February 2024 Recap

A peaceful brook found on a hike this month. The sound of running water in nature is one of my favorite things.

February 2024 was also not my favorite month. But, like January, there are still things to celebrate.  Between obstacles, I read a few good books, listened to some interesting podcasts, worked on a couple projects, and have a longer list for my 'what I enjoyed' section than my 'what I struggled with' section. Posting these recaps really do help me see what was good, rather than focus solely on what was challenging. 

What I Read

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power and the 21st Centuries Greatest Dilemma (Suleyman and Bhaskar)

 I keep going back and forth between everyone should read this book and no one should read this book. I think I'll stick with everyone.

Mother Daughter Murder Night (Simon)

A very fun read and the second book this year that I ‘book clubbed” or read with different friends as a way to have something to chat/spend time with them. I like the lack of commitment a one-off book club book provides. 

The Comfort of Crows (Renkl) Weeks 6-9:

​This is a year-long read with a short chapter for each week of the year. Weeks 6-9 are about winter, of course. Its interesting that when the author wrote her chapters for Febraury, she was noticing unseasonably warm weather that left her torn between enjoying it and worrying about it. This is exactly how February in the North County has felt. Usually, one week of this month sees temperatures consistently in the -20s (you read that right). Not this year. Not only did we fail to drop below 0, most of the month was in the 30s and even 40s, with 60s making an appearance more than once. Funny, I used to hate winter weather. Now I welcome the increasingly rare days where glittery white snow falls from the sky. February without a true Northern winter doesn’t feel right to me.
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What I Listened To

How to Money
Favorite Episode: Getting Paid in a Career you Love with Eliana Goldstein

The Mom Hour
Favorite Episode: Getting Things Done When Life Is…A Lot

What I Worked On

Coursework: Its the time of the semester where four classes means an intense amount of work and student needs. This truly dominated my month. 

Heritage Engagement Project Article: This article about spending time outside in winter for the Ralph Wilson Park Conservancy. It was really enjoyable to write, I love an excuse to discover something new about a culture (in this case, the Norwegian concept of friluftsliv). I started next month's article as well, which, spoiler alert, will be about happiness research and the role of parks in improving a community's overall well-being.

A Business Description: I am still trying to define the focus for my consulting business. I've started building a profile on my website. It needs some work, but its progress (which was a feat of human strength, given everything in the next section). 

What I Struggled With:

Illness. January and February have been one non-stop parade of stomach bugs and head colds, with a little pink eye thrown in on the side. Everyone including the baby threw up, over the course of weeks.  Schedules went haywire, energy was sapped, and moods were grim. Is this just this season of life? The outcome of adding one more virus-prone little body to the mix? Or is the viral load way more intense this year? I finally made peace with the winter weather, just to discover the real demons of the season are the viruses. Ready for this marathon of illnesses to be DONE. 

Teaching. It feels particularly challenging this semester. I have more students than ever before, since all of my classes are full or overfull, with the exception of one (there is one open seat).  Since they cut my position and this is my last semester teaching, the demands of four very full classes are tough. I need to be focusing on my next career move, but there seems to be little time (or energy) left over at the end of the day. Trying to fit in pumping (I am still nursing) certainly adds to the exghaustion. I am not someone who can just disengage or ignore student requests for meetings (they don’t deserve that), but its also worrisome how little time I’ve had to apply for jobs, build my network, think through new direction for my business, etc. 

Childcare. In the fall, we cobbled together an absurdly complicated but functional childcare situation for Jan-May that gave us three days of care, allowing my husband to work part-time. The entire thing was delicately balanced. It came tumbling down when the afterschool program my oldest was bussed to from his elementary school closed for lack of staff. Now we have exactly 2.5 hours between returning from a post-preschool daycare drop (start of daycare for younger two) and the school bus (the return home of the oldest). That's a grand total of 7.5 childfree hours a week. Now we need to figure out what to do. Take the other two out of daycare and forgo the start of his landscaping season next month? Sounds doable, until you consider what happens when you give up spots in daycare in a daycare-desert. There is no guarantee they will get back in. So…keep them in, hoping the afterschool program will find staff and reopen? That seems like a good idea, until you consider how terrible the viral (and emotional) load of having a baby in daycare has been, tempting us to take him out even before this happened. I feel utterly dismayed at the situation that took an enormous amount of mental and actual energy to figure out in the first place. I have no idea what to do, and am now facing an equally complicated summer care landscape (up here, a lot of the camps my oldest can go to are closed to the younger two, and the daycare the younger two go to does not have room at the age group for the oldest. And they are all in different towns, different times, different pay structures, different holidays, etc.). I could literally complain about this forever. 

Sleep. Sick kids don't sleep well. Full stop.

Slept many places that were not our crib this month.

What I Enjoyed:

An invite to speak at a summer fundraising gala for another NYS park! The invite was extended because of my work launching the Heritage Engagement Project, so it felt great to be recognized for it. 

A lunch that allowed me to learn from (and meet in person for the first time) a women with five decades of amazing experience protecting cultural heritage around the world. After lunch, I set up a coffee hour for students and had a great group that came and got to know her as well. It was an awesome afternoon.

Book chats with a childhood friend. We picked a book in January (The Right Kind of Wrong) and have had great chats about failure (the topic of the book). We’ve had to have numerous, short chats squeezed into commutes and time slivers between obligations, but we have not spoken this much in a very long time, so what a success. This reminds me of a great technique for getting more of what you want during busy seasons of life - stacking. Combine two things you want to do and you increase your chances of doing both. In this case, read more and catch up with a friend. By connecting the two, I feel successful with both, which feels great.

Hiking and beer with my husband: Speaking of stacking, given I wanted more time in nature and more date ‘nights’ with my partner, the fact we used a rare, three-hour window with no kids or work to go on a hike and have a beer at a local brewery felt like a major win. This was our second date of the month too. We had our babysitter back for the first time since the baby was born and had a great dinner out.
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Crepes date with my son. My middle child is a bit of a foodie, at the age of 4. Its entirely my fault, but now I have a preschooler who requests trips to the creperie when given a special treat. Twenty-five dollars and 9 billion calories later, we had a great one-on-one afternoon (the crepes were followed by a trip to the children’s museum). 

Valentine's Day.  While I acknowledge the silly and over-consumption nature of this holiday, I really love a reason to celebrate in February. I have a bin of decorations I reuse each year. I buy the kids some new books and silly candy from this unique candy shop in Lake Placid. And I make pink, heart-shaped pancakes (the weekend before and freeze because school mornings are too hectic for that). Dinner was mostly red things too. I needed the celebration, and it was fun.