Settling in

The last week has been pretty much me just sleeping. I forget how much the event takes out of me. Even if I feel “fine”, I find myself compelled to go back to bed after dropping the kids at school, sleep until eleven, still need a nap in the afternoon, and am still tired at night. This could also be just a) habit, b) being 50, or c) covid. It’s probably a mix of a and b, though.

I feel myself with a profound sense of satisfaction about how things went, still. After all that’s transpired in the last three years, it’s sort of hard to believe that we pulled this off. We came back, hardly missing a beat, and it felt like we’d never even been shut down. That was exactly the results I’d wanted but didn’t dare wish for. And I wasn’t left in the red. Huh.

Right now I’m straddling finishing up and planning for next year, plus planning our family life as we approach another holiday trifecta - what the kids want to be for Halloween (Bobby has become obsessed with Kermit the frog and wants to be him for Halloween, but sadly all available Kermit costumes are either for toddlers or adults), how to structure our Death Valley thanksgiving trip (mostly figuring out food, knowing as I do now that options are extremely limited in the area). And then Christmas break - can we afford a trip to Florida? I don’t know yet. 

Mainly, my thoughts are on the cabin. I figure we need to get it wired up if we’re going to be able to stay there at all this winter, so I feel some sense of urgency about that - winter temperatures at night are extreme, so we need to be able to plug in a space heater of sorts, and we can only do that with solar power. The H told me he can’t install panels himself, so I’m not sure where to go from here. I texted our contractor neighbor yesterday just checking in to see when he’d be back in town - originally the plan was November or December - but he hasn’t written back yet. What if we never hear from him again?? We’d be so screwed. I’m so desperate to get this place basically livable, but there’s so much that has to happen before that - first, power, then a water system of some kind so we can have a toilet and shower, then insulation, walls, flooring, windows, a porch. If our contractor comes back and has time for us it can happen fairly quickly at the end of this year or beginning of next…if not, well, it could be a long time coming. But regardless of next weekend’s high temps, we’re headed out there on Saturday, and will go check out a friend’s solar set up, and go to the astronomy festival, and have brunch at The Palms, and everything will be dandy. I ordered myself a custom “Rancho Saudade” key chain for keys to the place since that’s the only thing I personally can make happen right now; it gives me some small (silly) feeling of control. 

Soon it’ll be time to apply for kids’ schools again to earn points to hopefully make it into Eagle Rock jr high. Now that I understand the system I know what to do - apply for the most impossible schools and get points for not making it in. I do wish I had started this earlier - I think at this late stage Bobby doesn’t have a big chance of making it into their gifted program; but it’s not impossible, either. Either way he can still attend the school with an intradistrict permit. So many kids have vanished from LAUSD that it’s possible he won’t have as much competition to get in when he applies for real next year. 

For now both kids appear to be doing well at school - Theo’s teacher is a lot more intense than his was last year; I have to sign off on his 30 minute reading and homework each night, and his class work every week. I’m interested to see how the parent teacher conference goes in November. 

We came home last night from a rare date night to find Bobby sitting up with the baby sitter making origami weapons at 1:30 AM. This child needs no sleep. It’s bizarre. I mean I was a night owl at his age but I doubt at 10 I could have stayed up that late and not even be tired. Another way he and Theo are so different. Bobby eats like a bird, never sleeps, can zone out on something for hours; Theo needs his sleep, eats like a champ, and is easily bored. You wonder how much of this is natural and how much is them playing off of each other as siblings. 

Hopefully I will start to feel more normal in the coming weeks - I am determined to stop sleeping all day come Monday, and we finally have the two times delayed hotel meeting on Thursday which means I can pay my hotel bill and be done with that, which means I can put this event to bed finally. Then it’s time to plan next year. Oy.