January.
Ugh, I'm glad it's almost over. It's been a super rough month! There are things I wish I could write about sometimes, but when it's something about my kids, I like to keep it private for their sake. Everything is okay!... there has just been a lot going on this month.
I wrote recently that I was
wondering if I might have Seasonal Affective Disorder, because it seems that over the last few years, I've had bouts of depression in the winter months. This month has been no different. I've been super tired, unmotivated, emotional, uninterested in everything, and just plain unhappy lately.
Last month, when I asked on Facebook for blog post suggestions, one person said: "How about an honest approach to parenting, meal prep, marriage and still have your own identity. Instagram and Facebook are filled with perfect pictures of family and kids. Nobody wants to sound imperfect."
I love this. Because it's true! If you were to judge someone's life based on their social media posts, it would seem like nobody has any problems at all.
After reading that Facebook comment, it reminded me of a status post I wrote last February:
Having written this in February, I again wonder if the season had anything to do with it. I know I felt better at some point after that, but I don't remember when.
The timing of that post is actually pretty funny, because coincidentally, I literally cried at Lowe's on Friday. I was going to stop on my way home from dropping Noah off at school and pick up the materials to make new nightstands for my bedroom. I'd picked out the building plans online and had a list of the wood and cuts I would need.
Having a Jeep Renegade, there isn't exactly a lot of space to bring building materials home. Through trial and error, I've learned what sizes of things will and will not fit in my car. It's the plywood that is the toughest to work out.
Plywood is a 4-ft by 8-ft sheet. That will obviously not fit in my car, so I always have a Lowe's employee make a couple of cuts for me so I can at least get them home. Anyway, on Friday, I pulled into Lowe's and got a notepad from my purse to write down the cuts I would need.
To do this, I had to basically draw a rectangle on the notepad and try to "Tetris" all the cuts into that rectangle, with the fewest amount of actual cuts from Lowe's (I can't ask the Lowe's employees to cut out dozens of smaller pieces--I try to keep it to three cuts per sheet, just to get it home, and then I make the rest of the cuts myself).
Since I'd be making two nightstands, I had to double everything, too. This didn't help.
My mind just didn't seem to be working on Friday. I can't even tell you how many times I started over, trying to figure out how I could get the plywood cut and in the car, while keeping the pieces at the sizes that I need. I'm embarrassed to say how long I sat in the parking lot (ahem, 90 minutes!) before I just gave up.
I cried out of frustration because I couldn't figure out something that I'd done so many times before. I'm an expert at how to piece cuts on plywood to fit them all in. When I got close to home, it dawned on me that I'd been making a HUGE mistake while I sat in the parking lot (it's okay to laugh at this):
I was writing the width of the plywood as 36 inches and not 48 inches (as I said, the plywood is 4x8 feet--48 inches by 96 inches). When I was trying to fit all the cuts into the rectangle I drew, I was counting that shorter side as 36 inches for some stupid reason (I hate the term "brain fart" but that's basically what it was). If I hadn't been so frustrated, I would have thought the mistake was hilarious!
Most of the time, life is pretty good. Things go pretty smoothly. But sometimes I get so stressed out and overwhelmed that I have a week (or two or a month) like the one I shared in the Facebook post above.
The stress seems to come in spurts--one week might be so jam-packed full of things on my "to do" list, but another week might have an empty schedule. This month, it's been super busy; and having all of it on top of feeling depressed has been extra rough.
I have not been sleeping well at all, and twice last week I shut off my alarm only to have the kids wake me up, yelling, "Mama! It's 6:50!" (We normally wake up at 6:00.) I swear I only closed my eyes for a second...
Lack of sleep makes me unable to focus on anything. Or I'll start a task and then forget to finish it. If my kids tell me something that I'm supposed to remember, they might as well just not have even told me at all. My memory is horrible when I'm tired.
To get to the actual question from Facebook--about an honest approach to parenting, meal prep, and marriage while still having my own identity... it's hard!
Parenting feels harder now than it was when my kids were little. I like to keep their lives pretty private here on the blog, but in general, I have more to worry about because they aren't in my sight all the time. Also, I worry about their feelings SO much. I just want them to be happy.
You would think that as a stay-at-home mom, I would wake up and pack their lunches for school and make them a nice hearty breakfast of bacon and eggs and toast. Well, I stopped packing lunches a couple of years ago. And breakfast? That's what cereal is for! At 14 and 15 years old, my kids are old enough to pack their own lunches. And I don't say this out of laziness--they really need to learn to do things for themselves.
I wake up when they do (at 6:00), but I use that as my "me time" while they get ready for school. I usually do my "Peak" or "Lumosity" apps or read a book on my Kindle while I have tea or decaf coffee in the morning. Since Jerry is on straight day shift now, I am the sole chauffeur--I drive them to school in the mornings (it's an hour round trip for Noah, and I drop Eli off on the way).
I get done what I can before they get out of school (Noah gets out at 1:30 now, which doesn't leave me with much time)--writing a blog post (I need the quiet to write), working on laundry, dishes, house chores, grocery shopping, budgeting/finance stuff, errands, etc.
Meal prep/planning - I'm terrible about "prepping". I KNOW I should prep things like meat and vegetables right when I get home from grocery shopping so that it'll be less work throughout the week when I cook. However, grocery shopping is exhausting in itself!
I always use the self-checkout, so after putting everything into the cart, I have to remove it one by one, scan and bag it all, unload everything into the car, then carry everything into the house and put everything away. By that time, the last thing I want to do is prep food.
(I know some of you have mentioned grocery shopping online and either picking it up or having it delivered... I wish I could let go of my "control freak" side to do that, but I don't think I could let someone else pick out my groceries--especially meats and produce. I'm very picky about those things!)
I do write a meal plan every week before I go grocery shopping; but unfortunately, I rarely stick to it. Either the kids make other plans or I am exhausted and don't want to cook or I forgot to thaw out the meat or something like that. More than a few times, I've put food in the slower cooker only to realize later that I forgot to plug it in (seriously).
I cook as often as I can, even if it's something as simple as grilled cheese. But for the days where I am super short on time or I don't have a plan and the kids are starving, I usually have a pizza in the freezer. Thankfully, my kids love them ;) Something I underutilize is my slow cooker--I need to plan more meals around that. And make sure I remember to plug it in!
Marriage - This year, Jerry and I will have been married 17 years (!) and thankfully, we are still super close. We love spending time together, even if it's just reading our own books while sitting in the same room. We have literally NOTHING in common, but somehow, we still enjoy each other's company.
We rarely do "date nights" and that's something we've been wanting to do more of this year. I just feel so old! Now, when I think of date nights, I think of how expensive it is to go out to dinner or even just a movie, so that kind of ruins the fun of it. We'll need to come up with some cheaper ideas.
One of the most fun things I can remember us doing together that didn't cost us anything was actually a long bike ride.
We were having a "staycation" while the kids were away at camp, so we spent a lot of time together that week. We rode 26.5 miles when Jerry got out of work one day (we did an out and back ride on the Metropark trails, going through THREE parks). On the way back, we had to outride a storm that was coming in behind us, and we had so much fun!
I think what makes us have such a great marriage (I'm definitely not saying it's perfect, though!) is that we laugh a lot. Usually at the stupidest things. Just today, we were looking at memes on Pinterest and laughing until we wheezed about memes that reminded us of each other.
Last night, we were watching a show and I had my feet up on Jerry's lap. My feet are SO dry that when I shifted positions, it sounded like sandpaper rubbing against his pajama pants, and I was so sure that my dry skin was going to snag the threads 😂 We started laughing about that, and then Jerry made some joke about it that I can't remember now, but we were laughing so hard we couldn't breathe.
It felt really good to laugh like that, because like I said, it's been an emotional month for me and the laughter has been rare. The thing I've always loved most about Jerry is his sense of humor--and even when I'm not feeling good, he can usually get at least a smile out of me.
As the Facebook comment suggested, it's hard to be a spouse and mom and still have your own identity. I wrote recently about
my hyperempathy and how I am always tuned in to others' feelings. I do everything I can to make other people happy and consequently, I don't do much for myself.
Quite often, just writing on my blog actually helps me "remember" who I am. It helps me to think about what's been going on lately and how I've been feeling.
My favorite thing to do for myself is actually working on some sort of project--either organizing a closet or painting furniture or building something new out of wood. I didn't realize how much I loved this until
I remodeled the entire house!
When I'm working on a project, I listen to podcasts that I enjoy and I love seeing the progress I'm making on whatever it happens to be at the moment. A couple of days ago, I had a couple of spare hours before I had an appointment at the Secretary of State to renew my driver's license (ugh) so I decided to use the time for a "fun" project (others may think of it as dreadful, haha).
When I painted my cabinets, I lined most of them with contact paper on the inside, and I loved the way it looked. There were a couple of very large cabinets that I hadn't done, however, so I decided to tackle the largest one.
It took me FOREVER to get the shelf out (actually, that's why I didn't do this cabinet last year--because the shelf seemed to have been put in there before the cabinet faces were attached. I tried twisting and turning it every which way, removing the doors from the cabinets to make room for it, and still--it just wouldn't fit.
A couple of days ago, I decided to try again. I thought there was no way that someone would put the shelf in there before finishing the cabinets, so there HAD to be a way to get it out. After about 15 minutes of different maneuvers, I was able to remove it! I have no idea how that was possible, and I was sure there was no way I'd be able to get it back in when I was done, but I'd worry about it later.
I wasn't able to finish the whole thing in the two hours I had, but I was able to finish it up when I got home. And I was even able to get the shelf back in! It looks so much better. Of course, I forgot to take a "before" photo, but I'm sure I can find one from when the kitchen was in progress...
Anyway, projects are my happy place :) Next weekend, I'm going to finish my brother's bathroom for him, which has been "in progress" for probably six years now, haha--he needs the grout sealed in the shower and I'm going to build shelves for the closet. I'm actually looking forward it. And hopefully it'll help with my mood!
