Work life has gotten busy for me. When work gets busy, therefore occupying a lot of mental space, I’m stretched out thin by about 8pm when home life starts winding down. From that hour until bed time, I owe it to myself to carve time for lounging with Jon or doing small mental plans for meals, to check my personal to-dos, spend a few minutes thinking about the coming weekend/weekends for family fun.
I stopped bringing my work home a long time ago. Going on 6 years in fact. Despite being given an option to access my work computer from home, I have not done so and I don’t plan to. I don’t want to make my work email accessible because as soon as I do, that would fill my head with anticipated work. From that moment until I get to work, I run the risk of not giving my full attention to what happens in between. What’s the point of having quantity of time without attention?
Yet, despite all of that my work crept a bit into my home life when I printed a document I wrote to review because I ran out of time in the office. Though it took less than 15 minutes to do it, that was not a good sign.
While in the middle of all that busy work life, there was a birthday party to organize, weekends to enjoy (especially with longer daylight hours and warmer temps!), and TV series to catch up on. I’ve been giving Liam 5 hours straight a day in the weekend only with me, while Jon relaxes for a few hours doing laundry and random house work (oxymoron I know but that’s relaxation for us now). Once we’re home, Daddy takes over and I do my bit of house work. We try to chill on Sundays at home, but that tends to fail as we approach summer.
Jon took me to my first NBA game. We were close to the court, enough to see the players’ faces clearly. I enjoyed it, but I could’ve enjoyed it more had the Blazers played against a competitive team. I don’t know about other teams but Portlanders enjoy free chalupas when the Blazers score 100 points.
We’ve been following Downton Abbey, Alcatraz, Once Upon A Time and Grimm. We got rid of cable after trying it again for a few months. It just doesn’t work for us anymore, so we’re back on Netflix and Hulu. In the midst of that, there are Words with Friends, Scramble with Friends, Instagram, Facebook and personal emails that suck time. Oh well.
Liam will be 4 on Monday and he has really grown. There’s so much of him that developed too fast and he has turned into a little boy who discusses with us, gives his opinions, and gets more involved with activities like cooking. One night when I checked on him before going to bed, in the dark I thought I was looking at him as a baby. I sat on his bed to hold on to that odd visual we get in darkness. I admit, I truly miss the baby years although each year was unique and brought our family to new and different levels of fun. Sometimes Jon and I wonder why and how we got lucky to have such an offspring. Oh, his art work was featured on What My Kids’ Art Says.
The half-dance-half-gym class is not working for Liam. Sadly, we’re paid for February but I started looking elsewhere nonetheless. We managed to find him a suitable dance class at another place because the one that he goes to doesn’t have spots for other classes for his age group. He doesn’t like being the only boy in the class where all girls wear pink tutus. We think he feels out of place and that his interests are trumped by the majority. I tried to encourage him by saying that I’ll speak to his instructor about introducing different song genres, like New Wave that he loves so much, but he said that it wouldn’t make a difference. Seriously he did! He’s so grown up it makes me want to cry. The new place is very close to home. I look forward to taking him there on bikes with Jon.
Something in me clicked a month ago about eating less meat. As of late, my work week meals consist of coffee, baby carrots, celery sticks, blueberries or some other fruit, and maybe a sandwich. I still have desserts after dinner, though not religiously, but I feel less puffy nowadays. I may take up running again and include Beckett so that he can get his regular exercise. We’ll see if I get some traction on that.
I guess my point is that there’s always so much to do!
