since u been gone

Parenting solo has given me many opportunities for self-examination. Inventory, if you will. And in that spirit, I give you a list of things I am NOT good at.

Food things. All the food things, I truly hate them. Planning food, shopping for it, bringing it in, putting it away, pulling it out, cooking it, fighting with my children as they refuse to eat it, cleaning it up. If I could just do dishes and no other food stuff, I would be a happy mom.
This is why Slice does real cooking and we're not as well-fed with him gone.

Adulting. Most obnoxious, yet totally fitting, word for all the things I always procrastinate. Making appointments (and keeping them!), getting tires rotated, buying chicken food, replacing lightbulbs, calling babysitters. Calling anyone really. I get by surprisingly well without doing many things that I'm perfectly capable of. Maybe I have low-level anxiety? High-functioning depression? Maybe I'm lazy, or I'm a Type 2/4 who avoids forced interaction with people. Who knows.

Cleaning regularly. I have a printed cleaning schedule hanging in my kitchen that has not been followed ... at all. Since George is done nursing, I'll be better about my household duties, but it's hard to motivate myself when I know it'll be undone in a day. And no one but myself will even see my effort.

Doing anything regularly. (Except naps.) Slice and I have had this conversation about a million times.
Slice: "The kids need to do jobs every day. You shouldn't be doing everything."
Me: ".... but it's easier to just do it myself."
Slice: "And Will has to do his homework every day."
Me: ".... but homework is dumb."
Slice: "Wouldn't your life be easier with a schedule?!"
Me: .........

I'm doing pretty well with laundry though, I'll have you know.

The Drowning

It's been three months since my last post and I'm just now feeling like I'm getting the hang of this single parenting gig. And by "the hang of it," I mean I only had one major breakdown last week (spent an entire day doing nothing) and I dyed my hair purple.
Yep.

I think of this quote often -

- because it's the closest description I can find to what my life feels like. Barely keeping my head above water. Survival mode so hard that I don't dare add a thing to this mess, in case that's the thing that takes everything else down with it.

All of that to say .... I'm alive, we're alive, and here's a little update for my non-Instagram peeps.

Slice is in Provo at DevMountain, a 12-week coding bootcamp, in school Monday through Friday. He has 4 weeks of class left. He's doing well and enjoying it, mostly. I'm in Roosevelt keeping our small humans alive. The days are long and the nights too short (except when they're long). I'm still teaching piano lessons and we're still doing some photography. When this bootcamp is over, we have no idea what we'll do.

The options seem to be multiplying - which isn't a bad thing, but it's hard. We think we'll have to move out of the Basin and leave it all behind. There's not exactly a huge tech scene between Roosevelt and Vernal.  But we have a house to sell (or not), and lots of questions/feelings/wonderings about what's best for our young family. Also lots of gratitude for everything that has gotten us to this point.

Thanks for sticking around here, whoever you are.