A Day In The Life: March 8, 2018

My day started earlier than I wanted it to when I was woken not by the alarm, but by Nettle yowling outside our bedroom door at 6 am. Needless to say, David didn't even stir. Probably she could have yowled for 15 minutes without waking the kids either, but there was no point in waiting since I would never get back to sleep. So I let her downstairs and, rather than play her favorite game of "lead the sleepy human around the entire house pretending you want water when you really just want to lick the dry toilet paper roll," I cut straight to the chase and put her in the garage with her food bowl. Then I grabbed 50 more minutes of sleep.
My actual alarm is a "smart" one in my watch that is supposed to buzz as soon as it senses I am awake between 6:55 and 7:30. As usual, I woke right before 6:55. Less typically I got up and dressed without too much self pity. A month or so back I decided to start my days right by rising before the rest of the family so I could pray over them and the coming day before taking a walk. This is where I'm supposed to say something sappy and spiritual like that since I began this practice both my spiritual and temporal life has been transformed as I've drawn closer to God and sensed His clear direction and blessing on my life. Unfortunately this would not be true. I started off pretty well with a great prayer system, but predictably I've become increasingly bored with it since about week 3. I've found myself skipping over large bits and phoning it in on the others. I'm not proud of this, but there it is.  And I'm not giving up. Even if I am not operating on a spiritual high plane, I do function much better if I am up and running well before the kids, and I know that I need to learn patience as much as anything. Also, I came across a great Lent Bible Study through Matthew on YouVersion which I read and listen to while on my walk. Admittedly I always combine this walk with Pokemon Go, but it keeps me motivated. Weather permitting I go up to the park, knock out the Pokemon gym, and head back home, listening to 2 or 3 chapters on the way over the 20 minute walk. Weather was not permitting today: it was drizzly and dreary. So I took a much shorter walk to the Pokestop on the near corner.
I arrived home earlier than usual and took a few minutes to poke through a few Words with Friends games and Facebook posts before frying up some hash browns. (Yesterday's writing project involved decorating "Potato People," and I wasn't willing to let the materials go to waste!) As the girls were up and the skillet was hot, I also mixed up some GF pancake batter I'd picked up at Whole Paycheck a few days ago. David and I happily ate the hash browns, but as hard as I tried to sell them, the girls were only interested in the pancakes. Maybe if I made the hashbrowns heart shaped? Or maybe just go back to cereal like the other 8 in 10 days.
The girls were long finished with breakfast before James (who had to be prompted) was even stirring. He's in a pattern of staying up late and sleeping in right now, which I haven't been worrying about since he's reading in his room and I don't really care all that much if we start school at 9 am on the dot. That said there are down sides.
A couple of days ago Grace decided that she was going to be a teacher. Lucy's teacher specifically. She had me draw up a schedule with 4 subjects and 2 recesses, dug up a backpack, begged a snack from me, set up a little desk among the discarded clothing, blankets, and toys on their floor, and is apparently making Lucy do her letter worksheets.  I see from my blog that Grace was studiously teaching Lucy to write her name about a year ago - and succeeded - so I am absolutely not interfering with this as long as Lucy wants to play along! They headed up to get dressed and do "school" around 8:45.
Meanwhile James ate the rest of the pancakes. ("Make more next time, Mommy!" "Get up before they're all gone and the kitchen is cleaned up!") He wanted more food and argued vehemently that he ought not have to sit down and do math with me next. I was equally adamant that he would: Mom was going to be here at 10 and I wanted to accomplish something academic before writing off the rest of the day. We plugged through intro to long division for about 15 minutes before she arrived, but once she did there was barely time to assign some very minimal copy-work to Grace before I had to rush off to the Chiropractor.
I will file this subject under "It sucks to get old." The visit was prompted by lower back pain that I managed to exacerbate about 10-12 days ago through a combination of a too-soft mattress and an abortive attempt to restart my exercise program. I thought the Yoga and Pilates workouts I'd selected were plenty low key, but that Saturday I woke up in serious pain that persisted all day and barely budged with NSAIDs. It's much better now than it was then, but a visit was still in order.
I hadn't been in over 3 years so I had to do all the new patient stuff, and ended up not getting home until 12:15.
Normally we go to McDonald's with my mom on Thursdays, but since Grace was officially diagnosed with Celiac last month, there's absolutely nothing food-like on their menu that she can eat. There are other options around town that can accommodate her, but none of them hit that sweet spot of price, decent food, pleasant atmosphere, and place for the kids to play while Mom and I talk.
The compromise proposal is to eat lunch here and hit McDonald's for dessert afterwards. I hadn't made a good plan for this today, but on the way home I remembered that we had the makings for grilled cheese and resolved to make this as soon as arriving.
Everyone was happy enough when I got in: Mom and James were playing Blokus, Lucy was entertaining herself with Perler beads, and Grace was reading a "graphic novel." Unfortunately I'd no sooner walked in than I was hit with a belly ache that was absolutely unignorable and quickly progressed to disabling. I was very glad Mom was there to take over the food prep. Belly aches haven't been that common for me over the past few years, and I find it highly ironic, suspicious, and frustrating that I've been hit with two this very week, roughly 10 days into my own GF regime. (Which I probably shouldn't even be doing right now since I haven't had the Celiac blood test or endoscopy and won't for three more weeks, but that's another story.) This afternoon I couldn't even find a comfortable position, which is even more rare not to mention highly unwelcome. After a bunch of twisting and contorting I finally managed something I could live with, and perhaps 15 minutes later I was all better. Why? Who knows. I decided to stay in bed with my book just in case while they finished up lunch down stairs.
I was ready to face the world again around 1:30. Mom had made me a sandwich - on regular bread. I'd forgotten to tell her I was testing out the GF thing, and I've gotten so superstitious about it that I didn't want to eat the wheat. So I chose not to say anything and stuck a GF granola bar in my pocket to eat at McDonald's with my yogurt parfait. After the usual delay over coats and shoes, we got there around 1:45 and ordered everyone ice cream. Did I mention that I also have a terrible canker sore on the bottom of my tongue which has proven impervious to my secret weapon of "Canker-Rid" medication? This made my granola bar pretty darned unpleasant, but the mocha frappe helped make up for it. I left the second half of the bar in my pocket.
Mom has to be heading home by 3, and that's about the time we made it back to our place. She took off and I, feeling distinctly unpleasant (but at least no longer with a belly ache) was hoping to grab a nap, but there were other things demanding my attention. Grace is super fired up about a play she has written and is directing with the semi-voluntary participation of the gaggle of girls at church. Today she insisted that she (we) need to work on props. As supportive as I am of the endeavor in theory, I feel compelled to pull her down to earth quite frequently. Her eyes are way bigger than her stomach on the prop thing, but James helped out by finding a pretty good cardboard box that I was able to sell to her as a one-size-fits-all combination castle and witch's tower. But by the time I'd helped her through the planning stages, prevented her from ruining the box, and hunted down various other costume pieces and whatnot that she needed it was far too late to think about sleeping before dinner.
I revised my dinner plans from "pork chops" to "pasta with sausage," but I was only able to grab about 30 minutes of down-time with my stupid video game before I had to start prep.
I wasn't hungry for the dinner, which we had to eat right at 5 so David could take James and Grace to Tae Kwon Do. This was probably a good thing, because everyone else Was, and the entire pound of rice pasta and 3 sausage links disappeared before they did. (Not that the kids would eat the meat. I don't feel good about sending them off with so few protein calories, but it was beyond me to fight it this evening. They didn't get fruit either today: the apples are gone, the last few oranges moldy, and no-one but Lucy will even consider bananas, which were also brown. I should have offered applesauce cups, but I didn't make it happen. I am a failure.)
The Tae Kwon Do schedule is not ideal right now: Grace's class is 5:50, and James' at 7:10 with a class in between. On the plus side James is usually able to "help" in both Grace's class and the lower belt class afterwards, meaning that on some nights he is getting upwards of 90 minutes of exercise. Tonight Lucy and I joined David at the park below the dojo around 6 pm. It was too wet and cold for Lucy to play, though, so after some obligatory Pokemon Go we headed back to watch James and Grace's class. Somewhere in this timeframe I forced myself to eat the second half of the unexciting and exquisitely painful granola bar. Then I took the girls home and hustled them quickly into bed before it was even 7:30. For the first time in a week they didn't want to share the "tent" I built for them in the gable of their bedroom. I don't even argue at this point: they've gone from refusing to share a bedroom 3 months ago to insisting on sleeping on the floor, together, in that small space. At the same time they've dropped their requirement for lullabies, but Grace definitely wants to read. As long as they're actually sleeping, I'm just going with the flow.
James got home with David around 8 and I coaxed him into bed not too long after that. But when I went to check on him he wanted to talk, which led to one thing and another and it was 9 before I managed to detach, after my obligatory lecture on the need to clean up his darned room.
As of now, I am feeling run down, generally inflamed (worse than usual), sore (because of? despite? the chiropractor), and hungry from lack of real meals all day. I need to find something to eat, but I can't even think of anything Unhealthy around here that I want to go to the trouble of chewing with this ##^$#$%@ canker sore. Maybe a smoothie. But that takes initiative, planning, and cleaning up afterwards besides being cold. Basically I'm cranky, a bit discouraged, and sick of feeling sick and in pain. I'm afraid of taking it out on my husband. Hopefully we can just turn on the TV and let the day coast to a natural end.