Week after Thanksgiving

Hey good news. I'm feeling better. The last two times I updated this blog I was not doing so great. Heck, even a few hours ago I was not doing so great. I've been STRUGGLING with an early case of Seasonal Depression since before Thanksgiving. I've had January levels of anxiety and sadness and listlessness. 

It's been bad. I spent most of the weekend laying on the couch.  

And then tonight it got dark and my body was like, "okay, it's just dark. It's always dark this time of year. What are we complaining about?"

And I felt better than I had in several days.

Actually I think all the rest I gave myself was what really helped. My body asked for a break and I gave it a break and now my body is feeling better. I know that doesn't sound that complicated, but as someone who routinely ignores the signals my body sends out, it represents a big accomplishment. 

Anyway, let's get this blog updated because this is December and we DO NOT want to get behind. 

This first picture is from last Sunday. The kids were so excited to go play in the snow. Even Charlotte, who an hour earlier had been at instacare for a scratch on her eye was not going to miss playing in the snow. She had sunglasses on so the bright light reflecting off the snow wouldn't hurt her eyes. 

The kids were outside for a while. Gradually they trickled in. Veronica spent some time in her room with a roll of aluminum foil and came out with this nativity scene creation. 

The Monday after Thanksgiving is traditionally a terrible day for me. But this year I think I cracked the code. The trick is to try not to do to much. It was actually an okay day. 

I was able to get all the kids up and out the door without incident. (It helped that we already had all the snow gear out so we didn't have to find it that morning.) I went to work and got caught up on things, but not much had happened since Wednesday so I wasn't really that behind. 

At 10:00 I went to my podiatrist so I could get another steroid shot for my plantar fasciitis. The office was kind of backed up and so I ended up in the waiting room for over an hour. But honestly I didn't mind at all. I told the PA, "This is the first day that I haven't been with my kids in like 10 days. Sitting in a quiet waiting room is AMAZING."

Last time I'd been really surprised by how much the shot hurt. So this time I brought my Red Panda stuffed animal to squeeze while I had the shot injected into my foot. That helped a lot. 

Then I picked up Derrick and we went to the library. We came home and I read Patrick Stewart's biography, "Making It So." For a while. 

I picked up Veronica at 2:00 and the twins were home at 3:00. The kids had been begging to go sledding as soon as they saw all the snow when we came home from Utah. I told them we'd go on Monday since they are out of school an hour early. 

So everyone put on their snow gear and we went to the hill by the science museum. 

Someone had made this big jump. They kids had a lot of fun with that. 

They also liked piling onto two sleds and racing down the hill. 

Here are Brandon and me. 

And me. I'm totally loving the hood on this coat. I got it at the clothing swap this summer. It was hanging on a rack and I pulled it to get a better look at it. It fell off the hanger and I was like, "Oh okay, you can come home with me."  

Here's a video of the kids sledding. They had a blast. 

They played for about an hour. I'd ordered pizza from Little Caesars so we went straight there and picked up the pizza. 

I learned long ago that cooking dinner on the Monday after Thanksgiving is just asking for trouble. Pizza is a given at this point. 

Derrick and I had picked up the movie The Meg 2 from the library. We both wanted to watch that so we went downstairs and turned it on. The other kids were in and out, but I think they all were watching by the end. I went into it with zero expectations and actually had a really fun time with that movie. It was so dumb and that made it fun. 

When the movie was over I was in a really good mood. Brandon and I put the kids to bed and then went to the garage. We had a bowl of M&M's and we ate that while looking over the kids Christmas lists and making plans. We picked out a lot of fun stuff for them on Amazon. 

Brandon has been really helpful with me as we figured out Christmas. A few weeks ago he really helped me get things figured out. I've had the idea that we'd buy plane tickets to Texas for our big Christmas gift. The tickets would be for when we go there in April for the eclipse. But ticket prices were NOT cooperating with that plan. I was getting really frustrated. Brandon helped me realize that we didn't HAVE to have plane tickets be our big gift. We came up with a (much) less expensive option that the kids will love. I'm so glad I can work out ideas with him. 

It was fun to start ordering things from Amazon and to figure out things that the kids will like. It was a really good way to end a day that had gone really well. 

Tuesday was another story though. Monday had gone well, but kind of at the expense of Tuesday. 

I'd spent barely an hour at work on Monday. I was there for almost four on Tuesday. And then I was supposed to come home and work on stuff for Ivan's company. Which would have been fine under normal circumstances. But I was still working through the Secondary claims backlog. So I was looking at a good two hours of work. I ended up pushing that off to Wednesday. 

We also were completely out of food. We needed to go grocery shopping, but I hadn't made a shopping list or a menu. Thankfully Brandon took over all of that. He made the menu, made the shopping list, and went grocery shopping. Thank goodness for him. 

While he was at the store I was taking Derrick and Veronica to the church. Veronica had girls activity at 4:30 and Derrick had boys activity at 5:00. I didn't feel like shuttling back and forth all evening so I just took them both at 4:30.  Veronica went into girls activity and Derrick and I went into the foyer. I had him write a letter to Santa. Then I dropped him off with boys activity at 5:00. 

I went and stood by girls activity so I could hear what she was doing. They were doing a talent show and her talent was "Jokes." I'd helped her type up about 20 of her favorite jokes and she had them printed out in a folder. She told me it would be too embarrassing to have me watch her so that's why I was just listening from the hallway. She did a really good job and had everyone laughing. One of the adult leaders later told me that Veronica cracks her up all the time. 

I went into boys activity for a little bit to keep an eye on Derrick, but he was fine. 

At 5:30 Veronica's activity ended so I took her into the lobby and she wrote a letter to Santa while we waited for Derrick. And then we all went home a little before 6:00.

Boys and Girls activity only recently moved to the same afternoon. And yes, it's super annoying to have the times staggered the way they are. But there is only one more activity until Derrick moves into the Young Men's Program so I can make it work. 

Wednesday was supposed to be my day off, but it ended up not being very restful. 

I did take the day off from Aspen Grove. But I still had that secondary billing to do for Ivan. So I spent two hours doing that in the morning. Sigh. 

Also Derrick was home. The Middle school has these fun activity times called Cub Club. If students have high enough grades they can do fun activities during Cub Club. If they don't they have to do work. Lydia was actually so motivated by Cub Club that she did a bunch of extra work on Monday and Tuesday to pull her math grade up from a D to a C so she could participate in Cub Club. 

She and Charlotte ended up in the same group and had a lot of fun together. 

Derrick would probably be overwhelmed by Cub Club so I've opted to keep him home during the mornings when its happening. Last time he stayed home and then I took him to school at 11:20 and picked him up at 2:00. That's what I thought we'd do this time, but for some reason he was really worried about the different schedule. He ended up crying some pretty convincing tears so I said he didn't have to go. 

But he couldn't just stay home either. I told him he had to come with me on my errands. So he went with me to pick up Veronica from school. All three of us went to her therapy appointment. Derrick and I stayed in the lobby and Veronica had her appointment. 

On the way back to the school, we drove by downtown and dropped off the Santa letters at the special "North Pole Express" mail box.

Then we dropped Veronica back off at school. 

When she got out of school she was really excited about running for student government. She'd brought home a poster and started working on what she wanted it to say. She drew lots of pictures of fun activities that she wanted to try to plan. I took a quick picture of it so we could remember what she wanted to do when she wrote her speech. 

When Lydia came home from school she and I went to Welch's music to pick out a bow for her. I'm still not ready to buy her a cello, but she'd been complaining about her school issued bow. And we do have that grant money just sitting there. So I asked Welch's if we could use the grant money for a bow and they said yes. So we went to pick out a bow. 

We got back from that and had dinner. And then it was time for Charlotte and Lydia to go to Young Women's. They are usually to tired for activities, but they really wanted to go to this one. They were going to someones house to help socialize new puppies. The girls had a blast holding the puppies. One fell asleep on Lydia and she talked about it for days. 

Brandon dropped the girls off, and an hour later I went and picked them up. 

After I dropped the girls off at home I drove to the Warming Center for my first volunteer shift there. The Warming Center is in the basement of a church downtown. It's not a shelter so it's not open all day and its only open on nights when the forecast is below freezing. But it certainly fills a need. There were three volunteers and 12 guests at the center that night. I helped them get cots and blankets. I also helped set out food items like hot chocolate and cup of noodles. 

After everyone was kind of situated for the evening I helped organize donations. There has been a lot of community support for the Warming Center so there were a lot of new donations. Honestly the biggest obstacle has been how to store it. I couldn't solve that problem, but I could group things. I put all the socks in a tote and all the hand warmers into a pile. I grouped the food items as best as I could. 

The last hour of my shift I spent in a chair just reading. The guests were either already sleeping or just quietly reading or writing. I was happy that they had a warm place to be. It was something like 19 degrees outside. 

The next morning I emailed the director, Randy, and let him know that we needed a way to identify the volunteers. The warming center isn't super warm so everyone was wearing hoodies and coats. It was kind of hard to tell us volunteers apart from the guests. I figured it would be helpful for first time guests and volunteers to know who was a volunteer. I suggested magnetic name badges or lanyards with VOLUNTEER written on them. Randy replied back that that was a good idea and that he'd try to buy some lanyards soon. So if nothing else I've helped with that suggestion. 

Thursday was Brandon's birthday. And I really really really wish I had some cool stuff to report about that. But it was a pretty run of the mill day. 

Also it was when the week was starting to catch up to me and I was starting to suspect that I was experiencing seasonal depression. It's kind of hard to make your husband's birthday special when you feel like you are constantly crying inside. 

I logged another almost 4 hour day at Aspen Grove. One of the things I had to do was actually pretty cool, but it was also kind of tedious. We are moving to a new office! The move is going to be great and I'm excited for it and I'll tell you all about that in another post. But for now the important thing is that I had to tell all the insurance things about it and UHHHHHH that is the WORST. They all have different forms and different requirements and it's just annoying. I was whining about it for most of the morning. But I was able to notify the big 5 companies. 

And then I came home and did stuff for Castle Therapy. I was beginning to suspect that working from home was not for me. I like working from home when I do it for Aspen because it feels like I'm getting away with something. But when I ALWAYS work from home for Castle Therapy it feels like work is invading my home space. I don't like coming home from one job and having to start another. So I need to figure that out. Or just get through the Secondary back log so that Castle Therapy only takes less than 3 hours a week like I originally expected. 

When Brandon came home at 1:30 I did stop everything and go on a walk with him. It was nice to talk with him. He'd had a really good day. 

We had hamburgers for dinner followed by root beer floats. My sister Hillary sent him a head lamp and he'd bought himself Snow Shoes. Here he is testing out his presents. 

I'd hoped that Friday would be a nice relaxing end to the week, but that was not to be. Veronica had an appointment with her ADHD medicine doctor at 11:00 so I had to make sure I left work in time for that. 

Also it had snowed all night and was still snowing as the kids got ready for school. I drove Veronica to the school and then came home and drove the middle schoolers. The drive to the middle school isn't very far, but it was far enough that I was pretty fed up with traffic by the time I was done with the drop off. 

So imagine how I felt when I finally made it to work and had a phone call from Lydia saying she left her backpack. Normally it wouldn't be a big deal to drive home and get it for her. Home, Work, and School are all within a stones throw of each other. But the roads were still a mess from all the snow. It took a good ten minutes to get that backpack to her. 

So then I had less time to get work done. Fortunately the mail arrived with only one small check in it so I didn't have to do a big deposit. 

At 10:35 I left to go get Veronica. I had a stack of mail that I needed to drop off at the post office and a deposit for the bank. But I figured I'd get to those later. I just went and got Veronica. We were going to go straight to the drs, but she was hungry so we ran home to get a snack. When I was grabbing something I knocked a bowl off the counter. It shattered everywhere. 

But there was no time to clean it up. So we just left it and hurried out to the car. 

That bowl was starting to feel like my life. 

I drove toward the doctors office, but on the way there I was like, "Hmmmm I don't actually remember where this office is." The last time we were there was early October. And that felt like a million years ago. I had a rough idea of where to go so I just drove that way and hoped I'd remember. 

I knew I had to get onto Washington and I was thinking the road to turn onto was Filer. But then I saw the sign for Shoup Ave and I said, "Oh Shoup!"  Veronica thought I was saying, "Oh Shoot" like I forgot something so she was worried. I told her, "No it's Shoup Ave. That's the road we want." 

We checked in and the staff had me fill out the depression screener that they make all clients fill out. I was going through the questions for Veronica, but I was like, "Oh I should really be filling this out for me." There were many things on the list of questions that I was like "Yeah, I felt that way at least once this week." Here's the list of questions.

• Little interest or pleasure in doing things?
• Feeling down, depressed, or hopeless?
• Trouble falling or staying asleep, or sleeping too much?
• Feeling tired or having little energy?
• Poor appetite or overeating?
• Feeling bad about yourself — or that you are a failure or have let yourself or your family down?
• Trouble concentrating on things, such as reading the newspaper or watching television?
• Moving or speaking so slowly that other people could have noticed? Or so fidgety or restless that you have been moving a lot more than usual?
• Thoughts that you would be better off dead, or thoughts of hurting yourself in some way?

This is when I self diagnosed myself with Seasonal Depression.  

We had a good appointment with Veronica's doctor. Veronica's had some tummy issues from her ADHD medicine so we adjusted the dose. And she's been struggling with staying asleep at night. The doctor prescribed something that's supposed to help people with ADHD brains sleep. I was thinking that somehow we need to see how Brandon would react to that type of medicine. 

Veronica didn't really want to go back to school after her appointment. But she didn't want to miss lunch so she decided to did want to go back to school. But since she wasn't in a big hurry I didn't feel bad taking her on a few errands on the way home. So we stopped at the post office and I mailed the billing statements. And we stopped at the library book drop so I could drop off the Patrick Stewart book. (I'd finished it the night before. I highly recommend it.)

I dropped her off at school and went home to deal with that broken bowl and to get something to eat. Then there was just enough time to pick up Derrick from school, take the deposit to the bank, and then go to Ivan's office for our weekly meet up. 

He'd received the check for the first round of Secondary claims that I'd been able to push through before Thanksgiving. And I had a whole list the ones that had been submitted on Wednesday that would pay the next week. It felt good to be finally making progress on that. 

We also figured out where we were on some other tricky situations. 

I went home and entered some medicaid payments. I was done just as Brandon walked in the door. 

And I mean DONE. 

I told Brandon that I was barely hanging on by a thread all day and that I was done hanging on. I went and laid on the couch and didn't move for like the next three hours. 

I feel bad because my sister Hillary was coming for a visit. Hillary has had such a hard time the last few months and I try to be a good support for her, but this time I didn't have much to give. When she arrived I didn't even get up off the couch. I just told her, "I'm basically two inches from a panic attack." She responded by letting me hold her grounding rocks and gave me some of her grounding water. I felt bad that she was taking care of me when I was hoping to take care of her. 

Fortunately Brandon was around and he could take care of both of us. 

Hillary brought Walter and Penny with her on this visit. Walter went downstairs to watch a movie with Derrick. And later Veronica came home and played with both kids. My kids were really good at helping with her kids all weekend. 

Brandon made dinner and then we got ready to go to the Twin Falls Light Parade. I was a little on the fence about going, but everyone else wanted to go and I'd rested enough that I felt okay going. We bundled up everyone really well. 

Before we left I went outside to get a picture of the igloo that Charlotte and Lydia had been working on all week. They'd done a lot of work on Sunday and then worked on it a little bit after school each day. We'd even turned on the lights on the back of the house so they could work on it after dark. I was happy that they had the snow to play in, but this was part of the reason I was feeling so blah all week. Normally if it snows this time of year it melts within a few hours. This snow stuck around all week because the temperature dropped below freezing for like 7 days. This night was actually going to be the warmest night all week at 30 degrees. 

They were rushing to put a doorway on it so they could sleep in it that night. Yep, they had plans to sleep in it. I was like, "You might as well try and this is the warmest night all week so this is the night to do it." 

This is the view in a window.

Here's Lydia in the igloo.

Derrick had gone out to the front yard after dinner and built a snowman super fast. 

It was kind of crazy how fast he had it up.

Brandon drove Hillary's car so she woudn't have to deal with one way streets and road closures in an unfamiliar city. I drove the van with my kids. We parked and then walked to Mary Alice Park where we met up with Brandon, Hillary, Walter, and Penny.

As soon as we walked into the park Charlotte and Lydia started rolling snow balls. They had a snowman up within minutes. 

Derrick found Art by the model trains and was with him the rest of the night. He was running trains all night. 

Mary Alice Park is the perfect place to come for this parade. It's at the beginning of the route so we could see everything lined up. We didn't have to wait for the parade to come to us. It was already there. Art and his wife were also giving out free hot chocolate and cookies. It was the best hot chocolate ever! And there was a fire where we could get warm.

Here's the snowman. Shortly after I took this picture a kid started talking to Charlotte through the fence. He was like, "Hey you are in my gym class."  He and his friend started throwing snowballs at Charlotte and Lydia. It turned into a good natured war. The snowman ended up being a casualty. 

Here I am. (With my yummy hot chocolate.)

Here's Brandon helping with Walter. 

Here's Derrick controlling a train engine. 

This is what the parade looked like from the park. We could see the floats, but not super well.

Hillary's kids got cold so she put them in her wagon and brought that into the park to get warm by the fire. When they were warm she took them back out to the route. Veronica was out on the route the whole time getting candy from the people walking along the parade route. Charlotte and Lydia joined her when their snowball fight wound down. Derrick never left the trains. 

When the parade was over we said thank you to Art. He gave Derrick a clear plastic train as a present. Then we went back home. There were giant snowflakes falling as we drove home. 

Back at the house there was quite the party in the living room. Everyone was going over their candy and other things. 

Eventually it was time for bed. Charlotte and Lydia put on thermal underwear under their pajamas. They had on wool socks. They had gloves with hand warmers. 

Brandon helped them get their sleeping bags situated in the igloo. The girls wanted to watch a movie on the I-pad so he ran an extension cord out there for them. 

Here's the view into the igloo with both girls in there. It was so well insulated that their voices sounded very far away. 

Brandon put a boogie board over the opening to act as the door. Then we went on a walk. 

I was pretty convinced the girls wouldn't last very long. And I was right. They were back in the house by 11:00. They said they were warm, but the door kept falling off. Also they were feeling claustrophobic. But hey, they still get props for trying. 

Saturday everyone slept in until about 8:00. Then it was time to clean the house and the living room and then set up the Christmas Tree. 

Cleaning took about an hour. We worked really hard on the living room. We made sure everything was swept and vacuumed really well. Then we put up the tree. 

That was . . . fun . . . sort of. Derrick was all in. He was excited about every step and every ornament. Veronica was also doing a good job. But Charlotte spent half the time playing on the I-pad. (She was supposed to be entertaining the cousins, but they lost interest and she kept playing.) And Lydia. Oh Lydia. Lydia sat on the couch and didn't want to help but did want to offer lots of advise about how and where everyone else should be putting ornaments. I ended up yelling at her, "I DONT WANT TO HEAR YOU YELL AT YOU SIBLINGS ANYMORE. IF YOU WANT SOMETHING DONE A CERTAIN WAY HOW ABOUT YOU ACTUALLY HELP!"

Needless to say we all took a break after ornaments were on the tree.

The tree was up, but it was leaning.  

Here's the half decorated shelf.

And the living room with boxes on the floor and the coat rack in the hallway. 

Things got better though. I took a shower and when I came out the kids had finished decorating everything.  All the manger scenes were unpacked and on display. The furniture was back where it needed to be. 

Everything was looking really good. 

And really getting everything decorated made me feel better. The tree looked cheerful and Brandon even had a fire going in the pellet stove. 

We had a very nice afternoon. I think all the adults were even able to take naps. 

I'd ordered Arthur Christmas on DVD and it arrived in the mail. We watched that in the evening and had a great time. That's one of my favorite Christmas movies. 

I was hoping that I'd feel all the way better on Sunday morning. But that didn't really happen. Instead I ended up with like three different kinds of chest pain. I had some sort of heart burn, I had a little bit of congestion, and I still felt like I was crying on the inside. 

I laid in bed trying to get the oomf to get everyone up for church. But I just wasn't feeling it this time. We've really struggled with the 9:00 church time all year and we are running out of steam as the end of the year approaches. It seems like I end up yelling at one or both of the twins every Sunday morning. Someone is always in tears, or angry, or refuses to get out of the car. Little things like asking someone to brush their hair or their teeth are seen as SUPER judgmental and a reflection on their moral character. And well, none of that seemed like the way to start a Sunday. 

So we all just slept in and then watched church on Zoom. Brandon did make it to church about 15 minutes late. But the rest of us stayed home. 

It was another day of hanging out on the couch. The most productive thing I did was stage a photoshoot with last years Advent candles. I'm writing about our tradition of doing an Advent Wreath for the Exponent this month. I wanted a picture of our wreath. But when I got it out I realized that our candles from last year weren't quite as staggered in size as I wanted them to be. We hadn't lit them for very long each week last year and so they hadn't burned down much. (I'd completely forgot that so I'd already bought new ones for this year.)

But I wanted the tiered look for the picture. So I lit the first one and let it burn on its own for like 30 minutes. And then I lit the second and had it burn for a while too. And then the third and finally the fourth. 

Hillary left after lunch. Despite my abysmal skills as a hostess she'd had a good visit. And her kids had had a blast. It was good to see all of them. 

The day was really gloomy. The cold spell had snapped and the snow was melting. We even had rain. But that didn't help my mood. I didn't like how grey the day was. 

But somehow the sun going down actually helped me feel better. Like I said at the top of this post. As soon as it got dark my mood got better. I think that's the first time that's ever happened. 

I suddenly wanted to DO stuff. I played Uno with Derrick. Then I played it with all the kids. Then we played Chutes and Ladders. Then Charlotte, Veronica, and me (with a little help from Derrick) played Clue. 

It was nice to play with them all. 

The rest of the evening was good too. And I'm hopeful that tomorrow will also be a good day. This week is less hectic than last week. And we aren't recovering from Thanksgiving so that's good. 

Thanks for reading. And I hope you are taking care of your mental health. It's okay if you don't feel HAPPY, HAPPY, HAPPY during this time of year.