I feel like I’ve become very “one note” and boring recently. I hate that. I feel like there was a time when I had a lot of interesting things to say. I would like to get back to that.

I have been driving one of my kids back and forth to a day camp in the suburbs all week and I have discovered that being stuck in stop-and-go traffic for two hours every day turns me into an absolute monster of a human being. I have no grace left to give to any other driver at the end of the day. You take a half a second too long to hit the gas at the green light? Dead to me. You actually go the speed limit on a main city thoroughfare? Fuck you. You slow down way too much for that right turn you’re taking? I will murder your entire family.

I’m unhinged. It’s not healthy. It’s a good thing my usual work commute only involves two miles of city streets and the occasional wild turkey.

I am done with work, which means that 3/4 of our human family members are now on summer break. I do feel badly for the one of us that is not on summer break. On the other hand, by August I’m pretty sure I’m going to be really jealous of him and his ability to leave the house and go to a nice, quiet office downtown with fresh coffee.

The cat family members are always on their break. Their union is hardcore.

I have watched Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour on Disney+ an embarrassing number of times recently. I’m pretty sure this is a sign of impending mental breakdown, or maybe it’s a bulwark against impending mental breakdown? Unclear. And it’s not like I’m cutting myself or drinking every day, but I do sit there on the couch singing along during All Too Well with tears forming in my eyes and wonder what the hell is going on with me.

But it’s not drinking, so it’s okay, right?

I’m taking the summer off from piano lessons, and by that I mean that I’m attempting to learn a piece that my teacher declared too hard for me. Because this seems like a good project to take on while I am in the middle of wrestling with my self-confidence issues, right? It’s one of those pieces where you’re playing a lot of octaves and your hands are jumping around the piano and it’s basically impossible to keep your eyes on the music. My solution to this has been to work on memorization at the same time I’m learning it, which I haven’t done in a long time. It is going surprisingly well. Better than my self-esteem project perhaps.

Sometimes I think about my life ten years ago when I was in the thick of it with the kids being little and I cannot believe that I survived. I also cannot believe how different my life is now. I just kind of… do my own thing? Like yes there is a lot of laundry still, and yes I am making dinner most nights and I hate that. But also my kids’ wake time no longer determines my wake time. Sometimes I’m not even sure where they are or what they are doing. Yes, they need help with homework sometimes, and help with emotions sometimes, but don’t we all?

This has been on my mind more recently because we had our college reunion a couple weekends ago and many of our friends are still in the little kids phase of life and my God I felt tired just watching them deal with their kids all day. Meanwhile, those of us with the older kids were living our best lives with almost zero responsibility. It felt like it was never going to happen but it did!