It feels like an abdication of citizen responsibility to not watch the news right now, but honestly folks, I am barely keeping it together WITHOUT watching the news, and if I tried to actually track the Trump appointments, etc., I would just spiral into misery and non-function. And my family and students need me to keep functioning.
So I’m basically not looking at the news right now — there’s not much I can do about what’s happening at that level anyway. For me, now is the time to look after my mental health and my family’s — thankfully,
Anand is doing absolutely fine, with a bunch of friends, video games, and lots of Dungeons & Dragons. We don’t see that much of him, but he’s happy, and promised to play a game with me sometime soon. Occasionally, he’ll even pause and talk to me about whatever book he’s reading.
We share Kindle books, so he started reading a fantasy series I’d started, which I wouldn’t have recommended for him, because it’s romantasy, and he’s definitely not interested in romance yet (and apparently at this point, he’s ahead of me, she’s got like 4-5 love interests (depending on whether you count the dead guy)), but I guess there’s enough other plot to keep him engaged, so that’s fine.
Kavi is having a very hard time this week — she’s had illness to deal with (nothing super-serious, but she’s missed some school), which has put her behind, which is stressing her out mightily — she has a tendency to catastrophize, and goes very quickly from missing an assignment or test to “I’m going to flunk everything” to “I just want to drop out of school.” And then there are tears.
We’re trying to help her through it, and I think it’ll be fine, but I hate to see her so miserable. I want to take her away for relaxation; I think she really needs some days off. A lot of days off. But unless she gets caught up on the work, it’s just going to be stressing her out, making it impossible to relax. So right now, she’s just trying to grind through, which is very hard.
And Kevin and I are both exhausted, and have too much work, and last week was so terrible that I basically nope’d out of everything from Thursday – Sunday, which means I’m also very behind and in catch-up mode.
And I’ve had a cold, which had progressed a few days ago to the point where I was coughing so much that my throat had gotten abraded and felt like it was full of knives, and I was starting to lose my voice. I’ve been cosseting it like mad, just mainlining tea with honey, cough drops, and chicken soup for two days straight, trying to keep from coughing at all so it’d have a chance to heal, and I think that’s working, but it’s taking a while and also all the coughing interfered with sleep. All of which is just adding obnoxious insult to national (and international) injury. And my wrist still hurts, dammit.
Kevin and I are mostly focused on managing our own emotional regulation so we don’t spill any of our anxiety and stress onto Kavi, because we’re the adults and she doesn’t need to deal with our baggage on top of her own anxiety. Once I’m healthier, we’re going to try and make ourselves do some fun things together, rather than just hunkering down and enduring, because we clearly need a little fun and joy to balance all the work, exhaustion, and existential dread.
Cleaning helps, when I have the energy, setting this house in order. Gardening helps, nurturing a small growing thing.
Crafting helps. It helps a lot. I can not think, and just focus on making beauty. So I’m mostly alternating making things with necessary computer catchup. I’m bribing myself, essentially, to do the work, and I’m getting through the worst of the backlog. I’ll be healthy again soon, I think. The shock of last week will subside.
Soon Kev and I will go have a nice meal out together, maybe see a movie or go to the comedy club or catch a play. (If there any great, light plays in Chicago right now, recommendations would be very welcome.) We’ll try to find something fun to do with the kids too. We’ll make Thanksgiving dinner, and decorate the house for Christmas, and eventually the semester WILL end, and then it’ll be Christmas, and we’ll go lie on a beach for a little while. For now, that’s enough to plan for.
Here’s a chess set in progress, “Starry Night.” If all goes well, it’ll be at the Shops on Friday, or possibly Saturday. If you’re wanting one of my chess sets for a Christmas gift, I’ll note that I’ll probably only have time to make a few more before Christmas.
I’m not going to be doing many more custom orders before Christmas — focusing on just finishing things for the local shops. The Berwyn Shops close at the end of December, so at that point, I’ll likely put whatever inventory I can fit into Berwyn Sprout, and then start putting the rest online.
Onwards.
