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Another day

I am feeling restless this week, which is not contributing to my peace of mind. I have too little to do for work. Sometimes that's a nice and restful feeling, but when it happens too much I start to feel off kilter and aimless and, unhealthily, worthless. My work schedule is super unbalanced. The fall semester is awful and way too busy while the spring semester tends to be light. On top of that, working from home makes focus difficult. I have a nice work space set up in my bedroom, but there are often people coming and going, or the dog is barking downstairs and needs attention, or I want to be on the sunny deck instead of in my room. I can get stuff done when I need to, but when I don't technically need to ... not much happens. And work wise, that is totally fine. It's not like there's a bunch of stuff I'm neglecting. Obviously, there's always more I could be doing and, according to some, more that I should be doing. But I'm not, at least at the moment. So I'm not really working but at the same time I'm not comfortable abandoning the idea of work altogether and just doing something altogether different. Like, I'm okay walking around doing nothing, or washing a cup or starting some laundry. I can be okay sneaking in a few pages here or there of a book I'm trying to finish. But if it's a work day I can't just let myself go all in and put away my email and declare a holiday. And even if I could, I'd be alone with nobody to play with. Everyone else does their own thing on weekdays, whether it's work, school, or whatever it is that Will does all day. So, I am looking forward to a holiday! By which I mean a few days at a time when nobody is working and we spend leisure time together and we are entitled to each other's company without having to compete with work for attention. 

Here's a thing about pandemic living. Every time your kid is sick, even a bit, you can't send them to school because, you know, any little thing that might make a kid feel commonly sick also happens to be a covid symptom. So they stay home and tune into school via Zoom. But, here's the kicker--you also can't send them back to school without a doctor's note or a negative covid test. I get it. I do. I really, really do. But come on! Since spring break we've gotten Ryan one covid test (negative) and one doctor's note so that he could go back to school after needing to miss school because of a sore throat. He will miss school again tomorrow because he has a cold. It's clearly a cold with all of the cold symptoms and none of the covid symptoms. Yet, we'll have to line up a covid test or somehow secure a doctor's note before he'll be allowed back at school. Ugh, ugh, ugh. It makes me want to force him onto the school bus, but that's a horrible thing and not at all appropriate and of course I won't do it. There are only a few weeks of school left, which actually makes me kind of sad in a number of ways. But this is not one of them. 

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