Saturday Stuff

I love this shot of my family that I took today. Johnny looking tough, David looking handsome, and Grace doing her own thing. I've gotten over my traumatic summer school experience and am really enjoying the rest of my summer. Saturdays are spent going to birthday parties and the pool and I've found that I'm cooking more lately. I made chocolate chip cookies with the kids today, and I just finished cooking "the hell out" of a portion of ham that we'll eat tomorrow with homemade potato salad and squash casserole. I know my ham won't taste like my Aunt Sadie's, but her way of cooking all the water out of it (discovered accidentally) is the only way I'll eat ham anymore.

I do have adrenal fatigue and 10 mg of hydrocortisone daily hasn't seemed to boost my energy yet but I keep trying. Our schedules are going to change radically in the fall with Grace and Johnny both in school, me in class on Fridays plus a 12-hour internship plus still working, plus David's schedule. I recently worked out a 24-hour per week work schedule starting in Sept. that will be spread over 4 days (plus the internship, plus the classes). There really won't be much room in our lives not to be on a consistent, regular, schedule. David working late on Mondays while I hang with the kids. Yoga on Tuesdays. Family dinners and no other activities on Wed. Wild card Thursdays with the combination of kids' choir, Weaver Street after hours, me going to yoga and sometimes a work meeting. When school starts I'll check out and print out reading materials on the weekends and read for a couple of hours every evening. I'm committed to not staying up past 11:00 PM, because I need my eight hours of sleep each night. I'm also committed to being home during the bedtime routine as many nights as possible during the week and if I have engagements with friends, I either need to be home by 7:30 PM or go out (on Fridays and Saturdays) after 9:00 PM.

The next two years will be busier than ever with me finishing up my Master's requirements. I may not ever go back to working full-time or even more than 24 hours a week while the kids are in school because it's important for me to be involved with them and their after-school activities as we enter the school years full on. Certain aspects of family life are really important to me like eating together as a family as many nights a week as possible, no tv after a certain hour and adhering (even if very minutely at first) to a responsibility chart. We've started this somewhat complicated "good-chip" weekly chart whereby the kids have 35 "good-chips" at the start of the week and each time they do something wrong in one of 5 areas, they lose that chip for that day. At the end of the week, we count up how many good chips they have left and based on that number they get to pick a prize. 30-35 chips allows you to pick from the best prize box, 20-29, the next best, and 0-19 the least desirable. Kind of like a Chuck-E-Cheeses system. I always feel sorry for my kids who after getting what they think is a respectable 45 tickets at the end of a party only qualify for one lousy tootsie roll. We're two weeks into the system and it's somewhat working. David even gets prizes based on how well he adheres to the system.

Speaking of David, he really knows how to push my buttons. I had a load of professional clothes that needed to be dry-cleaned (2 pant suits, one dress suit, another dress, 3 pairs of slacks) and they ended up in the back of his car last weekend. We never got around to dropping them off at the cleaner's so all week he's been driving around with hundreds of dollars worth of my business clothes in his car. Finally, yesterday he reported to me that I'd be happy that he finally got around to taking my clothes in the back of his car to the Thrift Shop. He had me for a minute. Just like he had me a few weeks ago when I was waiting on him and the kids to meet me at the beach. What is supposed to be about a three-hour drive was taking more like 4, 5, almost 6 hours ,and about an hour after I figured they should have been there I texted him to ask him where they were. When he replied "50 miles away at a Denny's waiting on a coke," I was disappointed and surprised, but not as surprised as I was when he called 10 minutes later from the hotel parking lot asking me what room I was in.

David's ability to find ways to make me laugh at every-day situations that I find stressful actually make for a less stressful life.