What a week!

If we were having coffee, here is what I’d share that I’m…

Dealing with HFMD (hand-foot-and-mouth disease)

My idea of an easy weekend is…

We thought this weekend it was best to stay in town and take it easy by finally starting our pergola project. We’ve had the supplies in our garage — we just haven’t gotten around to building it because it been too hot to work outside…maybe if we did work on our project in the summer, we would have waited until the sun went down to do the work.

How are you dealing with this heatwave?

The past weekend we spent Labor Day weekend in San Diego. Believe it or not, the weather in San Diego was much hotter and more uncomfortable than the Los Angeles heat. Due to the high humidity in San Diego, it did not matter what time we left the house — it could be 6 am or 8 pm — it was still hot. In LA as long as the sun wasn’t high… the weather was more bearable. That is why I enjoy my 6 am walks with my dogs and my 9pm pre-bedtime ritual of sitting in the backyard reading a book.

Sublimation

It’s been a busy Saturday. Aside from the usual gym to the gym, my daughter’s dance class, budgeting, and cleaning up the house, I met up with some friends planning our upcoming trip in October. Initially, we were planning on going somewhere in Europe but we’ve been hearing about a lot of flight nightmares around cancellation and delays. Plus we decided to keep our trip down to a week since one of our friends has been very busy with work. Our trip choices are narrowed down to anywhere in North America which also includes the Caribbean — how broad. This week each of us will be creating itineraries and we’ll vote on the best itinerary (of course factoring in our budget and what kind of weather we’d be willing to tolerate). It’s been such a long since I’ve done any trip planning, so I find this assignment quite exciting!

It does not feel like ten years

Friday was a little stressful. My husband was working on his bike in the living area to prepare for a bike ride the following morning and our kid got a cut on her finger because she was playing on the gears. We cleaned the wound and bandaged it — of course it was an unpleasant experience. I think I was more stressed out at my husband being stressed out. In fact, he was surprised that he was more than stressed out than I am. I guess this is what happens when you’ve worked in healthcare for most of your career; you learn that pain (and young kids screaming at white coats) is inevitable. You can’t avoid a crying kid in pain, but you can help make it less worse. Over the years I’ve picked up a lot of techniques to distract patients from the pain of therapy and treatment. As we were cleaning and applying pressure on Lana’s finger to stop the bleeding, we turned on the Baby Shark channel and sang songs to keep her spirits up. And also to justify why I seemed less stressed is that I’ve seen worse things than a cut on a finger.

Naptime is an indulgence

My husband came back home on Tuesday. He is COVID and pneumonia-free since he spent most of his annual training in quarantine. Today he and Lana are going out to a car meet with a few friends. I was supposed to join them but our pets had a vet appointment today. On the bright side, it is kind of refreshing to be by myself and not have to entertain my kid every second of every day — it is a much-needed respite. The only thing I have on the schedule today is taking my dogs to the vet and nothing else after that. As I mentioned before, it was getting really hard when my husband was away for training so long. Don’t get me wrong! I love my kid but it can be overstimulating. My free day after the vet appointment would be a trip to the gym, go grocery shopping, taking a nap, and binge-watching The Mindy Project instead of the Baby Shark channel. How indulgent!

Going on “Easy Mode”

I feel lately it’s been very hard to be invigorated. So many things have been weighing me down. I had a headache in the last few days that did not seem to go away completely even with (more) water, ibuprofen, dayquil, and sleep. The worst of the headache happened on Monday night into Tuesday morning. My headache was so bad that it felt painful to get up from laying down or sitting. I had to shut my eyes really tight thinking it would go away. I even thought I saw stars. On Tuesday morning I went to Urgent Care to go see a doctor about my headache.

The Plate is full

I would like to say that July is my least favorite month of the year. Background: My husband is in the National Guard Reserves. The first time around he started after he graduated high school and left in 2013. He left because it just did not give him any meaning and it did not benefit him aside from helping pay for some of his college. He never got promoted for all the time he was there.

Currently sick…

I am currently taking care of a cold right now and I feel it is the longest I’ve been sick in a while. I’ve been sick since Wednesday and today is Saturday. I tested and it isn’t COVID surprisingly. I had to take Wednesday and Thursday off. On Friday, I returned to the office because I knew I would not have a lot of people coming in on that day. Also, I would have my own office that day so it lessens the spread. Today I canceled all my plans to take care of this cold. We’ll see about tomorrow’s plans…

Well this was unexpected…

First off, thank you all so much for the support and kind words about the incident at the park. It made my spirit crumble seeing that other family got to keep their dog at the playground and I was the “rulebreaker” asked to keep my dogs out of the park. I felt worse that my 1.5-year-old was part of this incident. I felt compelled to explain to her why world can be so unfair even though she won’t comprehend what I’m saying.

Door number 1, 2, and 3

** Warning: Long Post **

I just see a person

On Saturday my husband is off to a robotics competition. He’s a coach/mentor for a local high school. BIL #1 and BIL #2 are going to see their mom since it is her birthday. They offered to bring Lana because it would be nice for her to see her grandmother and it would free me up, but I told them she had dance classes and we had other plans. Honestly, I am less enthused about Lana going to MIL’s birthday because I am still bitter about that one spontaneous visit where she compared her with her cousins. But that was only part of it.

Play hard

The Comparison game

I think one of the worst things a parent, a grandparent, or a relative could do to a child is to compare them with other children. I am thankful my parents never did that. I am also thankful my parents advised me to never compare myself to other people. I am sure I started this self-flagellation of comparing myself to others as early as elementary school…maybe even sooner? I think into my 20s it was pretty bad because I was concerned about career and life satisfaction. Now in my 30s, I am actively fighting against it.