Fall In...

At two weeks ago, Pedro was giving me crap about a lot of things:

• How come you didn't take a fly fishing casting lesson before you went to Montana?
• How come you are not doing your skiing exercises (aka "Leg Blasters") so you can ski something other than green runs?
• If you really what to motorbike through Moab, you need to learn to ride a motorcycle. How come you haven't take motorcycle lessons yet? Do you need motorcycle lessons even? Why can't you just go out there and ride?
• Why don't you take your paddleboard out more? Why don't you standup on the paddleboard instead of sitting? You don't need a lesson. You just need to stand up, fall in and get back on the board.

Yeah.

He is right about all of these things, but he was--in his own words--"shitting on me." He was downloading a long list of things I was doing wrong and giving me advice on how to do them better. 

I walked along side him and nodded, listening to what he was saying, not telling him to mind his own business, that I can live my life as I see fit.

I felt myself slipping back into old, crappy patterns of co-dependency: not standing up for myself, taking the BS people dealt to me without thinking about it. "Just because they are giving it to you, doesn't mean you need to take it," my friend Ellen has said. That is true, and easier said than done.

What is the truth, though? Were those things my truth or were those Pedro's truth? He wants me to ski and fish and paddleboard--do I want those things too? Sure. I love to ski, but do I love it enough to do Leg Blasters every other day for six months? As of now, no. Do I need to make dinner after work instead of paddleboarding? Maybe I could skip dinner and paddleboard instead.

Part of Pedro's direct commentary on my life might come from living in therapy land for the past two years where direct conversation between the kids in his program was encouraged, even celebrated. Perhaps he is thinking of me as one of his former roommates, where he did tell them the truth as he saw it, and they gave it back. Maybe after many years of me being a parent to Pedro telling him what he needed to do, he feels like he can return the favor. 

Oy. That was not exactly what I had expected as my boomerang or karma gift, from parenting.

In time, I will change from sitting on my paddleboard to standing. First, I need to welcome and embrace falling in the water. I need to trust that I can get back on the paddleboard after I fall.

Parents are suppose to teach their kids new things, to let them know it is okay to fall, to encourage them to get back up. And after being away for two years, Pedro is doing that to me.

As American parents, how often do we encourage our kids to try and to fail and get back up, but all from the safety of the sidelines? Pedro never watched me on the soccer pitch. He never saw me run a cross country meet or perform in a band concert.* Yet, we expect and push our kids to perform.

Why did I feel so uncomfortable when my kid pushed me to do what I have been pushing him to do all of his life?

* I was in a dance recital as an adult. I'll have to find the blog post on that wild and crazy experince.

Addiction and/or Codependency & Meeting in the Middle

My friend Delaney is a doctor and a writer and a filmmaker. Her primary creative topic is mental health, writing and filming about her father's battle with schizophrenia and her kids' addiction to screens. 

Recently, she wrote a blog post with which I whole-heartedly agree: When We Judge Moms About Their Children's Mental Health. She writes about three sisters, one who has a child with mental health issues. The other two sisters blame and judge the mother for her child's problems, saying if she hadn't gotten a divorce or been such a free spirit her kid would be fine, which is of course, bullshit.

As a parent of a kid who was in treatment for two years, I agree we shouldn't blame or judge the moms. Delaney said we should have curious compassion, which is a great way to treat someone who is in the depths of a struggle instead of blame. This is all well and good.

Yet, I don't think parents should be let off the hook or get a free pass when their kid has problems, even in "good" families. And what do we mean by "good" families? They are affluent, well-educated, polite, civilized, professionals? Not that that are warm, kind and sweet?

Since Pedro has been home and since my visit to Montana a few weeks ago, I realized a few common denominators of many of the families in Pedro's program.

• They come from "good" families where at least one of the parents is (or was) a leader in their field.
• At least one parent has an addiction or co-dependency from growing up in a house with addiction or other dysfunction.
• The parent with the addiction is high achieving, thereby making it easier to mask the addiction. 
• Perfectionism is part of addiction, and as much as it is hard to live with a perfectionist, sometimes the right type of perfectionist can be very successful professionally.

It is hard for a high functioning, high profile person with an addiction to hit rock bottom. There is no vomit. They show up at work on time, ready to go. They might be loved by their colleagues and friends who don't see the addiction. I had a friend years ago who had an addiction to pain killers and whose husband was a narcissist/psychopath. She was kind and lovely and her family life was a complete shit-show. I saw her every day as our kids went to school together. It took me two years to figure out she had an addiction and her husband was a nutjob. Two years. I don't know if addiction is easy to hide or that I was blind to it. Nevertheless, her son had a truckload of problems and they got him into all of kinds of therapy, none of which worked because the root of the problem--addiction and psychopathy in the parents--was never addressed.

Not all kids collapse in a house with addiction. Some kids are like canaries in the coal mine: they wilt and struggle and suffer when they are raised with addiction. Other kids survive better. Think orchid versus daisies. Orchids need specific conditions to bloom--the proper amount of light, water, temperature. Daisies need water, sun and a patch if dirt. They are hardy and survive all kinds of conditions. The kids in treatment are orchids. They suffer without stability and consistency.

Back to my friend Delaney. I agree with her that we shouldn't blame or judge parents when their kids struggle, but families and parents need to look at themselves. What pain are they trying to avoid? What unhealthy ways are they trying to cope?

What happens when parents get better and do their work along side their kids? The parents get better and the kids get better. Pedro told me that the kids who do the best in his program are the kids whose parents do their own work. Part of me felt bad about not finishing all of the parenting books I bought before he came home. Instead, I was working on my own co-dependency problems. I was cleaning up my side of the street. And it was the better thing to do. I am sure those books have lots of wisdom, telling the parents they need to change. But do they ever spell it out for parents, in black and white, and say "YOUR ADDICTION AND/OR CODEPENDENCy IS PART OF THE PROBLEM. GET YOUR SHIT TOGETHER AND LIFE WILL BE BETTER. Life won't be perfect, but you need to leave your perfectionism at the door. Don't bring it in the house."

No, they never tell parents this.

Why? Because we don't want to blame or shame or judge parents of kids with mental health issues which is all well and good, but because of that we are closing the door on honest conversations about how families and people and emotions work.

So how do we bridge this gap, between not blaming the parent but getting the parents to honestly look at themselves and see that addictions and co-dependency are killing their families? 

Why did teen anxiety and depression gone up during the pandemic? Why did alcohol consumption for adults -- especially women -- rise during quarantine? Is there a possible correlation between families who spend all day together now exposing each other to their addictions and co-dependencies? Are addictions in general on the rise for parents and therefore more pressure on kids to cope and therefore the kids become more depressed and anxious? 

What can we do as parents to support each other when our kids fall apart? Perhaps is having honest conversations about how we got to the other side, that my son didn't come back from therapy fixed and problem solved. I did my work, he did his work and we met in the middle.

Heat Wave and Prayers and Driving

Seattle has just had two of the hottest days ever recorded, and I don't have central air conditioning. I have a portable AC to cool off my bedroom, which is helpful but not sufficient. At 4:00 a.m., the temp in my townhouse was 83 degrees. I am sitting in my living room with all of the doors open to the cool night air and the temp has dropped to 76 degrees in fifteen minutes, hopefully making it bearable inside for tomorrow later today. Opening the doors and windows at night is my work-around, and it works well enough, except for being awake at 4:00 a.m. when I have a presentation at work at 9:00.

So Pedro is living with me after being "sent away" for two years. I feel my old anxiety creeping back, hoping that he is okay. Prayer and mediation is part of my recovery program, so last night I decided to pray. Technically, we are only supposed to pray to know our higher power's will for us. Instead, I made a laundry list of what I wanted. Pedro starts his first job this week and will apply for his drivers license, both which cause my anxiety to rise. I swear to god that parenting a young adult is the most stressful phase of parenting ever. He is off on his own to work, to drive and then to live.

So I prayed last night, "Please don't let anything happen to the Boy."

Right?

Thankfully, my higher power/inner voice kicked in and said, "You can't be serious."

Please don't let anything happen to the Boy. That is the worst prayer ever. That is like asking for him to be sealed in wax and made into a statue and never leave my house. Just to sit there and let nothing happen. How boring and selfish. Maybe I could have asked to keep him safe from harm, that might have been better.

Better an even better prayer would have been "Please help me to chill the fuck out as my kid goes out into the real world."

Why am I worried? 

Because I am a mom.

Because he has been gone for two years and I have missed so much of his growth.

Because he drives like me.

Let's dig a little deeper into that last one, shall we?

I drive a high performance car, which I love. It is fast and it has great maneuverability and acceleration. The Boy sees me zipping in and out of lanes on the highway, passing people who dare to drive close to the speed limit. He swears at slow moving cars and drivers who make dumbass moves like making a left turn from the right lane. Just like me.

Oy.

So this weekend I was driving with Pedro and I decided to exhibit extreme amount of patience and serenity behind the wheel. I was on 520 behind a few cars and a FedEx truck going 45-50 mph. And I didn't pass the line of traffic. I patiently sat behind the slow moving vehicles. I didn't swear. I didn't fuss. I even said aloud that I was going to be patient.

And it paid off. The next time he drove, he drove like the improved me: calm, steady and not maxing out the capabilities of my car.

I need to revamp my prayers to be a better example to my son. Then maybe I could chill out.

Not Ordinary Time and Work from Home

The Catholic Church has three seasons: Lent (before Easter), Advent (before Christmas) and Ordinary Time. Ordinary Time is the non-holiday part of the year.

Pedro is home, staying with me at the condo. His return home has not been Ordinary Time. In many ways, it feels normal to have him back in my life, around for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Yet, his transition back home and my return to motherhood feels like a holiday, a cause for celebration. I feel like the parents in the Prodigal Son, killing the metaphorical fatted calf upon his return. 

"I feel like I am spoiling him. We are eating out all of the time and getting carry out," I told my friend Ellen whose daughter was "sent away" a few years ago.

"Of course you are," Ellen said. "That is perfectly normal." For a situation that isn't normal to start.

For once I am glad I am working from home. I get to see Pedro during the day and eat lunch with him. We chat between meetings.

So far, so good. I am enjoying his company. I like having him around. I am comfortable emotionally, not stressed or obsessing. The fact that I don't have a lot to say is a good thing.

In fact, it is wonderful.

Sleep

I've been in Montana now for more than a week and my major "accomplishment" (which is not the point of vacation) has been catching up on sleep.

Last night I slept for 10.5 hours. I went to bed at 11:15 p.m. and woke up at 9:38 a.m.. Most other nights on this trip, I've gotten at least eight, often nine, hours of sleep. I had two nights of insomnia, but those weren't that bad. One morning, I woke up a 6:30 a.m. to go fly fishing.

I've really enjoyed catching up on sleep. At home, I started a new job about three months ago and I start work at 8:00 a.m. compared to my old job which started at 9:00 a.m. Getting up and ready an hour earlier than usual has been an adjustment.

Why the restfulness? Am I more tired than usual? Am I exhausted? 

The past two years (and more) have been exhausting, stressful, and depleting. The time has been spent recovering and learning more about myself, how I tick and why I act the way I do. In some ways, the time has flown by. Life was easier knowing Pedro was being cared for and learning to care for himself. At times, I felt like a failed mom, that I had to outsource parenting to an outside organization. Other times, I felt like the challenge of raising Pedro more than most parents could handle, and there was no shame in seeking help. 

Why the restfulness? Am I more anxious and depressed, and therefore sleeping more? Is my body preparing for the stressful weeks ahead of having Pedro home?

One of the symptoms of depression is sleeping more. I can't say I feel depressed, but I know I am stressed about bringing Pedro home. I know there will be hard times, that I will have to exercise setting boundaries in ways that I never had to before. This will be hard. Before when I set boundaries with the Boy, I feared alienating him, that perhaps we would be estranged forever. In the past few weeks, I have set some hard boundaries. I did not rescue. I did not rush to jump in and save him.

And it was fine. He didn't hate me for setting boundaries.

Why the restfulness? Am I more at peace, so sleep comes more easily? That after more than two years of helping my breath, I can finally relax?

Perhaps this is the best answer.

I feel good about my progress and the Boy's. He worked so hard for the past two years, taking his therapy seriously. I give him credit for all of the work he has done. I give myself credit, too. I have done quite a bit of inner work, and I have grown in ways that I have not expected. Most of all, my mind has stopped spinning. At times--often actually, I am thinking of nothing. My mind is quiet, still, something I don't think I have ever experienced in my life before. At first when the spinning stopped, I felt dull. When I told my therapist my mind stop spinning, he said, "You are feeling calm. That is normal."

Perhaps the best analogy is I feel like I have come back from a long and arduous trip, and I can finally sleep in my own bed again. I remember coming home from camping trips as a kid, and crashing into sleep. It felt so good to rest.

And so I feel the same now. It feels so good to sleep.

Bookends

Thursday night, the night before Pedro graduated from high school, I dreamt he died. He was out somewhere and I went looking for him. I knocked on a strange door and I said "He's dead, isn't he?" The person who answered the door didn't reply. I assumed that her lack of response and the expression on her face meant it was true, but I never actually saw him dead. I was startled and woke up, completely freaked out. His graduating from high school is a big deal, and I should be happy. Why am I having such crappy and horrible dreams? My therapist loves talking about dreams. He thinks they are like poetry--open to interpretation.

I digress.

The graduation was lovely. I cried through most of it. Afterwards, I was exhausted.

Saturday, the family went to Glacier National Park and hiked to Avalanche Lake, the same hike Pedro and I did on his first family pass in October of 2019. This hike bookended Pedro's experience in Montana.

Both he and I commented on what a difference there was between the hike this weekend compared to where we both were in 2019. This was my first visit to the Boy at his boarding school, and, by his own definition, he was "an angry douchebag."

On the 2019 hike, the late fall weather was cold and dreary, pouring rain for more than half of the hike. The Boy marched ahead, not talking to me and not telling me why he was angry. I felt helpless and frustrated and sad and angry. I didn't know what to do. When we got to Avalanche Lake, the Boy skipped stones for twenty minutes in the rain, trying to burn off some unspoken emotions. Looking back, I probably should have not tolerated that insolent and dismissive behavior. I probably should have have taken him back to campus and then driven back to Seattle.

This year, Pedro was much more enjoyable to be around. He walked along side me for most of the hike. He even commented on the change between the two hikes. At one point, he told me to hurry, but like "It is okay to take your time and get some water, but don't sit and meditate for twenty minutes." Which was fine as it was clear and direct communication. When we got to the lake, we both sat on a log. I told him this is where he could scatter my ashes when I die, if they allow that kind of thing in a national park.

"I can get a little boat and drop them in the middle of the lake," he said. "But I'd have a hard getting a boat out here."

"Maybe you could take a stand-up paddle board," I said. "You could strap the urn with my ashes to the front of the board and row out to the middle." We laughed.

In movies and books, things often come full circle at the end of a journey, but rarely does it happen so neatly in life. Yet, here we were, in the exact same spot, two years later, both changed people.

Maybe my dream of Pedro dying means that the old Pedro died, the one who was angry and hostile and sad and isolated. Perhaps this is where a new Pedro emerges. I know there is so much more ahead for both of us, so many good times and times again where he will be "an angry douchebag."

Perhaps I missed something in the dream. I didn't die in the dream, but the person I was on that hike two years ago is mostly gone, too. My spinning and obsessing about everything has dramatically slowed down, and I am getting comfortable in this new way of being. I am trying really hard not to try to control everything I cannot control. I am letting things evolve instead of trying to manage them.

Final Exam

Two years.

I hope I am ready to have Pedro home.

For the past two years, I have been in deep introspection, spending ten hours a week in therapy, recovery groups, or talking to Pedro on the phone. 

When we flew to Durango, Colorado two years ago to drop Pedro off at Wilderness, I didn't have any idea of where this would lead me. I have been on quite the journey. I feel like Bilbo Baggins, and now I am coming home from wrestling with the dragon. What have I been seeking?

Today, I finally got to the answer to two questions that have been driving my crazy, plaguing me since the Boy left for Wilderness. Today. Right under the wire.

What is the difference between ranting/raging and venting?

• Ranting or raging is when someone is displacing their emotions and taking their anger out on someone else. Denial of the feelings is a necessary component of ranting and raging.  
• Venting is when you are feeling your feelings, and letting them out is a safe place. There may be some denial is place, but the person who is venting is seeking to release pressure and to understand their feelings, not bury them or take them out on someone else. Venting this the ugly stage before curiosity and acceptance arrive.

This has been an epic dilemma for me for years and I finally figured it out.

Which directly leads me to my next question: What is the difference between enabling and empathy?

• Empathy is when we are listening to someone tell their truth, quietly and without interruption, saying "I hear you and I stand beside you as you go through this challenging time."
• Enabling happens when someone is displacing their emotions, and we let support them in their denial. Enabling is allowing people to not be accountable or responsible for their actions.

- Aho

Disaster Recovery & Grown Ass Man

I got a new job about two and a half months ago working in Disaster Recovery at a large corporation. The idea is that all IT applications need a plan so that they can be recovered in case of a disaster. Maybe there is a fire, or a major power failure where the computer systems needed to run the organization are shut down. Each team needs a plan to restore their applications. The next phase of this work is Business Continuity: How do you keep your systems up and running even in the face of a disaster? How can you avoid or prevent human caused disasters? Are your servers three years past end-of-life? Then why are you shocked that they failed?

I digress.

Pedro is graduating this week and returning to Seattle this summer, as you all know. Before he could come home, Jack, Pedro and I have been doing our own Disaster Recovery and Business Continuity planning. Over winter and spring, Pedro has been planning his MAPP -- Montana Academy Post Plan (MAPP) and his Relapse Prevention Program (RPP). Likewise, as parents Jack and I have been preparing ourselves for Pedro's return. Pedro can be changed, but if we don't change as well, the whole system will fall back into its old patterns. 

Planning is easy. Disasters are messy. I discovered that this weekend. The Boy had this habit that Pedro needs to get rid of.* The Boy would not feel his feelings and then express his hostility and anger towards me. Which I hated, but didn't know how to manage with him (or Jack for that matter when he would get all rage-y.) 

The Boy's therapist recommended I preemptively write the Boy and tell him that I don't like it when he takes his unfelt feelings about the world out on me. So I did. I told the Boy I don't want to be his emotional garbage can. He needs to clean this up, not just for me, but for any future relationship he has. His significant other doesn't deserve to be his emotional punching bag, either. And anyone with a solid sense of self will not put up with it for very long. If he doesn't fix it, he will find himself alone or in toxic and unhealthy relationships. Neither is good.

A week ago, we had a call with the Boy where he was hostile and angry for about two hours. It sucked and I was exhausted. This was not productive venting where he was actually talking about what he was feeling, like "I am really frustrated when....and I want to resolve this issue." This rant was "everything sucks and everyone is stupid." As the Boy called it himself, it was an emotional dumpster fire. Recognizing the problem is the first step.

Wednesday, he called again, but he was kind and gentle and apologized for his shit mood on Sunday. 

Apologies are nice and all, but what people also want from an apology (meaning me) is that the toxic behavior stops. The apology is meaningless if the same stuff keeps occurring. Now, this is where the Boy/Pedro gets a wee bit of slack. I would like to see progress and improvement, not perfection.

This weekend, the Boy called again and was hostile. 

And I was different. I was telling/asking him about plans for his graduation week, and he got pissy. I asked him why he was hostile. He continued to rant. 

"Why are you hostile?" I asked. 

To which he replied by hanging up the phone.**

I cried for ten minutes, thinking that I might be permanently estranged from my son. Once I felt my feelings of sorrow and talked about it, I felt better. I was able to settle down and then go to sleep without ruminating about it like I used to do.

Yay! Go me! Perhaps the weekend at the ocean helped prepare me to weather the storm.

The next morning, Pedro texted and meaningful and sincere apology. He called again last night to recover and repair.

Disaster recovered. 

Finally. 

He's a grown ass man. 

Treasures from the beach.

* The concept of switching his name within a sentence is perfectly appropriate. Sometimes my son is a boy, and other times as one of my dear friends would say, "He's a grown ass man." 

** To those born before cell phones were invented, "Hanging up the phone" is a phrase where you would take the phone handset and put it back in the cradle. The little button in the cradle would then disconnect the phone. Slamming the phone down was quite cathartic. Pushing the little red dot on the phone seems so much less so.

Cramming vs Chilling

My last blog drifted away from its title, "Cramming or Comedy." My initial thought was to write about how I feel like I have to cram to get ready for Pedro to come back to Seattle, to finish reading all of the books I bought about how to deal with your anxious and depressed teen, like this one.

Instead of cramming Thursday night, I decided to watch "Girls5eva," a comedy about middle-aged women who used to be in a one-hit-wonder girl band twenty years ago and how they try to get back on stage.

This weekend, I invited myself to my friend Anneliese's beach house on the ocean for the weekend, which is the perfect escape I need before going to Montana. This past week at work, I was struggling. The background music in my mind--tracks about Pedro returning home--were playing at full volume. I didn't have the bandwidth to deal with the regular crap of daily life. Friday, I was so wound up I wasn't fit to be around other people. I needed to turn that down that soundtrack and take a break.

This was a good break. Walking along the ocean and being miles and miles from everything and everyone was healing and restorative, necessary before I embark on the transition of bringing Pedro home before he goes to college. I read somewhere that watching waves of the ocean is like meditating. It calms our minds just by being the ocean.

But what and where is his home? His current home is Montana. He's lived with the same guys for two years. He loves the land, the rivers, the mountains. I know he will miss Montana, and I am glad he will. 

We miss what we love.

I know Pedro has grown, as have I. I have learned more about myself in these past two years than I have at any other point. It was painful at times, but that is okay. The capacity to feel is the capacity to feel. I don't want to be numb again. Feeling pain and sadness and sorrow also means I can feel joy and happiness and serenity.

I don't need to cram to feel that. I need to chill.

Cramming or Comedy

One week from today, Pedro graduates from high school and from his therapy program at the same time. He will have spent two years to the day in a structured program. I am vacillating between grief and gratitude, fear and joy. I am delighted to have him home this summer, but I am also scared. Will I be able to hold my boundaries? What will I do and how will I react when he regresses or relapses? Am I helping or hurting the situation?

I am worried. I am anxious. I am afraid.

I have missed him for two years, and I am afraid of my feelings when he comes back home, that the grief and sorrow and sadness that I have been holding in will all fall out.

Why would that be a bad thing?

I read somewhere recently (probably on my diet app) that the secret to happiness is feeling all of the feelings, not to think of them as good or bad, but just as they are. Emotions are indicators, signals from our heart to our head.

If I don't feel my feelings, they will come out sideways, which is never good.

So, I am sitting here crying, thinking about the two years that I missed with my son. And I was crying, I visioned him in a few years, with his own family, hoping for his future. The two years I lost were likely traded up for years in the future that I otherwise might not have.

I have no idea if that vision or dream will come to fruition. It is one of many possibilities, but it is likely now, more so than it was two years ago. I loved him so I had to let him go.

Okay, I am done crying for now.

In other news, I was walking Fox this morning and I got smacked in the back of the head by a crow. Kind of weird. Maybe the crows were happy during the pandemic that some sort of quiet Armageddon took place and now they ruled the land. Perhaps now they are annoyed at the humans for coming back. Or the bird didn't like Fox. 

Anyway. 

I am feeling better. Thanks for listening.

People

I was walking Fox early this morning through the park. Given I was outside and I have both vaccine doses, I took my mask off as I left the courtyard of my building. At the park, I saw a young couple standing on little pillars stretching their arms to the sky. At first, I thought they were doing yoga (people in Seattle do that kind of stuff). Instead, they were taking selfies with Elliott Bay in the background. They saw me with my dog, said hello and asked if I lived in Seattle. 

They were visiting from South Carolina on their way to Alaska via the ferry. In the before-times, it wasn't uncommon to see visitors from the East Coast out in Seattle at 7:00 a.m., with their bodies are still in a different time zone. 

I said visiting Alaska was on my post-pandemic trip list, along with riding motorbikes through canyons near Moab, Utah, and visiting rainforests in Central America. We talked about how cold it was in Seattle this morning, and how hot it is in the south.

"There will be long hours of daylight now in Alaska, the midnight sun thing. How long are you going to be there?" I asked. 

"Three years," they said.

"Three years? Wow," I said.

"We are in the military and will be stationed in Fairbanks," they said.

Wow again.

"It was on our bucket list to live in Alaska," they said.

This was the first conversation I've had with strangers where I could see their faces. This was the first conversation with strangers who weren't selling me food or were another dog owner walking their pet. 

I saw their smiles and felt their warmth and an ephemeral friendship as we emerged from the other side of the quarantine. I read ages ago that it is these small connections we make with people who are outside of our inner circle that bring us a necessary kind of social interaction and comfort. They were from another part of the country, heading off to adventure, and I was one of the many people they will meet along the way.

Stuff I Got Done Today v Stuff I Did Not

As I am getting ready for bed, I started to think about all of the things I didn't get done this weekend. I didn't:

• Email or text back the other moms from Pedro's school. They wrote to me Friday and I have been a slug. I love these moms and feel bad I have't connected with them.
• I didn't do my Noom homework. I've done my diet homework diligently and faithfully since I've been in the program in March. Today I didn't get it done.
• I didn't exercise today except for a quick walk through the Market. 
• I have 23 ideas for blog posts that I haven't gotten around to writing yet.

Just as I was kicking myself for all of the stuff I didn't get done today, I decided I need to step back and congratulate myself for what I did get done.

I finished getting making the drapes and railing skirt for the landing so Pedro and Claire-Adele can have some privacy when they visit the condo this summer. My friend Erica came over yesterday and helped me pick out fabric and plan my sewing. She was sooo helpful and was such a great sanity check. She wanted to make it Insta worthy and worried that she was giving me bad advice. I just needed to get it done.

I love the fabric for the curtains, but given more time, I would have found a fabric I like better for the railing skirt. Time and the quarantine were not my friends as a several fabric shops have closed in Seattle. Those that are open have very limited hours. I could order fabric online, but that takes a lot of time to order samples and then wait for the fabric to arrive. I am becoming more used to the idea that nothing is permanent, that I can change my mind, and in a few weeks or months, I can get new fabric that matches "perfectly" to make the landing Insta worthy. (I'll give a plug to "The Fabric Stash" in Pike Place Market. I've been in there four times in past week. I am on a first name basis with the owners Gary and Deborah.)

But here we are. Pedro will be home in a few weeks. I needed this project done before I leave for Montana.

Today, I put everything together. And yes, I did a fabulous job on the curtains. Notice how the pattern is exactly level on both panels. Yes, I am impressed with myself.

Railing skirt. This is a term I just invented to describe this cloth thing.