Beautiful October

This wasn't a great week, but it was OK, and I'm feeling, hmm, maybe almost ready to face the tile guy tomorrow morning. Though I'm not sure what time he's coming.

I'm still fighting depression, boringly. At this point I don't know when it started -- maybe July? I had a nice June, learning the FlyLady's system, and then Rocket Boy came home in July and it was fun for a while, and then we had to go to St. Louis and that was awful, and then we came home and things were still difficult, and then he left and things still seemed hard, and then he was supposed to come back but didn't, which made me very sad... and now it's October and I'm supposed to be happy, but I feel like I'll never be happy again.

I guess it just is what it is and on we go. 

I didn't spend any days in bed this week, so that's a good sign (though I did take a long nap Thursday afternoon -- but I finally got up and made dinner, thus salvaging the evening). The FlyLady and I were "in the kitchen" and I also tried to do the living room tasks from the week before (when I was too depressed to do much). I cleared a lot of clutter off the coffee table (yes, more clutter has appeared, but it's different clutter) and switched out the cloth, so now we have a Halloween cloth. I also brought down the raven candy dish from last year and put candy in it. I decided that the red plaid blanket on the loveseat clashed with the Halloween theme, so I brought out that brown blanket instead. It's not beautiful, but it's more harmonious. In December I can bring back the red plaid.

(Yes, that's a twin under the gray blanket on the couch. Ignore him.)

Overall I think the house is looking nicer and nicer. But I wish I could get myself to LIKE housework.  Also cooking. What is it that (some) people like about cooking? I don't like anything about it, except possibly planning meals. I kinda sorta like finding interesting recipes that I've never tried before. But the execution never lives up to my hopes and dreams. I have trouble staying in the moment, with cooking. There isn't enough happening to occupy my brain, possibly because you have to wait for things to happen, onions to soften and that sort of thing. With other types of manual labor, such as sewing (which I like better), you can mostly just work along, no waiting. Of course, housework doesn't require much waiting, but I still hate it. It's just so stupid and mindless -- and yet sometimes hard.

It seems terrible to be spending most of my time doing things I hate.

But in fact, I spent a lot of time this week doing something I like, so why am I complaining? Last week I posted a photo of an array of books that I was planning to read in October, eight of them. Well, I read five of them this week, yes, five, so now I need a new batch. That is, I still have three left over from last week (the bottom row of this picture), but I've added three more (the top row). All of these are ghost stories, of various types. I thought I might try to slow down a little, read two books each of the three remaining weeks of the month. We'll see.

But anyway, I can't say I didn't do anything fun this week. I read along like a madwoman.

***

What else happened this week? To us, not a lot. My knee got better, though I think I should still see a doctor about it. The cats behaved themselves. The kids behaved themselves, although Teen A did manage to snap his glasses in half last night, right in front of me (he was cleaning them). He glued them back together and we rushed off to Costco this morning and ordered new ones. 

This afternoon we went over to CU for our yearly visit (for this big study we've been participating in for six years now). It wasn't an MRI year, so the kids just played games and answered questions, and I filled out questionnaires about them, answering impossible questions such as "Do any of your child's friends use marijuana?" How would I know? I don't even know who all their friends are. I just answered no to everything -- marijuana, alcohol, tobacco, inhalants, stimulants, etc. As long as I don't know, it's no ("don't know" wasn't one of the choices, interestingly enough).

Each year we've done this, the payout has increased: this year, even without an MRI, the kids earned $75 each, and I earned $150. I'm going to spend some of my $150 on dinner tonight -- we're going to get McDonald's. Bad Mom. Very bad Mom. I don't care.

What will the kids do with their $75? Teen B will probably save most of his, but Teen A is another story. He likes to hang out with friends after school -- maybe he'll buy some of those substances they were asking him about in the study. Or maybe he'll spend it on Roblox. I'm guessing Roblox. Maybe next year or the year after I'll need to worry about where the money goes.

Which is not to say I don't worry about my kids. This week there was another crazy incident involving a student at their school -- #5 so far this year, for those keeping track at home. This was something new: a 14-year-old girl gone missing for the past week, since the football game on September 30th (which she attended, wearing the school colors). The police have decided she's a runaway, so they haven't been doing anything, even though she apparently has mental and physical issues for which she takes medication (which she doesn't have with her). She doesn't even have a phone (unless she has one her parents don't know about), so they're not sure if messages supposedly sent from her to her friends are actually coming from her. She was last seen with two "older men, too old to be in high school." It is believed the older men may be drug dealers with violent pasts. They may be from Longmont (that made me laugh -- Boulderites always think the bad guys live in Longmont). 

Last year, right before the end of middle school, there was a 14-year-old girl in the kids' class who ran off with an older man and the police pursued that pretty vigilantly. I don't understand why they're not treating this case the same way. Maybe because they're understaffed? 

I look at my kids and think, what if they ran off with some older guys from Longmont? Would the police do nothing? I know they have hair on their legs and their voices have deepened, but they're still kids. Totally kids. 

High school is a very strange place. And here I thought middle school was bad.

I don't know if it's worth mentioning that I don't blame the parents. I don't know anything about them, but regardless, I don't blame them. Teenagers are crazy. 

I also keep thinking about the two kids in their school who died by suicide, one a few weeks before school started and one on the first day of school. What do their parents think when they hear about this girl going missing? Do they think, well, at least we didn't have to go through that? or do they wish their kids were alive no matter what? I'm guessing the latter.

Well, another week of beautiful October is coming up. Even if I'm depressed, I will look at the beautiful leaves and the bright blue skies and try to enjoy them. And I will try to be happy that the tile guy is here. And I hope that girl comes home.