We had a good day yesterday. A full day. And today promises to be more of the same particularly because Johnnie has a BEACH themed Zoom get-together with his class tonight. As for me it's one of my breath out days which means I'm in the middle of cruise control after having sprinted yesterday. I'm still focused on making sure Johnnie develops confidence in working with his chromebook to do his classes, no different than when I was trying to develop his confidence in his scooter (which he did) and his bike (which he did). And so the morning went tat-tat-tat. Johnnie's class, then before it was even over, my meeting with my team at 9:30, then as soon as that was over the Director's Meeting at 10, which lasted until 11:30 actually. So much for cruise control. I thought my meetings were productive though and I know Johnnie's class was as well and I loved that he is learning to articulate himself in more than a-few-syllable answers. Still I was able to let him engage with me even while I was on my Zoom meetings for a good 2 hours and he at least tried to do things on his own before coming in to talk to me. You get surprised at the things he puts together when left alone. A kite. A paper boat. All kinds of messages and signs and then here I am declaring that it's lunch time and we needed to head out to pick up food. After my meetings I had no intention of cooking anything, and I was happy to eat a McDonald's chicken sandwich for lunch. Man I'm sure putting in a lot of money in that place on a daily basis aren't I? I supplemented Johnnie's Mcnuggets with some udon. And so what made me irritated when he took his time eating everything and started stuffing food in his mouth is something I need to introspect about. Was it that he didn't eat the food after I spent time preparing it? Was it that he was about to throw it all up? Whatever it is that irritated me, what I need to remember was that I made Johnnie cry. And I think it was something I myself created since I was just thinking a little while back that it had been sometime since I did that. And it was just this morning that I remembered it and thought simply that it was a bullying act on my part. And here I am recreating it. Sigh. The good thing was that I do know how to make him feel better no matter what and all I needed to do was snap myself out of my own state, tell him it was all ok and it was daddy's fault, and tickle him a little bit to make him laugh. And then it was all good again.
And so I got him back to his happy self for the afternoon and I let him read all kinds of books from the EPIC library online that he now has access to. Especially his favorite "Don't let the pigeon ride DA BUS!" And although I didn't have any more meetings for the afternoon, I did have a lot of emails to respond to and stuff to follow up on. And so my cruise control Thursday ended up being a work Thursday unlike I would do before in the office. I think you DO more when you work from home actually. Maybe it's because you feel guilty when you don't much more so than if you were in the office. Weird huh? For his part, Johnnie continued to work independently most of the day, even as he kept coming in to my room asking me if I was done with my calls. All the kid wants to do is hang out with his dad. Aww. I would have loved to say we took the afternoon off and rode around the neighborhood like we had before but when I looked up from work it was already 4:30 PM. I did manage to get in a few minutes of fun with him here and there. A swordfight with plastic straws. Our exercise time with YouTube. But before I knew it it was already time to head out to get dinner. Panda Express for him, leftover fettuccini bolognese for me. And then at 7 PM his BEACH ZOOM meeting. That reminded me of Build-A-Tent night with his TK class a few months ago. I ended up doing that at my house because Lisa bugged out. And I'm starting to think she gets really frustrated with all this Zoom stuff. She says so herself. And she said it again when she called to pick up Johnnie right in the middle of his Zoom call. Immediately it took away my focus from Johnnie squarely to her because I sensed a whole lot of negativity. And instead of protecting myself from it, I played into it. I dropped my guard I admit. And so it should not have been a surprise that when she did pick Johnnie up, the usual catch-up conversation devolved into a full on argument. My offer to help again tomorrow morning seemed to have brought out Lisa's feelings of being inadequate. And now she is on the defensive. Blaming this, blaming that. And I couldn't be emotionally supportive becaused I FELT attacked. And i got on the defensive too. And so the evening ended with me simply walking off <better that than to have Johnnie watch us argue> and stewing for the rest of the evening. Well it WAS a good day... until Lisa happened. I really need to work on that. Because I know all that is still up to me...
As bad a sleep as I had the night before, I think I even got worse sleep last night. Although I felt less sore, it was a case of me feeling so much better that I actually couldn't sleep! And so I tried to quiet my mind by burying it on whatever I could find to read on the web, including a few dozen pages of Melody Fletcher's Deliberate Receiving. And also some Brad Yates EFT tapping on Pain. I know this pain in my legs is something I need to pay attention to. And it feels like there is something I am holding to that I don't have to anymore. And I tried to clear it tonight. The one thing that came up during tapping was that I don't have to sympathize with someone else's pain. Could it be that I am feeling all this simply because I am projecting someone else's pain to myself? And if everyone is whatever I push out then it's like me writing a scene with me feeling pain and THEN directing it to myself to boot. When I put it that way it seems like a pointless software program. But for some reason this one that is running right now has dominated my awareness. THAT is what I must investigate. The WHY of all that. In the meantime I did manage to sleep until almost 8 AM... as did Johnnie and so we got to have another late start today. He didn't care. In the meantime, the leg soreness wasn't there this morning and so I felt like maybe I'm back to normal? Except that now I'm feeling chills. No fever, but chills. Maybe there is some bug trying to do a probe on my immune system. Something I told Lisa that she was experiencing when she was down for more than a week. Great. Johnnie got sick too for a day. Is it my turn now? Actually I didn't really even care so much simply because I had a lot to do today. I had enough on my plate to manage Johnnie doing a double-day lesson plan because Lisa simply couldn't get to it yesterday and then I had to work on my presentation for the Technology Council Meeting tomorrow at the same time. And I did not feel like staying up all night to do that one. Heck I stayed up all night last night already. I posted pics of Johnnie doing his thing during the day. At least he was a good sport about doing double lessons today not that he even knew. When he got done with today's lesson I just continued it with yesterdays. And we STILL managed to get everything done before lunchtime. Which is all the more perplexing to me. Hey, at least this way Johnnie did not have time to get any video breaks in the morning. And then in the afternoon, I had him do TWO PE classes and another half hour of "extra credit" math on Freckle. All the while as I was organizing my presentation. I still didn't feel right and never did all day long. It's as if I was fighting some bug. Chills at times. Then muscle aches. But no fever. A hot flash or two was all I got. By the end of the day I managed to get mostly done with my presentation and so I still did the Tuesday ritual of the Italian sausage barbecuing. And I got Johnnie out there to kick soccer balls too. I had it in the back of my mind that I'm going to have to start giving him drills soon, if only because I saw a video of Jessie's son Enzo doing cones and he was a full 2 years younger than Johnnie. No competitiveness there in me is there? Even while out there I was still feeling chills and I did not have the energy that I would normally to kick the ball around with Johnnie. Heck by then I only had 2600 steps and for once I felt no urgency to go much further than that. In fact, in the back of my mind I was also thinking that perhaps this might be a good time to give my legs a rest. If I didn't feel 100% did I really need to keep my 11,000 steps streak going? Wouldn't it be ok to rest my legs for just one day? And so it was that I gave Johnnie his usual Tuesday dinner. But I didn't have any more energy to make myself more food either. In fact, I wasn't really hungry... a sure sign that I was not 100%. Instead, after dinner I let Johnnie finally watch some Cat-In-the-Hat videos. And I continued to work on my presentation until it was done. And by the time 8:30PM rolled around and it was nearly time to start Johnnie's bedtime routine, I realized that I was going to break the steps streak today. That's because I was barely at 3600 steps. For the longest time I thought the lowest I had reached was 5800 steps. Upon review, it would turn out that the last time I didn't make 70,000 steps in a week was January 2018 when I had the fever from the flu or something. Oh well. at least I managed to do an average of 10,000 steps a day for a year after that time. And then I ramped that up to an average of 11,000 steps a day for more than a year after that. The 3900 steps was the lowest I had done in all that time. But I still had a chance to keep the 70,000 steps this week alive. Or is it really worth it? We'll see how I feel the rest of the week...
I picked up Johnnie at 7:45 AM right on time at Lisa's house. She's working today and we're headed down to San Diego for Maia's birthday shindig later on. Lisa had made cupcakes for at least 13 people and I thought it was gracious of her to do that. She normally doesn't do well when she's not a part of something, like this birthday. But I'm going to chalk it up that this is her contribution. Her and Johnnie both. Grace had moved the restaurant time to 4 PM and so we had all morning to still do routine Saturday stuff. We still had to get breakfast of course. And of course we had to go to Elysee. Sausage and scrambled eggs and OJ as per usual. And then we had to make our Target pitstop, even more important today because we had to pick up Maia's Target gift card for her present. And of course Johnnie's lunch stuff for next week. And then finally when we got home, I asked Johnnie to make Maia's Happy Birthday card. He wrote it out and folded it up himself. We hung out until lunch since I figured we had plenty of time to get down there and I didn't want to get there too early. We stopped for lunch at Panda Express even. And maybe THAT wasn't such a good idea. I figured that there was at least a 50-50 chance that Johnnie would knock off to sleep on the ride there and I wanted him to have his lunch at least. The thing was that I ate too and so I felt like I wanted to take a nap. True enough we weren't even past the South Bay yet and I could feel myself wanting to nod off. Uh-oh... how am I going to make it another hour-and-a-half without falling asleep? It wasn't easy but I did it. I kept slapping myself in the head, in the temples, doing everything I could all the way through Long Beach, the OC, and into San Diego County, distracting myself just enough so that I could stay awake. And THAT was the goal of this drive...simply to stay awake. When we got off the exit on Palomar Airport Road, I pulled in to McDonald's, made a pit stop in the bathroom and just sat there and closed my eyes for 5 minutes. We did manage to make it to Grace's house by 3 PM and as it turned out they were already getting ready to leave! That's because the restaurant was a full 45 minutes away still in National City. W-h-a-t?! More driving...ugghh! I reminded myself that this is Maia's birthday and that it was simply another way for me to connect since it was either West Covina and/or San Diego and I did want Johnnie to see his cousins.
As it turned out the place Grace selected was a "Kamayan" place which means the food gets dumped onto banana leaves on your table and you just pick at all the food there. There were no utensils, no plates, no forks, just a bowl where you could dip your hands when they got messy. As for the food itself, it was a Filipino food smorgasbord. There was crispy pata, bistek, fried shrimp, fried fish (bangus), and fried lumpia. And of course lots and lots of rice. Mmmm! There was only one problem. There wasn't anything that Johnnie was used to eating. Thank goodness I had filled him up at Panda Express for lunch. I put more Frozen 2 songs on my iPhone in front of him to keep him occupied and he was just fine. I can only imagine he's like this when he's with his mom at her family functions too. As for Maia, I had memories of going to her first birthday party all those years ago in La Jolla when they lived there. Can't believe she turned 18 today. She has grown into a beautiful young lady albeit she's more bohemian than young lady. That's ok. I drove with mom to the restaurant from Grace's house. She kept asking me the same questions 4 or 5 times. I think she's starting to lose it. But hey she's in her 80s after all. Anyway the great thing was that we got together as a family and that IS important. And I thought it was important that Johnnie knows he also has my side of the family too, like it or not. Joe even brought his partner Michael there, which would be the first time I met him. All in all it was pretty good, up until the time Grace asked me to pitch in for Mom's mortgage. I told her this was not sustainable but that I was going to contribute this time. I tried to talk to my mom about it afterwards but she didn't seem to want to even think about it. For me the only solution was to sell the house and downsize to get rid of the loan. The alternative was foreclosure and then they would have to go find somewhere else to live anyway. Heck, she could live with Grace for all I care. Maia is moving out anyway in a few more months. As for Mike, hey he can fend for himself. Again that sounds cold, but compassion-less and I'm trying to find a middle ground for them that does not involve me, since my solution is cut and dried. I hope they find some way to work it out. If Grace empowers them to do this, then that's on her. Although in my heart, I wish I could just buy her out of her loan and let them live there forever. My mom is not 100% full capacity already mentally. I think it's Mike that has to figure something out for himself. I told Grace I'd do what I can for now but that this has to have a limit. It can't go on. Mom wanted to drive back to West Covina tonight with me. And so we drove back to Grace's house to pick up my mom's stuff. We stopped at McDonald's so Johnnie could have his chicken mcnuggets dinner. And then we drove to West Covina to drop my mom off. I tried to shake off the feeling that this was all so inconvenient for me. But family often is isn't it? How can I think of being of service to humanity if I can't even give my mom a ride without feeling inconvenienced? Got stuff to work on. I know I would love to just be involved to a point and not really throw myself into family matters. And maybe that's something I need to work through. I hadn't really been part of my own family for many many years. Certainly not after I got together with Lisa 14 years ago. And now I'm being asked to get involved. And help finance what amounts to a financial mistake my dad did before he passed. I don't know. We'll see how I can help clean that up if I can. For now, the next stop is Lisa's house so I could drop Johnnie off. He was dead asleep and Lisa was still in her office when I pulled up to her house at 9:40 PM. Just another Saturday for her. She finally got home, I finally put Johnnie in his bed and then we made arrangements for tomorrow. She wants me to watch Johnnie but now she has to go to a classical music concert with Courtney at Disney Concert Hall. Hey I didn't care.. I was glad just to get to watch Johnnie again. She told me she'd call me after golf tomorrow for more details and that was good enough for me. In the meantime, I was barely at 5000 miles when I pulled up to my apartment. I could have gotten to 11,000 for the day. But I pulled up at 10,750. I was tired. It was 11:30 PM. It had been a pretty long Saturday...
As bad a sleep as I had the night before, I think I even got worse sleep last night. Although I felt less sore, it was a case of me feeling so much better that I actually couldn't sleep! And so I tried to quiet my mind by burying it on whatever I could find to read on the web, including a few dozen pages of Melody Fletcher's Deliberate Receiving. And also some Brad Yates EFT tapping on Pain. I know this pain in my legs is something I need to pay attention to. And it feels like there is something I am holding to that I don't have to anymore. And I tried to clear it tonight. The one thing that came up during tapping was that I don't have to sympathize with someone else's pain. Could it be that I am feeling all this simply because I am projecting someone else's pain to myself? And if everyone is whatever I push out then it's like me writing a scene with me feeling pain and THEN directing it to myself to boot. When I put it that way it seems like a pointless software program. But for some reason this one that is running right now has dominated my awareness. THAT is what I must investigate. The WHY of all that. In the meantime I did manage to sleep until almost 8 AM... as did Johnnie and so we got to have another late start today. He didn't care. In the meantime, the leg soreness wasn't there this morning and so I felt like maybe I'm back to normal? Except that now I'm feeling chills. No fever, but chills. Maybe there is some bug trying to do a probe on my immune system. Something I told Lisa that she was experiencing when she was down for more than a week. Great. Johnnie got sick too for a day. Is it my turn now? Actually I didn't really even care so much simply because I had a lot to do today. I had enough on my plate to manage Johnnie doing a double-day lesson plan because Lisa simply couldn't get to it yesterday and then I had to work on my presentation for the Technology Council Meeting tomorrow at the same time. And I did not feel like staying up all night to do that one. Heck I stayed up all night last night already. I posted pics of Johnnie doing his thing during the day. At least he was a good sport about doing double lessons today not that he even knew. When he got done with today's lesson I just continued it with yesterdays. And we STILL managed to get everything done before lunchtime. Which is all the more perplexing to me. Hey, at least this way Johnnie did not have time to get any video breaks in the morning. And then in the afternoon, I had him do TWO PE classes and another half hour of "extra credit" math on Freckle. All the while as I was organizing my presentation. I still didn't feel right and never did all day long. It's as if I was fighting some bug. Chills at times. Then muscle aches. But no fever. A hot flash or two was all I got. By the end of the day I managed to get mostly done with my presentation and so I still did the Tuesday ritual of the Italian sausage barbecuing. And I got Johnnie out there to kick soccer balls too. I had it in the back of my mind that I'm going to have to start giving him drills soon, if only because I saw a video of Jessie's son Enzo doing cones and he was a full 2 years younger than Johnnie. No competitiveness there in me is there? Even while out there I was still feeling chills and I did not have the energy that I would normally to kick the ball around with Johnnie. Heck by then I only had 2600 steps and for once I felt no urgency to go much further than that. In fact, in the back of my mind I was also thinking that perhaps this might be a good time to give my legs a rest. If I didn't feel 100% did I really need to keep my 11,000 steps streak going? Wouldn't it be ok to rest my legs for just one day? And so it was that I gave Johnnie his usual Tuesday dinner. But I didn't have any more energy to make myself more food either. In fact, I wasn't really hungry... a sure sign that I was not 100%. Instead, after dinner I let Johnnie finally watch some Cat-In-the-Hat videos. And I continued to work on my presentation until it was done. And by the time 8:30PM rolled around and it was nearly time to start Johnnie's bedtime routine, I realized that I was going to break the steps streak today. That's because I was barely at 3600 steps. For the longest time I thought the lowest I had reached was 5800 steps. Upon review, it would turn out that the last time I didn't make 70,000 steps in a week was January 2018 when I had the fever from the flu or something. Oh well. at least I managed to do an average of 10,000 steps a day for a year after that time. And then I ramped that up to an average of 11,000 steps a day for more than a year after that. The 3900 steps was the lowest I had done in all that time. But I still had a chance to keep the 70,000 steps this week alive. Or is it really worth it? We'll see how I feel the rest of the week...
