Welp the kids all got off to school this week. Yay!
We spent last week getting back into real life groove after vacation, but also it was still summer vacation, so it was a combination of holding on to summer vibes but also preparing for fall. The Sunday after we got back from vacation, the 14 year old wrote this end of summer bucket list:
In case you can’t read 14 year old highlighter scrawl, the list says (and I can’t help it, but I’ve corrected the spelling.):
Last Week of School Break Bucket List
-school shopping
-go to Studio (This means my work – she likes coming to work and dancing in the rehearsal halls)
-get boba
-have a movie day
-hugs kisses
-Go to Asian store
-Bake
-make dinner
-face masks.
I think we got through most of her list. There was lots of boba consumed.
I really struggle with being productive all. the. time. Monday was a great day – I banged out a bunch of internet errands in the morning (ordered new backpacks, lunch boxes, underwear, socks; registered for things; filled out forms.) Then we went school supply shopping, stopping for boba and onigiri as a treat. Then we went grocery shopping. We were home by 4:30pm. I made dinner and then went to happy hour with my bus stop mom friends.
And then it all went downhill from there for the rest of the week. There were play dates and pool visits and one or two other errands. I took one kid for a hair cut and cut the other kid’s hair myself. (First time doing this and it was relatively easy. Plus her hair is wavy so mistakes are easily forgiven.) We dog-sat for our favorite Yorkie and went on lots of walks with him. Oh we also had our chocolate donut taste test:
But there was also a lot of naval gazing, wall staring, and scrolling, and malaise, and losing track of life. I completely forgot that the 14 year old had a voice lesson on the day and ended up logging her in 45 minutes late (thank goodness the teacher was flexible…). I forgot to go over and walk the dog one day and he was home for ten hours by himself. I feel really bad about that….
The weekend was a good mix of tasks and fun. Saturday I spent all day decluttering and going through the little kids’ clothes. I got rid of anything that was too small and rotated in the winter clothes. I made sure they each had 10 tops and 10 bottoms for warm weather and 10 tops and 10 bottoms for cold weather. I think we in truth have more like 15 tops per. Plus the 6 year old had a lot of dresses. At first I thought I would have to go buy more pants for the 9 year old, but then I remembered that my friend had given me bags of clothes from her kids and once I pulled them out, I got to 10 pair of pairs of pants for him. I think the 6 year old will still need some leggings, but I feel like we’re in a good place for the cooler weather. I will seriously scream if one of the younger children comes to me and says they have nothing to wear this fall/ winter.
The 14 year old, in a fit of “I’m going to high school!!!” emptied all her drawers late on Saturday night, had a meltdown, cuddled with me for a while, and then we methodically simultaneously purged and put everything back. This kid has SO MANY free t-shirts. I tried to encourage her to cull, but every one is special. Anyhow, we went through everything while watching Love, Rosie (which is marketed as a rom-com, but is decidedly not – OMG the male protagonist – why is he rewarded with true love at the end of the movie after being such a blind turd? He makes some seriously not good choices only to be conveniently relieved of them in the end… Anyhow… pretty forgettable, but Lily Collins was cute.)
The upshot of culling the closet/drawers with the 14 year old, though, is that this kid who never cared much about what she wore, who hitherto had a uniform of jeans (usually whatever didn’t fit me anymore), basketball shorts, free t-shirts, and hoodies – she has decided that she doesn’t have any cute clothes for high school and needs some clothes. On her list:
-baggy jeans (like her favorite KPop artists)
-a ruffled denim skirt
-a cute top or two, but not cropped or low V-neck or anything that shows too much skin.
Of course, she hates shopping for clothes, so I’m not sure how we are going to check those items off her list…. Where do teenagers even shop for clothes these days?
Anyhow, that was Saturday. I also cleaned out the area around my desk in the bedroom and got rid of a box worth of crafting supplies. The sad thing is that the room doesn’t actually look any less cluttered, because everything was contained in boxes or shoved in a closet. The room looks the same amount of boxy mess, only now those boxes are empty. I think the biggest thing I have to decide what to do with is:
1) my yarn collection – I have three containers of aspirational yarn. When was the last time I actually made something???? (Well, I crochet a belt for my son’s KPop Demon Hunter costume last year…. I feel like that doesn’t’ count.)
2) A box of cassette tapes from my childhood.
3) Papers. So many papers. Mostly investment statements. I’m sure I can just shred those. right?
I feel if I took care of those three things, 85% of my bedroom clutter would be solved. I guess the yarn would be the easiest place to start, so maybe that will be a September goal.
The upshot of Saturday was two bags of clothes and one big box of art supplies went to donation. There’s still more to do, but it felt really good to start to sort and purge and to get a sense of what everything is and where it might want to live. For example, we are currently keeping art and office supplies in maybe four or five locations around the house and I really need to consolidate that.
Sunday we went out to the Maryland with shore with a friend to visit another mutual friend of ours. She has a pool, her neighbor has sheep. We had a low key lunch – take out pizza, quinoa salad, lots of cookies and snacks and sodas. We lazed in the sun and pool, and talked and talked and talked. I had brought the 9 year old and the 14 year old with and I think they had a good time soaking up one last lazy afternoon of sun and swim before school started. On the way home we stopped for boba. Only the place was out of boba. It was 4PM. What kind of boba tea place runs out of boba at 4pm??? That’s prime boba drinking time. Oh well, we got lychee and coconut jelly instead, which was fine, but not as nice as boba.
Well it’s now a new school year and a new opera season, so more clearly defined blocks in my day now. I know when the kids have to go to school. I know when they will come home. I know what activities are where. Sort of. The sports schedule is still nebulous for the 9 year old. I’m not back to having a set work schedule, so I need to be a little more disciplined about getting work done efficiently and with focus since I’m really only accountable to myself until late September.
I felt a little frustrated with myself. It’s as if I can only have one optimally productive day in a week and that optimally productive day takes so much out of me that I can’t figure it out for the rest of the week. Last week, Monday I was on fire and the rest of the week not so much – I felt like my energy level was really low and I kept forgetting to do things. Why is it that 10 things on my to do list are easier to accomplish than two things?
But maybe it’s not an optimally productive day for me if knocking out those then things is so exhausting? Maybe I need to more consistently have a lower bar of to dos and allow myself more naval gazing time? I find that in any given day, I either have a lot of momentum and go go go, or inertia and nothing nothing nothing. Balance is hard to find.
Grateful For:
-Hand me downs. I thought I was going to have to do a big clothes shop for the 6 and 9 year olds, but I found almost everything in hand me down bins in the attic.
-Passport photos taken at Staples so that I could get those done while school supply shopping. Free printing at the library (up to 15 pages per library card) so that I could print the passport applications since I don’t have a printer at home.
-Our contractor/ handyman who came over one day and fixed a bunch of annoying but not urgent things for us. A play structure that had come loose from the wall is now safe to play on. An unsightly ding in the kitchen wall is now magically patched and repaired and seamlessly painted over. A nail in an awkward but potentially dangerous spot ground down. A drawer front re-attached. It’s funny how we just learn to live with these little things and when they get fixed life just seems… shinier.
-My mother’s rice cooker. We’ve been making a lot of onigiri and my mom’s rice cooker, which I borrowed from her apartment, has made that process so much simpler. I used to make rice on the stove and now I’m loving being able to put rice and water in the pot, flick a switch and walk away. The 14 year old can even do it. Heck, I think any of the kids could use the rice cooker. Maybe we should get our own one day.
-Sunny warm weather. Not too hot, but also still warm enough to go to the pool.
-Speaking of which – an empty pool. I took the kids to the pool one day and it was just us – it felt so indulgent to have the whole space to ourselves.
-Music in the car. We were coming home from church on Saturday and some song came on the Pandora – I’m not sure which, but it was one of those songs that you just have to sing along to. At the top of your lungs. And we were half a block from home, and the kids said, “Can we keep driving – this is such a good song!” So the Husband drove on past our house and kept going and drove an extra five or ten minutes so that we could keep playing music and singing along. It was magical. I’m always listening to books or podcasts in the car and I forget what an amazingly soul refreshing thing it is to sing loudly in the car with the windows down.
Looking forward to:
-Maryland Renaissance Festival! They have a new ticketing system which makes it difficult to truly know when tickets are available, so I went ahead and bought tickets for Labor Day when I saw they were available.
-Trombone and piano. The 9 year old gets to choose an instrument now that he’s in 4th grade and he has chosen trombone. We rented him a trombone over the weekend and I’m really excited to hear him play. The 6 year old is also starting piano this year after asking all summer. (I think is is mostly because when we went to the 9 year old’s piano recital, we discovered that two of her best friends from school are taking lessons from the same teacher and she didn’t want to be left out.)
-First Day of School! (This happened! All went well.)
-New passports. On our way back from Canada, I noticed that the two younger kids’ passports were to expire next March, so while on the road, I booked an appointment for new passports. I filled in the paperwork as soon as I got home, and everything went smoothly and there will be new passports with new adventures to come. I also realized that when the 14 year old next renews her passport, she will be old enough to get a 10 year passport. That milestone gave me a bit of pause. I feel like the 14 year old’s milestones are coming more and mroe quickly every day.
-My parents are coming to visit next month. Will be nice to see them. We are thinking of going to Monticello for the weekend.
-Just started this book. I really enjoyed her latest book Dolly Any Time, so I picked up one of her earlier books at the library:
What We Ate:
Monday: The 14 year old cooked and she made chicken and green salad. I went out to dinner with my Bus Stop Mom friends and I had a club sandwich, Greek Salad, and French Fries.
Tuesday: Taco Tuesday! I made these crispy tofu tacos from NY Times Cooking. Big hit with everyone. Vegan because I left out the sour cream. We just ate them with quick pickled onions, mango and avocado.
Wednesday: Pasta Salad. I needed something that I could mostly make-ahead. This Pasta Salad had small balls of fresh mozzarella, tomatoes, basil, cucumbers and a balsamic dressing. No real recipe, just tossing things together.
Thursday: Egg Curry from NY Times Cooking. Eaten with rice and paratha. I always forget about this dish and every time I make it everyone loves it. I added handfuls of spinach to it.
Friday: Pizza (The Husband made pizza – cheese, sausage and mushroom, and a pickle pizza.) and The Sheep Detectives. I wanted to see this movie in the theatre, but never got the chance – it’s got so many things that appeal to me: based on Three Bags Full (a very funny book), Hugh Jackman, and Emma Thompson. Talking sheep! What more could one want. The plot is nothing at all like the book. Actually I would say this is very loosely based on the book. Other than the sheep, there’s not much the same. Still – it was a charming, heartfelt, and that kind of sincere to the verge of sentimental that is so hard to find these days.
Saturday: We went out for Vietnamese food after church in the evening. It was delicious.
Sunday: Hodge podge dinner. The 6 year old had pizza at a birthday party. The 9 year old had microwave mac and cheese – only we don’t have a microwave, so I just put hot water in the cup. It was not the best, truth be told. Do not recommend. I had some Vietnamese scallion pancakes that I had picked up at the Farmer’s market, plus some sliced cucumbers from our yard. The Husband and the 14 year old just snacked through the evening.
Are you holding on to summer or have you moved to fall? What’s your favorite song to sing loudly in the car with the windows down? Any small but not urgent fixes get done lately?