Spring break begins

Oh, the joy of Spring Break, and to think that I used to hate it. The kids home for a week with no teachers to help take care of them! What will we do! Those days are long gone.

Now the main thing on my mind is that we'll get more sleep. The boys get about the same amount of sleep (I think roughly 9 hours) during the break because they like to get up early and play stupid games on their stupid devices. But they do that pretty quietly, and the cats are not too annoying in the morning -- possibly because I don't typically feed them the moment I get up, they're used to waiting a little while. This morning I woke up and then went back to sleep, waking finally around 9 am. Of course, that means I was sleep deprived, which is bad, but it's nice to know that I can sleep later if I want. I'll probably aim for an 8 am wake-up time during the rest of the break, with lights out between 11:30 and 12.

It sounds so luxurious.

I've been reading a book called Why We Sleep by Matthew Walker -- in fact, I only have about 10 pages left, but I was reading it last night and it was almost midnight and I WANTED to push through and finish it, but I thought, Matthew Walker has been telling you for 330 pages that you should not do that, so I turned off the light and went to sleep. (Rocket Boy had turned off his light about 10 minutes before.) The book is not perfect -- Matthew Walker does not understand that his point is not stronger if he makes it 50,000 times -- but it has some good information about the importance of sleep. It also explains dreams in a way I hadn't heard before, which I found fascinating. If I have this right, in REM sleep our minds make connections between what happened to us that day and all sorts of other things we have stored in our memories, making it possible for us to think more creatively about it all. In REM sleep, the part of our brains that forces us to think logically is turned off, which is why dreams can be so nutty. Dreams also match our emotions, so if you're upset about something, your dreams are probably going to reflect that. This is probably why I almost always have bad dreams these days.

Like last night. I dreamed that the book group finally started meeting in person again and they came to my house. Unfortunately, I had not prepared for this and had no food to offer them. Nothing. Not the gorgeous spreads I used to lay out, not the simpler bags of takeout food we relied on last summer. Nothing. It was terrible. I tried to whip up an unpleasant potato salad, but it wasn't going to be enough.

I also dreamed that I was still working as a research assistant, but I had ended up with most of the work on the project assigned to me. I was not doing it well -- writing important notes on little pieces of paper and then losing them, that sort of thing. I arranged to interview a woman in the psychology department for the project, but I had to walk across "campus" (sort of the CU campus, but including many other buildings) to meet with her. I told her it would take me about 45 minutes and I'd text her if I was going to be late, since she would have to wait outside the building to let me in due to Covid regulations. Instead, it took hours, since I seemed unable to take straight paths, but instead made my way through dorms and other buildings, some of which turned out to be locked. I couldn't walk through the (Denver?) Botanic Gardens, because I didn't have a reservation, so I detoured through Podesta's, an old florist shop in San Francisco, which was decorated for Christmas. I realized I should text the interview subject, but of course I didn't have her phone number available (it was somewhere in my backpack, on a little piece of paper). Finally, walking through the library (not the CU library, but an enormous library I've visited in dreams before), I saw my old grad school friend Kirstin, who waved happily to me. I was so pleased to see her. We sat down with some other old grad school friends to talk, and I decided to phone my poor interview subject (still waiting outside in the cold for me?) and reschedule.

In fact, I was scheduled to talk to Kirstin and other old friends on a Zoom call this afternoon, which is obviously what the dream was referring to. I told them about the dream and they were amused. It was a bad dream that turned happy at the end -- what does that say about my life right now?  

This was the second call these friends and I had done together, with our old grad advisor -- the first was in January. I feel a little out of place on the calls because I didn't stay in academia, or just on the edges, for five or six years, with the teaching at CU and all. Two of my friends have had serious academic careers, both have published extensively and both were/are chairs of their departments. Let me be clear: I don't mind at all that I didn't have an academic career. It clearly wasn't right for me, and I can enjoy my friends' success without envying it. But I know my advisor isn't impressed with me.

The other friend left academia also, after a brief stint as an assistant professor, and worked in industry, so she and I are both away from that world, it's not just me. But she appears to have navigated the world more successfully than I have in recent years, and is very active in volunteer work. 

What am I active in, right now? Reading, helping the kids (sorry, the teens) with school, attempting (and often failing) to do all the things in my life that I don't want to do, like cooking and cleaning and managing the rental property. It's not that I'm a failure, exactly, it's just that certain decisions I've made -- e.g., having kids -- have led to this situation where I need to spend most of my time struggling to do things I don't want to do and do not do well. It's important work, even though I'm so awful at it -- and it won't last forever -- but it does occupy a lot of my time in the last good years of my life. 

I'm hoping that after the teenagers go back to school four days a week (which is supposed to start March 30th), I will be able to spend more time on things I enjoy -- reading, probably writing, maybe sewing, and maybe I will also want to start working again, part time. Or there's volunteer work, though I feel as though I should be bringing in money. I am not sure, will have to see what feels right. There's also the summer coming up, not sure I want to be working when I've got the twins home all day. What on earth am I going to do with them this summer? It would be nice if I could pack them off to a traditional summer camp for a month, but obviously that's not in the budget, and I don't know if summer camps will be functioning normally this summer. Sounds nice, though, doesn't it? I don't know what I'd do with myself if they were gone that long. 

I'd figure something out.

Well, it is snowing again today, now that we finally have clear roads and sidewalks and driveways after the gigantic storm (which ended up dropping 21 inches of snow). They're predicting 2-4 inches with this storm, which is fine, we can deal with that. There's a chance of snow (or perhaps rain) several other days this week, but probably not a lot of accumulation. We're planning to go to the Denver Museum of Nature and Science tomorrow afternoon -- I got tickets for the Stonehenge exhibit. Then on Wednesday, maybe, we may drive south -- maybe go to the Royal Gorge, in Canon City, maybe Colorado Springs, something like that. We'd have to stay in hotels, which doesn't feel too safe, but we'll try to be careful. 

Rocket Boy will probably start driving back to St. Louis next Sunday.

We've had a busy week. Rocket Boy finally got started installing the new microwave next door, in the rental house. He moved the cabinet above the stove up a few inches and took the microwave out of its box. But he was puzzled to read, in the instructions, that it should NOT be installed above a stove. WTF? He showed me the instructions. And there I read that this was an Over-the-Counter microwave. Not an Over-the-Range microwave. Over-the-Counter. 

I came out to the living room and looked at the box. "Over-the-Counter" Microwave, it said on the top and all four sides of the box. Over-the-Counter.

Somehow I had managed to purchase an Over-the-Counter microwave, even though I intended to buy an Over-the-Range microwave.

I used to be an editor! How could I misread those words, over and over again?

Long story short, we went to Home Depot and bought an Over-the-Range microwave floor model instead. The rather grumpy salesman had to get it down using one of those little carts that can rise up to a very high shelf. Rocket Boy had to move the cabinet again, because this microwave was bigger, but he got the whole thing installed that evening. Of course, because nothing is easy, I'm going to have to hire an electrician to come in and rewire the kitchen, because the outlets are two-prong, not three-prong, so the microwave is running through an adaptor, which isn't safe. La la la. 

The next day (yesterday) we returned the Over-the-Counter microwave to Home Depot, and then went back to the appliance department and ordered a new stove for ourselves (I'd been fussing about what to buy for weeks). We agonized over buying a used stove on craigslist, but finally decided we didn't want to lift and haul any more appliances. The grumpy salesman who helped us with the microwave the day before encouraged us to buy a small cheap stove that's almost identical to our old one. He talked us out of a two-oven stove and a smooth surface cooktop, both of which we had been considering. The new stove won't arrive until the day after Rocket Boy leaves, which is par for the course.

In medical news, I finally saw an optometrist this past week, who took a picture of my eyes so we could see whether I have any diabetes damage. None was visible, and she told me she almost never sees any. She also told me about a dream she'd had the night before, in which her hair stylist moved to Grand Junction and she was so upset because who would do her highlights now? I decided not to tell her that my hair stylist had just died, since we were getting along so well and I didn't want to wreck the mood.

I chose a new pair of glasses while I was there, which will be ready in a week or two. Later in the week I had a "telehealth" call with my regular doctor to discuss the metformin. She's fine with me taking only 3 pills a day, so that is what I'm going to do from now on. And on Friday I went in for my third blood test. I'm REALLY hoping my calcium will be normal this time. If it's not, and/or if my parathyroid isn't normal, I'll have to go see an endocrinologist, who (the doc said) will probably take over my diabetes care as well. 

I'm voting for normal calcium and normal parathyroid, no endocrinologist getting in the act. But we'll see. I realize that my vote does not count for anything here.

I'm enjoying March Madness -- first time in my life I've ever paid any attention to it. I cut out the Men's Bracket from our newspaper and am happily filling out the winners as the games take place. CU won their first-round game, so we'll have a fun second-round game tomorrow. But I'm enjoying all of it (I keep track of it online, haven't actually WATCHED any of it except just a little of the CU game). I'm also cheering on the CU women, who are playing in the WNIT and beat Nebraska in the second round -- ha!

No formal plans for the week ahead, no goals -- just enjoying what's left of Rocket Boy's visit. The week after he leaves I'll go back to my resolutions and all that. I'll be having a mammogram and I'll also get my first covid shot that week, so that's something to look forward to. I know I'll need things to look forward to after he leaves.