Remote Learning, Relocating, and Returning to Life

September seems to have come and gone but apparently the trees didn’t get the memo. Are we the only ones with a yard full of green leaves still? Poor earth, all confused! Well, my fam and I seem in sync with with summer disorientation lingering this month.

First, by an unexpected turn of evens we found ourselves house hunting. We’ve wanted to move for years but it never seemed to be the right time. So with this opportunity suddenly appearing we thought this may be it. Well it wasn’t it. However, instead going back to the regular scheduled program we got bit by the moving bug and started house hunting in earnest. If you know anything about the current housing market you know houses are selling quicker than snow cones down under; I’m talking 15 minutes after being listed! Needless to say we came away not only with no new home but frazzled nerves. We’ve been in our little house for 20 years. We raised our kids here, laughed/cried/screamed here, entertained and pow-wowed. We got my mom’s cancer diagnosis here, my dad’s, and my husbands. This back patio of this house is where I engraved my grandson’s name and mourned his loss. So in all sense of the word this is our home. We have, what for it, one and a half bathrooms! I know! We’ve raised kids and had sleepovers under these conditions! Any who, it seems like this is where we’ll stay. The middle young adult is about to spread his wings, the teenage girl is going into college, and the little is now in the school system, albeit remote, that has been so good to my kids.

Speaking of remote, we are now in the 3rd week of remote learning and feeling totally like fish out of water. Between computers not working, codes being written and rewritten, emails being accidently deleted, folders lost… we thought we’d never get settled in but here we are. The little is in Kindergarten and his teacher is online via Zoom for the full class. Here’s something you may not know. New Jersey is one of the few states who DO NOT have a state funded public homeschool option. This means you can indeed homeschool your children but it must be through a private school. Doing so with out state funding means each homeschool family’s budget dictates whether there is an online teacher visible in real time or whether there is no teacher and only written correspondence. Other states have the option to homeschool but the state pays to have the children do so they are synced up with the local public schools. I homeschooled by daughter from 3rd grade to 8th and we had to pay for all instruction through private education. What is ironic is that now, due to Covid, remoted learning connected right to the public school is now available. So it actually is one of those silver lining things for families that were considering homeschool anyway. Due to Covid, we are saving money on private education and, In our case, the teacher is there real time, full time, explaining and taking questions. How many things in your life have ironically turned out to be a silver lining in this Covid-19 fiasco?

The third thing that happened in September… I opened a boutique ya’ll! The Boutique by CCPCL was an exciting idea who’s time had come. It was a scary, bumpy, sleep deprived ride but I did it all on my own. That is one of the most satisfying thing for me. Troubleshooting, planning, and creating on my own. I’m 47 and could easily be out of touch with technology. Don’t get me wrong it’s not easy, but I get in there, do my research and get it going. Sometimes it takes 3 or 4 different videos saying the same thing in different ways, sometimes it takes reverse engineering, sometimes it takes 4 cups of coffee! In any event, the project that is yours’s is the project that you will always be proud of. I had a launch date of September 12th and I launched on September 12th! I was so moved by the support I received and the launch was a success. We opened with a bang and kind of like when you have a baby, I was simultaneously ecstatic but also acutely aware of what it will take to grow this baby.

Top take away of September?

1. If you can’t move still go to some open houses. You’ll get fresh new ideas on maximizing your space and maybe regain a whole new sense of gratitude about your current dwellings.

2. Big or small doesn’t matter, the family in the house does.

3. Even the worst circumstances can have some great silver linings.

4. Never say you can’t because you can. It may be hard, but that’s not the point. You can do it.

So what’s on tap for you in October? Now that we’re back to schedule I look forward to just settling into our routine even more. The one thing I really want to do though is to do some re-centering of myself. There’s some spiritual digging I want to do and some reaffirming of what I know to be true. I’ve found that during the quarantine some of the minutia of others has spilled over in my lane. The balance of helping others while not loosing my own grip, when does empathy become too much of a compromise, and why is it so easy to bring up self doubt. These are some questions I’m getting to the bottom of for myself, personally this month, in a kind way, not a self ridiculing way.

You’re not alone if you are still off balance, if things still don’t seem “normal,” and if you are convinced things will get worse before they get better; but all we can do is work on ourselves. Work on ourselves, love our families, be there for our tribe. Be kind, be empathetic, be generous. And give yourself a bit of time and grace.

I Speak Because I Know

This was me a month and a half ago. Wearing a 24 hour heart monitor because my resting heart rate was fluctuating between 114 and 120 bpm.

When you tell the doctor you’ve had heart palpitations for over 10 years, you get a look that makes you want to explain that you aren’t complacent your life is just really complicated.

Over the past decade I would go to the ER I had dizziness or shortness of breath, get and EKG and be sent home with a cardiologist name that I would never follow up with.

Family members fighting cancer, an unexpected pregnancy, then an infant, teenagers with teenage drama, deaths in the family, all happening simultaneously really doesn’t lend itself to focusing on your own health.

Until I woke up feeling like my heart was beating out of chest. Apple watch clocked me at 120bpm at 7am. I had kids to drop off at school and errands to run. So went to urgent care when I could fit it in hoping to get a quick EKG. What I got instead was reprimanded was told to go straight to the hospital.

Long story short. My heart beats, pumps, and looks fine. One month, an echocardiogram, an ultrasound, a sleep study and one methocolate challenge later and I find I have sleep apnea, and asthma, and have developed a sensitivity to caffeine. So far treating the above has found me improved at my last follow up.

Three things kept me ignoring the tightness in my chest and heart palpatations.

1. Being overwhelmed with other things.

2. Thinking it was because I was getting older and am a little heavier. I worked out more instead saying I was having a problem out loud. I really didn’t want to even tell my husband, it seemed admission of a failure.

3. Having Fibromyalgia I have some pain and related symptoms most days. I assumed some of the pain was related to that, which meant there was no point in spending the time on checking it to just find out nothing can really be done.

We live for them, let’s make sure we continue living for them.

Moral of my story… Don’t survive all life has to throw at you only to be taken down by a health issue that you could’ve taken care of if you had got it checked out. Dying from uncontrolled asthma is not how I’m going out!

Take my advice and schedule appointments to have any concerns, even small ones, addressed with your doctor. It seems like the easiest thing to neglect on your to do list since it’s for you, but don’t do it. Treat yourself like a friend you love, and make sure you are taking care of your health!

Face My Weight

So I never talk about weight on the gram, on Facebook, never here in my blog… but, here I go.

The reality is I’m the heaviest I’ve ever been.

Through to my early twenties I never had a weight issue. At 5’3” I’ve always had an athletic build but maintained 129lbs, to 135lbs even after my first child. I went through my aerobic step phase and had a true six pack. I dated a jock and we worked out together. Blah, blah, blah, right? Who cares? The reality is right this minute, at 45, still 5’3” I weigh more than I have my whole life.

Is there a reason? Three more children? Nope, because I’ve always been able to get under control at least within two years after birth; it’s four years since giving birth to my youngest. Is it fibromyalgia? My fibromyalgia does make it harder to loose weight due to two factors: low serotonin, and FMS related edema. That’s not it though. The reality is, it’s stress. It is so much stress, at times I feel like I’m drowning. That’s the reality.

The effect my husband’s brain cancer has had is indescribable. A toddler in the mist of this and a teenage daughter? Need I say more? Add to it, aging parents - my mom with stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Loosing my grandson… the list goes on. I’ll spare you rest of the details. I know there are many that can relate. Just tell me why I can’t be the women who can’t eat? Who gets emaciated from the stress? And it’s not the eating, in fact I’m not a big eater. I have, in full disclosure however, gotten away from being 85% clean.

The first workout is always the hardest!

So here I am. Fat and still stressed. I’m now at a weight I feel unhealthy and uncomfortable. The self care advocate who takes care of everyone now needs to, “heal thyself.”

I have a plan. I have to do it. Consider this a manifesto. The goal? To go back to eating at least 80% / 20%, and my weight and my stress with movement.