grind and rise and grind

I tried sleeping with my watch on my right wrist so that when it buzzed to wake me up (which I do to avoid louder alarms that’d wake B before she needs to be up) I’d have a harder time sleepily dismissing it, which I’ve gotten pretty good at doing with unconscious muscle memory. I still failed, and the 5:45 backup alarm on my phone made a big ruckus. Thankfully, I think B slept through it.

Dogs were amped when I came out of the bathroom, so I took em to the yard, came back up and got 10 minutes of stuff done before Javi started barking at something, so I went back down to get them to avoid pissing off the neighbors too much. (I think it’s safe to say we’re solidly second or third place as far as eyesore/annoyance on our block.)

Maybe another 20 minutes of work (I’m working on a scene that in my mind takes place in the middle of our street, but down a ways, and I’m totally biting Bud Smith and Sam Pink etc. etc.’s phonetic/vernacular speech bent for some of the dialog) before I walked the dogs properly through the woods, around the baseball field, past the trash can that is almost always overflowing with dogshitbags but occasionally gets emptied by I don’t know who, through the gate at the dead end of the street, back around the corner, and then made hot water for whoever wanted oatmeal.

I’ve been getting really hungry midmorning, so I had granola, yogurt, and frozen blueberries, which I realize is pretty sugary, but I’m convinced is a lifehack because it gives me energy, feels good, is affordable-ish and tasty enough to tolerate eating often. In the last couple of days I’ve had a tooth sensitivity, though. Cold and pressure. I just recently braved the dentist (paid dearly for a good stretch of years I didn’t go) and got the all-clear, but it felt rushed/half-assed/complicated by covid precautions, and maybe everything was fine then and isn’t fine anymore. Maybe it’ll go away!

Upstairs, A was up and wanted to read this book of stories for each letter of the alphabet. I like it (most of em, anyway), but it’s huge and way too long, so my trick is to flip to the back that shows all the letters and ask which one to start on, and A said “A, B, C, D, O,” so I jumped to O, and then skipped from S to V, then hopped over W (a “Whiraff” is a hybrid Whisk/Giraffe, I don’t like it), so it didn’t delay our getting ready routine too long.

We’ve (mostly B has) been packing lunches for what we’re calling “school” [insert ethical handwringing here], providing all the healthy stuff that we’re supposed to, but we got a report that A isn’t always eating the goods. “Struggles to engage with lunch,” was the phrase they used. So I made a batch of mac and broccoli, surefire safebets, but A still came home with the greens untouched. Dumped those (shoulda done cleanup last night but the kitchen’s a disaster and I can’t face it) and refilled the lunchbox. We’ll try again today.