Zander's Inside Voice

The past week has been an insane, emotional blur. We left on Monday to be there for the funeral on Tuesday, then drove home on Wednesday, tried to restart the normal weekday activities on Thursday, and were back in the swing of things by Friday. Unfortunately all of the weeks’ changes interrupted my wife’s already rescheduled haircut on Tuesday. She was supposed to go Monday but had to reschedule for Tuesday because of work that would’ve been on Monday. So she had to cancel Tuesday. Her stylist happened to call on our way to NY that she had an opening for Saturday (yesterday.) Now normally if you have to cancel with her stylist, you are stuck waiting for weeks. So she jumped on the Saturday appointment, which was in the morning.

We are not morning people. Well, I am a morning person and my wife is not so we collectively are not morning people. Every single one of these children are not morning people so I am woefully outnumbered. If we have to get up and out for soccer or something else, we can make it happen though.

So we got up and out by 9:30. She went to the hair appointment and I took a short list to the grocery store to get us enough to get through to our official grocery shopping day of Monday. While it would make sense to have gotten all the grocery shopping done at one time, we need too many fresh produce items and meat that wouldn’t make it from Saturday to Friday. But generally on Monday we can get things that will last through the week.

I got through the list quickly and headed home, which was miraculous. The grocery store is my most serious PTSD trigger because it’s so noisy, the lighting is sometimes too much, and there’s usually lots of people. ADHD means I often overpromise and underdeliver when I say I will do a hard thing alone. Luckily no one was there and I easily got through the list with only one major crossback to the produce section when I realized I forgot fresh cilantro. I was ok to go back. It wasn’t a critical item and I could’ve skipped it but I was feeling good.

When I got back home, I took care of a ton of things like dishes, recycling, laundry, and a few other things. Then I made pizza dough. Then I realized I forgot to add pepperoni to the list so I ran back out for that, and found that I wanted sandwiches for lunch. By the time I got back my wife was home and we had lunch. Then we set out to reorganize the kitchen under the sink area and the upstairs hallway closet by the bathroom. I helped her build the shelving unit for under the sink and I went upstairs with the 12 plastic containers we bought. I think it took two hours, but I finished the entire project! That might be a first for me, finishing a big organizational project at one time with no help. Everything is in a container neatly and is sorted in a logical manner. I threw away a bunch of stuff and made that closet much more user friendly. We were forever ordering more of things that we didn’t remember we had in there. But now it will be easy to figure out what we have and what we need to order.

Under the sink also looks awesome. She threw a ton of crap away and made it a functional area without things piled on top of each other. All the things we use regularly are right in front and won’t be a struggle to find anymore. It’s so exciting to get two major projects done in one day! I still need to go through all of my drawers and my closet to remove clothing I don’t want or need and my nightstand is in desperate need of some organizing. I’ve been putting that off for awhile, actually. I have so much piled on there and I am always knocking it down.

Today is somewhat of a rest day. Although I doubt we will actually rest completely. Sunday evening after dinner is nuts around here with all the kid showers/baths, after school snack organization, and getting our minds around the week to come. It can be as stressing as tackling home organization products sometimes.

So far 2023 has had some very low lows and some amazing highs. With January over, I am hopeful that the rest of the year will slow down just a bit and we can actually take a breath. This coming week looks to be somewhat restful and then the Super Bowl on Sunday. I am a HUGE Eagles fan, so this is going to be so awesome. I was deployed for the last Eagles Super Bowl and did not get the enjoy the win as much as I would have if I had been home. But this year, I hope to enjoy another big win!! 🦅 🦅