August GBOMB

Good

Visiting Matthew's brother. We went on August 3 to visit Matthew's brother down in Monroe. It was a haul to get down there, but it was good to finally see their place and spend some time there. AJ loved it and ran himself ragged. We didn't get to go to the hot spring like we planned since it was so hot out. But still was a good time seeing family. 

Teaching ESL. I cannot even begin to explain. I wrote a post about it on my LinkedIn. I've had so much good feedback, from my manager, from my coworker, and from the students themselves. It has been such a great experience so far, and I feel so lucky to get to do it. 

My classroom

Growth. It is SO FUN to take pictures of seedlings at the beginning of the month and see where they are at the end of the month. I planted perennials in the front yard, and they're so much bigger now. I love watching my carrot and lettuce seedlings come up. It is so exciting. 

Babies coming up at the start of the month

End of the month, so much bigger

Fake lashes. Sounds funny but man it's crazy how some nice lashes with lash glue make me feel like a million bucks. While AJ was down and out on the couch I had a few extra minutes so I did some fake lashes. I just really like how they look. I don't do them often because I think the glue or magnet liner pulls my natural lashes off. 

AJ is sad here but my lashes were not sad

Bad

Sleep. I just want a good night of sleep. I don't know what it will take (I feel like air conditioning might be one thing, which is impossible). It almost happened one night when I took half a dose of ZzzQuil, but then AJ woke up screaming at 1am. I wake up drenched in sweat. I have insane dreams and sleep walk. On Labor Day (the day I'm finishing this) the cat woke me up twice, insisting he needed to be fed. It's always something. Can someone just please sedate me? 

Illness. Holy cow. AJ got sick on August 16. I started feeling it on August 19. I was full blown sick on August 20. I went to bed at 8pm. By August 22 I was OK but still not great. I spent the next week trying to cough it out. I think AJ wasn't able to cough his out, so it got stuck, and on August 28 he had a fever and ear infection. I fought it at home with him but finally took him to urgent care on August 30. With his pain and fever I relented to antibiotics. He was able to go to his friend's birthday party on August 31, so thank goodness for medicine. But I mean really we spent half our month sick. WTH. 

Summer's gone. I don't know what on earth we did all of August because I feel like we didn't go to the pool at all. Now that it's our last week of the pool being open, AJ can't go because of his ears. I just feel like I really dropped the ball here on taking advantage of the pool. Such a bummer. 

On My Brain

A "soft" generation. I was in our Emotional Intelligence leadership class. A colleague who works in manufacturing stayed after to talk about the class and that he found it really helpful. He said the generation coming up is soft, and that he's seeing he has to modify his approach for each individual. I was pondering that description of my generation. First I felt bad for his kids knowing they grew up with a low EQ dad. Then I wondered if I should take "soft" as an insult. In the end I decided I'd rather be soft than hard. 

Super powers for men vs. women. In the same EQ class mentioned above, there was an icebreaker where we all said what super power we'd like to have. The dudes in class (most of whom were dads) all said something like Spiderman, Batman, or Superman (because of strength, money, and invincibility). The women in the class said: "I'd like to be able to be invisible just to be able to get a break from the kids." "I'd like to teleport so I could skip my commute and save time." "I'd like to duplicate myself to be able to get all the things done." Please note the women's super powers all have to do with juggling the insane amount of things in their lives, increasing efficiency or reducing overwhelm. I left class almost a little angry about it. Men get to think of these frivolous things like speed and strength while women have to figure out better ways to function because men are not thinking about the ways they can contribute. Seriously insane. 

Not knowing. Why don't doctors just say they don't know? My doula client had a really rough go for her birth. One of the doctors wanted to blame her physiology not meshing well with her baby. That was such a pathological and cynical view of human anatomy. That's not how birth or bodies work. That's not what went wrong. If you don't know or if you have some guesses, then say that. But don't point the finger at her physiology, like her body somehow failed. It just makes me so upset.