over scheduling my child

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Waiting Room Woolgathering

I am in a waiting room at the car place while my vehicle undergoes repairs for yet another recall. In fact, this is a re-recall because I already had this particular issue addressed a couple of years ago. Or, not addressed, apparently.

There is one other woman-presenting person in the waiting room with me. She just consented to a $160 tire alignment. I am 95% sure that the service member who came to speak with her referred to her as Suzanne, and the service person who checked me in already told me my car’s alignment failed. What are the chances that two Suzannes would both have failed tire alignments at the exact same time?!

It’s been kind of a rough start to the school year. Or maybe not rough so much as nonstop busy? None of it is BAD stuff; it’s all stuff that we’ve done or chosen on purpose. Well, except for the leak in our pool. No one wants that. I think it’s like this every year, and I simply block out the memory of the frenetic bustle of it all during the relative calm of the summer months. Annual or not, I currently feel like I’ve jumped into the middle of an ice-cold lake and I’m not that strong a swimmer.  

What I really want to be doing is spending my days walking, writing, and hanging out with my cat. That sounds like my ideal level of interpersonal interaction right about now.

Ignore the doorbell and the dishes and the laundry and the fact that you need to pick up your kid and the neighbor’s children from school and lie down with meeeeeeeeeee…

In practice, I’ve been spending an average of two hours a day in a school gymnasium, making conversation with other parents, cheering for our kids, and trying to stave off butt and back pain from the relentless discomfort of the bleachers. (This little purchase has helped quite a bit with the latter.) Or rushing to/waiting around my house to discuss various home maintenance and repair and improvement projects with a parade of vendors. Or scrolling aimlessly on my phone in an attempt to stay awake while my daughter finishes her homework (she hasn’t gone to bed before eleven a single time this school year). Or driving to or from school and/or sporting events. Or working on a volunteer project, which involves both in-person meetings and a group chat. I remain terrified of group chats.

This is all, like, totally normal parent and life stuff and yet I am feeling overwhelmed and overextended and wholly unsuited to any of it.

Let’s just hope this is all an ADJUSTMENT period, to which I will ADJUST. My kiddo, by the way – who is the one DOING THE SPORTS AND HOMEWORK which is quite a bit more strenuous than observing those things – seems to be handling everything with much more grace and much less whining than I am.

On the plus side, I have not cooked a single meal all week. On the minus side, I did buy ingredients to make a giant salad several days ago and I am pretty sure they are all gradually rotting into inedibility in my fridge.

There are five of us in the waiting room now. One of the staff members has chosen this very moment to vacuum the floor of the waiting room. Why now, buddy? It’s not like someone just spilled a bag of chip crumbs or anything. The floor looks perfectly clean. Is this a conscientious objection to the inanity of Jenna & Sheinelle, which I didn’t know was a show? Is it passive aggressive proof to his manager that he is Doing His Job? Puzzling.

Those of you with better memories and/or experience with middle school and high school kids, is this just… How Things Are? Carla goes to school, goes to sports, scarfs a quick and less-nutritionally-balanced-than-I’d-prefer dinner, immerses herself in homework, goes to bed, repeat. There is literally no time to do anything else. She doesn’t have a spare ten minutes to tidy her room or practice her instrument or go visit the neighbor dogs. The only time we talk is in the car or over a hasty meal of fast-food nuggets. We’ve been sacrificing a traditional breakfast in favor of a few more minutes of sleep, and she’s been eating ants on a log or drinking a smoothie in the car on the way to school. Our only “non productive” time is the five minutes of cat videos we watch together every morning, and the ten minutes I spend reading to her in bed every night.

(By the way, I am currently reading her this book, which I remember liking when I was a kid, although not enough to read any of the other books in the series. But I am finding it boring and kind of dumb???)

My husband thinks that it was like this for him when he was in school. My mom thinks it was like this for me when I was in school. But I have no recollection of doing three to five hours of schoolwork every night. Maybe in college, but even then, only when I had a paper due the next day. Three to five hours of schoolwork seems BONKERS, let alone doing it on top of two to three hours of Sports.

I keep spiraling about Carla’s commitments. The spiral starts with: This is too much! This school isn’t right for Carla! Something must be wrong, either with the teachers or with Carla’s ability to do the work! Should I email the teachers? The principal? Should I encourage Carla to email the teachers? The principal? Should I make her quit Sports?

Then eventually (sometimes with help from my much chiller husband) the spiral makes its way around to this: But Carla seems to be doing okay. She’s tired, sure, but isn’t that true of ALL teenagers, EVERYWHERE? The other parents I’ve talked to say their kids are doing similar amounts of homework, and going to bed similarly late. And none of them are pulling their kids out of school or making them quit the team or marching into the principal’s office demanding Action. And Carla really seems to enjoy Sports! She’s getting better, she seems to be making a positive contribution to the team. The physical activity is certainly good for her. As is the social interaction. She seems to be completing her homework, even if it’s late when she finishes it. Her grades are fine, so far. And her own father says that this is How It Was even back in the golden era of the nineteen-nineties.

The calm doesn’t last particularly long, though. It doesn’t help that I am also getting less sleep than I prefer, and I’m much busier than I prefer. Maybe once those things resolve (will they resolve?) I will be more zen about Carla’s level of busyness.

Speaking of being more zen: The last time I posted here, which was eons and eons ago, I mentioned my fret about feeding the sports team. THANK YOU for pointing out that doing such a thing is inadvisable. I spent the first three weeks of school not signing up, and simply taking Carla some nourishment to eat between games. She eats WRAPS now, can you believe it? Ham, tomato, and lettuce. (I wrap the tomato and lettuce in the ham, so they don’t soggify the tortilla.) (Yes, we have decided to throw caution to the wind and get back on the lettuce train.) Other parents have been signing up to provide sustenance, and I have been observing what they bring. They are not bringing dinner, they are bringing SNACKS. I can totally bring snacks for the team. That’s much less daunting than providing an entire meal. Thanks for talking me down, internet.

And there’s the service guy who checked me in. My car is done, and so is this post.

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Mayhem, Summer, and Dinners This Week

I know it’s such a cliché, but WHERE DOES THE TIME GO? This week marks the beginning of May. MAY, people. May is going to be utter mayhem, that’s for sure, and I am already bracing for impact. Carla has so much going on. Three performances, a school presentation, a school trip, a fifth grade “graduation” ceremony, TWO class parties. On top of all the normal day-to-day chaos, of course, with three extracurricular activities that each meet twice weekly. And then BAM!, it will be summer break.

I tried to plan this summer so that it would be easier than last summer. Last summer, of course, we both bought and sold a house, so at least we won’t be dealing with THAT nonsense again. But I think we also over-scheduled Carla last summer. She had summer camp, plus she continued her music lessons through summer. That doesn’t sound like a lot, but I felt like we were constantly on the go – like there was no “break” from the busy schedule of the school year. 

This summer, I want time to relax by the pool and have friends over. But… Carla still wants to do summer camp. I am FULLY in favor of camp. While it sounds restful and decadent to spend the summer doing nothing by the pool, I feel like our days would end up being filled by a lot of screen time. And how many playdates can I really handle? Not enough to give Carla the same kind of social interaction she’ll get at summer camp, that’s for sure. So. Summer camp it is.

Okay, so summer camp by itself still gives us evenings and weekends to play and relax. But… Carla is considering trying out a new sport and maybe a new musical instrument. On top of that, we have two other commitments that will take place weekly after camp. Ugh. Now summer is sounding just as hectic as the school year! 

Maybe this is simply a busy season of our lives and I should learn to lean into it, instead of trying to force things to slow down? (Note: I realize that, once again, these are the Champagnest of “problems.”)

One thing that’s always constant: the need to plan and prepare meals. Once again, we’ll have two nights of takeout. I am ready to be done with THAT aspect of this school year. Takeout is fantastic once in awhile, but I am weary of it by now. And the annoying thing is, no matter how much I try to pack my day with nutrient dense foods, by the time dinner rolls around, I am so ravenous I scarf down a bunch of fries or chips. I love fries and chips, don’t get me wrong. But I don’t want or need to be eating them twice weekly. Well. Just a few more weeks of this nonsense left. 

(You may be thinking, Suzanne, simply DON’T ORDER the fries or chips. And yet… I find this hard to do??? When it comes down to it, I am extremely picky. My child, also extremely picky, only has two or three places where she will deign to eat on these takeout nights. And there are only a few options at each of them that I can stand to eat. Plus, I have a lifelong resistance to paying good money for food I don’t like. If I’m going to spend extra money on takeout, I am going to enjoy it, dammit. So. Loading up on fries and chips. I am my own worst enemy, etc.)

I DO have control over what I can make at home, though! So I will try to compensate for the takeout with some protein and veggie packed meals. 

Dinners for the Week of April 29-May 5

  • Caesar Chicken with Salad: I cannot for the life of me remember where I saw this idea, but it sounds easy enough: marinate some chicken in Caesar salad dressing and roast with a little parmesan sprinkled on. Pair it with a salad. My only question is whether I dress the salad with the Caesar dressing? Or go for a light vinaigrette instead???? I don’t want to over-Caesar myself. 
  • Baked Pork Chops and Zucchini: Another sheet pan meal! This recipe calls for asparagus, but I already have some zucchini on hand, so I will probably use that instead.
  • Golden Cauliflower Chickpea Bowls: These sound so nourishing right now. I bet my husband will want a chicken breast alongside his, and maybe I will add a salmon filet. We’ll see. I wonder if I could coax Carla into eating this? She likes crispy chickpeas…

 What are you eating, these last few days of April? How’s your summer shaping up?

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Recipe Bust, Activity Report, Fall Panic, Dinners This Week

First, I feel duty-bound to inform you that last week’s spinach artichoke chicken was a bust. I don’t exactly know why it was a bust, but it was. 

The spinach artichoke dip or sauce or whatever you want to call the element containing the creamy spinachy artichokey goodness was quite delicious. But the chicken… well, it suffered, and the whole dish suffered in empathy. I made enough to have leftovers, but when it came time to reheat the leftovers and eat them, I was filled with such revulsion I ended up a) making fish tacos with frozen fish sticks one night and b) ordering Chick-fil-A another night. And then I ended up throwing out the rest, which made me feel extremely guilty and wasteful. (I did scrape off the rest of the spinach artichoke element and ate it by itself; it was yummy.)

The other issue – besides the chicken, which was very tough? and also didn’t really seem to complement the sauce somehow? even though chicken is so neutral I have no idea how this is possible? – was that some of the artichoke hearts were… inedible. So that you would be eating along and then all of a sudden you realized you had been chewing for ten thousand years on a particular leaf. That was wildly unpleasant. I used the frozen artichoke hearts in a bag from Trader Joe’s and maybe that was the issue. It really kind of put me off of artichokes, though, and those have always been such a treat. 

Since I raised the issue of extracurriculars in my Dinners This Week post last week, I also feel duty-bound to update you. We had our first (nearly) full week of extracurriculars and we survived. It was rough going though. Although it was also a Call Week and it was also a week that Carla was recovering from a nasty respiratory thing that resulted in a lot of coughing, so she and I didn’t get a lot of sleep. 

This week has to be better, right?

I am also experiencing that free-falling panic that often accompanies September, which only just started and yet is also somehow two-thirds done. I have several freelance projects all due at once and then another one coming up in a couple of weeks; I have a big volunteer event looming in the near-distance and preparations and meetings have begun for that; we just had two family birthdays and two more are coming up early next month and one more after that; I am finally getting the ceiling repaired so we’ll have workers taking over our kitchen for a bit; then there are ALL the fall holidays one right after another and I feel as though I am already behind. Plus, in that time my husband and I have a pre-planned mini-getaway and I am trying to figure out if we can go visit my sister-in-law to see a performance she’s in even though the dates we could possibly make that work are the single weekend in between the big volunteer event and Thanksgiving. I don’t mean to complain, because it is all good stuff. It is just A Lot and it all stresses me out. 

I did buy my husband one of his birthday gifts already, so there’s that. But the rest of the uncompleted tasks are in a big, teetering stack and I don’t know what to grab first because everything is going to come toppling down on my head. 

Let’s think about food!  

I did not make lentil soup last week. The weather went from cool and rainy to 80+ degrees and sunny, and hearty soups no longer sounded appealing. I am back in Salad Mode, at least until I remember how much work salads are to put together. 

Dinners for the Week of September 19-September 25

  • Greek Marinated Chicken with Something Green, Probably Zucchini: I saw this on Instagram and immediately wanted to try it. In the Instagram video, Laura Vitale simply combines all of the marinade ingredients in a blender and blends them together, which is a relief because “use a mortar and pestle” is otherwise a reason for me to skip a recipe entirely.
  • Greek Farro Salad: I am feeling really into farro right now? I will make an extra couple of chicken breasts on Greek Marinated Chicken night so that we can have this salad.
  • Fall Chopped Salad with Some Sort of Protein: Another salad, and another Instagram find, this time from Healthy Girl Kitchen. Her recipes are vegan and I am not vegan, so there will be a little variation in the way I make my salad. For instance, I might add shrimp? Also, I don’t have any butternut squash on hand, so I may skip that part. I absolutely HATE chopping butternut squash – they are so hard and I am always afraid I will chop my hand off with the knife, or that I will send a shard of squash straight through the window (they tend to fling themselves away from the knife, when I can get it through the rind). My grocery store sells pre-cubed squash but one package was $5.49 and, while I appreciate how much labor is required to cube that squash, $5.49 is too much for me to pay for what is likely to be my least favorite part of the salad. I suppose I could look for frozen cubed butternut squash but I didn’t and I am not eager to return to my grocery store anytime soon. Last time I went I FORGOT TO WEAR A MASK and I am still reeling from that. Like… WHAT? I have worn a mask in a grocery store for TWO YEARS at this point, how did I just… forget?!?!?!
  • Tacos: ** Alert, alert: very quick weight loss talk ** The thing about tacos is that I love them with my whole heart. I want to put them on the menu because they are easy and everyone loves them, and because they SHOULD produce enough leftovers for a second night. However. I tend to overeat tacos. It’s as though you put a taco in front of me, and suddenly my body is certain this is the last time I will ever have access to a taco, and so I eat more tacos than any person should eat. I have a fond memory of being invited over to my schoolbus driver’s house when I was in elementary school, along with all the other kids on her route, for a taco night. (Yes, I suspect this is a little unusual, and yet my parents okayed it as did other parents of other children. Small town life, I guess.) And I ate TWELVE TACOS. As an elementary school student. Please understand that I do not eat twelve tacos when I make them at home, that was a one-time feat of extraordinary stomach stretchiness, but I do really, really like tacos. For most of my life, I have just… eaten however many tacos I want. But that’s not in line with trying to lose weight. I think it is reasonable to eat tacos, but that it is also reasonable to not eat ALL the tacos. So I am trying very hard to tell myself that just because things like tacos exist in my house right now, doesn’t mean I need to eat them. And likewise, that just because I am not eating tacos now does not mean I cannot eat them later. (This point is to prevent me from scarfing down leftover tacos for lunch, which I usually do as well.) Furthermore, I am not going to die if I only eat two tacos. I’m just not. (I am being hyperbolic; I never feel like I am going to die by restricting myself to X tacos. But I do feel a deep, deep longing for more.) Anyway. I am going to put tacos on the meal plan for TWO NIGHTS and ZERO lunches and it is going to happen.

Do any of these meals seem particularly in line with “easy” or “quick” (aside from the tacos)? No, not especially. So we’ll see how quickly it all falls apart.