September GBOMB

Good

Decorations. I normally would decorate for Halloween the last week of September, but AJ has been celebrating Halloween for the past 11 months anyway. Seeing his excitement as we pulled stuff out on September 21 to decorate was so cute and fun. I'll take the extra week of decorations for him. I also got him some small pumpkin and ghost lights to hang around his crib. He is obsessed. I hope our street is fun for Halloween. 

Audiobooks. I've been listening to my books at the gym (instead of music) and have gotten a lot more reading done that way. I started on my 9th book by the time September ended. 

Garden. Lettuce, spinach, and carrots are coming up! It is exciting to watch. Frankly I was overwhelmed by the cucumber and tomatoes this whole summer, but I'm grateful that was the struggle and not the opposite. We barely got any strawberries, and bugs or birds helped themselves to several of them before they were ripe enough to enjoy. But it's been fun to plant, water, and harvest our food. 

Carrots

Lettuce

Cornbelly's. It's already open, and we've already been a couple of times. I love that AJ loves it, and is more capable of running around and deciding what he wants to do without needing my constant supervision to make sure he won't fall or something. 

Peach season. Something feels special about it each year, which is funny because it's just peaches. But they're so good, and it reminded us to get together with my baby brother's family this year at Maddox. 

Omakase. I took Matthew to dinner at Itto Sushi for his birthday to experience a 16 course meal with Chef Itto who explained all kinds of things about where he gets his fish, how he prepares it, and more. It was a really cool experience. 

The fair. AJ loved it. It's fun being able to push him a little later at night. We looked at animals, did a butterfly experience with him, and even let him do a couple of the small rides. 

Bad

Road rage. I am a "5 over" driver except in a 25 or 30--I go 25 or 30. I set my cruise control no matter where I am. I feel like no matter where I am going, on freeway or side streets, morning or evening, people just want to go super fast, and they ride my tail. It gives me terrible anxiety. Last week I literally pulled over abruptly to let people pass since it was a two lane road with a 30mph speed limit. WHY is everyone in such a hurry? I even have a "baby on board" sticker on my window. I often don't have him with me, but still, how do they know? Why drive like this, baby or not? I am considerate. I stay on the right unless I'm passing. I'm so annoyed that I got ticketed last December for speeding in a place I had literally never been before, and didn't know the speed limit of. I'm so, so conscientious. And I feel like everyone else drives like an asshole, but they don't get pulled over. It's so maddening. 

Housing market. I've been casually browsing homes on Zillow. I made the mistake of looking at value history. Homes that are now $500k were $300k just five years ago. It honestly makes me SO mad. I look at the estimated mortgage payments on these homes and honestly just don't know how we'll ever make it work. We're barely making it work with our current tenants paying our rent. 

AJ's cough. AJ has been coughing the last four nights, to the point he has puked up mucus. He has a runny nose, but no fever or other symptoms. I'm not sure what's going on, but thankfully his humidifier and some cough medicine have been doing the trick for the most part. 

Spider bites. ON MY LIP! What the heck. I was worried it was a cold sore (I have never had them). But without any feeling on my bottom lip and chin, I didn't know if my lip was itchy, tingly, or painful. I did have some sensation of it being bothersome, and the rest of my mouth was hurting a little bit here and there. But I found the two little prong marks in the middle of a bite and confirmed it was a spider. I'm so sick of this stupid ugly humid smelly house with all of its bugs. We still have ear wigs, by the way. Hate them too. 

Head bonk. The same morning I found the spider bites on my lip (9/18), I hit my head really hard on my nightstand. It hurt for almost two weeks--it's only just now feeling 95% better on September 30. 

On My Brain

Staying home. After we had three days in a row with AJ for Labor Day, it was time to go back to work on Tuesday. He was so sad. He said he wanted to go in mom's bed to read books. He said he didn't want to go to Katie's house; he wanted to stay home with mom and dad. I have heard a lot that up until early adolescence, we are our kids' entire world. We are their favorite people. While AJ can be really mean to me sometimes, I know that if he had it his way, he'd be with me and Matthew all the time. It breaks my heart that we can't give him that. When he gets just one extra day off with us, it's like he realizes that's how it should always be, and he doesn't want to be away from us. It really is so, so sad for me. If I had it my way, I'd only work part-time so I could find a good balance of adult contact and productivity, while still spending most of my time with my son (and hopefully any future kids). We can dream. 

Charlie Kirk. I did not love the guy, frankly. But I support respectful dialogue and would never have wished death on him, especially so gruesomely. He has two babies, one of them not much older than my own. Since becoming a mom, I realize what that means; those kids don't have a dad now. That wife is a widow. It's absolutely heartbreaking. In the wake of his death, so many were posting, "America is so much better than this." Are we? This kind of stuff happens every day to the most innocent. And yet nothing changes. It feels like we do deserve it, actually, for all of our complacency. The same people saying "America is better than this" are the people saying "we need to wake up," without making any mention of gun reform. I don't understand. What is it we are supposed to wake up to? In my observation, we keep allowing these things to happen by changing absolutely nothing. It's painful and exhausting. 

Thunderbolts. Wow. That movie was not at all what I was expecting, but I loved it and got so emotional. It felt like such an important conversation about the "void" people feel when they are not connected to their purpose and to other people. The way we all need to feel valued and cared about--connected--and how important that is for our happiness, is everything in life. When they saved Bob from his darkness by reminding him that he wasn't alone was such a powerful, emotional scene. I love that the screenwriters addressed such a heavy topic at a time where we're all feeling so disconnected and anxious. I wonder if Brene Brown has seen it--it aligns perfectly with all of her teachings.