Tag: #StayathomeParent

  • Fixing Nightmares

    I’m just not feeling today. Part of it is that I didn’t sleep well last night, which was due to my mind not shut off. I was having a negative thought downward spiral, where I was listing everything that I was disappoint in about myself, as well as saying to myself over and over again that I will never succeed at anything I truly desire.

    Good times in the self-defeating department.

    And then at about 3 in the morning, the kid woke up from a bad dream, and wanted me to snuggle her back to sleep. That made things a little better. I didn’t ask her what the bad dream was about, as I have found that asking her to relive the nightmare sometimes makes things worse, as it just scares her all over again. What works better is to play a game of naming all the things that makes us happy. We go back and forth, I normally start, and we do this until she either feels better, or falls asleep.

    I start with an easy one;

    Me- Snuggles

    Her – My doll

    Me – Reading books

    Her – Drawing pictures

    Me – Pizza

    Her – Cheesy noodles

    Me – The dog

    Her – Friends at the park

    After a few back and forth’s, she is out. I hold on to her for a minute or two more just to make sure she’s asleep. Then I slow slink out of her room, with the job accomplished.

    Not that I got back to sleep right away, but I tried thinking about the things that keep me going, the goals I have. Generally, I keep it together, but there are those days when everything feels a million miles away, and nothing will change it.

    That is the Covid-isolation brain talking. I have been pretty much doing the same thing for a year now, and it just feels like nothing has changed. But feelings aren’t necessarily facts.

    I’m just tired.

  • Covid Guilt: I’m Doing What I Can

    I’m ran the kid through her reading drills, and now she is in her remote class, working on writing words and sentences.

    I guess this is now normal for her. I wonder what she will remember about all of this? At what age will she look back and say, this was a completely messed up time to be alive? I can hear her wonder aloud one day, “How did three people stuck in a tiny apartment in Upper Manhattan survive this? How did we not all go insane?”

    I don’t know the answer to that. I’m not sure if I will ever understand how to answer that.

    The other night the wife asked me if I had an exercise plan. My answer is that I’m not planning on working out until the kid gets back into school, and I’m not going to feel bad about that. I am the primary care giver for the kid; parent, teacher, partner in crime in playing around the apartment. It takes up just about all of my time. To carve out an hour a day, three to four times a week, is just about impossible. And I’m tired of beating myself up over it. I’m putting the kid’s wellbeing first, and that’s good enough.

    None of this is normal, but I keep fooling myself that I should be able to get it all done. Some days I can do it all, but most days I can’t. Just making it to tomorrow, happy and health is a victory.

  • Stay at Home Parent; Gotta Have Goals

    I have been doing the stay at home parent thing since June, which means that I have logged nearly nine months of this. Last night, the wife and I had a conversation about the next six months, and what that means for the kid’s schooling, home life, and our roles in it. The decision we made, even if the kid gets back into school full time, is that I will continue to be a stay at home parent, and not look for a job. Things may change in September, but for now, this will be my role for the family.

    I also know very well that planning in this pandemic is foolish, as there is a very high probability that what we are setting ourselves up for is disappointment. Hoping that the future will be better was the philosophical status quo a year ago, but now that thought seems fraught with disaster. I’m not ready to give up hope just yet, and I really don’t want to set that example for my daughter.

    My grandmother used to always say to us, “You gotta have goals.” I used to think that was something that people in retirement would say, to give their day purpose. Now I see that it is a mantra for mental survival. If you don’t have something to work towards, then it’s hard to get up in the morning.

    The wife will be the one who works, brings in our income, and provides our insurance. I will manage the home, the kid’s schooling, and all the other tasks in our daily life. That’s the deal. We will reexamine this situation when we hit June to make sure it still works for us.

    And there is one other thing; I need to stop calling this the “new normal” and just call it normal.

  • The New Normal: The Job of Staying Home

    I over slept this morning, by thirty minutes. In this world we live in, it felt like I lost the entire morning. I was a half hour late on getting things started around the apartment.

    I had to quickly suck down a cup of coffee, shower, change and winter up so I could walk the dog in the twenty-degree cold that was this morning. Hurry, hurry, hurry, because I still had to get the kid ready for remote school, and when I got back home with the dog, the kid informed me that I don’t have a job, and need to get one.

    “You’re my job,” I said.

    “That’s not a real job,” The kid told me.

    Ah… the curse of the stay at home parent; no one thinks it’s a real job, even your kid.

    Is this the effect of capitalism on our society? If the endeavor does not earn capital, does it have a value in our society? I mean, this is not a new question, as I remember hearing this being asked when I was a little kid. That would mean, that over thirty-five years, stay at home parenting is still not viewed as a productive job that has a value.

    Or is this a matter of roles in a household? As in, the wife and I have always been working since the kid has been born. The child has only known us to be a family where mom and dad both have jobs outside of the home, and then share the responsibilities of all the domestic tasks. With the world turn upside down, did we ever take the time to explain to the kid what the new make-up of our family roles will be?

  • Confession: Reading Failure

    I have a confession to make. Awhile back, I said that I would read The Stories of John Cheever this fall. Well… as we are now clearly in the middle of winter, I have to admit that I did not read The Stories of John Cheever. In fact, I only read the first story in that book. I looked at that volume every evening on the nightstand as I got into bed, and I would say to myself, “Tomorrow, I’ll get back to it.”

    Yup, I failed at this personal goal. I mean, I didn’t even come close. I wish I could say that I got caught up reading another book, but that isn’t true either. Sadly, my fall and winter reading progress is pretty disappointing.

    And if I am to be fully honest with myself, I only finished three books in all of 2020.

    I’m not saying this to garner sympathy, or to make excuses. Its more that I want to identify what isn’t working. You can’t write if you don’t read.

    What had brought this about is that I am now teaching my daughter how to read, and I want to instill a love of reading. The best way I know to do this is by example, as that is what my parents did for me. It’s not that they told me to read, or made me; reading is what they did for enjoyment.

    Gotta get my shit together. For all of us.