The Best Days of My Life

The best days of my life are behind me.

At least that’s how I understand it. That’s what those gray-haired women told me time and again over the past eight years. They would see me pushing a cart loaded down with three small children and a week’s worth of food as our paths collided in the dairy aisle, and they would smile before they spoke. 

“Oh,” they would say. And I might be hyperbolic here but I picture them with their hands on their hearts and misty expressions in their eyes. “These are the best days. Enjoy them.”

The conclusion I drew from this was simple: It’s all downhill from here. This is as good as it gets.

But I’m beyond those days now. This past September, on an unseasonably warm Friday morning, all three of my kids stepped on bus number 537. My youngest, the Kindergartener, ran onto the bus without any signs of hesitation. I waved as they went off to elementary school together for the first time.

I watched the bus as it pulled away and walked back to my house to reheat my coffee. Aside from the dull sound of the microwave running it was very, very quiet. Quiet enough that I could hear myself think, which had been a novelty for the better part of a decade. And after all those years of being home with small children, it was terrible, but mostly wonderful.

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It sometimes seems like we have a hard time moving on from things. Society tends to look back on everything with nostalgia. Even things that at the time may have been more “meh” than “time of your life.” Because I remember hearing those “these are the best days of your life” words in high school, too. Family members told me this. Mid-’90s and early-‘00s teen movies tried to sell me this, though my high school broke out into far less spontaneous singing and my wardrobe looked nothing like what Cher Horowitz or Regina George wore. 

As if high school is as good as it gets.

Because then there was college. Another time that might as well have “ENJOY IT WHILE YOU CAN” flashing around campus in neon lights. And yes, college was fun. I went to my share of parties, spent a memorable night building the biggest snowman you’ve ever seen on central campus, and frequently sat up until morning with friends. (Before getting up for an 8 a.m. class, as only a 19-year-old can.) But I spent just as many nights working on projects at midnight as I did having fun. And hanging out with friends often meant walking up sticky apartment staircases smelling of cheap beer at questionable hours of the night.

My husband and I got married fresh out of college. (We were babies. Somehow no one stopped us.) Once we returned from the bubble of our Jamaican honeymoon, it was back to the reality of an apartment so small that if you stood at the edge of the living room, you could see every inch of the place. He was in grad school, and I was trying to make enough money to support us and pay off our student loans. My futon from college and the folding table and chairs that functioned as our dining table were our crowning pieces of furniture. Bless our newlywed hearts.

All the Disney movies and frou-frou wedding cards gushed that this here, this time for real, was as good as it gets. And maybe all you need is love but surely furniture not made for the express purpose of collapsing wasn’t too much to ask?

Soon enough, I made it to those days the gray-haired women were misty-eyed about. Three years into married life, I held twin babes, one in each arm. And just two years later, we added a third to the mix. (No one stopped us. Again.)

Read the rest over at Coffee + Crumbs.

Life Lately

I’ve seen words in a few different places the past week that in effect have said: You don’t have to say something wholly original and new and surprising in your writing. You just need to further the conversation.

Caden has been writing books since he was four. Back then I stapled together a couple sheets of construction paper. He was in a major Batman phase and most pages were a drawing of Batman and words to the effect of, “Batman sees a bad guy. Baman wins!” Simple, preschool-ish sentences.

Today he fills notebooks with words. He recently had to write a fable and filled up 10 straight pages in his college-ruled notebook with his tiny, spiky handwriting about the origin of fire. I’m guessing the other kids in his 2nd-grade class wrote a page or two. At home, he’s progressed from construction paper and now insists on 8-10 pages of plain white printer paper, carefully folded in half and creased with my bone folder, then stapled along the edge with exactly five staples. (A child of mine being particular. Imagine!)

His stories now are heavily influenced by his Wings of Fire obsession. (Heads up: affiliate link!) We own every. single. book. Graphic novel, regular chapter book, prequel, and all 16 books in the series. He fills pages with his own dragon-inspired stories, fitting illustrations of dragons in the margins. He stays up I don’t know how late working on them. He says he’s working on a series of 15 right now, because of course he is.

Batman. Dragons. He’s not creating anything fresh and wholly original. He’s letting his mind go, influenced by some of his favorite things. He’s not thinking too hard about any of it. He’s too busy furthering the conversation.

Something to think about, isn’t it?

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Around the Internet

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Eating

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Fun Things

  • I’ve been on a Madewell spree (Um, possibly always?) and am currently snuggling in this sweatshirt. It’s very soft and at least the colors feel like spring, since apparently it will never be warm here ever again. RIP sunshine.

  • I’m re-watching Mad Men, one of my favorite shows of all time, and decided the occasion merited a new mug. Might I recommend to you a purchase based on a beloved fandom? It’s ridiculous the amount of joy it brings me.

  • Sometimes the day’s Wordle isn’t enough for me, and that’s when I check out Letter Boxed. Though it can be depressing when I view the previous day’s answers and discover that letters like COSDYAENR around the square could have been turned into SECONDARY, and what I did was something more like NOD and DONE plus three other words. Oh well.

Life Lately

Happy Almost-April!

That exclamation point is much more optimistic than I actually feel. Really it feels blah. Y’know that whole “in like a lion out like a lamb” thing? We entered March with major lamb energy: there was sunshine! And the snow was melting! And we had a whole week of 40 and 50-degree weather! Now we’re exiting March to snow and wind and cold. I feel like I haven’t been properly warm for a solid two weeks. That lion showed up. Rude.

Just us here. Perpetually indoors and eating snacks. Guess it could be worse.

But! Enough about the weather (sorry, Midwestern hazard). If you follow me on Instagram, you know I went back to work as an interior designer this month for the first time since the twins were born. Though “went back” is actually defined as “sitting at my desk in the corner of our bedroom.” Which honestly, is what I was hoping for. I’m working for my previous employer, but remotely. Same but different.

This has been in the works since late January. (When one of my co-workers called me up and was all, “This is really random but would you ever want to come back and work remotely?” And I was like, “Absolutely yes.”). Despite wanting to go back to work in some capacity for a while, once I had a start date on the calendar, it got real. Did I really want to go back to work? To have my time not be my own? (As though my time was my own with three kids around.) To give up my early retirement? Gah.

But? I’m loving it. It feels good to work with floor plans again. To interpret wants and needs into reality. Even to fight with the design program over dimensions and try to chase down elusive countertop materials again. Things long-forgotten, pushed from my brain by motherhood, have started to come back, like NKBA guidelines and building codes.

It’s a vibe shift but honestly what hasn’t been a vibe shift the past two years? Since 2016? Since having two babies and then another one? You get a vibe shift and you get a vibe shift! Vibe shifts all around.

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Thing I’m Doing

Honestly just adjusting to a new schedule. Sometimes life is like that.

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Around the Internet

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Eating

  • I made this Thai-style basil chicken for the first time in a long time and remembered how delicious it is. Equally great as leftovers.

  • I’m sure I’ve mentioned this pasta with prosciutto and snow peas before, but it’s worth bringing up again. It’s spring on a plate. I don’t like mint so I replace it with basil. Yum.

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Fun Things

8 Ways Bluey is the Most Relatable Kids Show

Has anyone else been on a Bluey-binging spree? It caught my attention one day when I overheard my daughter watching it on her iPad. I know that watching shows with kids is supposed to win me a parenting gold medal or whatever, but please. You know I’d given her that iPad so I could brush her tangled hair in peace.

But the dialogue on Bluey caught my ears until I was just as wrapped up in its 8-minute antics as she was. It’s the rare kid’s show that feels like it’s as much for us parents as for the kids. There’s just enough parent-related humor sprinkled throughout to keep us invested, snort-laughing and high-fiving in solidarity. We set a family goal to watch through the entire series in order, which we accomplished huddled under cozy blankets during two consecutive subzero weekends in January. I’m not sure who enjoyed it more: the kids or me. (*ahem* It was me.) 

In case you’ve been living under a parenting rock (okay, or you don’t have kids in this age demographic), Bluey is a 6-year old Australian blue heeler. She lives with her parents, Bandit and Chilli, and her 4-year old sister Bingo in Brisbane. They have all sorts of familial, everyday adventures together. 

This is what sets it apart: I’m not sure I’ve seen another show celebrate family life in quite this way. Forget parenting books and influencers; watching Bluey is the thing that makes me want to be a better parent. It’s a show that doesn’t make you think too hard; there aren’t necessarily any grand morals or life lessons to be learned. Instead, each episode showcases the joy of family and packs a lot of laughs and emotions in less than ten minutes. You can just tell when a show is crafted with such care. And that Australian lingo? You know I love it.

Read the rest of my love for Bluey and it’s relatability over at Twin Cities Mom Collective.

A Little Bit Tired

What strikes me first is how little they are. Their cheeks are plumper. They’re shorter, more miniature. As I scroll through photos from the spring of 2020, I spy Nolan running in his monster shoes. Those ridiculous shoes place this in the landscape of time; I bought them when he started preschool in the fall and he would wear those shoes and only those shoes. I’d forgotten about them. Time passed, life felt like survival mode, and somewhere in the tumult they were outgrown or scuffed beyond wearing before they were discarded.

He turned four and the twins turned six not three weeks before the world shut down. Two Kindergarteners and a preschooler. Old enough to understand that things were weird. Young enough that it was hard to explain why. They were so little.

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My first pandemic purchase was a printer.

“They’re not going back to school,” I said to Tyson matter-of-factly. It was dark, evening. Most likely we’d gotten the kids to bed and I’d been staring into my phone, scrolling through social media, looking to other people to try to make sense of everything. What were other people doing? Was I the only one feeling this sense of dread? What did the New York Times have to say? Which resulted in me ordering a black and white printer from Amazon so I could print…worksheets? For the kids? I guess? Because Spring Break had just been extended and I was positive, had this gut-level feeling they wouldn’t return to the classroom. 

My second pandemic purchase was the Anne of Green Gables books. The same set I had when I was a kid. Because $47.92 buys you comfort in the form of books.

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I wrote snippets during the first few weeks of the pandemic.

March 18: “Just 10 days ago it was over 50 degrees outside and we bought ice cream from the ice cream truck that rolled through the neighborhood. From a stranger. In a truck. Who handed us food and we handed him money. With our unsanitized, unwashed hands. In a crowd of neighborhood kids.”

March 25th: “Caden and Brooklyn’s school sent out a video with three of the teachers singing a parody of ‘Some Things Never Change’ to the kids today and I cried.”

April 3rd: “I seem to roll with a cycle of ‘this isn’t so bad’ to a big ol’ ‘meh’ where I exist without feelings before plummeting to ‘everything is terrible let’s burn down the house and start over.’”

April 6th: “I’m so entrenched in this now it seems like this is how life always has been, is now, and shall be forevermore.”

April 15th: “I wake up and think, ‘Oh. Here we go again.’  And it takes every ounce of strength I have to pull myself out of bed. Even though I just throw on my glasses and some sweatpants and walk downstairs to get coffee. The monotony of our days is its own brand of exhausting.”

Bright little ray of sunshine, wasn’t I?

There’s a song going around on TikTok. “Do you get a little bit tired of life? Like you’re not really happy but you don’t want to die? Like you’re hanging by a thread but you gotta survive?”

If that song had been around two years ago, it would have been our pandemic anthem. Even now, this side of the pandemic, it hits different than it would have before.

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Recently, Beth from Pantsuit Politics said “I’m stressed because what else would I be?”

I’m not sure I’ve heard a truer sentence

If I were to make a list of stressors—and you know this Enneagram One loves a list—there wouldn’t be anything surprising on it. March 2022 is almost nothing like March 2020, when we woke up to new news every single day. We were all home all the time. We thought vaccines were years—plural—away. We actually wiped down our packages and groceries with bleach, bless our little early pandemic hearts.

My days are largely back to the ordinary of life. We need to eat dinner. Again. The kids are on break and Tyson and I are both working now and what do we do with them? My body is stiff because I haven’t been doing yoga. We need to solidify our summer plans. 

But my corner of the internet keeps reminding me that the body keeps the score. And mine is tighter, tightening more as Spring Break approached; the week two years ago that marks the time life changed forever. I’ve had these unusual, near-constant headaches. I feel unsettled, though I can’t put words to emotions. Something inside me is busy keeping score, remembering what happened two years ago.

And really, what else would a millennial be but stressed? What else would we be but a little bit tired of living our unprecedented lives?

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I wonder if the coming of spring will ever be normal again. It still feels hopeful—when you live in a state with five solid months of winter, warm weather and budding trees will never feel anything short of miraculous. Dread follows that feeling of hope, though. At least for me. My body still keeping the score.

Sometimes it feels like the kids should still be four and six. Their very early elementary years feel misplaced. Nolan’s preschool years were completely lost in the shuffle. Can they really have just turned six and eight? How did they get so tall? What happened to those monster shoes anyway? Can’t we just rewind two years? Aren’t we in some infinite 2020 time loop? Aren’t we all, still, just a little bit tired?

They were so little. We all were.

This post is part of a blog hop to share our pandemic stories. It's hosted by www.laurapbass.com and you can read the next post in the blog hop by clicking here.