November browns

Another Sunday, another blog post. November is chugging along quite reasonably. We've had decent weather -- snow in the mountains but nothing down here, just a little chilly some days. Today it's in the 60s and windy. We could use some moisture, but there's only a slight chance of any this week. I keep forgetting to water the plants that are still alive at the front of the house. By this time of year you would expect everything to be dead or dormant.

I'm busily doing November things, that is to say, I'm reading November books. I've read a few Indian books already and am working on another. I also have a presidential biography out of the library (that's Rutherford B. Hayes, my fourth of the year) and a book by David Brooks on how to live a moral life. 

Oh, and I voted -- two weeks ago. I'm having trouble paying attention to the news, everything upsets me terribly. But I'm trying to be a good citizen. Not doing so well on raking leaves, though. They're everywhere. All the pretty trees are done. It's November, the time of year when you think about the pretty leaves that were so recently with us but now are gone.

Rocket Boy is driving out for Thanksgiving and will stay for two weeks. He's going to leave St. Louis on Friday, which means he'll arrive here late Saturday, the 20th. Then we'll have all of Thanksgiving week together, plus he's planning to stay one week afterwards, long enough to watch Teen B play his clarinet in the marching band during the Parade of Lights on December 4th. 

This means, of course, that I have to clean the house! But it's OK. First of all, the house is not in bad shape (or not as bad as it sometimes is). Second, I have a whole five and a half days to work on it (or at least think about working on it). Third, my plan is that while RB is here, we will decorate for Christmas -- dreadfully early by our standards, but not by other people's -- so I need to clean up with that in mind, too. Maybe that will be inspiring.

It will be extremely weird if we manage to pull that off. We never ever put the tree up during the first week of December. But if we don't do it while RB is here, the kids and I will have to do it all by ourselves, like last year, and that's such a pain. Especially since our old fake tree is disintegrating. I want RB to see how hard it is to assemble these days. Maybe he'll be motivated to replace it. I say that -- but I don't think we will. You can't get fake trees like our old one anymore. We'll probably just do something to try to keep it going. What that might be, I don't know.

It just occurred to me that I should also get our Christmas letter and cards ready. I always like to send them out early, but this seems SOOOO early. Still, it would be a good idea. Maybe RB can go with me to buy cards -- McGuckin's has nice ones, or there's always Target. Then he can sign all the cards before he goes back to St. Louis. And I can have a draft of the letter ready for him to approve. Good grief! I'm not ready to write a Christmas letter! But it's time, or almost. Better put that on the list.

I'm still struggling with the problem of schedules and planners, to-do lists and "done" lists. I'm enjoying keeping a "done" list, noting down all the things I accomplish each day as I do them, so that's going well. When the list looks short, that motivates me to do a little more. It's figuring out what to "do" that is the problem. My master to-do list is too big -- I can't figure out what I should be doing from it. I've been writing tiny to-do lists at the bottom of the "done" lists (first thing in the morning, before I've "done" anything), to keep myself on track, and then copying numerous items over to the next day's "done" list when I don't do them -- might as well just have a to-do list! So this week I tried something different -- a weekly to-do list to help me with my "done" list. But that didn't work either. Too many things on the list, hard to tell which needed to be done when. I did a lot of things, but I forgot to do other things because I didn't spot them on the list.

This week I'm going to try the weekly to-do list again, but with a little more organization. I think I need separate sections, one for things that get done every day (dishes, my walk, litter boxes), one for things that have to be done on specific days (appointments, cleaning tasks designated for a particular day), and one for things that could be done on any day. And perhaps those need to be broken down into types of things (phone calls, emails, chores, errands). 

Oh, I don't know. It's all so hopeless. But things are worse if I don't try at all. I keep wondering: are most people's to-do lists actually I-don't-want-to-do lists? That's what mine are. The things I want to do, like read, don't have to go on the list. I spend a lot of time trying to get myself to STOP doing those things, so I will do the things on the to-do list instead. If only.

This was a strange week because we had that unexpected four-day weekend, with the kids getting the Friday after the Thursday holiday off because the district didn't have enough personnel to staff the schools. Once again, I thought very strongly about applying to be a substitute. I'm still thinking about it. On the one hand, I don't want to give up my lovely days alone. On the other hand, the schools really need people like me. People who don't need to make a large income or receive "benefits," who are happy to work here and there, now and then (though my understanding is that if I wanted to, I could probably work every day the kids are in school). I could even work just at the kids' school, to make things simple.

If Rocket Boy manages to move back to Colorado, as he is trying to do, and if he ends up working at home most of the time, I will need something else to occupy me. I get antsy when we're both home all day. If there ever comes a time when the kids don't live here anymore but we do, we can set up a desk for me in another room. But for now we ALL have our desks and computers in the "office," aka the "desk room," and I find it hard to work in there when RB is there too. We can hear each other typing, and it annoys him when I play a game of computer solitaire (he can tell by the pattern of the clicking). I, on the other hand, get annoyed because I know he's listening to my clicking. 

It's better if we can have a little bit of our own space, especially since we're so used to it now, after two and a half years mostly apart.

Tuesday was Teen B's band concert, which Teen A and I attended. We had gone to the choir and orchestra concert the week before -- to "support the music program," I told the boys, who did not want to go. I ended up crying all the way through that program, mainly because it was so wonderful to be back in the auditorium, watching and listening to kids perform. Fortunately, I was sitting alone, or else I would have embarrassed the boys horribly. But they were in the furthest back row, probably playing games on their phones. 

For the band concert, Teen A sat in that high back row, while I sat alone several rows forward, but I only cried a little. Adorably, some of Teen B's friends came to the concert and sat in that back row a little ways down from Teen A. I heard them call out to him, "Are you here to support your brother?" and his grouchy response, "I'm here because my mom made me." The friends (mostly girls) called out, "Go [Teen B]!" when he came on stage and were generally as cute as could be. I remembered coming to the band concert back in the fall of 2019 and observing big 8th graders calling to their friends in the band. The spring 2020 band concert was cancelled, as were the fall 2020 concert and the spring 2021 concert. Now here we were at the fall 2021 concert, my little pixie 6th graders suddenly turned into giant 8th graders. So strange.

Teen B's friends remind me a little of my teenage friends, kind of nerdy and loud and different. His are a little more LGBTQ than mine were, but that's the nature of 2021 vs. 1973. I had gay friends -- I just didn't know I did. Now (at least in this town, at the kids' school) it's more or less OK for 13-year-olds to be out. 

Teen A has a different group of friends, but I know very little about them. He won't tell me names, always very private. On Friday afternoons, he walks to the shopping center near the school with them, but when I go to pick him up, most of them have already left (they live close by and can walk home).

The other thing we did this week was participate in the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development (ABCD) study at CU. This is our 5th year in the study, so it was an MRI year, but Teen B couldn't have one because of his braces. So only Teen A did the MRI, but they both had to give various biological samples (saliva, urine, blood, hair), answer endless questionnaires, and play games for money. While they were doing that, I sat in a little room by myself and answered my own series of endless questionnaires. Much less fun to do alone (Rocket Boy and I used to do it together) and while wearing a mask, but I survived. They ordered lunch for us and we sat together to eat it, joking about the questions. The kids get asked a lot of questions about drug use, which strike them as very funny. One of the drugs the study asks about is "snus," which I had never heard of, but apparently it is a type of smokeless tobacco popular in Sweden. We were joking that Teen A had eaten a snus brownie (I don't know if that's possible).

Two years from now, when we're back for more MRIs, the questions probably won't seem as funny because the kids will have more personal knowledge of the drugs. Sigh. Oh, high school, what do you have in store for us?

At the end of the long day they paid us: $200 for me, $210 for Teen A, and $190 for Teen B. Riches! Oh boy! They paid us mostly in $50 bills, so on Saturday, we went to the credit union and exchanged them for smaller bills. Teen A showed me that he can't even close his wallet right now -- all those tens and fives. Five years ago, that money meant so much to me! Now it's just pleasant. So strange to be in a situation where $200 doesn't really matter. I mean, I can't go around spending $200 here, there, and everywhere, but it's not a make-or-break amount of money.

I thought about spending the $200 on something special, but there isn't anything special that I really want. I could put it toward a new printer, but the printer we want is out of stock everywhere. Supply chain problems, and all that.

Teen A will spend his on video game stuff. It'll be gone quickly, but he'll enjoy it while it lasts. Teen B tends to save a lot of his money, but he also is currently enamored of "Piggy" paraphernalia. I let them buy things online and just give me the cash for it, so we've already put in a couple of small orders. I did let myself order a Barbie fashion pack that I've been not ordering because I thought it was too expensive. With free money, I figured I could buy it.

I could spend the $200 buying Christmas gifts, but I'm already wondering how on earth I'm going to find anything to put under the tree this year. Five years ago, that $200 would have helped me buy the kids Lego sets, but they don't play with Legos anymore. Some of the gifts I got them for their birthday last year still haven't been played with (games, a puzzle). We used to play games almost every night. Now it's all screens. Teen A did ask me for a pair of wireless earbuds. I guess I could wrap them in a big box, make them look more impressive on Christmas morning. But then I'll feel bad for wasting wrapping paper.

I could donate the money -- and I will, of course. Colorado Gives Day is coming up in a few weeks, and I'll spend more than $200 on that. 

What can I say? It's November, I'm feeling glum. Not desperately depressed or anything like that. Just November. November at the end of almost two years of Covid, with no end in sight. It's not a happy time.

I don't know what we're doing for Thanksgiving! We have made no plans. Rocket Boy thinks we should go somewhere, a quick trip, but where, exactly? He was thinking of Wyoming. I don't really want to go to Wyoming in November. Not to mention that their Covid rate is even higher than ours. Well, we'll figure something out. It will just be nice to be together.