It's a Mess

My life is a mess.  Something I never would have thought would be that I would be so overwhelmed with things to do that I just give up and don't get some things done.   The house has been those things of late.   Which I find really strange.   Something I loved that would give me joy was going to sleep at night knowing everything in the house was tidied, all the dishes were up, things were prepared for the morning and my papers were in order.   

Of late, even my desk is a wreck.   I'm trying to adjust to the new life I'm leading, but it's taking some getting used to.   I don't think I like it as much as the orderly, tidy all the time me of the past.  

Maybe the me of the past is still in there, in here.  I don't like the me of the now.  I want to have everything spit spot like Mary Poppins said.   For now, it is my hope. 

The Big Boy Update: my son has sold a good number of luminaries for his Passion Project.   He is very happy.   

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter told her VI teacher that she really didn't know what she could see. The doctors said she can't see much at all.   She said she doesn't really use her vision much though because she has such a great imagination.  That's so my girl. 

Passion Project

My husband and I are very worried about my son's "Passion Project" that he's doing for his final year at school.   It's a luminary project but things about it seem all wrong.   It doesn't seem well-thought out.   He didn't seem to know what was going on, including that he was supposed to be at school early this morning for his own project to sell luminaries at drop-off.

We helped him understand how the luminaries work this weekend and I got him to record a video to tell his classmates how to set them up.   They were planning on preparing things in advance (which would have ruined the luminary bags and the whole thing would have been a big mess).   

We hurried around and I went in to talk to his teacher.   She said my son had talked to the head of school three times, did I know this?  No, we didn't, because he doesn't like to tell us anything.  At any rate, she said it's okay if the selling doesn't work out because there were added days in the scheduled to look at a second option for selling them,  

She said it was intentional that they weren't involved, because it was okay to have setbacks and learn from them.   So I hope it will all be okay and my son will be happy.   He thought we were messing up his day.   Before I left he ran back that they'd sold one.  One luminary.  He wanted to sell three hundred.   I think they sold a few today.  But he was excited he sold the one.   Which was all I needed to hear.   I need to let him figure it out.    

I just don't want to fail as a parent by not being there for what he needs.   Hopefully we're doing enough.  And not too much.  

The First Random Item

We are using a post office to have people mail things to Filament Stories.   We have that address posted on the website in case people want to mail something with information saying there is no guarantee anything sent will be used on our social media or used at all for that matter.  

Companies for the most part want to negotiate a contract with us which means we don't receive much to our P.O. Box that is unexpected.   

I got something today that I had heard was coming.  I didn't know what it was for, and it didn't seem to make much sense, but it was magnets and I love magnets.   What it was was a fidget using some strong magnets, for my daughter.   It's very nice to move around with the little clicks a magnet does.   And it's a solid little fidget. 

My daughter likes it.   Although she was confused as to why someone would have mailed something to her that we didn't know.    

They Understand

Some days I feel like a terrible, horrible, lazy person.   I get up and work pretty much every day of the week, because that's what I do.  I do love the 3D printing and Filament Stories parts of my life.   I take time to do things with the children and a good chunk of the day making sure the guinea pigs aren't living in filth and that they have enrichment in their lives.   

It's a lot of time at the computer, something I would never have been able to do without the spinal fusions.   But despite the help that brought, I am still dealing with pain and degeneration.   So I go and lie down every day. I feel like the biggest loser, having to lie down.  But it helps the pain and I can get other things done like responding to messages from people or catching up on other videos from peers or that people have sent me.   Or I can just take a break.  

Do the children understand that I'm not a complete slob and I choose looking at videos over them?  Do they understand that when their father takes a break it's in a chair downstairs in front of the television or at his computer.   He doesn't lie down and sometimes fall asleep. 

I asked my son today about this very thing.  He said, "Mom, we know.  We understand."   He nearly made me cry.   

Every Night This Happens

I say I'm going to finish things early so I can go to bed.   We are going to get that content produced early and be done and I can go lie down and my back won't hurt so badly or I'll have time to get to the eleventy twelve other things on my to do list. 

Tonight it's 11:40 and we're just finishing principal filming on the video, which means we're far away from betting the video completed.  Sigh, we try every day.  I started printing as soon as I got up.   The prints were done but we went to dinner with the children and had games with them and then when they went to bed we started work, but I had to get it all organized first, so that pushed things out a bit longer because I have to have more than just some prints slapped down on the workbench.   I need to be completely prepared and we have to get the information ready for the posts as well because people want that information. 

Damnit, I did it again.  I came here and whined.   I hate that I'm whining.  My husband doesn't beat himself up for not getting more done.  He's so good about being level-headed and reasonable about everything.   I am always trying to be better, and maybe that's actually making things worse. 

The Big Boy Tiny Girl No Contact Dinner:  We went to dinner with the children to a sushi restaurant they like that we hadn't been to in a long time.   We kept them far apart at diagonals of the table so they wouldn't get into the touching thing where they pester each other.   We are working on kindness.   Is it so much to ask for kindness?  The dinner went well and we had a good time playing cards afterwards/.  Ot was a gapped day with them. 

Family In Town

We got to see Aunt Kelly and Uncle Eric tonight.  As well as their dog, Daisy.   We had dinner with my in-laws and caught up and the children were pests because they were bored when they weren't being involved but then wanted to be in the middle of things and tried to force their way into the conversation.  

I was young once, I remember what it was like when the adults did that "boring talking thing".

The Children Fighting:  After everyone had left, we went upstairs to play card games as a family.   The first game went fairly well, although my son and daughter were bugging each other.   We dealt the second hand out and the children were just rolling around, trying to bother the other one more and then it got physical where they were trying to hurt each other.   My husband lost his temper and we both decided we were done.   My daughter was upset.   It makes no sense.   Why do they do this?  I can't understand.   I never had a sibling. 

The Sidetracking Marathon

Some days I feel like I can't get anything done.  There are so many ways to communicate: email, Discord, text message, voicemail, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, Twitter, FilamentStories website, Patreon.com, Any of the model repository sites we download models from, and I'm sure I missed some others that I'm on regularly.   Keeping up with it all is a maze of being sidetracked.  Here's a very reasonable scenario of a typical morning's start:  

It's the start of the day and I've gotten home from dropping the children off at school and procuring coffee.  I need to find things that have come in and handle them.  But if it’s not slapping me in the face, banging on my forehead, or sounding a gong, I’ll miss it when it arrives.  I feel like I'm bombarded all day.  For example, I start by going to Instagram to respond to someone when I see a post in the Instagram feed that I had been meaning to comment on.  I comment and then see the next post which is amazing and I want to consider printing it for an upcoming video.  I go to Cults3D.com to download the model I notice on the front page, a model is being featured—a model I’ve already printed for an upcoming video—so I click in to get the information I'll need when we record the video.  "Now where was I," I think, "Ah, yes, responding to that person on Instagram."  I go to Instagram messages and there are some messages I can handle very quickly, so respond with a heart or smiley face.  Then I see a message that's concerning so I click in.   I need to look a few things up to confirm the facts before responding.  I grab a sticky pad to write down some numbers and there is something on the top page that I was supposed to have done two days ago, so I go check to see if I have an email about it.  When I open email I see I  didn’t respond to Reese’s teacher about the upcoming IEP proposed meeting date.  I need to respond so they can coordinate with the other eight attendees.   I open my calendar to add the meeting to it and see that today, "Hm, I was supposed to do that today?  Gah! I’ll add it to the to-do list for today, which includes yesterday's list of incompleted items.    I'm now how many sidetracks in?  I can't even remember where I started.  I'd better write down what I remember.

There are just TOO MANY ways to communicate and too many ways to try and organize everything but since I’m using multiple, because Protopasta uses this, and Asylum uses that, and Chris isn’t Mac, so we coordinate.  Looking at my text messages I think, "Oh no, I didn’t see the message from the dog groomer: she was waiting for me all weekend to let her know if she could come to groom the dog.  I see a prescription is ready to be picked up.  So I don't forget, I write "Prescription" on a sticky note and stick it on my purse to get it on the way to get my daughter.  At this point I think, "where was I?   Sigh, I got lost in sidetracks...again.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  My daughter's first video has not only had a lot of views on all of the platforms, but people are also commenting and saying the nicest things to her.  There are only a few outliers like the one person who said how did we really know if she was blind she could have been looking.   People jumped all over him about that.  Another person said if she was blind, why was she wearing glasses.  My husband responded that they aren't corrective, they're for protection.  People also jumped on that commenter saying there were "Legally Blind" people who had glassed which in no way changes the fact that they're blind.   But forget those people.  Thank you so much to everyone who has been so supportive and kind!

The Big Boy Update:  My son had a very bad day yesterday, he said.   He has very sweetly apologized for the things he said in the car yesterday morning.  He wasn't even hoping for a change in my decision.  He is upset it's a three-day weekend.   I don't know what to do to get the children to understand that flat out insulting a person is not okay.  My husband and I talked and wondered if they were getting this behavior from us.   We don't think so, we don't resort to insulting someone if we're angry at them or if we don't get what we want or any number of things along those lines.  We never talk about the person as a whole, we talk about the specific action.   At least we hope it's not behavior they've learned from us.