Surviving January

A few weeks ago I got stuck in the drive through at the bank. It was a branch I don't normally go to and I guess I picked the wrong time to try to drop off a deposit. I was in that line for over 20 minutes. But it was fine because I was listening to a new episode from Glennon Doyle's podcast. 

I don't listen to every episode of her podcast, but I'll listen when things look interesting. She'd posted on Facebook that she had a new diagnosis and to listen to the podcast to hear all about that.  So that's what I was doing.  

Here's the gist of it. Glennon had struggled with bulimia from the time she was 10 until she was a young adult. She was able to get into recovery when she was pregnant with her son. But over the years she'd relapsed a few times. She sought help from some new doctors after her most recent relapses and that's when she got the new diagnosis. 

She wasn't actually bulimic. She was anorexic with purging. 

This rocked her world. She'd NEVER considered that she could be anorexic. But as she read more about it she realized that this described her to a T. The part of her story that stood out to me was when she said something like, "I was reading about Anorexia and I realized that things that I always thought were part of my personality were really just symptoms of a disease."

I've been thinking about that a lot lately. Especially in regards to my anxiety. I've been looking at things that I've assumed are part of my personality, but are quite possibly just symptoms of High Functioning Anxiety. 

It's been quite the process. For example. I'm fastidious about being on time to things. How much of that is me and how much of that is anxiety? And if I try to manage my anxiety am I suddenly going to become the type of person that is late to things? Could I even be that type of person? Probably not. But is it healthy for me to obsess over what time I need to leave the house in order to arrive somewhere on time? Also probably not. 

So over the past few weeks I've been looking at various parts of my life and trying to find a healthy balance between CONSTANT VIGILANCE and complete disregard. I've (tried) to let go of taking some things personally. I'm (trying) not to tie my value to things like the outstanding balance total at work or the amount of PTO activities at my kids school.  It's a process, and I'm not great at it yet, but I'm feeling a little less tense about things.  And that's good. 

Anyway, the timeliness and predictability of blog posts on this blog might end up being a casualty of my attempts to be a less-anxious person.  I don't think I could ever give up the blog at this point. But I know that weekly post are probably not going to happen for a while. 

Best I can promise are blogs every other week. 

So let's get cracking. 

Monday January 9 is the day that I finally had my foot looked at. Oddly enough, my foot  - that has hurt nearly every day for almost a year - DIDN'T hurt the day of my appointment. I was like, "What the heck?"  My appt was for 1:00. So I went to work in the morning, went home and got something to eat, and then went to my appointment about 45 minutes early. I parked and then walked around the neighborhood near the office for 30 minutes.  When I came back my foot was hurting a little bit. 

When I did the intake paperwork there was a picture where I had to circle where it hurt on my foot.  I just kind of circled the whole ankle area.  When my doctor came in he asked me where it hurt specifically.  I was like, "I don't know. I just hurts in here."  

I wished I could explain that I am horrible at actually listening to my body. (Remember how I didn't know I was pregnant with twins for like 6 weeks after going through what I thought was a miscarriage?) Anyway, he felt around my foot and pushed on certain points.  That helped him and me pinpoint where the pain was. 

We also did an x-ray to see if there was any obvious problems. 

When we were done the doctor told me I have something called PTTD. It stands for Posterior Tibial Tendon Dysfunction). Basically the tendon that runs done my ankle on the inside of my left foot is not doing its job. 

He pointed out how my left foot is a lot more flat footed than my right foot. That's visual proof that the tendon isn't holding up as well as it should. 

Solutions for the problem involved solid over the counter orthotics (I bought mine online from Super Feet), wearing my ankle brace again, and wearing shoes in the house (I hate this, but I'll admit it has helped.)  We can also look at physical therapy to teach the tendon how to do it's job again. 

If things don't improve we'll move onto doing an MRI to actually look at the tendon and see if it's torn. And if that's the case we'll have to do surgery.  

So far I've been a lot more mindful of supporting that tendon and my foot has felt a lot better. What's also interesting is that now that I actually know where the problem is I can feel the pain. Does that make sense?  Before my appointment I just knew my ankle hurt and I guessed it was a tendon.  Now I know exactly where the tendon is and I can feel the pain there. Not some general location, but THERE in the tendon on the outside of my ankle. Yay for being more aware of my own body. 

My appt got over a few minutes before 2:00.  Derrick and Veronica get out of school at 2:00. I hadn't been sure if I'd get there in time so I'd asked Kaymie to pick them up. I don't know what I'd do without that woman. I ended up making it there in time to meet the kids, but it was so nice to know she had my back. 

After school I took Veronica to what we thought would be her last physical therapy appointment. She is still an EPIC toe walker, but they've addressed some of the major issues over the last few months. We've been slowly ramping down therapy. Mr. Spencer actually wanted to see her for one more follow up in a few weeks, but other than that she's done with physical therapy. 

And just in time too. Because just like naming my foot issues helped me start feeling the pain better, naming her Anxiety has put a focus on it. Now that she knows she has anxiety she's feeling it more acutely.  And things that we just kind of lived with before are now things that we know are anxiety related. For example, she's having a really hard time falling asleep at night. It's become a big process to put her to bed. I'm not exaggerating when I say that she was easier to put to bed as an infant.  

So as we ramped down physical therapy I started to think that we might need to start some other sort of therapy. 

Monday night was the first rehearsal for the Music Man.  Brandon, Charlotte, and Lydia are so excited to be part of that. They did a whole read through of the script. The director was talking about some things and he said, "We even have identical twins in this play."  We never really think about how cool it is that Charlotte and Lydia are identical.  They are just Charlotte and Lydia and really hard to tell apart sometimes.  But the director is super excited to be working with twins. He's been giving them directions to do things like yawn at the exact same time. Charlotte and Lydia think its super funny.

And Brandon is excited to be "Playing" with his friends again.

On Tuesday I was finally going to do something else I've been planning to do for a while. I was going to go to the gym by my house. I was going to do the weight lifting class that was at 9:00. I got ready and I went there after I dropped the girls off. I went to the counter to pay the drop in fee - and the class was cancelled for the day. Apparently it's never cancelled, but I'd happened to pick the one day that it was. 

So I went to the canyon rim trail and went for a walk. This time I went west from the Visitor's Center. 

As always the view was amazing. Like, how is this not a national park?

I made it to the viewpoint by the Perrine Coolee waterfall. 

Here I am.

After the walk I went home and got ready for work. 

All day the kid and I had been looking forward to a very special visitor that evening. Hillary had called on Sunday and asked if it was okay for her to come up to visit from Tuesday to Wednesday.  Walter had been asking to come up and see Veronica and Joe had a busy week at work so it made sense for them to come up for a couple days. 

Hillary showed up right around 5:00 and my kids went nuts to see her and Walter and Penny.  

Rehearsal that night was just for the traveling sales men on the train at the beginning of the play. Brandon is one of those guys so he had to be at rehearsal, but Charlotte and Lydia didn't have to be there. That was good timing because it meant there was time for Hillary to re-dye the girls hair. 

She put on "Gabby's Dollhouse" to entertain Penny. Charlotte and Lydia kept commenting on how it was "such a little kid show."  And yet, they were pretty into it.

Veronica and Walter had a BLAST playing together. I can't explain the bond between these two cousins who are 5 years apart. But it is there and it is STRONG. 

They played and played and played. 

Walter was so happy.

When it was bedtime Derrick and Walter went to bed okay in Derrick's room. But the rest of us (including Penny) stayed up until 11:00. 

On Wednesday I decided to let Veronica stay home from school. I figured that since Walter had come all that way to see her she might as well be there for him as much as possible. 

I dropped everyone off at school and then headed to work for what I thought would be an hour or two.  But pretty quickly I realized I'd rather be at home. Not just because Hillary was there, but also because my work laptop was on the fritz.  It had been having trouble for a few days. My boss had fixed it and things were better on Tuesday, but it was back to it's old tricks.  And now the monitor was flickering.  So I sent and email to my boss that the laptop was having trouble again and then just went home to work on things there. 

Later I got an email from my boss telling me it it had completely died. All I could think was, "I never even got a chance to say goodbye."

At home I worked on somethings for work while Hillary called around to find a mechanic. She had an engine warning light that had her concerned about driving the three hours back to Utah. But no one could get her in that day.  (And the one guy who said he could get her in seemed to be overpromising.) So we decided not to worry about the car. 

We thought about going to the Science Museum. But the kids all seemed content to stay at the house.  And that ended up being impossible anyway because when Hillary went to grab something from her car she noticed that I had a flat tire.  I was like, "First my computer dies and then I get a flat tire. What kind of a day is this."

Hillary was debating leaving around noon so she could get back to Utah while it was still light.  But we were texting Brandon and he said to wait until he got home and he'd look at the car one more time. (He'd looked at it in the dark yesterday.)  So we waited.  

Hillary gave me a trim and cut Veronica's hair. 

Veronica and Walter went to watch a movie.  Hillary and I curled up on each of the living room couches and took naps.  That was wonderful. 

Brandon came home and looked at Hillary's car. He said it would be fine to drive home. Then later he put the spare tire onto the van. I wasn't thrilled about having a flat, but I was happy it had gone flat at my house.  Brandon said it was a good thing that's where the flat happened because the spare wasn't very inflated at all. 

Around 4:00 I realized I'd never taken the deposit to the bank.  So I jumped in the pilot and drove to the bank.  As I was driving I realized that Derrick was supposed to be picked up for therapy at 4:00.  I hoped that wasn't too much of a surprise for Brandon.  

On my way to the bank I picked Charlotte and Lydia up while they were walking home from the middle school. They liked coming with me to the bank and getting dumdum sucker from the teller. 

Then we went home.  Hillary left a little after that.  I started making dinner.  I was really excited for it.  We were having Salisbury steaks for the first time in a long time. I'd been craving them for a while. 

Well I made them, but I kept taking little pinches of meat to taste and they didn't taste right. I almost gagged a few times.  Fortunately I'd also made some vegetable side dishes.  When we sat down to eat I told everyone, "I'm not going to eat the meat and you don't have to if you don't want to."  

No one ate it. 

After dinner I just kind of gave up trying to do anything the rest of the day.  My computer had died, I'd had a flat tire, and I'd ruined dinner. I wasn't going to test my luck any more.

Brandon and the girls had rehearsal that night.  I think I just let Derrick and Veronica watch TV until bedtime. Then I just read. (The third book in that Senlin Ascends series, "The Hod King" had come in at the library and I was deep into it.)

Hillary texted me that she got home safely. I'm so glad she came to visit. She'd brightened up two winter days and helped me feel like Wednesday hadn't been completely full of bad luck. 

On Thursday I walked with Derrick and Veronica to school for the first time since about halfway through December. I still drove Charlotte and Lydia, but as soon as I dropped them off I went right to Les Schwab to get the tire fixed. I love Les Schwab. I thought I was going to have to pay for the flat repair because we didn't buy the tires for this van at Les Schwab. But I'm a frequent enough customer that they didn't charge me for this repair. (Or maybe that's just how they are with all flats?) I was in and out of there within an hour. I spent the time reading the Hod King. 

I probably should have gone grocery shopping when I was done, but I'd promised Veronica that she could go grocery shopping with me after school. So instead I just went home and read in bed. I love that I have a schedule that gives me time for things like that. 

At noon I went to work. I brought my home laptop with me. My boss was in the process of getting me a desktop. I really didn't care what I got as long as the keyboard had a 10-key pad. 

After work I went grocery shopping with Veronica. That was fun, but also kind of exhausting. I used to shop with her all the time when the other kids were in school, but I'm out of the habit of shopping with kids.  It's a lot of saying, "No" and "We'll buy that another time."

I took Derrick to Occupational Therapy that evening at 5:30.  It's such a weird time for therapy.  Especially in the winter.  It's dark when we get there and the rest of the suites are already closed. This was the first time there were other parents in the waiting room. I just read some more. 

That evening no one had rehearsal and we all just RELAXED. I have no memory of what we did. 

Friday was Friday the 13th. I'm not superstitious, but given my track record on Wednesday I was a little cautious going into Friday. 

I dropped Derrick and Veronica off at school, then dropped off Charlotte and Lydia, and then went back to the Elementary school. PTO was doing another Mustang Day sale during lunch time.  That was great, but I'd never got around to counting the Smenciles after our last sale.  I needed to know how many Smanciles we had so I could figure out how many we'd sold the last quarter of 2022 so I could know how much sales tax we needed to send to the sales tax commission. 

So I spent time in the closet counting Smencils. Then I tuned on my computer and used my phone as a hotspot to get into the PTO google drive so I could calculate everything on the spreadsheet I built. 

I had my computer on a box and I was sitting on the stage floor. It was a funny place to do accounting but it worked. 

 

I liked how my hair looked so I took another selfie. 

I got the sales tax all figured out. I wrote out the check for the PTO president to sign when she came for the sale.  I even got the envelope all ready to mail. 

I also did some counts of the apparel to see how much we'd sold and what kind of money we were making. 

When I was done with that Monica showed up and I helped her sell to the Kindergarteners.  Then we moved everything down to the main hall to get ready to sell to the rest of the school on their lunch break.

Normally we have a lot of moms come help. But we were short staffed for several reasons this time. Usually I let the other mom sell and I take care of taking the money from them and keeping it organized. But this time there were only three of us there so I helped sell. 

When we were done selling I sat down to get the deposit ready. I was in no mood for doing a pretty deposit.  I didn't even bother with the coin.  I just told the moms to dump it into one of the money bags and I'd have the bank teller run it through her coin machine. I was a little better with the currency.  I still counted and bundled it, but it was a sad looking bundle.  I don't think I've ever bundled a deposit that sloppily before. 

When I got to the bank I told my teller friend, "I'm not proud of this deposit at all, but it is together and here so that's good enough for today."  She got it all counted. I'd been dead on with the currency count which made me feel better. 

I still had to go to work which was kind of nuts for how fried my brain was at that point. I was there just long enough to do the deposit for that work (much less cash) and then I was out of there.  I went back to the bank and went through the drive through. A different teller came to the window.  I told her, "I'm back, but with much less cash this time.)

Then I went home and laid on the couch for a long time. What a day!

There was one thing that had kept me going all day. We were going to see JIVE at the high school that night. JIVE is the show choir for Twin Falls High School. We've been going to their performances for about 2 and a half years and we LOVE them. Watching JIVE perform is one of my favorite things. So even though the day had been long, and I was pretty much done for the week I was so excited to go see JIVE that night. 

We had dinner and then drove over to the Roper Auditorium. This place felt a little more familiar than usual. Charlotte's Christmas orchestra concert had been here.  So had Veronica's Christmas Choir concert. We found our usual seats toward the back and waited for the show to start.  

Here's Derrick and Me. 

Veronica was sitting on my other side. 

And here's the view down the row. 

We know two boys in JIVE. Oakley and Andrew are in our ward. Last year JIVE did a Les Mis medley and Oakley had sung Master of the House.  When the show was over Brandon had confided to me, "I was jealous of Oakley. He looked like he was having so much fun in that song."

Well fast forward a few months to when Brandon was in Guys and Dolls.  After one performance he told me, "The best part of tonight was looking into the audience and seeing Oakley watching me sing and dance."

I love watching all the kids in JIVE, but I'll admit I've picked out a few favorites over the different performances we've seen. Last year I was blown away by the girl that sang Epinine's part in the Les Mis medley. I'd assumed she was a Senior, but she must have only been a Junior because she was on the program again. I was excited to see what she'd do in this performance. 

The show always starts with a clock counting down from 10 to 0. Everyone in the audience counts down along with it.  It's so much fun to yell, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1.  Then the curtain opens and the JIVE kids come out singing and dancing. There is so much energy in the room. 

They sang a song together and then the girls sang a song and the boys sang a song. Between numbers one or two of them will do little skits and things to give everyone else time to change. And changing is important because each number has a different costume that went with it. Some are simple like matching shirts and black pants.  But others - especially the medleys - take the costumes very seriously.  

The first half of the show ended with a Frozen II Medley. One of the guys came out and did Olaf's story. The kids laughed so hard.  Then the rest of the cast came out and sang a bunch of songs from Frozen. My Epinine girl was singing Elsa's part and did wonderful!  She had on a fabulous Elsa dress and wig. You know what, let me just steal a picture off the JIVE Facebook page real quick.  Here are the main Frozen singers from this song. Look how good those costumes are!

That could have been the end of the program. But no this was just the halfway point. There was a 15 minute intermission where we all talked about how good these kids were. 

After that there were more songs. They sang and danced to Once Upon A December from Anastasia. Oakley and Andrew sang Hallelujah while Oakley played the Guitar. There were a few more songs. And then it was time for the big finale - an Aladdin Medley. Our boy Oakley was singing the Aladdin part and he was so so so good. When he sang the "Proud of your boy" song I was nearly in tears. Later I asked his mom how she got through that song every night. 

The medley ended with Friend Like Me. Everything was so high energy. The dancing was amazing. Later Brandon told me, "I want to learn to dance like that!" 

We clapped and cheered and stood up and clapped and cheered some more when it was all over.  The singers were out in the lobby when it was over. Epinine was swarmed by friends, but I made sure to tell her how great she'd been. (Last year when she sang Epinine I'd told her that she'd nailed it and she told me that comment made her night.)

Brandon found Oakley and Andrew and congratulated them. He asked them when they will sing the Halleluiah song in church. 

We went home riding high from all the energy and fun. We are already looking forward to the Spring Showcase (where they will repeat the Aladdin Medley.) Also the kids could do Jr Jive and preform during the Saturday Matinee in the spring so maybe we'll do that. 

You might think that JIVE was the high point of the week. And you'd be right it it wasn't for what was happening on Saturday.  Saturday was one of my favorite Twin Falls Events - CABIN FEVER DAY!

Cabin Fever Day is put together by the Parks and Rec department. They offer free things and some businesses around the city also offer free or discounted services.  We could choose from:  Free Swimming at the pool, free roller skating at Skate Town, free planetarium shows at the Science Museum, two for one climbing packages at the indoor rock climbing gym, half priced bowling, or some free activities at the library. 

This year we decided to do a free planetarium show and then the half priced bowling. I was already thinking about going bowling for my birthday so this was a good chance to do that while also saving some money. 

Derrick was also really interested in going for a bike ride with Brandon. Derrick was the first kid up and so he and Brandon went for a bike ride. They ended up going on a super long one. 

I got the girls up and we worked on cleaning up a lot of the house. At 10:30 we left the house to go to the science museum. The tickets to the shows were first come first serve so I wanted to make sure we were there early enough to get tickets for the 11:30 show. 

We showed up around 10:45 and the doors were still locked.  It didn't open until 11:00.  We were some of the first people there, but soon there were lots of other people waiting too.  

The kids passed the time running around and trying to climb the pillars.  Brandon and Derrick hadn't been back from their long bike ride by the time we left so I just texted them to meet us there.  They arrived about 10:55.

We were let in at 11:00 and I made sure we got tickets to the 11:30 show.  Then we went into the big meeting room where the museum staff was showing off reptiles and snakes. 

The kids loved touching and holding all the snakes. 

They were fearless.

The last snake was this big one. 

It was really interested in Charlotte. 

We finished with the snakes and walked through the museum. I took a picture of this trilobite because it's surprisingly significant to the Hod King Book. (Which I'd finished reading.)

We presented our tickets and went inside the planetarium theater.  Here we all are.  

My phone died almost immediately after I took that picture. Which was fine because we needed to turn them off for the show anyway. 

The planetarium director came in and gave us a tour of the night sky and pointed out things like planets and easy to see Constellations. He also fast forwarded to some cool events that will be happening in the near future. (The moon and mars being close together. Saturn and Venus being close together)

Then he showed us some trailers for the shows that they have at the planetarium.  He also showed us images from the James Webb telescope. It was a great show. 

After that we went home and had some lunch. I recharged my phone. I think Brandon and I took little naps too. 

Later in the afternoon we all got ready to go bowling. All the lanes were busy when we got to the bowling place so we put our names on the wait list.  While we waited Brandon taught Charlotte, Lydia, and Veronica how to play pool.

I took Derrick (and later Veronica) to another table and we played with a lot less rules. (We didn't care if we were shooting solids or stripes.)

But Brandon's table was pretty hard core. 

It was a really fun way to pass the time.  Soon it was our turn for a lane. We got our shoes on and picked out balls. 

Veronica got things off to a great start by bowling a strike on her first try.  That was kind of amazing.  She ended up doing it like 2 more times during the game. 

Derrick would do a funny "chicken dance" every time he bowled.  He'd put his hands up to his face and that would make his arms look like chicken wings.  Then he'd jump up and down while also "flapping" his arms.  It was so funny. 

I really like bowling because I'm actually kind of okay at it. I can get strikes somewhat consistently.  And there's a mental space I get into when I'm about to bowl that is kind of unique. It's one of the few things where I can shut everything out and just focus on the moment. 

Brandon on the other hand is terrible at bowling. He's often the lowest score.  It's so funny to be because Brandon is good at so many things. But not so much bowling. 

Here's Lydia getting ready to go. 

Here I am.

Charlotte jumped in the picture with me. (Somehow I forgot to get a picture after Hillary re-dyed her hair. So here's a belated picture.)

I ended up winning (as usual), but the kids put in a pretty good showing.  And Brandon had a rally toward the end too.

I love taking pictures of all of us in our bowling shoes. 

And here I am with my ball.  I called it "Old Scuffy."

Back at home we had dinner and then decided we wanted to watch a movie. Derrick and I had picked up Dante's Peak earlier that day. I'd kind of thought this would be the type of movie that we'd just watch together on a Saturday afternoon, but enough other people were interested in it that we decided to do it for family movie night. 

That might have been a bad idea. The movie itself is fabulous. The special effects hold up even though its almost 30 years old. The plot is decent (though there are some odd time jumps). I highly recommend it - but it's not for anxious 9 year old girls. 

Veronica, who was already super hard to put to bed was so nervous about volcanoes and acid lakes that night. 

OOPS 

But other than that it had been a near perfect Saturday. 

Sunday was another day with 9:00 church. The kids are still not used to it. I'm not really used to it either.  But I do like the long afternoons.  

We are still working out what our afternoons look like, but we've figured out a few things.  We like to come home from church and put together little bowls full of snacks.  They have crackers, cookies, dry cereal, etc.  Then we take the bowls downstairs and watch the videos that go with that weeks Come Follow Me Lessons.  

Here are some of the channels we like,

Line Upon Line 

AP Sunday School

Bible Project - specifically the overview videos.  

Oh and I HAVE to tell you the coolest thing about the Bible Project videos. Back in the summer I wrote a guest post for the Exponent listing some of non LDS resources that helped me with studying the Old Testament.  I included Bible Project on the list. 

Fast forward a few months to January 6th of this year. I read a article in the Salt Lake Tribune by Jana Riess titled 6 Ideas for Latter Day Saints studying the New Testament this year. Her first recommendation was the Bible Project Youtube videos. 

There are probably a few ways that Jana Riess learned about Bible Project.  Her husband is part of another Christian denomination so maybe that's how she found out.  But I prefer to think that she read my post on the Exponent and started following Bible Project videos on my recommendation.  And then she shared them with her audience.  

Just the idea that someone like Jana Riess could be reading and learning from my work is pretty cool. 

Anyway, back to what we do for our Family Come Follow Me "study."  This year I decided it was time we watched The Chosen series. I've wanted to do this for a while because the few clips I've seen have been captivating. I pretty much hate the way Jesus is portrayed in LDS media. His line delivery is . . .full . . . of  . . . too . . . many . . . dramatic . . . pauses. It's just too stiff.  But the Jesus in The Chosen seems like someone I'd actual consider following. I figured this was a good year to watch the series. 

So we started the first episode on Netflix. The kids were a little unsure at first, but by the end of the episode they were asking for another one. I told them they had to wait a week. They were like, "A whole week?"  Streaming has spoiled them. 

And in case I forget to write about this later - they loved the second episode.  It's so fun to hear Derrick say things like, "THERE'S JESUS!"  My favorite part was when Jesus winked in a friendly way.  HE WINKED! I really like this guy.  When the second episode ended the kids once again asked to keep watching, but we told them they had to wait another week. 

Sunday night kicked off my unexpected project for the week. I was putting Veronica to bed. She's started having the "Sunday Scaries" where she gets really anxious for the upcoming week. I was listening to all of her concerns and some of the things she said started getting me concerned. I came away from that conversation knowing that it was time to start looking for a therapist. 

I knew this was going to be complicated. I'm in the therapy world on the billing/insurance side of things and I know there is a shortage of mental health providers locally.

My first choice for therapy would be my office - Aspen Grove Family Therapy - but I didn't feel comfortable having her see any of my co-workers.  I just didn't want to complicate our work relationship with having anyone see my daughter. It would just be too weird. 

But my boss is still a great resource in another way.  On Monday I asked him to give me some recommendations of other therapists I could call. He gave me three. I stopped what I was doing and immediately called them. 

I was able to get Veronica onto a 3 month waitlist with one place. 

Another place needed me to get a referral from Veronica's primary care doctor. After work I messaged him and asked for him to send the referral.  Because he was the one who diagnosed Veronica with Anxiety we didn't need an appt or anything. He just sent the referral. 

That place called back and put me on a 6 month waitlist. But they also did a little screening. They asked me questions about why I was seeking therapy for Veronica. And based on my answers they marked her file as "urgent."  Even with that the wait is still expected to be over a month. 

Our school district is partnered a company called BPA which will provide 6 sessions of therapy. It sounds great, but you still have to find the provider.  It was worth a shot though. So I called that company and started that process.  But I got bogged down in trying to find a provider. 

While I was working on all that I also remembered that we'd been awarded some sort of grant to help kids catch up with anything they need help with in school.  It's some sort of COVID money or something.  I really don't know.  I don't even know how I knew about it to sign up for it. But I'd signed up for it in like October and had recently been awarded the money. So I started looking into that.

Half of Veronica's anxiety problems are probably due to the fact that she's behind in school.  She's close to grade level in math, but she's still reading on a first grade level.  I figured if we could find some sort of tutor who could help her with her reading that might help with her anxiety. 

I had a friend who was a tutor so I asked her if she had any availably.  She didn't, but she recommended a place in town.  I emailed them and found out they work with the grant. I was able to get Veronica in for an assessment on Thursday. 

The assessment was really cool.  I thought they'd just be reading or something. They did do a little bit of reading, but they also were testing things like her visual memory. One of the biggest revelations was that Veronica has a hard time keeping her eyes on track on a straight line. Her eyes don't know how to stay on one line of text. No wonder reading is so hard for her! 

At the end of the assessment the guy showed us some of the things Veronica will do to learn how to improve her visual memory, strengthen her eye muscles, and do other things. It's all really cool. 

I left that appointment feeling like maybe, just maybe this would be something that would help. 

On Friday I called the tutoring office and got Veronica on the schedule.  I'd started the week with only the plan to get Veronica some help. And by the end of the week I did have her in some sort of help.  She still probably needs real therapy. But the tutoring is a good first step. 

Anyway, life was going on while I worked through all the paperwork and phone calls. 

Brandon and the twins had more rehearsals. 

It snowed. 

I had a work meeting where we restructured some things so that I didn't have as much responsibilities in some areas so that I could focus on the things I should really be focusing on.   

The kids had an elaborate nerf war - complete with war paint.  They came into my room to show it to me while I was doing something else. 

Veronica ate a pizza into the shape of Idaho.

I went to a sour dough class taught by a lady at Church.  Sour dough has always seemed really intimidating.  But she made it seem do able.  And she gave me starter which I haven't killed yet.  So that's good. 

Veronica's friend Parker came over to our house on Friday. She was so excited.  Getting Parker to our house took months and several attempts. Here's the various things we went through. 

Plan A: I wrote my number on a piece of paper for Veronica to give to Parker to give to his mom.  (This is how Charlotte and Aurora planned arranged their first playdate in 3rd grade and it had worked out pretty great so I figured this would work. It didn't)

Plan B: Parker told Veronica his mom's phone number.  Veronica memorized it and told it to me. I texted the number and asked if it was the right number.  No answer. 

Plan C: After school one day I met up with Veronica and Parker outside the school.  Parker took me to his mom's car and I introduced myself. Showed that I wasn't crazy, and said that we'd love to have Parker come over some time. This finally worked. (And I confirmed that I did have the right phone number.)

We planned out a good day for Parker to walk home with Veronica.  And Friday was the day finally.  Parker and Veronica are a funny pair of friends.  Veronica is a tall girl with short hair. Parker is a short boy with long hair. They aren't in the same class, but somehow these two found each other on the playground and became friends. 

Parker played at our house for several hours and he's welcome here as often as he wants. 

On Friday night I wanted to watch Spider Man 2 with the kids for movie night. But they wanted to watch Goonies.  (Derrick has been COMPLETELY obsessed with treasure.  From the moment he wakes up in the mornings until he goes to bed he's talking about finding a treasure chest.)  Brandon and I decided we might as well just go on a date while the kids watched their movie.  So we went to Walmart and bought him new pants. Yep, super fun stuff. 

But really Friday night could be boring because Saturday was going to be AMAZING.  We were going to Lava Hot Springs!

We like to go to a Hot Spring every January. Winter sucks, but somehow visiting Hot Springs helps it suck less.  When we lived in Pocatello we went to Lava Hot Springs. But we haven't been there since we moved to Twin Falls.  Well this year we decided to go back. 

At first I thought about doing an overnight trip, but Marcia complicates things.  And I wasn't sure about the weather. I didn't want to make reservations somewhere and then have a blizzard come in and ruin all our plans. 

I decided to just block out two Saturdays in January. Which ever one had good weather would be the one we'd go to Lava. We'd leave in the morning and come home at night. 

All week long we'd been watching the weather and this Saturday looked clear so we decided to go for it. 

But first we had to clean the church. I was kind of a sour puss about this. But then I realized that we'd be getting up early to go to Lava anyway. It wasn't a big deal to stop at the church for 30 minutes and help clean.

Here's Veronica dusting.  

I was actually surprised at how helpful the kids were.  In the past I've vacuumed and Derrick has helped me plug in my cord. This time he told me, "I want to vacuum like I do at home."  He took the vacuum from me and did a great job.

Charlotte vacuumed the whole overflow area of the chapel.

We finished vacuuming and were soon on our way to Lava.  

The drive was about 2 hours and 15 minutes long. We were so excited when we pulled into Lava a littel after 11:00.

We parked and paid and then changed into our swimming suits.  Here I am so happy to be there. 

Here's Veronica in the water. 

And Brandon

Charlotte and Lydia. 

Derrick

And then I put away my phone and just soaked and soaked and soaked. The water felt so good. 

After a while I needed a break from the hot pool (it was between 106 and 110 degrees) and so I got out and walked around a bit.  It so great to be in a swimming suit in January.

Here's Derrick.

we looked at this grotto area with a real hot spring in it. 

Brandon's parents came up from Utah and met us at the hot spring.  I happened to be taking a break from the water when they showed up. They were bundled up in their coats and I was standing there in a wet swimming suit.  It was like we'd come from different dimentions.

They changed and came out to enjoy the water too.  

Here I am again. 

We'd been in the water about 90 minutes and the kids were getting a little bored. Plus we were getting dehydtrated.  I'd been making everyone drink water, but Derrick was getting a stomach ache and I was getting a headache.  So we got out of the water and changed. 

Back when I'd worked for the treasurer's office we'd all come to Lava to celebrate Jen's election victory. We'd gone to eat at a place that had really good fried pickles. I wanted to go back there. So for lunch we went to eat at the Chuck Wagon. 

So did all the other tourists.  We had to wait 20 minutes for a table and even then we were at two separate booths. And then it took a really long time to get our food.  I started playing a game with Derrick and Veronica to pass the time.  I had everyone at our table guess a time that the food would arrive. We started playing the game at 2:25 and I guessed the food would arrive at 2:35. I was thinking that was over estimating the time and I was sure to lose.  

We'll none of us guessed the time right. 2:35 came and went and I had everyone pick new times. We picked new times when ever our time came and went. Veronica ended up winning with a guess of 2:51.  

But guess what?  The fried pickles were totally worth it.  I ordered a basket for our table and for the other table as appetizers.  They were just how I remembered them. 

Here's the other table trying their fried pickles. (that afternoon sun completely washed Charlotte and Lydia out.)

The wait for our food was long. But it was worth it. Here's my guacamole burger. It was delicious.  

After we were done eating we said goodbye to Steve and Jacque.  Then we had some nonsense with trying to find a bathroom. (I was like, "why didn't you go at the restaurant???")

Eventually we made it out of Lava and drove back to Pocatello.  We drove by the kids old school and our old house.  We went to the McDonalds by ISU for ice cream cones. Then we stopped at Smith's Marketplace for gas. After that we drove home.  We were home a little after 7:00

We all took showers and baths. The kids went to bed and Brandon and I stayed up and watched Weird. It's about Weird Al Yankovic but the twist is that it's a parody of biopics. It was  . . . well weird but also funny. 

On Sunday we had church at 9:00 again. We are slowly getting used to that time. 

And here we are at the end of another 2 weeks.  I want to wrap this up in a how. But I'm tired.  We'll just end this with a reminder to please take care of your mental health. It's important. 

Oh and take care of your tendons too.  Those are important too. 

Thanks for reading.