Feel Good
They say the days are long and the years are short the more you age, and sometimes I feel that deep in my bones when hours crawl and I wallow in 'boredom' (which is a lie, I am never actually bored), but most of the time I feel like I operate at maximum efficiency trying to use every second of the day to its full capacity. It's unsustainable, but it's necessary right now.
There isn't really an option to not with life and work and kids and dogs and self-care and everything that pops up in the crevices between. Sometimes I yearn for nothingness, but most of the time the reality is that I can't stop/won't stop and can think of nothing worse than withering away with nothing to do.
I know there is peace in silence; I also know my brain has never once in my conscious life been quiet and that I've learned to find peace in other ways.
After coming up for air after the past two weeks of days off and the flu and cancelled plans and ear infections and travel and a funeral and a stomach bug and a dog having an anaphylactic reaction and basketball and swimming and my manager leaving and and and ... this week feels dull in comparison.
I'm trying to embrace it without the hurry-hurry-hurry-rush-rush-rush feeling, and I've felt a certain amount of overwhelming calm that I think I'm likening to being in the eye of the hurricane. I'm also touching into that impending sense of doom feeling...
and I'm trying to tease apart whether that spiral is legitimate or some of my typical catastrophizing. Is this an eye? Is the back half of the storm going to come at me full force over the next few months... or is it going to dissipate and become just fearmonging like in so many storms?
In the meantime, I can only try to take solace in the smaller moments - reading with the kids at night, rocking and singing Hailey to sleep, morning dog walks, human connection and conversations - and accept that I only have the power to control so much.
Do Good
I took this kids this weekend to visit some friends in Charlotte, and we all had a blast. Charlie and their daughter are weeks apart (we met through Baby Slack, this amazing (Reddit-originating) community I'm a part of with about 100 other moms with January 2020 babies),
and the three of them interacted seamlessly for the two days as they ran through awesome outdoor playgrounds and climbed on rocks and raced in Mario Kart... and who knows what else, because apparently one of the joys of having kids finally old enough to play independently with each other is not having to watch them like a hawk the entire time (who knew we'd ever get to this point).
We went to the Whitewater Center and the Daniel Stowe Conservancy, which was perfect because it about 70deg out (in early March!), and we're all a little ready for some spring.
Fun Fact: Way back in 2018, my mom, grandmother and I ventured from Southern Pines to Monroe (right outside of Charlotte) to retrieve a very tiny puppy Georgia... on this exact weekend. I've been to Charlotte only once aside from that time, so something-something about the weird synchronicity of life.
It was a great break from the norm, and I'm really happy we were able to coordinate a time to go.
Look Good
I've toyed over the years with starting some sort of fashion blog/account - I've always (his started when I was super young, where apparently even as a 1-year-old, I was doing 'fashion shows' and mixing and matching my own outfits) taken some delight in getting dressed and exercising a bit of creativity to put outfits together. More than that though, I LOVE the chase of finding a good bargain and almost never (realistically, probably never) actually pay full price for anything.
The real annoyance though is that while I make a habit of working out, showering and getting fully dressed every day, working from home means I typically only ever am seen from shoulders up or in the five minutes I stand outside of the school for pick-up. This might be the sole reason I miss having an office job... but not enough to ever go back to the dark side.
Anyway, here's where I landed this week.
We had an abrupt switch from 40deg to 70deg between Monday and Tuesday (and the rest of the week) with varying clouds and sun, and I haven't retrieved my summer clothes from the depths of my office closet yet. I also had the purple skirt/white shirt combo on one morning, and literally minutes before starting my first meeting spilled an entire cup of coffee down me, so it was a quick pivot to it's darker red and black twin.
Some highlights: the shorts in two are J Crew and probably my favorite chinos ever, and while I have the navy and white, I'm regretting not buying dupes in every color to cycle through for future years. I have a reallllly hard time finding shorts I like. Shirts are from J Crew, Amazon and Madewell, skirts are from Anthropolgie (via Nuuly) and Target, and shoes are Amazon, Sam Edelman loafers, Cariuma sneakers, and Toms. I've not been a huge fan of the sneaker look, I've been grabbing them more lately to dress down things but also mostly because I walk Daphne daily, and it's just easier.
...And, That's a Wrap
That's all for this week - next week looks... uneventful? and warm again?! So hopefully we can just keep swimming along.