Hanging on, sort of…’tis the season

OH MAN you guys, this past week! Was pretty nuts. I knew it going in and it did not disappoint.

Let’s do a run down of why I had a “sense of impending doom” last Sunday, while also trying to enjoy all the happy things and festive season…

Lol, this meme made me laugh. 😅

Here we go:

Monday 12/1

Kicked off the week with a 9 a.m. doctor appt for Ethan on the far opposite side of Madison, at rush hour. We decided to carpool and just take one car, since I also had to go to a college planning appointment at his school at 12:15 (also on other side of town).

Ethan and I grabbed a quick breakfast after the appt- this was nice! Then I dropped him at school and went to work at a coffee shop right by his school until the 12:15 meeting. (EVERY SINGLE SEAT was taken in the (large) coffee shop! Jeepers. Finally snagged a table.)

At 12:15 Ivan and I met up at school for the college planning appt with Ethan’s pre-college advisor. It went really well! We talked about preliminary thoughts on colleges-as of now, his criteria are “within 4 hours of driving, a bigger school, ideally a more urban setting”. It definitely makes it a little easier if you’re narrowing it geographically! On the negative side, “big urban areas” within that radius are fairly limited… Ha.

She recommended then considering touring in Madison (of course), Milwaukee, Chicago (?!), Minnesota and possibly Iowa. She explained that if he really isn’t sure and doesn’t have experience with this, it can be nice to just SEE a splattering of different schools (and different areas/ different styles/ different sizes), if even for comparison’s sake or to rule something out.

As of right now, he thinks his front runner choices would be #1 UW- Madison or #2 Marquette University, but he has done exactly 0 campus tours so far, so, I guess we’ll see! It’s not easy to get in to UW Madison, either, even for strong applicants, so he definitely needs to keep options open. (I’d like him to at least tour a couple of smaller schools, too! He says he wants big- which is fine, it’s his choice!- but I want him to make an informed decision. I also shared with him that my Econ 101 class at UW Madison freshman year had like, 500 people in the double-decker lecture hall (Ag Hall!)… how does he feel about that??)

I then waited/ worked remotely for another couple hours before picking up Ethan and then driving almost 60 minutes home because it was SNOWING and there was a big back up on the interstate where 2 trucks ended up in the ditch. Argh. We also stopped at Target so Ethan could pick up his birthday gift for Asher (gaming headphones).

Monday summary= Good, productive, enjoyable and also oddly a bit tiring… I guess just very out of the ordinary from my “typical” Mondays.

Tuesday 12/2

Asher’s 16th birthday! I already recapped it here.

But this was also an abnormal day- 6 a.m. birthday donut run, road test with Asher at 8:40, stop off for celebratory treat, etc. I did manage to squeeze in my gym workout in the afternoon and then after work I had to rush to wrap Asher’s presents before dinner out…the day started very early and I didn’t stop moving (or working) until after presents were opened at (checking time stamp..9:09 p.m.).

Tuesday summary= exciting and happy day! Also, is it only Tuesday?

Wednesday 12/3

I had a hot tub repair appt at 9:30 this day. Last weekend I noticed that the display panel (where you adjust the temp and turn on the jets) was totally dead. Fortunately the jets and heater still worked (all on auto mode) but we couldn’t control anything.

I had called and described the issue and the guy said he’d come over. He gets out of his truck, looks at the display panel (without even opening the side of the hot tub or literally doing anything), and goes, “Oh, yeah, you need a new display panel.” And then he charged me $84.50 for a service call.

Ummm…. ? 🤨 I said to him, as I begrudgingly got out my checkbook, “You know, maybe based on what I had described over the phone, you could have had me just send you a photo to confirm it’s what you thought and we could have just ordered the part first.” And then I said, “No offense, but you didn’t actually DO anything…”….. (as I handed over my hard earned $84….). Seriously, he was there for all of 3 minutes!

He seemed maybe mildly sheepish but not really and was like, Don’t worry, I’ll give you a price break when I come back to install it. 🙄 Yeah, right. I think ultimately he knew darn well that these displays don’t last forever and if I’m saying it’s totally dead, the only way to fix it is to just replace it! I doubt he even needed to “look at it first”. But it’s an easy buck to drive over to tell me that. Hmph.

Well, Ivan was even more pissed. We ordered the parts online yesterday and Ivan says that per YouTube, it shouldn’t be too hard to install himself and that I should NOT ask Mr. Hot Tub guy back.

On Wednesday afternoon from 3-4:30 p.m. I also had to lead a big (long) presentation/meeting at work that I was essentially dreading in the background all week. (It went totally fine! Also glad it’s over.)

Oh, then I still had a volleyball game Wednesday night at 7:40 p.m. at the gym. Where I proceeded to get hit in the face with a ball so hard that my whole head and neck reverberated and I am pretty sure based on symptoms that I got a mild concussion!!! 😬 Still couldn’t resist a drink with the girls after and got home after 10 pm.

Wednesday summary= Moderately stressed all day waiting to give that presentation while simultaneously annoyed at the hot tub guy and why is everything so expensive.

Thursday 12/4

I woke up with a persistent headache following the volleyball incident, which lingered all day long. Fortunately, this was my only “breather day” of sorts in the week. I didn’t have many meetings and it was pretty low key, thankfully, because I felt off all day. I skipped my planned gym workout because my head really hurt.

Finally by evening I was feeling better and did a little online Christmas shopping, etc. I did end up on the phone at night for almost an hour back and forth sorting out some mix up with the boys swim team suit order. (I had sent the box to practice with Asher, thinking he would, you know, hand them out. But no, the boys just started all pawing through the box without referencing the name/size list, so a couple kids took the wrong size and one kid who didn’t even order a suit somehow ended up with 2 suits (!!!)…. anyway, several texts and calls later, we found the ‘missing’ suits and all was well. 🙃 Note to self: next time go hand them out myself.)

Thursday summary: I needed a whack in the head like a hole in the head this week.

Friday 12/5

Friday I started the day with a relaxing yoga video but then had to hustle to get ready and out the door for a meeting at the hospital.

I know this is normal practice for many (most) working people, but I have worked remotely for 10 years now. And even when I worked full time on site, my shifts started at 7 a.m., so I used to just get up, shower, and leave before anyone was even awake! Ivan dealt 100% with getting the kids up and ready and to daycare.

Now, getting up and ready while 3 others are too, plus add in walking and feeding a dog before leaving, plus rush hour commute (vs quieter 6:15 a.m., like I used to), ALWAYS feels chaotic to me. (I am sure I would adjust if I did it daily, but, thankfully, I don’t.)

(If you’re keeping track, this is also now my 4th day this week that I either had somewhere to be or something to do first thing in the morning (not counting school drop off). Haha. (Just mentioning this because it’s unusual and it honestly contributed to this week just feeling more off kilter.))

Anyway, the meeting was fine and I headed home right after. My day felt all chopped up though, with the commute home in the middle.

I also had to call the doctor (+ 2 subsequent call backs from the nurse) to get ear drops ordered for Asher- he frequently gets swimmer’s ear and think he has it brewing only ~2 weeks into the season…

I worked right up until 4:30 p.m. and then quickly changed, let Charlie out and was at the pool by 5:00 for Asher’s first meet of the season! A home meet, which means volunteering. Fortunately, the girls’ team showed up and relived the parents of the timing positions, so I got to watch from the bleachers! Ivan met me there after work. Asher did well and it was fun to kick off the season!

Following the meet, we were supposed to (maybe) go to my work holiday party. (Drinks/ dessert only, from 7-10 pm at a place downtown.) I had RSVP’ed yes weeks ago, optimistically thinking, why yes, I’m sure come December 5th, I’ll feel like racing out of the swim meet late on Friday night after a crazy week, going home, changing into dressy clothes and then driving downtown (late) in dark, frigid, snowy weather to mingle at 9p.m.!! 😅😅 Nice idea, past Kaelyn.

Current Kaelyn was yawning in the bleachers at 5:35 and was like, yeah, not happening. Hahaha. Oh well. We ended opting for Plan B, which was to join all the other swim parents at a local (much closer, but also cutely decorated for Christmas!) place for post-meet dinner and drinks. Thankfully I got a second wind and this was actually super fun!!

Friday summary: TGIF!

Saturday 12/6

After a night of swimming on Friday, we basically slept and went back to the pool (this time the opposing high school’s pool) for a (bigger and longer) Invitational meet. Well, I did- Ivan skipped this meet and spent the morning out car shopping with Ethan. (No purchase yet but maybe getting closer?)

It was COLD OUTSIDE and I wore these new navy blue baggy sweatpants Ivan picked up for me recently while returning something at the Nike store. They’re so comfy!

I sat in the bleachers and cheered from ~9:30 a.m. to ~1:15 p.m., which is long enough that my butt was literally sore from sitting there by the end.

It was a fun meet, though, and the parents all sat together. It is LOUD and VERY STIMULATING in those pools though, so not exactly relaxing! ha. But I do love it.

After the meet Asher went to Culver’s with the team, and I met up with Ivan and Ethan at Chipotle! I was starving. (And had resisted the pizza slices at the concession stand.) We chatted about some car options they saw, and then actually swung back to a dealership so I could look at and test drive one of the front runners. Ethan then had to work (at Panera), and Ivan and I went home.

I was pretty spent by that point, which was late Saturday afternoon. Really, nothing in this week was “hard” per se, and as Ivan pointed out, “it’s all just regular life stuff”, but it just felt like a lot of moving parts, I guess.

I ended up spending a long time sitting by the fire and reconciling/ updating our expenses in Monarch on my laptop, which I had ignored for too long now, and then we watched an episode of Boots with Asher and eating a big bowl of popcorn. 🙂

Saturday summary: We officially made it through everything that was on the calendar for this week!

Sunday 12/7

And this brings us to yesterday. There was, mercifully, NOTHING on the calendar for Sunday. (Besides my ginormous to-do list of all the things we didn’t get to but wanted to during the busy week…).

I finished updating our other finance spreadsheet in the morning (oh, I also woke up stupidly early despite going to bed WAY too late Saturday night…), did some general house clean up, a big fridge clean out, made huevos a la mexicana while Ivan did all the laundry, and then made a meal plan + grocery list for the week.

Asher had to work (but could drive himself!) and I headed to the gym for strength while Ivan headed for groceries.

There was a big Packers/Bears game at 3:25 that we definitely wanted to be done with any “chores” by then! We were, and I greatly enjoyed laying on the couch by the tree + fire with both boys! during the game.

(I also did sneak in a little online Christmas shopping on my phone in between breaks.)

After the game I made myself do a 30 minute cardio workout (I missed it on Saturday). I opted to just do the 12-3-30 incline walking treadmill workout (while watching part of Home Alone on TV, lol.) I didn’t have it in me to do a Caroline Girvan cardio on Sunday night! haha.

Sunday summary: Pleeeeease can the weekend be longer, I still have 95 things on my to-do list?!!

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And with that long-winded recap, we’re at Monday. The good news is, this week should be lighter! (HAHAHA 🤣🤣 no it won’t be, I just reviewed my calendar and it looks about as bad.)

On the docket:

• Mon- boys ortho appts (done, this morning- they drove themselves!). Asher has a no school day today and is now at swim practice.
• Mon- K- swim board meeting tonight
• Tues- K dentist appt tomorrow 12:00
• Wed- K tele health appt 1:30
• Thurs- volunteer at swim team pasta dinner (need to either make, or honestly, I’m probably gonna borrow my BIL’s Costco membership and just buy some premade pans, a bunch of pasta/sauce!)
• Friday- haircut in afternoon + another swim meet –> followed by my volleyball team’s Christmas PJ party/ cookie exchange –> which means I need to somehow also buy ingredients + make a few dozen Christmas cookies before Friday night…
• Saturday- swim meet invitational (1 hour away)

Somewhere in there we also need to finalize Christmas shopping!!! Ivan and I have an in-home “date” set for 8 pm tonight, at our rec room bar, to go through what we have, what we still need, etc. We leave for Ireland a week from Friday, omg!!! 🤪🤪 Which also means the usual pre-travel errand + eventual packing….

DANG it’s really been a lot lately. Whew. What I would like to unwrap under the Christmas tree is a plane ticket to fly by myself (ok, maybe I’d bring Ivan) to a secluded beach where I don’t have to do a single thing, or maybe even talk to anyone 😅, for at least 3 days.

On the plus side!:

• the snow is pretty!
• I love fireplace season
• I love the constant backdrop of Christmas music (while working, at home, in the car…basically 24/7)
• I love the twinkle lights
• swim season is super fun and I love watching Asher swim
• I loved my special snowy day in the car/ errands/appts with Ethan last Monday
• I love cozy clothes season
• I love that I don’t have anything too stressful or crazy on the work calendar this week 🙌

Daily Gratitude:

I am grateful for a big Packers win yesterday!! So exciting.