Scared skinny?

UGH.

I am FOR REAL THIS TIME getting my nutritional shit together.  I SWEAR.

I am not happy with how I look lately/with how my clothes feel.  Part of me just wants to say eff it and buy bigger clothes, but the other part of me thinks that my clothes might seem brand new if they FIT BETTER.

I haven't weighed myself since the Whole 30 ended, but I am sure those 8 pounds (and more) have crept back on. The jacket I wore yesterday was so tight in the arms that a single mosquito bite near my shoulder would have made it unwearable.  I go to the doc next week for my annual physical, so I'll see the numbers then.  WHICH IS SOON ENOUGH.

Ben and I talked about this Ravishly piece on our podcast this week (It'll be out today or tomorrow.  Or maybe it came out yesterday.  I want to keep you guessing.  If you are an Apple person, you can listen and subscribe here, and you can also listen on our website), and I cannot stop thinking about it.

I definitely drink too much.  Too many drinks at a time and too many days of the week.  It's just what people do in Wisconsin, and it;s what we expect moms to do all over the place.

I sometimes feel like I need some wine to slip into the second shift at night, and as one of my really smart Facebook friends pointed out, wine is the kind of vice-masquerading-as-self-care that you can take advantage of with your kids in the room.  I might need kid-watching help to take a jog or do some yoga, but I can parent WITH wine in my hand,

Anyway, it's bad for me, and it's making me fat.

I woke up to a slew of pictures from the speech team even on Facebook today.  And while some of them were cute

This one made me cry

This is what I look like?  It's like me peering out from a shiny fat suit.

As of now, I am back on the My Fitness Pal, and I am not going to drink.  Tonight for sure.  Thinking about the Weight Watchers bandwagon.  Or another month of Whole30.  Keto? Intermittent fasting?  NOT CRAMMING ALL THE SNACKS INTO MY FACEHOLE?  I am still working on a plan.

GAH.

Can I just say that yesterday was LOVELY up until the very second it was NOT?

Ben was the at-work parent for the day, so he took Dorothy to school and I sat hunched over the kitchen counter in my pajamas writing until about 10:50 when I looked up in a panic and realized that I had to take a shower and make all the beds and leave to pick up Dorothy in less than 30 minutes.  So, I did all of those things really fast.

Dorothy and I stopped at Target because I needed to send in like $20 worth of green grapes because it;s color week in kindergarten.  I also finally managed to get her some shoes that are not high heels (high tops with Trolls fur on the tongue which is already kind of funky from just one sandbox sojourn).

We had lunch (note: when the only salad green you have is kale, a taco salad is not your best use of salad greens-- yuck.  Luckily I packed a kale, craisin, and chicken salad with lemon and balsamic for lunch today-- packed it WHILE having lunch yesterday because I knew that shit was about to get real).

Dorothy watched Wally Kazam and I watched Gilmore Girls while I cleaned up the kitchen and prepped the grapes (I realized that just sending in a bunch of unwashed grapes was not super helpful so I washed them and put them in snack-sized ziplocs-- hope that's OK).  We put the laundry away.  We played Zingo.  We went to the library.  It was lovely.

Then.  We got home from the library at 3:20 and waited in the car in the driveway for Cooper and jack because shit was about to get real.

They got home at 3:28, and we peeled out of the driveway to take Jack to his tutor.  We dropped him off and ran home to start feeding the kids snacks and get Harry, who ran off the bus and immediately changed into his baseball uniform.  I stopped the little kids mid-snack and loaded them back into the car to take Harry to baseball where Ben-- the head coach of his team-- was waiting for him.  We skidded back to our house, and I washed lunch boxes and packed them for the next day while the kids finished their snacks.  Jack met us at home (he walked from the tutor's house, which was a great idea) and changed into his gymnastics clothes.

Jack and Dorothy went to their respective gymnastics classes while Cooper and I watched.  Then I took all three of them to a welcome party at Dorothy's school.

FINALLY at 7:30 we were all at home at the same time and we had dinner.  That ended in screams, not surprisingly.  Because ALL of us were hangry.

It was just a brutal afternoon.  None of us (except Harry and Ben) were in the same place for longer than like 45 minutes (unless you count gymnastics which I don't because it's impossible to get anything done there, although I tried really hard to read a book). We were all too tired.  Dinner was too late, but we didn't have any other time to eat.  It was TERRIBLE.   It's actually been our second stressful Wednesday in a row.  If we have a third, we are going to have to reschedule gymnastics because DAMN.  Next week, Dorothy will also have dance on Wednesdays, so I'm sure that'll make things go more smoothly.  Eye roll.  ALL OF THE EYE ROLLS.

She likes really well done toast.

 A little jump rope.

 Poser. (Also she beheaded all of those marigolds and sprinkled their petals all over the driveway and called them fairy dust.  Erm).

 Library.

 She was like Oh my gosh I know those guys!  And then she posed by them.  Like a flamingo.

 Gymnastics.  That also make her cry.  I LOVE signing a kid up for an expensive activity and then having them decide they hate it and want to quit.  (We're totally quitting-- I really don't care AT ALL, but I did care in the context of last night when I had to take all of the kids and had no entertainment packed for her and needed the time to read for class.  It was my fault for needing the time, not her fault for hating it.  I'll keep you posted.)

 bell hooks' feminism is for everybody.  YOU SHOULD READ IT.

Fall's false start

It was supposed to be fall.  Like, all of the weather forecasts were for chilly air, and we saw the leaves start to turn.  The last day of the pool was so cold I was the only mom in a suit.  And I ran out and bought Dorothy a bunch of sweaters and tights and the boys a giant Old Navy bag full of athleisure pants. I ordered fall coats for all, and Dorothy and I got galoshes.

And then in turned 80 and humid and all the mosquitos came back.   GAH.

But, I mean,  have the premature forecast to thank for our MATCHING rain boots, so there's that. I hope to get her into Target this week to buy some shoes that are not high heels, so maybe there will be more matching styles in our future.

 Harry has been eating a green smoothing in the morning before school.  While it's been a little disruptive to my morning writing routine, I genuinely love how happy and excited he is before school.

 Speaking of before school.  It's really hard to get everyone out the door on time.  I actually forgot just how hard it could be.

 But darn if they aren't so CUTE all ready to go.

 So far, Ben and I have tried to help out the work-at-home parent by also doing preschool drop off on our out-of-the-house mornings. This is nice because the other parent can stay in their jammies and keep working (since we are still both waking up before the kids to get a jump start on the day).  But our work volume is creeping up with each passing day, so who knows how long we'll be able to keep that up.  Le sigh.

It's fall almost, temperature be damned, so I have been baking my fall faves.  Like granola bars!

 I am slow to adjust to new routines, and this semester is no exception.  Yesterday, I went to work and banged on my office keyboard wondering why nothing was happening on the screen for a good 15-20 seconds.  BECAUSE MY COMPUTER WAS STILL IN MY BAG, and that screen is just a monitor.  Duh.

 Last night, I got home from work at about 3:30, just as the boys were all getting home.  Dorothy was a total freaking wreck as she has been after school every day since school started (see: slow to adjust to a new routine), and Ben was ready to walk out the door to take Jack to baseball as soon as Jack changed his clothes.  They went to baseball.  Dorothy and Cooper tried to kill each other. I helped Harry with math homework (and by help, I mean, I tried to talk him out of right answers and asked him to use neater handwriting.  I suck) and supervised snack (they ate almost an entire pan of brownies, which is why on Monday night I baked 2).  I made dinner while Harry went to a friend's house and Dorothy and Cooper continued to brawl. The kids ate, and I cleaned everything up. Then Ben came home for like 20 minutes to collect Harry for hockey.  Jack changed from his baseball jersey to his Cub Scout t-shirt (which frankly pairs better with sliding pants and tall socks than does the button-down), and just as Ben and Harry were leaving, the Webelo Den came over for their meeting. Cooper joined them.  Dorothy did not, but she sure did join me in everything I was doing because she is an excellent sidekick.  The Scouts finished up their meeting with the other pan of brownies and trip to the school park.  Dorothy and I joined in for that despite the literal swarms of mosquitos.  Dorothy fell down and hit her head and chin on a metal balance beam, so we had to leave early for an ice pack.  Meanwhile, Ben dropped Harry at hockey and went downtown for a speech team meeting, leaving that a bit early to pick Harry up and bring him home.  Dorothy and Cooper fell asleep with no fighting or hijinks, a rarity since school started that I hope was due to an extra trip to the park and not a head injury.  Jack and I watched Gilmore Girls while we waited for Ben and Harry. And it was pretty much 10 pm before tBen and I got to see each other at all.  We sat on the couch with the TV off and dozed until one of us woke up enough to prod the other one into starting our nighttime routine (take the dog out, take the little kids to the bathroom for a sleep-pee, muck out Harry and Jack's bathroom after the wreckage of their showers, etc).

Dorothy enjoyed some bubble hat and mutton chops time in the tub.

And now I am up before 6 am ready to do it all again.  Woo-hoo!

The Bell Always Tolls for Thee, Dude. Even on the Speech Team

We didn't go to Pekin JUST to celebrate Cooper's birthday.  We also went there because a friend of mine from Bradley organized a lovely surprise celebration lunch for a Pekin High speech coach who retired after FIFTY YEARS at the high school.

I had SO MUCH FUN at the lunch.  There were alums from the 1970s-1990s, and I saw 2 of my former coaches, as well as a bunch of friends I haven't seen since high school.  There were many speeches, including one from me.  I didn't prepare anything at all until the morning of the lunch when I was in the shower and the perfect words came pouring out of me. I have always done my best practicing in the shower.  I leapt out and wrapped myself in a towel and scribbled down everything I said on a legal pad and read it over a few times between the parade and the lunch and probably said about 62% of what I wrote because when you are giving a speech in front of a room of speechies, you DON'T use notes.

I was blown away by the other speakers of course and by their recollections of our coach who gave so much of himself to generations of students.  He started crying as soon as he walked into the room and saw the assembled crowd.  Big, ugly sobs that almost sounded like laughter at first.  Then he went around and hugged each person after joyfully shouting their names-- and he knew us all.  It was lovely.  At the end of the day, he spoke, too, and sounded just like his old self with a booming laugh that another alum described as a sense memory.  He said that he dreamed about his former students and hoped he could see them all someday to see what they had become, and then there we were.  There wasn't a dry eye in the house.  He said a bunch of wonderful stuff about how his job was to give kids confidence to believe in themselves and imagine a life different than the one they could see before them in tiny little Pekin, IL.  To his credit, most of the people in the room were lawyers or really successful executives.  And there was me, a fake doctor, and a REAL doctor, too.  So, mission accomplished, Coach.

My speech bestie was there from DC, and I got to meet her husband and share memories and go to a long, leisurely breakfast the next day and swap stories about our lives as juggling moms.  We haven't seen each other since high school (except for a brief meet up in DC over spring break), but we didn't miss a beat in the conversation.

I left Pekin delighted and grateful for speech.  So many of the speakers at the lunch talked about how speech saved them from unhappy homes and showed them a path to success they didn't think they could find.  I loved hearing their stories and knowing that an activity that was so transformative for me, introducing me to my voice and my husband and some of my best friends in the world and my area of lifelong study, was also vital to them.  Such connection and kinship-- a whole room of dorky kindred spirits.

And then, yesterday morning, I woke up to a text string from college speech friends telling me that one of our teammates was dead.

She was a year younger than me, 38. We hadn't kept in touch, and she hadn't had an easy time since college, despite getting her MA and teaching at Northwestern for a time.  She didn't have an easy time before college, either.  Or during it.  But damn was she funny.

All day long, I have read stories about her on our alumni Facebook group, and I have been thinking about those stories--about brilliance shadowed by tragedy--and about the joyful ones I heard on Saturday-- about brilliance subverting shadows.  Maybe if speech could have found her sooner?

At the end of the day, we are only our stories, really, the ones we tell and the ones people will tell about us when we're gone.

I feel even more grateful to have made the trip to Pekin over the weekend to hear people paying tribute to a man who was in the room, there to appreciate our words and add his own.  I keep thinking about my old friend who is gone and wondering what she would want to say, what she'd want us to say.  You know?

Happy Birthday COOPER!!!

Cooper has been six for 2 days, and he already seems bigger and wiser.

 We went to Pekin for the weekend for a speech team reunion for me and for the Marigold festival, which seemed like an ultra-fun way to celebrate a six-year-old.  To me, anyway. Ben continues to be unimpressed with my favorite small town experience.  But I keep making him go.

We started the celebration Friday night at dinner, where in a sign of the children growing up, we were able to withstand the whole 40-minute wait for a table.

 Except Dorothy was a monster.  But that's nothing new.

 Also we had some wine.

 Then Ben and I took the kids to the Marigold Festival canrvial which, predictably, they LOVED.

 We played enough carnival games for everyone to win a prize.  Next time I am just going to flush $100 down the toilet and roll around in the dirt.

 But seriously, they LOVED it.

And I got to talk to the ride operator for an awkward amount of time since Dorothy wanted to keep riding the boats.  He said they've been to 11 cities in 10 weeks  and they sleep in bunk beds in the back of a truck.  OMG.  He seemed to really like it though--and he said he would miss it for the 8 months that he'd be waiting for the next season.

 Dorothy HATED HATED HATED the bid slide.  When she go down to the bottom, she said, "I did not like that AT ALL," and she seemed pretty serious.

 CARNIVAL SELFIE!

 He was having a pretty great birthday eve.

 The rode this at least twice.

 Love it!  She won the flamingo herself because she's a surprisingly good darts player.

 A carnivals-are-awesome picture, natch:

 Seriously, I think the whole thing was made even cooler because we went at night when we could have been putting them to bed.  And you know what  I think we might STILL be paying for their 10pm bedtimes.

We ragged all of Cooper's presents with us, and he was SO EXCITED to wake up to open them.  Especially because Ben told him e'd have to wait until we got home on Sunday because he loves to tease Cooper (who knew we were joking with about 96% certainty and was a good sport about it)

 My mom made Cooper a cake, and he LOVED it.

 The actual candle blow-out was abrupt, so I made him reenact it.  I LOVE reenactors.

 (Dorothy helped)

 Them Grandma and Grandpa's town threw Cooper a birthday parade!  I mean, it was really the Marigold parade, but who's counting?

 Dorothy loved eating cotton candy in the gutter and then scrambling in the streets for candy.

 We left after 90/150 floats, but that's because it was just too much awesome for us to handle

 Parade selfie!

 Scrambling in the dirty street for candy.  LIKE YOU DO.

 Some of the groups gave out water.  Jack was excited.

 As was I because I got to see a bunch of high school friends and their adorable kids.

 After lunch, Ben and my dad took all the kids to Chuck E Cheese, and then we hit up Art in the Park, which is a huge craft fair,  Harry and Jack wanted to buy just about every Cubs and Bears lawn sign they passed (and there were many), but all we ended up with was a sleeping bag and pillow for Dorothy's Wellie Wisher.

After birthday pizza from our favorite Pekin place, we made one final trip of the season to the world's best ice cream shoppe.

 Cookie dough arctic swirl, I will miss you until May.

 Oh, kids

 Six: Awesome.

 My view upon waking the day after Cooper's birthday: (he was carrying as many of his gifts as he could fit on his person)

 As SOONS AS WE GOT HOME (like, the moment we pulled in the driveway and Jack and I jumped out to grocery shop and Harry and Beatrix jumped out to lay on the couch and watch football), Cooper went to Toys R Us to spend the gift card my parents got him.

 (one of the things he bought was a gumball machine)

 SIX was FANTASTIC, and his friend birthday party is still to come.  Now what are we going to do for SEVEN?