Living deliberately

[catherine]

So I sat down to breakfast today with the intention of eating mindfully. I have not had a decent breakfast during the week for a long time.. I tend to get wrapped up in work and skip over breakfast and sometimes lunch. In short, my eating habits of late have been horrendous. I realize that's not great, so today I resolved to actually make breakfast for myself (DH doesn't eat breakfast often either) and sit at the table and eat it.

I did OK with that. The breakfast was delicious, but my client interrupted me with a call, so the breakfast was cold and interrupted. But at least I had one.

[Zoe Girl]

Thank you Chicken, it is triage. I have a family that is driving me bonkers, and I said to much to the other family in the situation apparently. There is a bully and a victim and I like the bully's family better right now. So after loads of reassuring and them stopping me in the hallway to have conversations (not taking me up on any appointment times I offered) I am totally frustrated. I also made a mistake in the middle of this and shared too much with one family,

The reason I thought about it is because I just got a text on my work cell from the victim's family. The child is starting a new after school club today and they want to know all the other students enrolled in the club, by text, at 7:30 am. This is not about one child bullying their child, which is valid and we are taking lots of steps to ensure he is safe, but also looking for bullying everywhere they go. I was sitting with tea and yogurt, and I am back to tea and yogurt focus, and making an epic packed lunch.

[sweetana3]

I suspect that family needs to be escalated. Is it even appropriate to pass around the names of all the other students to other parents? I agree with you that they are looking for problems and not solutions.

[Tybee]

Sounds like that situation needs to go directly to your school social worker. I would not have any more to do with that one, as it's already out of hand.
School social worker is your friend--that and your supervisor!
Let them do their job.

[Zoe Girl]

Thanks all, it is escalated to my supervisor and her supervisor and the principal and psychologist. They are not comfortable talking to me apparently. There is enough gossip already, they learned about the bully students behavior from the gossip mill that is super active in that grade/class. So my supervisor came to help out with my super short staffing issues and we talked, and she included me on an email that she sent to them blindly just updating and requesting we all meet. I want someone else there to see that I have explained things and maybe we can all work together.

I am making tacos with ground turkey, that is what is important.

[Chicken lady]

Zoe Girl, I am really glad that you are focusing on your tacos. And awesome packed lunches! The situation with the children will pass, but you need to take care of yourself.

catherine, good for you too, focusing on breakfast.

i enlisted a student in my exercise program yesterday - lol. She struggles, she was having a hard day, and she confides in me a lot. I was leaving and I told her. "I need to go swim and I don't want to, but if I don't, my joints will hurt. So I'm telling you because I make you do a lot of things you don't want to do because they are good for you. Now I have to swim. Because if I start to back out, I'll remember I told C, and if she asks me if I swam, I better be able to say yes." She smiled. I swam.

covered the three stars yesterday. The week is getting harder because I am getting more tired. The current schedule combined with dh is only giving me 7 hours of sleep a night, and I am a person who needs 8-9, especially if I am going hard. Dh watches movies before bed at night. In the living room he leaves the sound on and it's too loud for me to sleep. In the bedroom he uses his iPad and headphones, but it's too bright for me to sleep. I sense a fight coming, because he thinks I'm over sensitive and I could sleep longer if I didn't milk goats.

i went to the grocery store yesterday. I'm doing really well at not buying random items, cooking what we have, eating seasonally, and staying under budget. (I have another $80 cumulative to get to next Wednesday). Dh says we need more salty snacks, but in the abscence of a specific request, he gets popcorn. I did buy two loaves of bread yesterday because I have not had time to bake and dh has very specific bread preferences that include not eating day old bread (nevermind that the bread I make becomes day old bread in 24 hours). So I got him grocery store preservative bread in plastic bags.

usually I feel guilty when I resort to that sort of thing, but I looked at my list and thought - what should I have not done in order to have time to make bread? And the answer was "nothing. The store bread is a reasonable cost of doing these other things." So I am good with it.

on to today....

[Tammy]

DH needs to watch the movies on his iPad with headphones in the living room. Alternately, he could do so in a spare bedroom away from you.

[Chicken lady]

Amazing Tammy, such reasonable solutions! And yet, when I mention them, I am told that this is his house too and he doesn't want to do those things. Also that I am too sensitive to light and noise.

Eventually I will get annoyed and instead of quickly silencing my alarm and creeping out of the bedroom at 5:30 to dress in another room in clothes I prepared the night before, I will get up, turn on the overhead light and start getting stuff out of my dresser. Then he will get upset about being tired and me waking him up so early, and I will tell him it is my house too and he is too sensitive to light and noise. If you won't respond to reason, you get passive aggression.

[Zoe Girl]

Oh the sleep thing, I am not sleeping this week really. It is a combo of hormones and stress, practicing having actually effective conversations with people instead of being talked over. I was married for a long time and the sleep/quiet thing was huge. In California houses are small and my ex wanted a piano. He actually wanted a baby grand even though it would have meant no kitchen table and he liked to play at night. So we ended up getting a nice weighted keyboard with headphone option. He grumped about my oversensitivity to needing quiet to sleep, and then a couple years ago apologized to me for the snoring! Apparently his snoring and his new wife's restless leg means that no one was getting any sleep. My ex used to get furious when I left to sleep on the couch because of snoring.

In any case I am happy I have the chance to sleep in a quiet place, not that I can always sleep.

[Tammy]

Chicken lady -

I don't think I could live with a man like that. I might choose to make one of the spare rooms my bedroom and he is not allowed into that space. Or I might tell him to shape up or move out.