Brought and Born @broughtandborn - Tumblr Blog

I complained recently that all of our spatulas smell like onions or the dishwasher. I know you can bake them to get the smell out of the silicone but I have a really sensitive nose and Andy doesn't so I'm the one who's in charge of that and it pisses me off every time I go to make a dessert and all the spatulas smell like alliums. So last week Andy was at a store and grabbed two different kinds of spatula for me, good brands but ones that look nothing like the rest of our spatulas so they can't get mixed up, to hand wash and keep in with my baking stuff so they'll always smell neutral! Such a tiny thing but it's been so nice to not have to smell them before I use them!!

My older kid went to bed late with bad cramps and shortly after she went to bed she called down for me so I hustled up to see if she was okay, all prepared to hear that she was feeling barfy (she ate a bunch of candy and cramps can make her queasy) and I was like "yes, sweetheart, what do you need" and she goes, face pressed into her pillow, "did you see that lightning? It was cool"

I cracked up, man. Like I'm ready to jump in and do some momming and she was just confirming that someone else saw the cool lightning. I threw a squishmallow at her.

She has been so much more relaxed since school ended and that has meant so much more fun with her. She's still 14 so we still have to deal with meltdowns about, like, what does "pick up after yourself" actually MEAN and how does it apply to leaving crumbs on the counter that you literally just watched me wipe, but overall there has been so much less strife lately and it's so great.

broughtandborn

It is really hard to watch middle school mean girl shit affect your kid!!

broughtandborn

My lovely, sweet, wonderful 13-year-old was very firmly dumped by her longtime best friend this week. This is the friend who came on vacation with us last year, who was texting my kid asking to come over last week. Middle schoolers can be so fickle, man! The best friend just started dating a boy for the first time and I think that's a big part of this. I also think the friend sees herself moving into more popular circles and thinks my kid will hold her back. It really feels like a slow disengagement would have been so much more kind but that's not how tween brains work.

For years, we've been gently encouraging my kid to expand her friend circle, but she was adamant that as long as she had this best friend, she was all set. She was devastated for two days and now is moving into "okay, so what now." She does have several other buddies and a lot of people she gets along with. She's doing a theater camp through the school starting next week that should be distracting, and we're staying in a different part of town than last year when we go on vacation next month. I want so badly to make it all better for her but that's not growth!!!! My poor baby!!!

It is really hard to watch middle school mean girl shit affect your kid!!

My parents took five of their six grandkids out for ice cream and my dad spent the entire hour on hold with the trash collection company they cancelled last month that changed them anyway (with the call ported through his hearing aid so he def wasn't interacting with the kids). Now they're back at my house and the kids are split into groups playing two different board games and my dad is scrolling on Facebook on his phone, probably posting about how great it is to have the kids all together.

Re: my kid's injectable med, the manufacturer called back and said to have the pharmacy run the script again and that it should be fully covered and to call if it doesn't show that way. Which is a relief and wonderful etc but also, like, maybe just don't charge a $2,500 deductible for a drug that insurance is already paying thousands for? And also why I do have to coordinate all of this? It's so dumb!!!

There seems to have been a glitch of some kind in my payroll system so it's showing that I currently have 14 weeks of vacation and five weeks of sick time. Wonder how long it'll be until anyone notices.

Usually June feels like a flat-out sprint, with multiple family birthdays and Father's Day and many end-of-school events and tasks, and then usually once we hit July things start to settle down. This year, though, I still feel slammed. Lots of meetings and appointments and my sister and her family are in town and my nieces are staying with us some of the time but not all of it and I don't always know when they'll be over and when they won't and I'm in the office which is still bullshit.

One of my kids is on a shockingly expensive injectable medication and the first two times we had the prescription filled, the cost was covered completely by a "copay coverage program" the manufacturer has, but I just got a call today that they're only covering $125 this time, so I had to call the manufacturer directly and update all of our info in their system and they'll re-run the prescription and let me know in 2-3 days what it says. How is this the system we've accepted. How is it my responsibility to figure this out when my kid's doctor says she needs it. I'm so tired.

I woke up with a very weird feeling of sadness about the upcoming 4th of July because, in my half-asleep state, I was imagining how we'd be celebrating in a different timeline with a different president and how much FUN it would all be

I took a half day today just for fun. Andy and the girls are leaving to go pick up a load of firewood while I wrap up my work

Me: think about what we should go do this afternoon!

Older kid: NOTHING! WHY DO WE ALWAYS HAVE GO DO SOMETHING. I JUST WANT TO SLEEP THE WHOLE SUMMER, YOU'RE ALWAYS MAKING US DO STUFF --

Younger kid: Mom said maybe we could go see the new Toy Story movie.

Older kid: -- AND I DON'T -- oh actually yeah that could be fun. I want to do that.

I seem to be having some sort of allergic reaction to a lip balm I've used for years (the Going Places lip balm by Ursa Major). It started on Thursday with my lips just feeling really dry, then I realized they were feeling kind of sunburnt, like that feeling where you know they're going to peel. On Friday I realized it was worse after I used the lip balm. I haven't used it since but my lips are all puffy and have peeled and sting. It looks like I used a very cheap plumper that didn't agree with my skin. Very cool, very fun. I've been slathering my lips in a calendula salve and they're definitely slowly improving but every time I eat they get irritated again!

Guys I just got this great book from the library, have you heard of it? It's called Project Hail Mary and I really think it's going to take off

nortism

Rules of the Les Misérables magic system (as far as I can figure out):

As long as there is still suffering to be had, Jean Valjean cannot die

Jean Valjean has super strength which cannot be depleted by age or his poor ability to look after himself (up to a point)

Once a person has met Cosette, lack of proximity to her will slowly drain their life force

The dead benevolently haunt those they loved while alive (ily ghost!Fantine)

Javert has an incredible ability to recognise potential criminals (read people from lower social classes)

Eponine has the ability to blend into the background but cannot turn this power off

The only one immune to this power is Javert which isn’t very helpful

Yesterday I was freezing and bored in the office so I decided to walk to the weird little cafe in the plaza for a coffee. On the way there I dropped my glasses in the parking lot while getting my sunnies out and got a nice big scratch on them, and then I got to the cafe and scared the heck out of an employee who apparently thought they were locked up because they were closed. So now I have to replace my glasses and I didn't even get a mediocre coffee about it.

The amount I love having heat vents blow warm air on my feet while I'm doing stuff like washing dishes or my bedtime routine is the exact same amount as how much I hate it when it's air conditioning blowing cold air on my feet instead

Had a dream that I was explaining to someone that Andy and I had recently retired and were on a mini golf road trip, where we were crossing the country staying at hotels/motels that had mini golf courses. Woke up in a panic that I should have already planned all of this.

My older kid has this incredible ability to just decide when she's going to wake up and then just does it, without an alarm. (I have the opposite of this ability, where even with an alarm I am effectively still asleep for several minutes.) Sometimes she uses this for evil, like getting up three hours before the bus on a school morning so she can spend an hour doing her makeup and an hour on her hair and an hour fighting with her sister, but sometimes she uses it for good, like today, when she needed to be at the school for her class trip to Boston at 5:45 and Andy's alarm didn't go off. She woke us up at 5:22, fully dressed and ready to go and panicking about why we weren't up yet, and we were in the car at 5:30 and had her at the school at 5:38. Their buses were supposed to arrive at 6 and leave at 6:15 but didn't arrive until 6:30 and left around 7, so then I had to rush to get ready and out the door (I'm in the office today) and the whole thing has given the day a weird dreamlike quality.

This godforsaken app has broken my brain because every time I log into Paylocity and see "Investment Balance | My Investments" my brain immediately goes "#myinvestments" and now I've been thinking of all of my retirement accounts, collectively, as #myinvestments

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