminism, race, class, gender, etc, is really great to read. Also I found a bunch of new accounts to cringe-follow, which is terrible, actually. (READ THE BOOK!!)  The clash between structures that can’t support caregiving and social media’s rendering of that lack of support as bad personal choices is applicable to, um, everything that’s wrong with the world.

2. Errand Fridays are an excellent idea BUT some errands are time sensitive, which is how I wasted the extra hour of preschool Minnie has on Wednesdays at Menards buying dryer venting. Boo hiss. And then Thursday saw me picking up a curbside Target order, buying cheese and wine, and trying out Aldi for the first time in forever because MOAR SNOW on the way.

But Minnie had extra cute hair, so that’s something.

Also, at Wednesday drop off, another kid in her class was really whiny and didn’t want their parent to leave, and the parent told Minnie’s teacher the kid has an ear infection and also diarrhea but just from the ear infection meds and THIS IS WHY WE ARE ALL SICK ALL THE TIME.

3. Dorothy has a New Year’s resolution to read for an hour a day and also journal about her reading. She keeps track of what she liked about the book and what she thinks is going to happen next— THIS IS DARLING

4. Minnie added these dollhouse lamps to my bookshelf, and I am here for it.

What I am less here for? NOT HAVING TIME TO READ BOOKS. I am in the middle of 2 but haven’t had consistent time to read them, and also DOING ALL THE HOUSEWORK. I don’t think I realized how much Ben was doing on his WFH days and how easy it was to work 2 full days out of the house and have NO responsibility. I gotta make a chart and figure out who can do what instead of me. Weekly cleaner for the big stuff FOR SURE, but it is the maintenance that is getting me. Bah humbug. I DO NOT WANT more takeout or eating in restaurants for health reasons, but the meal prep, etc, is a whole bunch.

But also! I am doing not smart things with my time that I know are not smart while I am doing them. So. There’s that. My problem is like 65% structural inequality but 35% BAD TIME MANAGEMENT.

5. Jack’s 4th grade teacher (who also had Dorothy and Coop) sent me this photo from her awesome end-of-semester pancake party in 2017. WE WERE BABIES. I want to tell these cuties to BUCKLE UP. Also, I was wearing that apron without any irony, and that sweatshirt is still in my closet because the way to make fast fashion ethical is to be a mom with too many kids and wear those clothes FOREVER like they’re HEIRLOOMS.