Saturday, May 14, 2016

Mother's Day #1, and Life being Life


"When it rains, it pours."
--English Idiom, and the Morton Salt Slogan

*****

So we have had a rough couple of weeks. Let me weave a little yarn for you, here.

Usually in the Spring I end up taking some second jobs, sort of odd jobs. I knew that I was going to want to do that again this year because the extra money helps us out especially towards the end of summer when things can be a bit lean. It means coming home from my main job and going out again, it means time away from my family (which I don't like), but it does mean a little extra dough.

Life has a way of throwing other stuff at you, too, when your stress level is the absolute highest. Last week I had my second job going Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday, the dog got into some stuff at home and we ended up having to take her to the emergency vet. It was a really long night for all of us, and the following morning the baby got sick with a stomach bug that had been going around. This meant that my wife and I ended up also taking a couple of days out of work.

My wife had some outside of work commitments over the weekend, and then Saturday night I got monstrously sick. That meant that on Mother's Day, when I had planned to be cooking, cleaning, child rearing, and letting my wife get some much needed sleep, I was the one in bed feeling like death warmed over. I still feel really badly about that, but we have a makeup date set for the holiday for next Saturday (I'm working today, and tomorrow).

This is a hellish time of year. We'll get through it though.

The baby is awesome. More and more speech stuff, movement. She's eating solid foods now (well, OK, rice cereal, but it is a start!) I have even done daycare pickup TWICE now! A big hurdle for me because I get anxious in unfamiliar social situations, and my wife has been working to overcome her own separation anxiety.

Running wise I am slowly building up my mileage again, reversing the taper. 11 miles or so last week, and then hoping for 16 by the time this week is out. Have a couple of 5ks coming up I want to be in good shape for, so I'm also throwing in some bursts of speed here and there on my midweek jaunts. My hope is that these side jobs will help cover my race costs so I can go into the summer with a defined schedule of events and not worry about anything other than the training and spending time with my family. There are downsides to seasonal work, and forced work stoppages, but there are benefits in terms of time.

I've also been getting active on the twitter, and you can follow me on there @endurancedad. I've been really enjoying checking out the Life of Dad feed, as well as the AHDN feed. Great to see that there are so many folks out there enthusiastic about parenting.

So there might be a slow down in the content I'm writing here for a bit -- I'm planning to write next week on my summer schedule. But it may come later in the week than usual.

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