I feel like summer is finally here. Like 90 degree weather and full sun here. It hasn’t tipped into the unbearable humidity yet, though. The baby pool is getting a lot of use, though the fancy water table is no longer working. However, the Husband has plans to rebuild that, so I’m excited. Also – I realized last week, that none of the kids have full swim suits. They all have tops, but no one has bottoms that fit. I guess we didn’t go to the pool this winter, so I didn’t realize it. Oh well. Swimsuits have been ordered.
Thursday was a very good day. I got my hair cut! The Husband had taken a half day off work to watch the kids so I could go to my appointment. Aside from an ill advised trim that I did on my own, my hair has been uncut for over a year. There was a lot of hair on the floor when all was said and done. The first cut was a six inch pony tail, though I only managed a sad picture of a few strands:
After the cut, I made an impulse stop of get some boba tea. Boba tea is one of my favorite indulgences, and another thing I tried to DIY this past year, but while nice, it just wasn’t the same as getting it in the store. I tried a new place and they allowed customers to customize their drinks. My order: oolong milk tea, no sugar, 50% ice, half boba and half coconut jelly. (My ideal is lychee jelly, but not a lot of places have that.) When I got home, I poured my tea into a glass and took it out to the back patio. With my newly shorn head and my special drink, it was a perfect summer moment. (Side note: apparently there’s a boba shortage! Very concerning.)
And since the Husband has taken the rest of the day off, he wrangled children, taking all of them with him to the 9 year old’s dance class while I met up with my friend Kristen for a hike. We went to Turkey Run, which is on the Potomac, and it being a weekday evening, it was quiet. For two hours, we hiked, talked, laughed, enjoyed being among trees, and occasionally hugged. It was such a good time. Grateful for: vaccines, 8:15pm sunsets, easy access to nature trails, and good friends.
I had a moment where I questioned if I should be having such a great day without my family, without even wanting to be with them, or missing them. But I think I’m okay with it. I think I’m okay with the best day I’ve had in a long time be one where I was by myself.
The cicadas have really been coming out this week. The kids are fascinated by them and on our evening walks, they look for cicadas. The Husband told them that the cicadas are trying to get to the trees to climb upwards, so the four year old has taken to rescuing them from the sidewalk and using a stick to carry them to the nearest tree.
I’ve been taking many many pictures of them. I’m fascinated by their many stages of being, their slow emergence as they molt, their buggy red eyes, their wings, their slow steady march up tree trunks, the exoskeletons they leave behind that still cling lifelessly as if for their lives.
Some fun discoveries this week:
I realized that just as our public library has lots of great online programming these day, so do other libraries. This week I signed up for two small sessions through the LA County Library – which was my library system when I was growing up. I logged into a session called “Relaxing with Art” and a toddler story time. The presenter for the Art session talked about the benefits of drawing as a way of decompressing and then led some drawing exercises. I’ve been missing having a weekly drawing assignment since my drawing class ended and it was nice to pick up my pencil and have some short art exercises to do.
The toddler story time was actually really interesting because I found out that LA County has a program where parents of young children can call in and talk to a parenting expert if there is something that they are struggling with. It’s certainly not something to be used in lieu of talking to a pediatrician, but having free parenting support available to the community in a variety of languages is so fantastic.
Took the kids on a hike and we saw herons! That was pretty cool.
The nine year old started going to in person piano lessons this week. I had to to take the two younger kids with me this week, but the Husband has said I can leave them at home in subsequent weeks. This means I’ll have 30 wonderful minutes to myself. I’m thinking of bringing my yoga mat and getting some yoga in while I hang out in the teacher’s back yard. If I were a runner, that would also have been ideal, but I’m not…. Also side note – there’s a lady in our community who will come to your child’s sport practices and lead a yoga class. How brilliant is that?
I’ve picked back up with the Science of Well Being Course. This week’s lecture talked about WOOP technique for setting positive goals. WOOP stands for Wish, Outcome, Obstacle, Plan. What I thought was interesting was that Laurie Santos, the professor of the course, suggests that “Outcome” asks you not just to think about best outcomes from achieving what you want (Wish, first step), but to also think of the worst outcomes if you don’t. I think I tend to be motivated by focusing on the positive of achieving my goals, but the negative ramifications of failure are probably just as strong a motivator. In fact, I think the negative thoughts are what inspire me to make the goals in the first place. There are many times in the course where Santos talks about how one’s baseline for satisfaction moves and every so often you need to remind yourself what it was like to be at the bottom in order to counteract dissatisfaction. Of course you can belabour the point and be an insufferable optimist, or, conversely be an interminable pessimist, but I do think there is value in recognizing that your brain often adjusts its standards of happiness – happiness inflation, they call it.
Anyhow, I’ve decided to WOOP some goals this next week. Namely getting more sleep and finishing two books from the library that are due imminently.
The start of the summer shoe tan:
Made a key lime pie last weekend. The husband came home with a bag of key limes. I usually just use regular limes when I make key lime pie. But he was so excited, so I gave it a shot. These things are labor intensive! A whole bag of key limes made barely enough juice for one pie. There was a distinct taste from using key limes, but I can’t for the life of me describe it, and regular limes make tasty pies too. So I might stick with regular limes. (See above about baseline level of happiness.)
This man, seen at the side of the road on our Friday evening commute home. What the what? The Husband says he is here every Friday. It was vastly entertaining, but perhaps the resulting rubbernecking could be dangerous?
It’s been a rough week for sleep. We’ve moved the baby into the big kids room and she is sleeping on her crib mattress on the floor. She has had a rough time adjusting, perhaps only sleeping through the night one night out of seven. Luckily the other kids are heavy sleepers.
What We Ate:
Saturday: Tortellini with pasta sauce. We had met some families at a local brewery that afternoon and had lots of snack, so we weren’t terribly hungry by the time we got home.
Sunday: Sweet Potato and Poblano Tacos (from Dinner Illustrated), with homemade tortillas. I haven’t made tortillas in a while, and I’d forgotten how easy and tasty they are.
Monday: Eggplant and coconut rice from Meera Sodha’s East.
Tuesday: Mushroom crostada and bagged Caesar Salad.
Wednesday: Dosa and dal from Sdha’s Fresh Indian. I was quite proud of this meal. It was very time consuming to make, but very simple. And, if one makes the filling ahead of time, making the dosas actually comes together quite quickly. Not quite like at our favorite restaurant – these dosas get soggy if not eaten right away and are much smaller – but okay for at home.
Thursday: The Husband got burgers, fries and milkshakes from Five Guys. Normally I make dinner before dance class, and the fact that I didn’t have to make dinner made the day even more awesome. And while it’s not something I should do often, eating a jalapeno mushroom burger and fries at 10:30pm just feels really good sometimes.
Friday: Pizza and Hairspray, the original John Waters movie. I thought that the movie would feel dated, but it doesn’t really.