A New Era: Leaving the Kids at Home Alone

I can't recall if I've posted about this here before, but we have entered a new era in our family life, one in which we can leave the kids home alone. It's still relatively new for us, and not employed all that often, but it's been helpful. Like the hour tonight after I picked up both kids from school, and Hannah had a lot of homework, so she asked if she could skip the much-needed grocery run, and then I realized she could keep Max home with her too.

Not having to take both kids for an unplanned grocery run with no list after a long day of work, school, commuting, aftercare and play rehearsal? You don't have to ask me twice.

Well, that's not 100% true. I did miss their input and talking to them in the store. I *like* being around my kids, and they can be fairly helpful with shopping. But they needed the quiet time at home more than I needed them there with me.

I'm definitely not used to this new era. It didn't even occur to me that they would want to stay home, or that they even could. I'm sure there will be more and more times that they request to be left at home, and I'll be begging them to come run errands with me. But for now it just seems like a marked difference from a few short years ago, when leaving them home alone was out of the question, and so you'd think long and hard about whether a shopping trip was possible after a day like this one.

It seems that the one true constant in life is change.

Know Thyself

We left Ohio after dinner last night and stayed in Buffalo, which meant we were able to get back to Newton around 6 pm today. That worked well for me, as I was able to dive back in to all the things I'd ignored over the last few days, and catch up on some work before heading back to the office tomorrow morning too. I've been feeling stressed out about what I wasn't getting done, which is frankly ridiculous. I wanted to relax - knew I needed to relax - but instead felt anxious about what I wasn't getting done. I should probably just give in and get some things done every day instead of putting it off in the name of relaxation if it just leads me to anxiety instead. Know thyself, right?

I think I've also been anxious because Thanksgiving is the last "big thing" before the next "big thing," being Hannah's bat mitzvah. Okay, yes, the holidays are coming too, and both kids' birthdays, but I expect to be in full bat mitzvah prep mode during those weeks. It's scary to think about all of the things I'll be doing over the next seven weeks or so. Exciting things, but there are also lots of work deadlines to be met, and lots of regular life stuff that will need to keep happening.

So, it's Sunday night and I fully expect to be lying awake in a couple hours, staring at my ceiling and listing everything in my head. Because I really do know myself, after all.

Mocha

This is Mocha. She is making my resistance to getting a dog very low. 

Gobble Gobble

Easy

The road trip to Ohio is so much easier now. That's something to be very grateful about.

Anti-Semitic Imagery On Facebook

It's fairly typical for me to write something around Thanksgiving where I express gratitude on Facebook, for Facebook. Since joining the network many years ago now, I believe that on the whole Facebook has made a positive impact on my life, and I'm so grateful for the many people it has kept in my life.

But the last two weeks since the election have been brutal. Every single time I look at Facebook, I am confronted by Nazi imagery, shared usually by well-meaning people trying to share their shock and horror about it. And I definitely appreciate that. It's the right thing, to express shock and horror like this. But I can't look at it.

This shock and this horror is something I carry with me daily--and not just because Trump is President-elect. That the escalation in these types of incidents since the election is upsetting to so many is warranted and justified, but I've always seen it there. You may not have heard the stories until now, but they linger around me, always in the shadows, just beyond the frame of the happy picture.

So I'm really trying with Facebook. I want to stay informed, and to not lose connections with so many people I care about. But the constant barrage of imagery that I can't filter out is really hard to deal with.

Monday, Monday

Random thoughts on a Monday:

- I am so glad to be home right now. I've been fighting a cold for the last week, and though I am a lot better, well, I'm really tired from fighting it.

- I still haven't packed.

- Max went to urgent care for a possible broken wrist on Saturday, but we got the all clear on his x-rays after a second review tonight. Thank goodness, because, as said above, I am so glad to be home right now and not going to get him a cast somewhere.

- I updated approximately a zillion apps today, but my Blogger app is still misbehaving. Of course.

- I don't go in to the office again for a week. I'm working from home tomorrow as Marc has a conflict at work. Then, Thanksgiving vacation time for me. Yippee.

- I fell asleep watching "Saturday Night Live" on my "Sunday Evening Recording" and can't decide if I should bother watching the rest.

- I am planning to watch "Search Party." Vulture says it's one of this year's best shows, and I'm interested to see if I binge watch it or wait as the episodes unroll this week. It's a personal test.

Enough typing for now. How was your Monday?