Pertinent to my Interests

I have always been a terrible sleeper.

My worst years of sleep were probably in early elementary school; I would lay awake in bed for hours most nights unable to fall asleep. Back then I shared a basement bedroom with my sister, and I had a collection of stickers stuck to my bedside table. I made up elaborate stories for these stickers and would repeat them to myself several times each night while I waited for sleep to come.

Some readers of this blog will be familiar with my stuffed dog, Bernard, who was my nighttime companion for most years of my life. I had stories for Bernard too. By manipulating his ears and his tongue and his jowls I could turn him into different members of the Bernard family, and replay stories from their lives.

If I turned my head toward the wall, I could examine the Precious Moments wallpaper that my mother had hung when we first moved into that house. I created stories for the Precious Moments people on the wallpaper too.

Sometimes things weren’t so precious. At one point in my staring at the wall I started to consider the wall itself and then I thought about the dirt behind the wall and then my mind wandered to the cemetery that was just a half mile from our house. It occurred to me that if coffins could travel (and maybe they could?) a coffin could break right through the wall exactly at the level where I was now lying in bed.

I got pretty freaked out about that, and tried to not have that thought again.

One time, maybe when I was in preschool, we went to the store and bought 101 Dalmatians on VHS.

“Everybody who takes a nap gets to watch 101 Dalmatians after nap,” my mother declared. We eagerly climbed into our twin beds and within minutes my sister was snoring away. I stared at Bernard. I stared at the wall. I stared at my sticker collection. I could not fall asleep and the more time ticked away the more upset I got. I wasn’t going to be able to watch 101 Dalmatians! I was trying to sleep but I couldn’t! It was so unfair that my sister was so good at sleeping and I was so bad at it! Would I have to stay in here while she got to watch the movie?

After what felt like hours of fretting, my mother opened the door and announced it was time for 101 Dalmatians. Warily, I said nothing about my inability to take a nap. My sister, having been asleep herself, could not betray me. I got to watch 101 Dalmatians despite having not fulfilled the prerequisites.

Things didn’t improve much during my teenage years. By then my sister and I were sharing the big room in the basement and the Precious Moments wallpaper had been ripped out of the little room to make way for my brother who apparently would not appreciate just how precious the moments could be.

I did get a portable CD player and headphones at some point in those early teenage years, and I spent most nights listening to Enya as I tried to fall asleep. I had scenes that I played in my head for each song, and there were nights when I listened to all four of my Enya CDs and still would just lay awake, bored.

College wasn’t much better at first. My first roommate was a bat, and kept an opposite schedule from me. I would cover my head in blankets attempting to drown out the noise of her typing or the light from her opening and closing and opening and closing the door to our room all night long. Why do they keep the dorm hallways so bright all night long, anyway?!

But that first year of college was probably the last year of really bad sleep. I had a great roommate the next year, one who shared an interested in going to bed early so we could make it to breakfast almost every morning. Eventually I moved off campus and had my own room again.

I am generally better at falling asleep now than I was as a child, but I am just as bad at staying asleep. Any small thing will wake me up, and the older I get the less likely I am to be able to fall back asleep after waking. I am sometimes filled with rage at others in my radius who do not contribute meaningfully to (nay, they sometimes even sabotage) the absolute darkness and quiet that I need for peaceful slumber.

I have, though, developed some tips and tricks over the years for good sleep which I will share here now in order of importance.

1. The most important thing is to stop caring how much sleep you get. Seriously. Don’t count hours, don’t look at the clock. Turn the number display off or hide your clock in a drawer if you must. Knowing that it’s 2:13 AM and that you have to get up at 5:50 AM is information that can only harm you. Ignorance is bliss.
2. Read in bed for a little bit each night. Preferably non-fiction. Preferably about the British royal family. I love the royal family, but I’ve never been kept awake because I am so eager to turn the page and find out how many pheasants George V shot in 1918.
3. Charge your cell phone somewhere other than your bedroom.
4. Do not allow yourself to think about scary things or stressful things after 8 PM. Tell yourself that you can pick it back up tomorrow at 6 AM but for now the subject is off-limits. Find something else to think about. My go-to safe topic is Star Trek and that usually leads me to other safe topics (Dyson sphere! how do they do it?!).
5. Don’t get cats. If you already have cats, I’m sorry. I adore my cats, but they are the worst creatures after 9 PM.

That’s it, that’s the secret sauce. And while I still would classify myself as a terrible sleeper, I would say I’m much better at it than I used to be. The above rules have at least made it much less stressful to stare at my ceiling for hours some nights.

But there are nights when I wish I still had that sticker collection.

Despite my last post about that one negative interaction at work, the temp job is going well. So well, in fact, that they have asked me to stay on indefinitely.

I’m also suddenly getting requests to come in and interview for permanent jobs similar to what I’m doing now. Yesterday I returned a call from a principal and explained to her that I was looking for a job with an earlier release time than what she needed. To my surprise, she assured me that she was willing to compromise (quite generously!) on the release time.

So I have two interviews for permanent positions next week. This does not mean that I will be offered either of these positions (obviously), but it’s a step in the right direction. After several years of unsuccessful applications, I had begun the process of incorporating the word “unemployable” into my identity. I have paused that for now.

My brain has shifted into a different gear. This job is very much one that I leave behind the moment I clock out, and that’s important to me. But my days are much, much busier now and there are so many more things to process. I fall asleep easily, but wake up too soon. I’m just ON in a way I haven’t been for years.

It’s nice to be busy and it’s nice to feel competent again but I am missing having the space in my brain for this blog! I am determined not to let this thing go defunct yet, and I think am going to focus on recording childhood and young adult memories for a while. Those mini essays are mostly easier to access, organize, and write than some of the other stuff I like to do.

Anyway, here I am, wide awake at 5 AM on a Saturday, but I’m enjoying the dark, the quiet, the coffee, and my strangely favorite comfort documentary.

Today at work someone screamed at me on the phone. She does this to everyone, so it’s not really a big deal. But it did not feel good and I still have not recovered completely.

Today I dealt with two separate crying students at two separate times. All problems were solved eventually.

Also, I had to send the same student back to her classroom at least three times. She kept wandering into the office asking if she could call her mom.

Today at work a fifth grader who only speaks Spanish came to the office, looking stricken. Her mother was picking her up because the girl had gotten her first period. I dug up a graphic novel that had been floating around the office all morning and brought it to her. “Quieres mirar?” I asked. “Si, gracias!”

Today at work I saw my great-aunt-in-law.

I emailed an old friend with a database question, and she responded happily, immediately.

Today at work I got “the look” from my boss because a task she had wanted completed last week was still untouched.

Today at work I gained the ability to print.

And then I almost missed a printing deadline.

Today at work I made several mistakes, but I also had many successes.

And yet, the only thing I can think about is the lady who screamed at me. She will probably come in tomorrow and scream at me again.

My temp job started last week. My first time working for pay in twelve years, and my very first time working and also being a parent.

It was an interesting experiment.

I liked going to work this week. I liked getting emails and solving problems for the teachers and staff. I even liked answering the phone and finding information for parents. I liked feeling like I was making a difference, and that difference did not involve the cleanliness level of anything. I liked being busy and part of a team.

A few of my working parent friends had given me some advice, and I think the best advice I received was not to plan any complicated dinners, especially that first week. So I didn’t. We had frozen enchiladas one night, and macaroni & cheese out of a box another night. I have decided we are just getting Jimmy Johns every Wednesday from here until eternity.

My sister reminded me that new jobs are always extra tiring, and that made me feel better about how exhausted I have been since Wednesday. In addition to learning how to do my job, I feel like I am learning how to do life all over again. Every system I had in place has to be reworked. When do I manage to do laundry and when do I manage to fold laundry? How do I get myself and my youngest ready to leave the house at the same time? Should I be going to the grocery store on Sunday with the rest of the working parent zombies or should I try to go on Tuesday evenings?

Everything feels more difficult. I’m driving through both morning and evening rush hour. I’m picking my kid up from childcare at rush hour. My younger son doesn’t have time to practice piano, do his homework, get his usual one hour of screen time, eat dinner, shower, and get in bed by 8 PM and I hate that. My older son is home alone for several hours some afternoons and I hate that too.

Everything feels so much more frantic, and I feel so frazzled, and although I’m sure it will get better with time, I’m also sure that two full-time working parents will always, to some extent, be a no-win scenario.

But is it worth it? The slight increase in my sense of self-worth, the satisfaction I get out of my productivity, the enjoyment of being part of a team: are these things worth it to make our lives more complicated and rushed?

I’m not sure yet.

I did reach one important conclusion this week, though: I am glad I stayed home with the kids when they were little. Even though they certainly missed out on things by not being in daycare and I certainly missed out on things by not being at work, it was the right decision for our family at the time. And I will never have a big, cool career or be a big earner, but I still have twenty-five years of gainful employment ahead of me and that is plenty of time to enjoy functioning as a professional again.

“Hey, Casey!” my youngest says to me. “I’m playing a game about World War II! I know how you like World War II!”

My eyebrows shoot up at this and I freeze in the kitchen, Triscuit in hand.

Me? I like World War II? Not me. He must have me confused with my father. Old men read books about World War II. Dads and grandpas know the important dates and players. This is not a thing for a charming, middle-aged woman like me!

My eyes travel back to the kitchen counter where my latest pick from the library is waiting, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II. And wasn’t it just last week I was watching a documentary and when they noted the date September 1, 1939, I knew exactly what major event they were referencing without looking it up?

Yes. Yes, that was me. Clever, attractive, middle-aged woman that I am. It’s me, hi, I’m the one who is into World War II now. I can already see the thick, dry non-fiction books that they will gift me on future birthdays. The texts they will send when me when they are studying for their college course on 20th century European history. And after I die, they will hear mention of World War II and they will sigh and turn to their own kids and say, “you know your grandma loved World War II.”

Dear God what have I done.

I’m signed up with a temp agency and I got my first assignment: a two-week position in a nearby school office.

I am looking forward to trying out this working parent thing for just the two-week stint. If it’s absolutely horrendous I can easily remove myself from the temp agency’s employment and embrace a future spent within the four walls of my house.

I’m guessing it will be mostly but not completely horrendous. Hopefully not enough to dissuade me from going back to work. It will, at the very least, be a massive learning experience for all of us.

Please send your best tips for working parents.

Discombobulating subject change:

I had a dream a few nights ago that I was playing a waterlogged piano. I remember many of my dreams and they are often very vivid, but I don’t usually assign much meaning to them beyond the obvious connections. But this waterlogged piano has me mystified. It feels like it must have greater significance, but I can’t think of what that could be.

Please also send your best guess for the meaning of the waterlogged piano.

Another non sequitur:

We have no plans this weekend, because I have a longstanding commitment to not making any plans the first weekend after school has started (thank you, Jen Hatmaker, for this and all your other parenting advice that I didn’t know I needed). I love having no plans.

The last non sequitur:

Earlier this summer I picked out the Netflix series Wednesday as my new gym-only show. The gym-only show is an important part of my motivation to go to the gym and I’ve gone through several gym-only shows in the year and a half that I’ve had a gym membership.

Today I am watching the rest of Wednesday from the comfort of my basement couch. Because you know what? I’m willing to try out the full-time working parent lifestyle for two weeks. But I know I’m not going to even attempt the full-time working parent and dedicated exerciser lifestyle. Someday I will have to, but not this time.

Well, the children are back at school and I am able to eat again.

My oldest picked up some sort of terrible stomach bug at his sixth grade orientation last Thursday, something we did not realize until we found ourselves cleaning vomit from the cabin carpet at 2 AM last Saturday.

A few more of us were felled like dominoes as the weekend progressed and as a result, I spent most of the first day of school in bed: hungry, tired, with a painful stomach, and the worst headache of my life. I would have googled “how to tell if it’s a migraine” but even looking at my phone was too painful and it was all I could do to drift in and out of consciousness for several hours.*

My youngest woke me from my strange half-dreams with a phone call demanding that I pick him up immediately from the after-school care program. We finally got him signed up this year so that I can go back to work, and he’s not particularly happy about it. I’m still (f)unemployed, but we don’t want to lose the spot so he’s going for a little bit every day.

It’s a weird year. My oldest rides the bus to middle school now. After years of being at the same elementary school we don’t even bother to read the principal’s newsletters or the parent handbook anymore, but now I’m forcing myself to read everything the middle school sends because we have no idea what we’re doing.

And my kids are at different school. The last time my kids were at different schools was before face masks, and distance learning, and mRNA vaccines. It was approximately six lifetimes ago. So I’m really confused by the fact that they now go to different buildings in different ways on different schedules every day.

And then I’ll go back to work and there will be even more change.

*I just did some research and have concluded that it was not a migraine.

We went to the Minnesota State Fair on Monday, despite the staggering heat and humidity.

“Are you a Fair person?” Minnesotans often ask each other this time of year. “Are you going to the Fair this year?”

I am probably not a Fair person. I like the bucket of cookies and the SkyGlider. I like the cows. I like that other people like the Fair, but it’s too hot and overwhelming for me.

When I was a college freshman I showed up for our week of orientation to discover one of the optional activities was taking a charter bus to the Minnesota State Fair. Having just left my tiny, rural hometown, and having been underwhelmed several times by my local country fair, I did not even consider the trip. Why would I? Why would I move all this way to live in a city and then kick off my urban experience by attending the local fair? No, thank you.

I don’t think I attended the State Fair until my senior year of college. This would be both the first and last time I would attend the Fair without kids in tow. I mostly just remember being impressed and confused about how well my friend was able to navigate us around.

We only stayed for a few hours this year. It was so hot. My oldest almost melted into the asphalt on the way to the bus stop. My bucket of cookies melted into one giant cookie while we were waiting at the bus stop.

Every year when we stumble out the exit of the fairgrounds I feel a sense of relief. I have done my Minnesota parental duty and purchased overpriced deep-friend candy bars for my kids. I have begged, once again, to go see the animals and have been disappointed, once again, by my kids’ lack of desire to see the animals. I have punished them by forcing them to go on Ye Olde Mill. I have sweated my ass off waiting for them to finish their rides in the Midway.

And now we can go home and we don’t have to do it again for a year.

Lest my previous post about our allowance strategy lead anyone to think that I have my shit together, I am posting today about how I often struggle to stick with things.

Earlier this year we started doing gratitude journaling at dinnertime. It was easy, it took about thirty seconds, and all I had to do was remember to get the pens and journals out as I was setting the table. This lasted for maybe three months, and now the journals are abandoned somewhere on the art cabinet, buried beneath many hand-drawn diagrams of the kids’ extensive Minecraft plans.

My big plan for this summer was to teach the kids to type. I mean my big plan was for Mavis Beacon to teach them how to type. I don’t understand why they haven’t learned to type in school, but I figured just ten minutes per day in the summer would get them a solid foundation at least. But between our ten-day vacation in June, our whole week at the cabin in July, two full weeks of camps that same month, and then tonsillectomy at the beginning of August they have barely done any typing. The few weeks when we did it consistently were very successful, but now I’m staring down the last week of summer and wondering if it’s even worth it to start them back up on this project.

My hobbies suffer from this same lack of consistent interest and care. I’ll read five books in one month, and then go two without reading a single book. I love playing the piano but will play for hours over the course of one week, and then let the keys collect dust for the next six weeks.

I think the only things I can keep up with consistently are the things I have to keep up with. There are serious consequences if I don’t feed the kids every night. There are very fragrant consequences if I don’t do the cat litter every day.

I wish I could be more consistent. My friend sent me a bunch of information about getting kids to contribute to the household without chore charts and nagging. It looks like a really good idea, a good system. But… can I keep it up consistently? I know how I am. We’re going to have one busy day that saps my bandwidth and the system will crash down around me as I straighten the shoes and wipe down the table myself.

Is it worth it to even try to do these things if I know I can’t stick with it?

A little more than a year ago, I instituted a new allowance strategy in our household.

We had a problem with the previous allowance system in that it was paid out at random times and sent directly to the kids’ bank accounts. The kids had no real idea how much money they had and thus my youngest was constantly spending money and my oldest was never spending money and I was questioning the entire purpose of allowance.

We certainly were not teaching them how to handle money.

So I started the Give/Save/Spend system, which I read about in an irritating book. The system annoys me, for reasons I can’t quite articulate, but it works.

Our Give/Save/Spend system is all cash, which works great for the kids to see and feel how much money they actually have. I bought cute little money containers on Etsy, and on the first of each month each kid receives $60 split evenly between the three categories.

My youngest can no longer buy whatever he wants at any time. He had a $6 online subscription going for a while, but cancelled it after two months when he saw how much less spending money he had. If he wants something expensive, he has to wait to save the money. Usually this doesn’t happen and his monthly spend money goes straight to the CEO of Roblox who is making huge amounts of money off of gen alpha. But I think it’s instructive for him to go to stores, see a stuffed animal he wants, and have to put it back because he cannot afford it.

My oldest–an actual squirrel–is being forced to spend. I told him when we started this system that the spend money had to be spent; there was no option to move spend money into the save category. This may seem perverse, but I think it is necessary for a child who is wound too tightly and sees the spending of money as a massive failure of self-control. I told him if he didn’t spend all his spend money by the end of August I would be taking it and using it to buy expensive chocolate for myself, so he’s been slowly working on purchasing things that make him happy, mostly manga.

My plan for the save jars had been to watch the cash grow for a year and then transfer it to their savings accounts, but we ended up deciding to teach them about investing instead. Well, my husband is teaching them about investing. He took the cash they had saved and helped them pick out funds and now they each have money in the markets, which they check on from time to time. We talk about how much more money they will make if they can keep their money invested as long as possible. I hope this is instructive.

And that brings us to the give jars. My oldest gave some money to a class trip fund earlier in the year, but otherwise the give jars have just been ignored. I guess I’m not much for philanthropy, but I decided we needed to address the overflowing give jars before the end of summer.

We sat down yesterday to start researching charities, and it didn’t take long for the kids to find out that if you donate enough money to the World Wildlife Fund they will send you a stuffed animal. So we are now expecting three new plushies to arrive before the end of this month. Money was also given to Heifer International, Scratch Foundation, and the Animal Humane Society. It was a good exercise in thinking about giving priorities and how to make the world a better place.

Although I still find the Give/Save/Spend system annoying, it has worked well for us and we will keep using it. The cash aspect is probably the most difficult part, but also–I think–super important so kids can see and feel how much money they have. If you wanted to start the system in your household, I would recommend setting yourself up for success by ordering the containers from Etsy and going to the bank and taking out as many twenties as possible all at once.