Hour-a-Day April 2014

It's been a long winter.

A year ago, we packed up our home and moved an hour away, to a small town in the middle of Amish country where we didn't know anyone. It's a lovely place, and exactly what we wanted, but it's been a long, lonely year. Our van died, we had a baby, Valerie started kindergarten, Dorothy turned three (which, any parent will tell you, is so much worse than two). And then: the. longest. winter. ever.

I've lived in the greater Philadelphia area for about 8 years, now, and in that time, there have been about 5 snowfalls that have stayed on the ground long enough for Canadian-born me to drag out a sled and play like it's a real winter. But this winter, even cold-loving, winter-fun-having Jule Ann shouted, "Enough!" 11 snow days (or was it 12? I lost count.) Snow past my knees. And days on end when I never saw a single ray of sunshine, literally or figuratively.

Meanwhile, my normal housework roller coaster was getting wilder than usual. I would start to get caught up on things, then someone would get sick (usually me), or something would break, or I would just run out of steam, and it would all pile up again. A few days later, I would start to get a handle on things again, feel optimistic again, bake some bread, then it would all fall apart again. I was diagnosed with depression, and have seen some progress with SSRIs, but nothing has broken the cycle. I feel like I spend 2/3 of my time in survival mode, and the remaining 1/3 of the time is not enough to catch up, let alone get ahead.

Then, last weekend, I choked on a sip of my drink, and got sick again, and was worried enough to go to the doctor this time. They ran some blood work, and apparently my Vitamin D levels were very low, so I am taking ridiculously high doses of prescription vitamin D until my levels come back up again. In retrospect, it all makes sense. The low energy, the depression, the frequent illnesses - all symptoms of Vitamin D deficiency. It's been a dark, dreary winter, and we've been cooped up inside far too much. We drink raw milk, which is not fortified like the grocery store kind, and I don't eat fish, which is the only really good dietary source of Vitamin D. Unfortunately, all of the symptoms of vitamin D deficiency also look a lot like the symptoms of just-had-your-third-baby-and-moved-to-a-new-town, so it never occurred to me that I might have a physically treatable problem.

Which brings us, in a very roundabout way, to Hour-a-Day April. My house is a mess. I need to do dishes and laundry. I have a newly-mobile baby who gets into everything. I have lots of creative/organizational/fun projects floating around in my head. I could do so much with an extra hour of productivity squeezed into every day for the next month. But I'm going to need to give myself a lot of grace, too, because I run out of steam so quickly these days. My commitment for Hour-a-Day April this year is to at least START every day. I want to do the hour, I will try to do the hour, but if I can't do the hour, I'm at least going to start. Even a few minutes of progress is better than no progress.

If you don't know what Hour-a-Day April is, it's a productivity project I created a few years ago. For the month of April, you make it a goal, every day, to spend one hour doing something that you normally have a hard time finding time for. My original post is here, but I will post the updated "Rules" for 2014 below as well. Who will be joining me this year?

Hour-a-Day April 2014 Rules

1. Think of something that you normally have a hard time finding time for. Sewing, cleaning, painting, organizing, playing basketball, crossing things off your honey-do list, it's up to you! It can be one big project, or a bunch of little projects. For me, it's going to be mostly sorting/organizing, deep cleaning, and planning. Those are the things I never seem to get to, because any motivation I have gets used up on the surface stuff before I get to it.
2. Spend an hour every day working on your chosen project(s). Set a timer and stick to it. Kids need your attention? Stop the timer and give them your attention. You have all day to squeeze in that hour, and if your kids are anything like mine, it might happen five or ten minutes at a time. But by the end of the day, make sure you've clocked that hour. Know yourself. If the best way for you to get in your hour is to get up early, get up early. If you clean best after everyone else goes to bed, skip CSI. It's only for a month.
3. Take one day off a week. If you're religious, you may already have a set sabbath, if not, just pick a day to be your "break" day. Or don't pick a day, and let it be a floating day off, so if you miss a day, you can just say, "Oh well, that was my day off." (I tend to do this last one.)
4. Keep others updated on your progress. Comment on this blog. Blog about it yourself, and send me the link. Join our HADA Facebook group, and come chat about what you're working on. Phone up your mom. Put a gold star on a chart.
5. Don't give up. Missed a day? Just brush it off and get back on the proverbial horse the next day. Even if you only do half the days, that's still 15 hours more productivity than your April would have otherwise had.
6. Don't let HADA set you back on all the stuff you normally do find time for. If you're having a hard time keeping up with the daily stuff, count some of it towards your hour (but not all of it, or the point of HADA is lost).
7. Don't let anyone or anything steal your joy and sense of accomplishment for the things you have done. HADA isn't about becoming perfect, it's about deliberately spending an hour every day tackling the projects you rarely get to. If you did your hour today, YOU WIN. Period. It doesn't matter if someone else did two hours, or if the sink is still full of dirty dishes, or if there are still 17 more hours of organizing to do. If you managed to squeeze a whole extra hour of blood from the stone of your already-busy day, be proud of yourself.
8. Celebrate when it's all over! If you live near me, let's go out to dinner together and order gooey chocolatey desserts. If you live far away, have your own celebration and tell me about it. Go ahead and splurge, you've earned it!

Fun Things and Not Fun Things

So, Valerie's monthly letter is over a week late, now. I swear, I have some really good excuses this time.

Last weekend was the weekend of Fun Things. Friday night, we went to a Starbucks Grand Opening at my former manager's new store. I got to see a bunch of people I really miss seeing from my old store, and had a really nice time catching up. Saturday morning, we went to an absolutely, insanely huge thrift sale that was actually too big to really dig through properly. I went through the specialty tables, picked up a few little things, then hung out at the babywearing table unofficially demonstrating various carriers. I also found a gauze wrap for $7 to replace my stretchy wrap that Valerie is getting too big for.

Saturday night, I left Valerie with her daddy and her grandparents while I went to a friends' house to pretend I was in college for an evening. We ate take-out and played video games until the late, late hour of 10:30 p.m. Okay, so that part of me is not-so-college anymore, but my limitless attention span for Katamari Damacy remains unchanged.

Sunday, after church, I met up with a local mom at the Wegman's café for soup and a nice, long chat. Sunday night, we had dinner with Jer's grandparents.

Meanwhile, we were all catching colds. By Sunday night, Valerie was coughing like a 70-year-old smoker, with a nose that wouldn't stop running. We weren't about to let a little cold spoil our fun, however, so we went ahead with our plans to go to the Aquarium with my playgroup friends on Monday.

Valerie did really well at the Aquarium. She spent more than half the time happily asleep (in her new wrap!), but when she was awake, she loved looking at the big fish swimming right past our faces. For less than the cost of two visits, we bought an annual pass, so we will totally be going back there again! I forgot my camera in the car, but my friend Jess kindly took some pictures of us, which I hope she doesn't mind me posting one of them.



Monday night was our game night, which has moved from Wednesdays to accommodate work schedules, board meetings, and LOST. We hammered out our new story arc, which is full of political intrigue and could end in war. Fun stuff.

On Tuesday, I was finally concerned enough about Valerie's cough (and the horrible, hairbally throat noises that were now accompanying it) to call her pediatrician. He told me what I expected he would, that there is really nothing to worry about unless she's throwing up or running a fever. But at least I could stop feeling guilty every time I heard her sad, pathetic coughs.

On Wednesday morning, I wasn't feeling very well at work. I had some stomach cramps, but mostly, I was just feeling really worn down. Valerie wasn't sleeping at night, and she seems to have already learned that misery loves company. I called around to see if I could get someone to cover my Thursday shift. I wasn't feeling terribly sick, but I felt like I might get sick unless I took a day off. Unfortunately, no one was available to work for me, so I dragged my weary bones out of bed before the crack of dawn on Thursday. Before the first customer arrived, I discovered the cause of my stomach cramps. Without going in to further detail, I seem to have contracted the worst gastrointestinal virus I have ever had. Three of the babies from the Aquarium trip have it, too, as do three of their parents/caregivers. So, I'm guessing we picked it up at the Aquarium. Maybe we shouldn't have played the "lick a sick fish" game? I left work as soon as I could get a replacement in, and did not work Friday. I have been obsessively drinking water to avoid dehydration. I seem to be on the mend, now, and actually ate breakfast this morning. Now, I'm just completely exhausted, devoid of all energy, and back to dealing with obnoxious cold symptoms. Jeremy and Valerie both still have the cold, but have so far managed to avoid the GI virus. I'm praying they don't catch it. It's no fun. Besides, they're miserable enough with just the cold.

Anyhow, that's the long and the short of the fun and the not fun we have had this week. I realize, now, that in the time I wrote this, I could have written Valerie's monthly letter. Oh well. Hindsight being 20/20 and all that.

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Cuddle memories

At one point this evening, Valerie started to nurse furiously, gulping desperately like someone who had been wandering the desert for days and then finally found an oasis. Then she coughed, and back up it all came - an entire boob-full of milk all over me and her and all of our clothes. All I can think is that her tummy was hurting, and she thought she could make it feel better by drinking more milk. Poor little girl; most people don't learn until college that drinking until you get sick won't make your troubles go away.

We peeled off all of our wet clothes and climbed into the tub to clean up. Once we were washed, dried, diapered (one of us), and dressed, I picked her up and carried her back into the living room. As I did, she clung to my shirt, and her weight sank into me as I sat down and wrapped my arms around her.

In that moment, a wave of memories washed over me. I was a little girl, waking up in the night with a bad dream, or a tummy ache, or simply feeling alone. I would wander downstairs, rubbing my face as my eyes adjusted to the lights outside my bedroom, to find my mom. I would tell her that I needed a cuddle, then I would crawl up into her lap on the big, orange chair and sink, comforted, into her arms. There is no place like a mother's arms for a child who needs comfort, and something in the lingering smell of sick and baby soap, and the soft, but deliberate, weight of my daughter sinking into my arms brought that feeling back like I was a toddler all over again. And as I wrapped my arms around my child, rocking her and singing to her as her body started to relax, I wondered that, even though I'm now the mommy, the feeling of a comfort cuddle is remarkably the same.

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Canada!

So, I've had photos sitting in my hard drive, and a blog post sitting in my head for over a week now, and it's high time I updated before something else happens in my life and pushes last weekend out of blogging range. In my defense, I have been sick for a little over a week now, a phenomenon I am choosing to blame on whatever pollens were blooming about three weeks ago in Philly that made me sick then, and apparently chose the very weekend I was visiting Canada to bloom there so that I could enjoy that particular bout of allergies twice.

Right, so about that trip to Canada.

I had booked a four-day weekend off of work. I am part-time now, which makes booking time off that much easier (and also me much happier and less exhausted). Jeremy chose not to come with me, because he wants to save his time off for when there is a baby to spend it with. I spent Friday driving, and even with my frequent, pregnant-lady pee and food stops, I still made it to my mom's house at exactly the time I had estimated. That was very un-Davis of me.

Benjie and Trish were there when I arrived, and I got to meet my niece, April, for the first time. Such a sweet baby. Auggie is going to love her cousins.



After dinner, I got together with my friend-since-we-were-eight-years-old, Sarah, and we bought slurpees, put candy in them, and sat in the park talking on the swings for a long time, just like we used to do in high school. I have many fond memories of hanging out in that park with slurpees and good friends. It almost makes me miss being a teenager. Almost.

Saturday morning was my baby shower, which was the original purpose of my trip to Canada. My mom still attends the church that I grew up going to, and, to this day, I have a hard time calling any place but Sunnyside my "home church". But I've moved around so much since graduating high school (11 years ago now - man, that makes me feel old), so I haven't been a regular attender there for more than a summer here and there, and that one year when I was articling in Ottawa. I was really touched that anyone other than my mom even wanted to attend a shower for me, and when I saw how many people came out, from every era of my life, to show their support for me on my journey into motherhood, I was really blown away. I'm pretty sure I cried once or twice, but I'm gonna blame the hormones for that. Yeah, hormones.



I also acquired a lot of stuff for the baby, and I'm finally starting to feel like it might just be possible that I won't have to wrap Auggie in one of her dad's old shirts and have her sleep in a cardboard box. Although I do have some very nice cardboard boxes, I think, in the end, I might find the highchairs and whatnot that came inside them much more useful.

In fact, I acquired so much stuff that those who were helping me carry it all to my little Mazda 626 seriously doubted that it would fit in my trunk. But all those years of watching my packing-guru father load the family car up for trips to grandma's or to the lake or to Algonquin park seem to have paid off. Also all of those hours of Tetris he and I used to play. See? Who says video games rot your brain!

The big surprise of the shower was that my aunt and cousin had made the trip up from Rochester to join in the festivities. It was really nice to see them, and we spent a really nice afternoon on Saturday sitting and talking and visiting. Then it got late, and I went to bed.

Sunday morning, I was able to attend church at Sunnyside, which is always one of the highlights of my trips to Ottawa. I still feel so much like a part of that church, and I received many warm hugs and congratulations from old friends and practically-families. It also boggled my mind, as it always does, to see the growth of the church since I was a kid there. I had one Sunday school teacher for most of my childhood, and I was almost always the only one in my class. Then, when I finished a grade, she would move up and teach me in the next class, because there were no more than a handful of other kids in the church, and there was no one waiting in the class below me, and no one graduating from the class above me. Now, there is such a crowd of kids (over 50, I'm guessing), that you wouldn't know that it was the same church, except that it is filled with the same loving spirit under which I remember growing up.

Sunday was hot. You'd think it would be less hot in Canada, but Ottawa gets its fair share of heat and humidity, and when it does, it's extra miserable because many people (my mom and brother included) don't have air conditioning. And I'm usually okay with that, because I believe that it's healthier to turn on some fans and keep cool naturally, but pregnant, I find it unbearable. AC has become a necessity for me.

So, after Benjie and Trish and I had a quick lunch, we took April to an indoor pool for her Very First Swim Outside the Womb. It was a lot of fun, although April didn't seem entirely sure what to make of the gigantic bathtub. She seemed to have a good time, though. After swimming, I was craving shawarma, so we stopped at a little place I used to go to all the time with Sarah, and I indulged my craving with shaved beef and heartburn on a pita. I've pretty much resigned myself, at this stage of my pregnancy, that anything I eat is going to give me heartburn, so why not eat what I want? It was delicious. I really need to find a shawarma shop in Philly.

After shawarma, the four of us laid claim to one of the air conditioned lounges in the church that was not currently being used (my brother lives above the church offices), and spent the rest of the afternoon not being miserably overheated. I broke out my water-based face paints, and Benjie and Trish created the first two entries in my belly art gallery. I will post them after I finish this post.

At this point in the weekend, my pregnant body had pretty much had enough excitement, and I was ready to go back to my mom's house, maybe play a board game, and go to bed early. But there was more excitement to be had. A few hours later, I was upstairs on my mom's computer, when I heard the door open, and someone said the name of my sister's dog. My sister lives in Vermont, and, although she couldn't make it up to Canada for the shower, she decided to bundle up her dog and my nephew, and surprise us on Sunday night for a visit. It was awesome to see my sister, and Nick who has doubled in size and mobility since I saw him last. He's even saying a few words now, and most adorable of anything, he makes little fishy faces when he wants you to pick him up to ring the fish chime that is hanging from the door frame.





So, counting Auggie, all three cousins were together for the first time, so we made some fumbling attempts at a family portrait. Here is, sadly, the best one of the bunch. Hey, it was getting late, and we were all pretty over-stimulated by this time. Even the babies.



Monday morning, I got to spend a bit of quality time with Alana and Nick before hitting the road. We took Eli for a walk, which I thought would be a good idea, since I was about to sit in the car for 8 hours. Unfortunately, I think it was the walk that ultimately did me in, allergies-wise. Between that, and the stubborn gas bubble in my chest that mysteriously appeared sometime after eating the shawarma (completely unrelated, I'm sure) and didn't go away until Tuesday morning, I was feeling pretty lousy by the time I hit the road at about noon. The trip home was miserable. The only highlight, really, was a relatively easy border crossing, where the border guard peeked in my trunk, but didn't even need to see my extensive list of all the gifts I had received with all of my rough price estimates. So yeah, let's fast-forward through the overly long drive, with far too many stops (several of which might have ended with me sleeping in a parking lot somewhere if it hadn't been for the fact that I had to keep driving to keep the AC on), and a burning sore throat, and a nose that wouldn't stop running. But I made it home eventually, tired and miserable, and really not feeling up to going out to dinner to celebrate our anniversary when I got home. We've decided to postpone that particular celebration.

And that brings us up to today. Well, okay, not really, but we can fast-forward through the rest of last week, last weekend, and the the beginning of this week, and that will bring us up to today. I'm not as sick anymore. The sore throat has gone away, which is good because it was the symptom I was most worried about, and the cold/allergies/whatever has mostly settled in as a stuffy nose and glop in my chest. Still no fun, but better than before. Besides, I'm on vacation now, and that makes everything better! I'm on vacation for two whole weeks, during which time I will be doing a bit of cleaning at the house (but only a bit), and then heading off to Massachusetts to play story games with some friends I met in a forest in Virginia, and then off to New Hampshire to sleep in a tent and spend some quality time with some friends from college. I will bring my face paints along, and if I happen to see you on my travels, maybe you can paint my belly!

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I guess it wasn't the laughing after all

I believe I mentioned here that the rest of the house has been sick recently. Some kind of cold/flu/G.I. thing. My brother-in-law got it the worst, with basically all of the imaginable symptoms. My parent-in-laws both got off with slight colds. My husband had a fever and cold symptoms, but seems to be mostly on the mend (well, back to his normally sick state, anyhow). Saturday night, I started to notice a slight sore throat, which has since developed into a full-blown cold. I'm still hoping I will escape the worst of it, but after two days of crappy coldiness, I am confident that the sore throat was caused by the illness that has been making the rounds of my house, and not, unfortunately, by all the laughing I did this weekend.

But I didn't open this blog post to complain about being sick. I opened it to publicly complain about my own stupidity. I know that the reason most people read blogs is to be reminded how much smarter they are than other people and/or how much other people are screwing up their lives much worse than they are. So, without further ado, here is an anecdote to make you feel better about yourself.

I tried to go to bed about an hour and a half ago. But my nose was stuffy. And I can't sleep when I can't breathe, so I got up and took some Sudafed.

Which is basically speed.

Which is not exactly sleep-inducing.

So I went back to bed, knowing that I had about a half hour or so before the drugs would kick in, and hoping I could fall asleep quickly, before they did. But I couldn't fall asleep, because my nose was stuffy. And it remained stuffy well after the wide-awake-ness of the Sudafed kicked in. So I tossed, and turned, and cursed drugs and my own stupidity, and finally gave up and came back out here to kill time on my computer. And I finished reading all my blogrolls, and ran out of distractions, so I decided that the only thing left for me to do was create content of my own. (This was after joining Facebook and my ten-year high school reunion forum.)

So, in the end, I guess that wasn't a very interesting story. But it's all I've got right now. Unless you want to hear about random things that I now have time to link to, since I've probably got another hour to kill before my body adjusts enough to the speed to let me sleep. (I buy the 12-hour Sudafed for precisely this reason: I can usually go to sleep about 3 hours or so after taking it, after it has worked its magic on the stuffiness, and after my body has adapted to the adrenaline buzz. But unfortunately, I forgot to take the 12-hour Sudafed when I needed to, three hours before bedtime, when I was still at work.)

So, links, eh?

Free coffee at Starbucks on March 15

Free iced coffee at Dunkin' Donuts on March 21

Free Rita's Water Ice on March 21 (I blogged about this last year.)

Hmmm... Still awake...

Okay, one more thing, then I swear, I will go distract myself with flash games or videos on YouTube. This is like one of those "name five songs you are listening to right now" memes, except that it's so highly specialized that I doubt anyone else will really be able to steal it and do it themselves. And, I'll probably cheat and list more than five.

Starbucks has some pretty good music on their regular rotation right now. And, I am fortunate enough to work in a store that still has one of the older machines that lets you scroll through and select which song you want it to play (although you're stuck with whatever song happens to come on after that, unless you hang out in the back by the CD player and keep selecting the next song whenever one ends, which frankly, you never really have time to do. Unless you have just closed the store and are running some of the closing procedures in the back, directly underneath the machine, but then you don't get to really hear the songs, because they will be playing in the lobby, not the back.

So, without further rambling, here are the songs that I will skip to if I ever have the time, the songs that make me happy and a more productive worker, the songs that I might just have to buy when I no longer have Starbucks to play them for me:

1. Sandi Thom - I Wish I Was a Punk Rocker (with Flowers in My Hair)

2. Belle and Sebastian - The Blues are Still Blue

3. Janis Joplin - Mercedes Benz

4. Zero 7 - Throw It All Away

5. Lily Allen - Littlest Things

6. The Decemberists - The Crane Wife 3

7. Damien Rice - 9 Crimes

8. The Shins - Wincing the Night Away
(Okay, fine, that's an album, not a song, but I made the game up, so I get to bend the rules.)

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