Summer week 3: Prefrontal cortex problems

My friend posted that on Facebook at the beginning of June and I think I've thought about it every day since then. 

This week was kind of hard. I wish I had something to point to and could say, "THIS, This is what made it hard."  But there wasn't anything specific. And that's what made this so week hard. There wasn't anything I could fix or change to make the week better. I just had to deal with vague discomfort, anxiety, and sadness coming from somewhere. 

I think I assumed that once school ended and summer started then life would be smooth sailing. But its not. There is still a lot of unknowns. Not the least of which is the fact that it's been a really long time since Brandon was working a normal job while the kids and I were home during the summer. There are a lot of things we need to figure out like what do we do in the evenings and what time do we want to make dinner. Add in the fact that there is a pandemic going on and a national conversation about race and well, this summer is not simple. 

I've realized that all the unknowns are starting to wear on me mentally. Through a little bit of reading I've realized that I'm having the textbook symptoms of  prolonged stress affecting the prefrontal cortex. My body is going thought the "fight or flight reflex."  But since I'm not dealing with a one-off moment of panic my body is staying in a heightened state of anxiety. I can't feel it. But my brain is having a lot of trouble. 

This paragraph from a May 18th article for Huffpost Wellness sums up what I mean. 

Chronic stress leaves the brain swimming in the hormone cortisol, which research suggests can disrupt the functions of the prefrontal cortex ― the area of the brain responsible for attention span, decision-making, problem-solving and emotion regulation. Cue brain fog, apathy, indecisiveness and mood swings.

I've found it hard to focus on things that would normally be no problem for me. Each day I seem to only get through one or two "simple" tasks that leave me feeling completely worn out. For example: Last week I registered the Honda online. It took me maybe 30 minutes but it was all I could do for that afternoon. I laid on the couch and took a nap when I was done.  Contrast that with last year when I dropped the twins off at an art class, took Veronica with me to the Assessors to register the car in person, published a blog post, took the kids to the park for lunch, and then took the kids swimming at the lake. 

I haven't been able to write much (besides updating this blog which I can basically do in my sleep after almost 12 years of constant updating.) I have a hard time picking what to make for dinner. I'm sometimes paralyzed with indecision over what to do with my kids each afternoon and usually go for the easy option of letting them watch a ton of TV. 

Thankfully I'm still able to focus at work. I think it helps that I don't have a lot of decisions to make at my job. I just do the work. 

But everywhere else I'm kind of a mess. 

I'm not telling you all this to make you feel sorry for me. I'm telling you to let you know that you are not alone if you are feeling some of these same feelings. Our brains are all struggling right now. 

Anyway, I did take some pictures this week and I did get some things done so let's go through the run down. Just keep in mind that for every picture you see here there was a lot going on that wasn't pictured

We were supposed to go swimming at the city pool on Monday. I'd bought the pool pass a week earlier (which had been the big task for that day) and had a time reserved. But then Monday ended up being really cold. So instead we stayed home and the kids watched Sound of Music. 

We have a lot of oranges from the kids lunches. My kids are spoiled so they only eat little cutie oranges and are just baffled by real oranges. I decided to attempt to make marmalade with all the oranges we had piling up. I took this picture as a before picture. 

I never took an after picture. The marmalade never really set up. It turned out okay, but not exactly right and I was just sick of the project by the end.

The highlight of Monday was when the print copy of Idaho Magazine showed up. It was so fun to see the three page spread of my story. I laughed when I saw that Derrick got his own page. This is such a Derrick thing to have happened.

All the kids loved seeing their pictures and names in the story. I was happy to see my byline in print. It's something I've dreamed of for a long time. But I also had a hard time realizing that I really wrote something that was published in a magazine. I wrote this story in late February/early March. Those halcyon days when the kids went to a physical location for school and I had hours to spend writing. (Not to mention a functioning brain.) I wish I could write something else to submit to again. But it just doesn't seem possible at the moment. 

Still it's really encouraging to finally be published. I'm fairly confident the writing part of my brain will come back online eventually. And when it does I'm sure that this success will help motivate me to write more.

On Monday night I went over to my neighbor Diantha's for a girls night with her and Kaymie. In theory we were making cards, but I found that was too hard for me. I just doodled while we talked and laughed. I'm so glad I have these two friends.

Tuesday was a crazy day. Derrick had a speech therapy assessment. I decided that it was finally time to get Derrick back into private speech therapy. He's had speech therapy through school for years and that's been okay. I've always known that we'd want him to have more therapy, but it just never seemed like the right time. We were always too busy or getting ready to move. But I realized that now was a good time to get him into private speech therapy.

So I've been working on that for a few weeks. I crowd-sourced the local Special Needs Facebook page for speech therapist recommendations. Then I narrowed those down with my tried and true method of picking the office closest to my house.  I had to take Derrick into see his primary care doctor so he could give a referral. I followed up with the office and pretty soon I had an appointment for an evaluation. (And actually this may sound crazy, but this process wasn't that difficult because doing paperwork and evaluations for Derrick is part of my "normal" life. After so many years as a special needs parent, setting up appointments is basically hardwired into me as a default setting.)

The only glitch was that the only available appointment for an evaluation was at 10:00. And Derrick has behavioral therapy and I have work at 10:00. I was able to reschedule his therapy for the afternoon and I just didn't plan to go into work that day. That would have been fine, but we have been interviewing for a new receptionist and the only day one of the candidates could come for an interview was on Tuesday.   So I told my boss I would pop into work in the afternoon to meet with that candidate.

Derrick's eval went really well. And by well I mean he showed that he needs therapy. His therapist is going to work with him improving parts of his vocabulary and describing events and action.

We went back home and Derrick was enjoying relaxing after the 90 minute appointment. He was not happy when Miss Shay showed up and I told him it was time to go with her. He was refusing to go and I was pleading with him. I kept saying, "Derrick, you have to go because I have to go to work."  Finally I got him into Shay's car and they drove off. (Shay texted me 5 minutes later to say that Derrick was doing just fine.)  I rushed into work and talked with the job candidate. It was definitely worth my time to meet with her because she was exactly what we were looking for. Then I came back home and texted Shay and said that Derrick could come back early if needed, He did come home early and went back to watching movies with the girls. I was completely worn out from such an all over the place day. I just laid on the couch the rest of the day.

Moral of the story. Derrick and I really like our normal schedule and I shouldn't mess with it.


Veronica spent a lot of time making one of the closet cupboards into her little lair. (Why she needs a closet when she has her own room is beyond me.)  She put so much stuff in there.

There wasn't much room left for her. 

 She also wore this hat and it made me laugh.

 Our backyard pool didn't get as much action this week as it did last week. Still I'd look out there and see the kids playing with the water guns.  Oh and in case I forget to mention it later.  We drained the pool on Friday. I was taking buckets of water out of the pool to water the trees and garden. Derrick decided to speed things up and undid the valves for all three air chambers. The whole patio was FLOODED.  Charlotte had the brilliant idea to use the wet/dry vac to suck up the big puddles. We did that and had the big puddles gone within a few minutes.

Tuesday night Brandon had a rock climbing class through the College of Southern Idaho Outdoor Rec Program. I'd signed him up for it so he could learn about some of the local areas to go climbing. He had a really good time.

I tried to take the kids on a walk to the park while he was gone, but it turned into a bit of a disaster. Derrick was on roller blades and kept getting really far ahead. Then Marcia jerked her leash and pulled Charlotte's arm really hard. Charlotte was crying and I decided we needed to abort the mission and get back home in case her arm was really hurt. It ended up being fine. But I felt like such a failure.  I couldn't even take my kids for a walk.

Yeah, Tuesday was hard.


But Wednesday was good. The weather had warmed up and we were able to go to the pool! I'm so glad that it is open.  We came in our swimming suits so we didn't have to go into the locker rooms. The staff checked our temperatures when we entered. And then we were just told to stay 6 feet away from other family groups. Easy enough. This picture is slightly misleading. There were other people in the water when I took this picture - they just were on the other side of the pool. 

 I was so happy to take the kids swimming. This is one of the main reasons I work part time - so we can go swimming together.

 Our trip to the pool reminded me so much of going to the pool in Alabama. And I LOVED the pool in Alabama. This was even easier though. None of the kids need swim diapers or even life jackets anymore. Oh I'm excited to go often.

Thursday was another funky day. I wasn't feeling super well. When I left work I was a little dizzy and by the time the kids were eating lunch I was super tired. I ended up taking an hour long nap while they watched a movie. Even after my nap I felt tired and woozy. I was actually afraid to go into the basement because I was worried I'd fall down the stairs.

I spent the day laying on the couch and reading. I read "When they Call you a Terrorist" which is a memoir from one of the ladies who started Black Lives Matter. I'd reserved a half dozen books at the library about social justice and this is the first one that came in.  It was very eye opening. It's a good place to start if you are trying to understand the Black Lives Matter movement.

Not feeling well physically didn't do any favors for me mentally. Or maybe I was already falling apart mentally and it was manifesting itself physically. By the end of the night I was angry and then sobbing.  Brandon heard me out (both when I was yelling and then when I was crying) and while he didn't "fix" anything, it was good to have him listen to me. 

I felt much better on Friday. It also helped that I don't work on Friday's and so I was able to sleep in super late.

We got the rooms cleaned that we needed to and also put away laundry that we'd washed on Thursday.  Derrick has become a pro at putting away his laundry. He's started doing it without being asked. Yay.

I'd picked up a DVD copy of Singing in the Rain. We watched that together in the early afternoon.  The kids have seen it before, but that was several years ago. They LOVED it - especially the Make Them Laugh song.

We went swimming again at 3:00. I forgot to take a picture because I was having such a good time in the water with the kids. Veronica is working on learning to swim. Its very similar to her process for learning to walk and by that I mean she's constantly on the edge of disaster.  The deep end of the pool we play in is about 1 inch lower than her mouth -when she's on tip toes. But that doesn't stop her from just jumping in with the other kids and assuming I'll be there to fish her out. She's constantly launching herself off of the wall and swimming a few feet before starting to go under. I have to keep a close eye on her when we are in that deep area.

We got back from the pool and changed back into regular clothes.  Brandon and Charlotte had a special camping trip planned for the two of them. Brandon came home and they got the last few things together for their trip. Brandon had made a frame backpack from Charlotte's school backpack and my old crutches. Charlotte was so excited for the trip.

 They went up to the mountains around Stanley.

 This is the Salmon River.

 Meanwhile the other three kids and I felt a little lost as to what to do. We are used to having Brandon gone from time to time, but Charlotte?  Lydia especially seemed lonely. We didn't want to watch a movie without Charlotte nor did we want to do any activity that she'd feel bad about missing out on.  So we ended up watching America's Funniest Home Videos on Disney Plus. That was really fun.

Around 8:00 we went on a walk to the school.  (And actually made it.) The kids school has some little farmland on the other side of the fence. There is a horse back there. It seemed to really miss seeing kids every day. It let Lydia pet it and feed it grass.

 Veronica talked me into pushing her on the swings. She had fun leaning back and looking at me.

 Lydia was able to sleep in my bed with me. We stayed up watching How to Cake It videos on Youtube.

Brandon and Charlotte were planning to hike to a campsite, but they never found the trailhead. They did find a campsite near the highway and stayed their. Here is their sunrise.

 Charlotte was in heaven.

 They'd brought Marcia with them and she had a great time.

 More happy Charlotte.

 They went fishing and caught 3 fish. They put them all back.

 Brandon under the highway bridge.  

 Charlotte brought home several small rocks, but she took pictures of these rocks because they were too big to bring home.

 Meanwhile at home we were relaxing and not doing much. (And I had to constantly remind myself that it was okay to not be doing much.) I went out to check on the garden and realized that I haven't taken pictures of it in about 2 weeks.

Here are the tall, tall peas.

 They don't really get past this stage before the kids eat them.

 The lettuce.

 The peas

 The onions

 Pumpkins

 Berries

 Raspberries

 Blackberries

 Brandon and Charlotte came home around 5:00. Brandon offered to pick up pizza on their way home so I had an order waiting for them at Little Caesars.

After dinner I asked the girls if they wanted to read Harry Potter 7. We were in the last 200 pages of the book. We started reading and kept reading and reading and reading. We read from about 6:00 pm until 11:00. We finished the book! The girls were so into all the things that happened. They were jumping up and down and interrupting every few minutes. They were thrilled with it all. It was such a great way to end a kind of blah day.

 Today was a good Sunday. I felt really good all day. We went on a walk to the streets with all the Arts and Crafts houses in the afternoon. Brandon liked seeing all of those. Then we went to the park and the kids played for a long time.

Back at home we watched Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. The kids liked that, but then they wanted to watch Singing in the Rain again.

And that gets us caught up to today.

I'm trying to figure out how to tie this up in a neat bow. But maybe that's beyond my Prefrontal cortext abilities. So let's just call this a night.

Thanks for reading and be gentle with yourself. You're doing the best you can with where you are at the moment. 

Summer Week 2: Pajamas and Swimming Suits

This is what the majority of our week looked like. 

We set up the swimming pool on Monday afternoon and the kids basically spent the rest of the week living outside.  I'm exaggerating, but not much. We literally made them a changing area outside. That way they could change from their clothes into their swimming suits and back again without wasting time in the house. There were days they didn't wear anything besides swimming suits and pajamas.

Oh and we also started reading Harry Potter 7. Our second week of summer was spent sleeping in, swimming, and reading Harry Potter. It was amazing!

There were a few other things worth mentioning so let's get going on the rundown for the past week.

First up is the fact that I accomplished my life long goal of being published in print! My piece about Floating the Portneuf River was published in the June edition of Idaho Magazine. Here's the link the the web edition, but it only displays the first few paragraphs.  https://www.idahomagazine.com/article/the-portneuf-paddle/

We'd arbitrarily decided that June 1st was Marcia's birthday. The kids were very excited about this. We talked about going to the store to buy her a present, but in the end the pool won out.  (Later I bought her a toy that she could destroy.)

The kids were so excited to watch me blow up the pool. We'd bought a pump that plugs into our car outlet. We bought it for pumping up our air mattress when we are camping, but it turned out to be very handy for blowing up the pool. Then we pulled the pool over to the grass and started filling it with the hose. 

The kids were so excited to jump in the water.

When they got to cold they would lay on their new beach towels. I'd bought the pool and the towels a few weeks earlier.

Brandon's sister Melanie and her family were in Idaho for the weekend and they stopped by our house on Monday night. They brought pizza for everyone. It was so fun to show them our house. We sat out on our patio talking for a long time. This is the first time we've really hosted anyone in our backyard. It was so fun to do that.

Here's a visual update on my garden. The peas started producing little peas this week. The kids loved eating them right off the vine. (Which is fine with me because that's basically the reason I grow peas.)

Tomatoes. We are doing some single stemming techniques I learned from MI Gardener.

Pumpkins. I really need to figure out a way to trellis these because they are about to take over.

Green onions.

Beans which eventually will start climbing the strings.

And lettuce and onions. We have so much lettuce right now.

And the pool again.

When Derrick and I got home on Tuesday morning Derrick ran in the backyard, stripped naked, put his swimming suit on, and jumped in the water. He didn't go into the house until at least an hour later. I realized we were probably going to need some sort of private changing area.

I found an old sheet and figured out a way to hang it from the tree house to make a little screen.

I found Brandon's grommet making kit and used that to put grommets into the corners of the sheet. Then I put screws into the posts. It's super easy to hook the sheet onto the grommets. And by the way, making grommets is super satisfying. I want to put grommets into everything now.

I also was dealing with a lot of wet kids running in and out of the house. This was quickly becoming super annoying. So I made a sign and put it up by the side door. Within 5 minutes of putting up the sign I heard Charlotte and Lydia run up to the door, stop, and then say, "Oh I guess we need to get our towels first."  Success!!!

All this pool time wasn't the only thing on my mind. This week was a flex-point in American Politics.

I literally don't have energy to neatly type up my feelings about all the political events that took place this week. It's a complex situation that is further complicated by being emotional and ever changing. And I'm already so worn out from so much that has been going on this year.

But here are a few scraggly sentences that hopefully sum up a little of what I've thought over the last 10 or so days. George Floyd's death from being knelt on by a police officer was horrific and unfortunately not a singular event. I was happy when the officers involved were arrested. But that being said, I don't believe all police officers are evil or corrupt. I think a lot of them are products of a flawed system.

A system that needs to be updated. And so I support the people who are protesting. I am conflicted about the rioting. I wish that these things could be done peacefully, but honestly I'm not surprised that we've reached a point where the people are rioting. It's the middle of a pandemic that has disproportionately affected People of Color. We are also in the middle of a deep economic downturn that has disproportionately affected People of Color. And now there is more evidence of police brutality and a flawed system that disproportionately affects People of Color. I'm not surprised people are abandoning peaceful protests.

And then there were the things that happened in front of the White House on Monday night. I've never been a Trump supporter. But the fact that he had a peaceful crowd of protesters forcibly cleared from in front of a church so that he could do a photo-op - that's just downright scary. I've been encouraged by the way that so many military and political leaders have decried this event in the days after it happened. 

With all this going on I knew I had to do something. On Tuesday night I went to a peaceful vigil in honor of George Floyd. The vigil was held at Twin Falls City Park. It lasted about 90 minutes. There were about 500 other people there. There were several speakers at the event, including the Twin Falls City Police Chief. Near the end of the vigil everyone knelt in silence for 8 minutes and 46 seconds.

I didn't take any pictures while I was at the event. It just didn't seem right to be taking a selfie there. When I got home I saw this picture on Facebook took a screen shot.  You can also see more pictures at this link.

All day I'd been finishing listening to the Malcom Gladwell book, Talking to Strangers. Here's what I posted on Facebook when I finished the book that night. 

I started listening to this book 2 or 3 weeks ago. I picked it because I always like reading books by Malcolm Gladwell. I didn't really pay attention to the subject matter.

It ended up being surprisingly relevant.

The book starts and ends with the arrest of Sandra Bland. She was black and the officer was white. A traffic stop escalated to a shouting match that ended with her arrest. Three days later she committed suicide in jail.

Throughout the book Malcolm Gladwell tries to examine the ways strangers interact with each other - and how those interactions can go terribly wrong.

At the end of the book we circle back around to Sandra Bland. And by then it's clear that there are flaws on our society. Flaws that are causing harm. Flaws that are costing lives.

This book is definitely worth reading right now.

So yeah, there was some heavy stuff going on this week. I could write more and more and more about the topic.   But that's not the point of this blog post. So let's put all that aside for a moment, and get back to the pool.

The pool continued to be the greatest thing every on Wednesday.  I have the kids clean a room each day before they can swim in the afternoon. Wednesday's room was the bedrooms. They all got their rooms picked up and vacuumed and then they headed out for more fun. 

I put my swimming suit and new cover up on and joined them outside. But the pool water was too cold for me. I don't know how they stand it.

The twins got tired of swimming (surprisingly) so we ended up laying in the shade on the picnic blanket and reading Harry Potter. We read for a long time.

And then the kids played some more. I love this picture of all the kids jumping in the pool. Veronica's pose is perfect.

Later Lydia found this giant weed. She was really excited about that.

Oh and let's check in with my irises in the front yard. They were so pretty.

And here is a beautiful sunset. 

Our little rose bushes also bloomed. It's been so fun to discover the pretty things in our house.

On Thursday I got a text from the lawn guy that I'd asked to come aerate our lawn. He said he was coming on Friday Afternoon. So we drained the pool and moved it to the patio. When we refilled it the water was too cold for most of the kids. They came inside and watched movies. But every so often I'd look out there and see one or two of the kids playing.

I don't work on Friday's and so it was nice to relax with the kids in the morning. We ran a few errands and then it was back to the pool.

The girls have a lot of squishy toys that they love to play with. Here's Charlotte showing off hers.

The lawn guy came in the afternoon and aerated the lawn. It was so compact that in some places he only was able to get about an inch out of the ground. He gave me some recommendations for what to put on the grass to help it out.

That evening we went for a walk at Deirkies Lake by Shoshone Falls. There is a loop trail around the lake that we've never been on before. The trail started out wide and level.

The lake was so pretty.

Charlotte posed with the lake.

And then Derrick said he wanted to copy her.

There were lots of big rocks along the side of the trail that all the kids wanted to climb on.

There was also a cute cave.

Here's Veronica. 

We found one of the Hidden Lakes.

It was very cool looking. 

We named it Frog Lake because we saw a big frog on the edge of the water.

Then we found another of the hidden lakes. We named this one Mirror Lake.

When we'd started the hiked I'd wondered how the hike could be a loop trail. It didn't look like there was much shoreline on the other side of the lake.  Well there isn't.  Instead the trail goes up to the top of the large cliff/outcropping that separates Dierkies Lake from the Snake River. There were several sets of stairs that made it easier to get up.

The view was great! This is the view of the lake.

And here is the Snake River on the other side.

The trail was narrow and rough.

It was almost 8:00 and it was so hot. Veronica was not happy in this picture. She was complaining about being tired and hot and the sun was in her eyes.

We dropped down a little bit and were in an area with lots of fun climbing areas. This is called the Alcove. We'll have to come back and explore this area more.

Here's Derrick checking out a little cave.

We made it back to the car. Everyone was happy to be down with the 1.7 mile hike. But we also all wanted to come back.  Good thing we'd bought the $25 season pass so we can come back whenever we want.

We were so hot when we got home that we turned on the air conditioner for the first time this year. The forecast said that Saturday would be 20 degrees colder, but that just didn't seem possible.

Well on Saturday we woke up to cold weather. We spent most of the day inside.

Saturday was a productive yet also kind of lazy day. I went to the LDS Home Storage Center and bought some bags of wheat and powdered milk. I wanted more items like dried apples and onions but those were out of stock. I ran a few other errands like picking up the stuff for the lawn. Then I came home and put the food storage on our shelves. Slowly, but surely we are stocking up on things.

We also have quite a bit of stuff in our freezer.

Brandon ran a few errands as well. The jeep has needed new shocks and he bought those as well as a good floor jack and a creeper. Those will make working on the cars so much easier.

Veronica spent a good part of Saturday making her room a "museum."  She's been saying she wants to be a scientist so she was really excited to turn her room into a museum.  Around 5:00 she gave us all little scraps of paper that were our tickets. Then she let us into her room. 

She wore some construction paper on her head that was her special hat.

She showed us a collection of things and the sketches she'd drawn of those things.

She'd carefully laid other things out on her desk. 

Her main display was this solar system that she'd cut out and glued herself. Brandon had helped her tape them to the ceiling. She'd added a stick as a rocket.

The whole thing was very impressive. Veronica was embarrased whenever I praised her hard work or her creativity.  She told me matter of factly, "Just say wow."

Lydia made lots of fun yarn dream catchers while I read to her and Charlotte. We've had a good time reading Harry Potter. We've entered the really depressing camping chapters. I told the girls, "These chapters are hard because everything seems really hopeless. But things will get better I promise."  So we are taking them a little at a time and just working our way through them.

The most exciting news on Saturday was that my sister Hillary made it to 37 weeks with her pregnancy and had her baby!  Here's baby Penelope June. Her middle name always was going to be June, but for a while there it didn't seem like her birthday would be in June. I'm glad she's made it here healthy.

During the night we heard lots of thunder and had hail pounding on our roof. I was very worried abut my garden. When I checked on it in the morning all my plants were okay. A few had some little holes, but most of them were fine. Whew.

Today was even colder than Saturday. It rained off and on all day.  It was a good day for snuggling up relaxing.

My Aunt Vera told me that she wouldn't mind a phone call from my kids. So we called her on their phone. Derrick talked to her first for about a minute. Then Charlotte for maybe five. Then Veronica took the phone and walked all over the house while talking Vera's ear off. They talked about how Veronica is 6 and suddenly I remembered being 6 and talking to Vera. When Veronica was done Lydia took the phone and talked to Vera for probably 30 minutes. I'm not sure Lydia has talked to me for 30 minutes in one day.Vera was so good at listening to all the kids and hearing about all the things that are so important to them. When the phone call had finished it had been over an hour.

We finished the evening with more Harry Potter. Then the kids went to bed.

In theory we are swimming at the city pool tomorrow. Its open to families but you have to make a reservation. I bought a summer pool pass and reserved a time for us tomorrow. But I think it's going to be too cold to swim. We'll see.

I hope you have a great week and as always thanks for reading.