Brought and Born

Yesterday I was freezing and bored in the office so I decided to walk to the weird little cafe in the plaza for a coffee. On the way there I dropped my glasses in the parking lot while getting my sunnies out and got a nice big scratch on them, and then I got to the cafe and scared the heck out of an employee who apparently thought they were locked up because they were closed. So now I have to replace my glasses and I didn't even get a mediocre coffee about it.

The amount I love having heat vents blow warm air on my feet while I'm doing stuff like washing dishes or my bedtime routine is the exact same amount as how much I hate it when it's air conditioning blowing cold air on my feet instead

Had a dream that I was explaining to someone that Andy and I had recently retired and were on a mini golf road trip, where we were crossing the country staying at hotels/motels that had mini golf courses. Woke up in a panic that I should have already planned all of this.

My older kid has this incredible ability to just decide when she's going to wake up and then just does it, without an alarm. (I have the opposite of this ability, where even with an alarm I am effectively still asleep for several minutes.) Sometimes she uses this for evil, like getting up three hours before the bus on a school morning so she can spend an hour doing her makeup and an hour on her hair and an hour fighting with her sister, but sometimes she uses it for good, like today, when she needed to be at the school for her class trip to Boston at 5:45 and Andy's alarm didn't go off. She woke us up at 5:22, fully dressed and ready to go and panicking about why we weren't up yet, and we were in the car at 5:30 and had her at the school at 5:38. Their buses were supposed to arrive at 6 and leave at 6:15 but didn't arrive until 6:30 and left around 7, so then I had to rush to get ready and out the door (I'm in the office today) and the whole thing has given the day a weird dreamlike quality.

This godforsaken app has broken my brain because every time I log into Paylocity and see "Investment Balance | My Investments" my brain immediately goes "#myinvestments" and now I've been thinking of all of my retirement accounts, collectively, as #myinvestments

Do any of you use credit card points for travel? We have accumulated a bunch and want to use them for a vacation but it feels like there are a million people to tell you there's One Right Way to do it and if you don't do this very complicated set of steps you're WASTING them. I just want to drink nice drinks and eat nice food in a beautiful setting! Tell me how!

I had a successful morning getting old stuff cleared out at work this morning and then was discouraged by lack of progress on something else and then ended the day with a forwarded "can you look into this nonsensical customer question" right before I logged out, and THEN my kid was given very specific parameters to follow and just straight-up disregarded them and then got mad at us about it so I'm very annoyed! And allergies aren't helping!

For some reason, when she was a toddler, my kid would say "hear this!" instead of "listen!" when she was playing on her keyboard or working on a song or something, and she's 14 now and still occasionally does it and I love it so much.

Very unrealistic that the children who were an infant and toddler at my wedding have just turned 18 and 19 years old, respectively.

My bestie and her girlfriend are in town this weekend and coming over for dinner tomorrow. They're grabbing takeout on their way but I'm planning to make a dessert. Girlfriend is allergic to dairy and mango but no other dietary restrictions: what should I make? Has to be doable while putting in bare-minimum effort during a workday.

I'm really glad I decided to go to Maine. My grandparents have never lived closer than eight hours from my family and have never really made an effort to, like, get to know their grandkids as people, so I honestly waffled a bit. Ten hours in the car each way with only one day in the middle is a lot. But my grandma was SO delighted and let me sit near her and refill her drink and ask questions about when she and my grandpa were young and frankly it was the nicest interaction we've had since she wrote me off when I dyed my hair blue when I was 15. She's 89 and mostly still pretty with-it but her hearing isn't great so she can't really keep up with multiple people talking at once, but she did great just chatting with me about their life together. She loved bragging to her friends that I had driven "all that way! By herself!" to all her friends at the luncheon after the funeral, and today after I left she sent me a really sweet text thanking me for coming -- I assumed my parents (who are still there) said something to her that prompted it but they said were out running errands when she sent it! I did tell her over and over that if she moves here, I'll bake her things and we'll have her over for dinner and help with her groceries and all that, and she agreed that that sounded great, but I'm sure she's going to stay put in Maine because that's less scary than moving far away from what feels familiar. She has historically been a very difficult person so I was really surprised how well the trip went.

Family dynamic stuff is so dumb, like what you you MEAN my mom decided to make the trip to Maine at the last minute despite having been talked until staying home because she has two vertebrae with stress fractures, because she and my dad's brother's new wife are in a passive aggressive battle for my grandmother's attention, which they will never earn????!

Aww you GUYS I'm going to be in a car all day tomorrow so we're doing Mother's Day today and they've been working on a surprise all day and it turns out the idea was a thematic feast to eat while watching Jurassic Park, which my kids have never seen!!!! It's so CUTE and they put so much effort into it and it's my favorite movie and I love all of this so much!!!!

I am driving to Maine on Sunday for my grandfather's funeral and then driving home on Tuesday. It's a ten-hour drive without stops. I am seeking suggestions for audiobooks and for car snacks.

I really hate how much I correct my impulsive kid!! I've been trying really hard to focus on praising her but she's currently failing multiple classes because she doesn't turn work in and any time I ask "what did you get turned in" she hears it as a criticism rather than a neutral question. She's constantly off task when she's supposed to be doing homework but if I say "hey, are you on task" she hears it as a criticism. If she cleans up 30% of a mess and leaves the other 70% and I call her back to finish, even if I start with "hey, thanks for picking up X," it feels like a criticism. Her expectations for everyone else's behavior and for herself are miles apart and she treats her sister really poorly a lot and always insists she has a good reason ACTUALLY. How have you all managed an impulsive, unmedicated teen who is absolutely right that I nag too much but who resists any and all reminders about expectations????

Hey what jewelry do you all wear on a daily basis? I have three rings (three-stone engagement band, wedding band, anniversary band with eleven small channel-set stones) that I never take off, and a pair of sort of weird gold earrings I wear every day (but take off at night -- they have long front and back prongs and a loop at the top that threads through my ear). I have an old cocktail ring that belonged to my mom's mom that I want to have remade into something I can wear every day and I *think* I want it as a ring but am also maybe thinking necklace?? It has eight small blue sapphires and one larger one, and six small stones that are either pink sapphire or ruby. I don't want a bracelet because they drag on the desk while I'm working and it annoys me. I want to know what everyone is wearing that is part of their everyday look! Or if you have ideas for what I should do with these babies!!