Busy, Busy

I live for rest time on the weekends. The number of Zoom meetings I have during the week exhausts me. By Friday evening I just want to go to bed immediately after logging off.

These days the second shift really starts after work as I try to help Hope work towards some sense of normalcy after the summer drama. I try to spend a few hours of quality time with her and try to get her up and around a bit. It’s not easy, but we’re getting better at achieving a few small goals everyday.

This weekend I was determined to get us up and out to enjoy the gorgeous 80 degree days. Yesterday I got us up and out to visit a farm to do some good shopping: fresh pressed cider, apples, tomatoes, honey, and jams. Then we got Whole Paycheck for a sorbet Hope had been wanting to try. Then we headed home to watch Lucifer on Netflix while I made a dog sweater for a colleague.

We celebrated the election results, and enjoyed a special moment watching VP-elect Kamala Harris give her speech. Gotta say, watching that speech with my daughter was something I will never forget. For me it was reminescent of Obama’s first term and all the emotions I felt then.

Today I’ve been up since about 3:30am when Hope’s early morning insomnia antics disturbed my sleep. Since then I’ve been on the move, cooking, cleaning, bathing Yappy, finishing the dog sweater, returning Amazon items, shopping for new sheets, meal planning, reworking a slide deck for a workshop I’m conducting tomorrow, cleaning the kitchen a second time, and do on and so on.

I’m finally sitting, noshing on some reheated chicken fingers, thinking about just crawling into bed. I’m so exhausted.

And tomorrow, the rat race starts all over. I’m taking some time off later this month and a couple of weeks next month. Of course that means nothing tonight. This adulting thing is so dang hard.

Yesterday, on the long back from the farm, Hope asked me what were the top 5 things about being an adult… That weren’t material. It was one of the best and most challenging questions she’s ever asked. I talked about learning about myself, learning to be authentic, the joy of constantly learning, the freedom to do most of what I want with little consequence, and then Grammy called and I was spared from coming up with the final reason.

The exercise really did make me think hard about my own life and how I want to encourage Hope to keep pushing forward. Adulting is hella hard; it’s great but it’s really hard. Hope sees that and her first brushes with adulting have made her rethink independence all together. I low-key don’t blame her some days.

This is another busy week ahead, another week of adulting and another week of nudging Hope towards the same. Wish us luck