Blech, I need a do-over of yesterday.
It was not my best day. Nothing terrible happened, but I was just off. Actually, I have felt a bit off all week. My brain has just been so DISTRACTED!! I don’t know. Too many things on my mind I guess, and then it ends up that I’m neither here nor there when I’m doing other things.
I know next week is going to be crazy busy, so I may be in part anticipating that and trying to “think ahead” to things I need to do…. but it’s not helping the “now”.
Oh, and I’m also feeling some driving fatigue in our evenings right now. Ethan’s 5:00 soccer practice is kind of killing me. It’s 3x/ week, and Ivan is flat out NOT HOME YET at that time. So I have to drive him every time, and Asher has had volleyball 4:30-5:45 on 2 of 3 of those days, too.
So it goes like:
-Leave home. Drive Asher to VB. Go home. Kill ~15 minutes, then drive Ethan to soccer in opposite direction by 5. Go back home. Have another ~20 minutes to kill, then go pick Asher up at 5:45. Go home (or straight to swim practice, on Mondays). On Thursdays, Asher has swim at 6:30. SO after 5:45 VB pickup, I only have another 30 minutes before we need to leave again for swim! And then Ethan has to get picked up at 6:30, too- but fortunately usually Ivan is home and can pick up there.
AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!! Make it stop. 😂
Ok, I mean, it’s not awful- I like the time in the car with the boys and stuff. But all the little “fragments of time” are killing me! And since it all starts right after work, I feel like I get launched into all this running right away with no breather. And I’m usually also trying to figure out how to pull some sort of dinner together, amid all of this, too.
ANYWAY! It’s a season, it’s temporary, and in a few weeks, activities and schedules shift again, so there’s really no use in getting my feathers all ruffled over this.
(I realized yesterday one big difference right now is that we have no CARPOOLS going on!!! Normally we carpool for swim, but with Asher’s busy/ intermittent schedule right now, we couldn’t really commit to carpool days. I am the carpool right now. 😩)
On the plus side, Ivan does handle most of the later pickups once he’s home (from soccer and the back end of swim), so that is one good thing.
A few good moments from the week:
- We had sunshine for Ethan’s Wednesday soccer game. This is about the only good thing, because it was actually freezing by the second half.
- Sunset over a neighboring empty soccer field:
- Asher reading in the sunroom after school yesterday:
- I got out for a walk this morning, early, after literally not walking AT ALL or working out yesterday. See above/ the whole day was just off, and I basically gave up and just decided to scratch any attempts of salvaging it. But, today is a new day!! 😉
- Driving home from soccer practice, my day yesterday felt “redeemed” when I was alone in the car and it was sunny out and Britney Spears’ “Oops, I did it again” came on the radio. I mean, yes!!! Nothing like an almost 40 year old mom in a minivan and wearing a cardigan singing along to, “I’m not. that. innocent!” OOPS I… did it again…. I played with your heart….got lost in the game…. oh baby, baby…. 😅😅
Ok, worky work time- have a good Friday!!!
Daily Gratitude:
I am grateful for sunglasses.
GRATEFUL KAE 
There must be something in the water – I also had an “off” week, too, and know SHU blogged about feeling uneasy.
Our weather was the pits until today. Cloudy, overcast, some rain and COLD. Ugh. I think this has a disproportionate impact on my efficiency, mood, and level of motivation.
Asher reading in the sunroom is just…the best.
And I was musing about not being able to recognize the “last” of things this week too. There was a last time I fed my kids a bedtime bottle, a last time I rocked them to sleep in a onesie set of jammies, a last time I buckled them into their stroller, a last time I changed their diaper…etc. It’s a bit crazy how certain activities in motherhood (or just life more generally) feel like they will last forever and then you blink and they’re done – FOREVER – but without us usually being aware. It’s a bit of a staggering thought, actually.
I also think sometimes the best thing I can do it just wave my white flag for the day and focus on getting through it. There will be a time after this, as Nicole so wisely tells us ❤
Hope you have a great weekend.
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Yes, I know they say you can “re-start the day” at any point, but sometimes it actually feels better to sort of just surrender the rest of the hours and have a clean slate the next day. 😉
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Yes, there are days when I feel like I have a second job as an uber driver getting the kids where they need to be.
I will always love Baby One More Time. I first heard it on The Work Trip From Hell. I had a long drive in the darkness through a storm. This was way before mp3 players let alone phones so I was at the mercy of whatever I could pick up on the radio. Baby One More Time, an Eminem song, and Christina Aguilera’s first song had all just come out and they were getting a lot of air play. Those three songs literally got me through that night.
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Such great, fun songs!! 90s music is the best for singing along to in the car. I don’t know why I don’t put on 90s playlists more often. That music brings me so many happy memories. 🙂 (Though in this case it sounds like you might associate this song with that bad storm!!! Hopefully you think of it positively, as the beacon of light in the dark night 😉 )
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I’d be singing along to Britney right along with you! But Will actually tells me to stop singing when I sing. In the words of Stephanie Tanner of Full house: “How rude!!” I love singing along to songs but he always tells me to stop. He is a demanding toddler as he has opinions about how loud the music is and will tell us to turn the heat off, too.
That is a lot of driving! I’m glad it’s temporary and that you can use car pools for things like swimming.
Re: the park – while you are wistful for a time when you took the boys to the park, I am so very excited for a time when I can actually sit on a bench at the park. Last summer I remember texting my little sister to tell her someone was at the park with their kids READING A NEWSPAPER! Her daughter is close in age to Will so she texted back and told me how someone was knitting when she was at the park recently. We were both like #lifegoals. Park visits are still very hands on for us, especially with Will who is more of a dare devil and wants to do what big brother is doing. But I know someday I will get to sit on a park bench and read a book or stare off into space. 🙂
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That’s SO FUNNY about Will!!! Hahaha, I can just imagine it- a crabby little old man toddler, “Turn down all that racket!!” lol!
Yes, believe it or not, eventually you can sit and read at the park! When my boys were younger, we also went through a phase where we visited those indoor McDonald’s/ restaurant playlands a LOT. That was one of my favorite things to do in the winter on a cold morning (though I know, they are kinda gross, but we all survived). I could get something to drink and sit and read or do whatever while they played in an enclosed space! It was great.
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Ohh that is a lot of driving! I would be feeling off, too if I did that amount of driving (my kids are still small: 3 and 5). One day I probably will! 🙂
The picture of your son reading with a box of cheezits is amazing, I get such great energy from that shot! In NJ we have rain, rain, rain all weekend long so trying to come up with things to do. In the house.
Have a great weekend!
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It’s really true that parenting is just always changing! The constant hands-on parenting from the toddler years goes away, but then it morphs into other demanding needs, like all the driving! Oh well, it’s all got its pluses and minuses.
We are having rain rain here too this weekend! I’m glad we got some sun this week, though I don’t feel like I really capitalized on enjoying as much as I should have…. just an off week for me over here all around!
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Hope this coming week is a bit better!
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we all have those days when it seems that to-do list is never ending. a lot of driving makes me anxious… thus I try to minimize going out when I know there’s a lot of traffic. I got to appreciate husband more now that he takes the girls to things.
hope you get time to chill this weekend. leaving space to do nothing really helps the mind to rest.
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I think we’re just in a season of life where we aren’t going to have great big wide open spaces right now. But, on the other hand, in just over 4 years Ethan will be graduating high school and probably moving out of the house to go to college!!! So, I’m trying to remember that in theory, I will have much more free time then. Trying to enjoy the busy now while it lasts 🙂 although it can still sometimes be tiring.
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Ugh, that is so much driving! That sounds honestly exhausting. Well, as you say, it’s a season of life and at some point it will be over. The upside is I find the kids to be very chatty when I have them in the car, trapped!
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I sadly agree, that is a lot of driving… and I am assuming there is no other way to get to these practices than by car? I was happy to learn (when I was back home in April) that my sister does a fair amount of driving (to and from sports practices), but there are also days where the kids can go by bike esp with summer approaching. So convenient.
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