(no subject)

So, I can't really tell if I'm depressed, or profoundly disabled, or just bad at life.




I'm not teaching my kids very much. But I teach them sometimes, and they do a lot of independent learning and use educational websites, and I can just order Annie to go do work on her own, and Elise goes to preschool, and I still take them to their activities?

I don't really clean anything. But I've never been very good at that.

It adds up to a lot of just hanging around in a messy house 0_o

I have really, REALLY low energy. I mean I just want to take a nap, like, all day every day. A clear and likely explanation for this is that I'm recovering from a pervasive illness that has dropped everyone I know for long periods of time and am still on antibiotics and cough medicine, BUT - how can I deal with that, and be ok with it, when:
-I was sick for like, weeks following Christmas
-then I got whiplash in a car accident
-and now I've been ill since mid March
-all the while with this chronic back pain and weird stomach discomfort from major hernia, which I was just in the ER for again not long ago
-and with my deblitating periods still happening monthly
I mean wtf?

I'm slacking off bigtime in school this semester. I'm always making something up or turning it in at the last minute, spotty attendance, or being like "Well a 50 averages in far better than a zero, mission accomplished". And it's like, well, this semester I've been sick as hell twice, I've had my bike (i.e. transporation to and from school) stolen, and I had a crazy lot of stuff to deal with re: Isaac. Or, maybe I just got a bunch of As and a couple of Bs in summer and fall and now I'm burnt out. Or, maybe I'm self sabotaging because I don't know how to be successful at things. Or, blah blah blah.

I'm also doing this stupid shit where I don't cook anything and I'm starving and the kids are like, spilling cinnamon sugar everywhere making too much toast and leaving milk out on the counter after they get cereal and taking two bites out of apples that turn brown on the table after that, all day long, and I feel progressively worse and worse from not eating until eventually I end up having, like, a can of black olives for lunch.

This afternoon the phone rang, and when I found it on my bed I flopped down and answered it and it was just a recording, and then it felt so hard to get up that I just stayed there and took a nap. Sometimes, I feel profoundly hassled just because one of my kids is talking to me, and I find myself squinting more and more until I say something like, "I really need some space right now. Go find something to do."

I might just be a selfish person, because I still get a whole lot of enjoyment out of little things like flowers and phone conversations I choose, and funny things on tumblr. I was, dareIsay, enchanted by this AMAZING park we went to yesterday, and I still have a lot of fun doing things like staying out til 4 am with Jess two nights in one week. I sat on a couch at Cybele's excitedly raving about my writing career for half an hour last night and that was great. On the other hand, that's what I do when I'm sick, or depressed, or stressed or whatever - I try hard to be nice to myself so it doesn't spiral into something worse. I indulge and tread gently until I come out of it.

I'm most successful, lately, when I find ways to combine productivity with self indulgence. For instance, if I can watch a show or movie I also dig with my kids, or lay in the hammock looking at clouds/stars with one of them, and they feel like they're getting quality interaction, everybody wins. I love congratulating them lavishly on art, projects, schoolwork or cooperation they accomplish totally autonomously and telling myself that it's because I've invested so much effort in the past.

Sometimes, I can trick myself into going to school by making eating something really good or putting on makeup and painting my nails part of getting ready.

Hopefully I'll be rich and famous soon so I just come off as eccentric, and can hire staff. Or, more likely and possibly even more immediate, I could GET BETTER and BE HEALTHY.

Seriously though it sounds like some kind of miraculous parting of the clouds to me to just be healthy and well and not hurt anywhere or have any kind of ailment. I vacillate all day long between thinking I need to fling myself headlong into some sort of exercise regimen to jumpstart my metabolism and thinking I just have to give myself time to get better and eventually I'll come out of it.

Bleh.

(no subject)

This is the park where the TLC kids decided to draw all over the sidewalks.

Don't ask me.

I'd never been there before, but now I want to go back all the time! Huge gorgeous trees everywhere.





I really love these trees.







The main part of the part used to be a rock quarry and they dug coral rock out for many of the houses around the (very wealthy) area. Which means the area where people are kicking balls around and kids are running is sunken, which is great because it makes it so much less likely that anyone will end up in the street.

Obviously I should have been turning my phone the other way.



At one point, Grant called me over to one on the other side of the park like something was just crazy and I went running over:

Clearly he lived, or else I imagine this post might have had a different tone.





You can go here and see a tumblr post of a bunch of their art





Ninja Dolphins on the vine swing...


Except this one is acting like she's, like, WAY too cool for vine swings, but still totally athletic enough to get up high in a tree. Sometimes I see myself in her an awful lot, I HATED it when all the boys I was hanging out with wanted to like, jump walls to get places quicker or get up on roofs to hang out or whatever.