Rituals

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Weekly Rhythm

I’ve been thinking lately about rhythm. I feel like my life, like that of most working parents in our era of COVID, is just frenetic. I’m working at home or I’m working at work but I feel like I am always (or almost always) working. I spend a few hours during the week doing things that aren’t strictly working but are almost like performing maintenance work on myself so I can survive for another week (making healthy dinner, riding my spin bike, meditating). I really have almost no fun and no leisure.

But – something does change in my life as I go through each week and I am curious about what that is. On weekends, I try not to use my computer or phone for internet at all. I do text people, and video call my family, but no internet browsing (sometimes my kid is being totally insane and I brake this rule for a tiny dopamine hit). This means, conversely, that I spend a disgusting amount of time on the internet during the week, because I am doing my work and I am doing what R and I call “internet errands”. During the week, my laptop is like a sticky molasses from which is it more difficult to extricate myself than to continue doing whatever it is I am doing.

On Fridays, I have 1-2 hard cocktails. I like to get drunk on Fridays! The minute I’m done with work! In recent weeks, I’ve also taken to eating half a pint of ice cream out of the carton! I also try to “finish” work and I have this insane nesting urge to prepare for the weekend. Sometimes, this includes going grocery shopping twice so I know we have ingredients on hand to make any dinner I could ever aspire to. Friday nights also generally involve making a batch of granola for eating a breakfast of yogurt and crunchies on the weekend.

Monday is sort of a hazy day of thank god I survived the weekend. I want to nap and watch TV all day but I don’t. I sometimes have a lot of work and if I don’t, I try to do a lot of personal productive things, from the to-do list I keep that conveniently has all my work and life tasks.

Tue-Th are these sort of hazy days where I get the bulk of my work done and just sort of vaguely exist. I talk to coworkers on conference calls and see my kid for about 3 hours but I’m just a shell of a human being. After bedtime on these days is like I am a zombie. No one knows me and I do not know myself. There is nothing to aspire towards and nothing to help you relax. Sometimes, if I can snap out of it, I’ll do some restorative or yin yoga. Sometimes, I can read (I have only finished 1 (!!!!!) book so far this year). Sometimes, I call a friend. But mostly I painfully pass the time between 7:30-9:30 pm and am thankful when I am tired enough to go to sleep.

On the weekends, we have a very standard routine of inside house time – playground – naptime – playground – inside house time – bedtime. I wash probably 150 dishes a day. We get the NYT delivered and I fritter away a lot of the day reading it while kiddo plays nearby. I almost love to go to the playground and spend a few hours in the frigid air doing nothing. I also love when R is on playground duty and I have alone time at home, which I spend tidying up while listening to a podcast, working out, and showering. Then, they are back. (I know R has the same routine bc he is always in the shower when we come back from the playground). I love also when we all three go to the playground and/or see our playground friends, and life feels a bit like pre-COVID. The most fun we have on a weekend is watching a movie, in two parts.

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COVID Update 6521

Just a random number to reflect how many years it feels like we have been in quarantine. Daycare closed so we were staying in a friend’s cabin to quarantine which burned down*. We went back to our apartment, then back to a new place to quarantine with my sister who graciously decided to come to help with child care. Hopefully this apartment will not burn down and on May 2nd, we will start a new plan to live at my in-laws during the week and my parents during the weekends.

Life has been strangely okay. What is harder is thinking about daycare reopening, work starting to expect more of us working parents, and then having to choose between seeing my parents and going to daycare. That seems like an awful situation to me…but maybe things will work out in a better or different way. I am also sure we have already had CV because of a fever bug we had in February or have been asymptotic carriers because MANY people in my building had it and a few were hospitalized. So it would be nice to get a test and know we are unlikely to infect our grandparents.

Life has a weird repetitive nature. I mostly don’t think too much about the future or even the next week. To me, it has been reduced to watching the baby from before I want to until 11 or so, 4-5 hours of work, a short workout, bedtime routine, and then some leisure/TV watching/food prep for the next day, etc.

MG has become soooo chatty. She can say: up, down, ball, book, baby, Mama, Dada, Nana, Moon, Doggy, Mou (for cat), birdie, done, more (she says mo, like a southern bell), yeah, and probably others I’m forgetting. Oh yes, no. If you offer her anything, the response is now no. No! NO!

*true story but I mostly try to not think about it.

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2020 Sabbath

Most years, I make a resolution. Or at least more of an intention. I’m generally happy with my life, but I’ll try to tweak things in certain areas. I’ve been thinking about 2020 and what keeps coming to mind for me is the Sabbath. Creating Sabbath within my own life.

As a secular person, I do feel a bit weird about adopting a religious tradition outside of context. But I honestly think people with formal structured Sabbath are probably happier that those without. A forced rest – time for relaxation, away from the never-ending to-do list.

So what would I want a secular sabbath to look like:

  • weekly
  • clear starting and ending points
  • without my phone (I’ve been thinking about getting a sabbath-specific dumbphone so I can see people but not use the internet)
  • a delicious activity: a meal with friends, a massage, a long shower with wine – something that nourishes

I want to some more reading on this…looking at this and this

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Life Update

I have been wanting to write for a long time, but haven’t prioritized it. Life has been good. R and I are both back at work but it has been better than I thought it would be. I have become a drop-off pro, greatly facilitated by the fact that I work from home three days a week. MG is insanely cute, crawling around like a maniac and with very clear preferences. The whole world is her oyster.

I’ve been thinking a bit about the holidays and new traditions. I have a real aversion to traveling anywhere with MG. I firmly think travel is not for the baby, but for the parents (though in our case, mostly an obligation). Babies I think, at least our baby, really like sleeping in their own crib, being the masters of their own place, and spending a lot of time with people they like and know. With Thanksgiving coming up, I am very, very tempted to just bail and do what we want instead. There is something interesting to me about how grandparents (who are retired) get to be visited instead of visit, while working people with families have to cram that into already limited time off. Wow, how crotchety do I sound? I guess I have a sense that it’s not worth spending free time out of obligation. I’ve been very into the simpler life – a life where a good Saturday is making a delicious soup and eating it with bread and friends and taking a walk and watching The Americans while the baby naps. That to me, right now, is much more nourishing that going to check out the new MoMA or taking the train anywhere.

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Daily Habits

A while ago, I was really into my daily habit tracker. I had five daily habits: 10k steps, no sugar, time with R, meditation, and stretching. Since then, a lot has happened. I became pregnant, had a baby, came back to work, etc. I’ve been thinking about what my new habits should be. My short-list so far is:

  • Food journaling. I am very not into diets or anything insane, but have 10 pounds of “baby weight” left to lose and thought writing down all the food I eat might help with some internal accountability.
  • Intermittent fasting. Linked to the above, I’ve been trying to eat in a window of 10 hours and fast for the other 14 (which isn’t as bad as it sounds because I’m typically asleep for 8 of them).
  • Deep work. Now that I’m back at work, I would like to become a super productive beast.
  • Daily workout and nightly stretching.
  • Meditation. As usual.

And, I would love to put something on their like nourishment, but I’m not sure exactly what would fit. Left to my own devices, I become very routine-oriented (which is good in many ways), but can lose opportunities to have fun.

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Rituals

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about rituals. In November, MG will start daycare and R and I will go back to the office full-time. So, even though she won’t remember them long-term, it seems like a good opportunity to start with some family rituals.

You can have daily rituals like…

  • a few, on-rotation afterschool snacks
  • saying what you are grateful for at the dinner table
  • taking a shower and changing into pajamas after school (instead of before bed). We did this a lot when I was a kid and it was soooo cozy.

Or monthly rituals like:

  • cake for breakfast on the first day of every month

Or yearly rituals like:

  • a birthday experience (instead of presents)
  • pumpkin carving
  • opening one Christmas present on Christmas eve

Or seasonal rituals like:

  • late night summer grocery store runs;
  • going to the library on a rainy day and then spending the day snuggled up at home
  • watching Moonstruck between Christmas and New Year’s