The Cardigan Queen

I'm a librarian and I've got the cardigans to prove it.

[the-cardigan-queen]

I had a panic attack in a train station this morning but this evening I got to see a total solar eclipse so, on the balance, a pretty amazing day.

[the-cardigan-queen]

My body does not think it’s 6 am (the time at home) or noon (the time where I currently am) but rather a secret third thing (tired and disoriented and a little bit nauseous).

[the-cardigan-queen]

On the other hand, we’ve been here 24 hours and I’ve walked more than six miles, eaten pan con tomate and a great deal of cheese and jamón, navigated shoe shopping in Spanish to buy the avarcas I’ve wanted for ages and stumbled upon a street festival with live music and beer. My body may suck at travel but the rest of me is pretty good at it.

[the-cardigan-queen]

My body does not think it’s 6 am (the time at home) or noon (the time where I currently am) but rather a secret third thing (tired and disoriented and a little bit nauseous).

[the-cardigan-queen]

Is there any nap better than the nap after an overnight flight and a few hours wandering around? Probably, but it’s truly a top tier nap. Genuinely transformative.

[the-cardigan-queen]

We’re in Spain! It’s beautiful and quite warm! And in our flurry of last minute planning and booking we accidentally booked our first hotel starting tomorrow and not today! Oops. But it’s sorted and we only have two more, very sleepy hours until we can check in and take a much needed nap. I can’t wait.

[the-cardigan-queen]

We’ll be staying in three different cities- well, two cities and one small seaside adjacent town- which is about my limit for location changes in a week of travel. We hadn’t been planning on spending even a full day in Madrid, just a half day then staying the night and flying home in the morning so it’ll be nice to spend a bit more time there and actually explore the city a bit. We’re flying in to where our friend lives but since he’s not there we’ll only stay for a couple days and then move on. I’d been looking forward to having a local guide but we’re pretty resourceful. I do wish I’d retained more of my Spanish but I always wish that.

[the-cardigan-queen]

So the friend we’re traveling to Spain to see next week is officially not going to be in Spain next week. We may catch him on his return trip in Madrid but who knows (and maybe also who cares). I’m pretty pissed and my husband is hurt because obviously it’s not his fault that a family friend died or that his family expects him to drop everything and fly back to the states (once again) but he doesn’t seem to have thought much about us in all this. I really don’t think he understands what a big deal this trip is for us, not so much in terms of money- although not not in terms of money- but how much effort went into coordinating the flights and a week off of work for both of us and work coverage for while we were away and a week of childcare from my in-laws. A lot of people arranged a chunk of their summer for this and he’s just like “we can reschedule.” No, we can’t! And we don’t want to! If I’m being perfectly honest, this would not have been our destination of choice for our first actual vacation in eight years. It doesn’t even crack the top ten. Like, maybe Madrid but not Santiago de Compostela which seems perfect lovely but is a pain to get to and the main draw (if you’re not visiting expressly to see an old friend who won’t even be there) is being the end point of the Camina de Santiago which I don’t really care about. We’ll pivot and make the most of it because that’s what we do but it really is so disappointing.

Last night the husband and I talked about our feelings (not great!), split a xanax because we were both a jumble of anxiety and booked hotels. Previously, I’d had close to zero involvement in the planning of this trip but by the time we went to bed I had an annotated map and a multi-tab itinerary spreadsheet. Because I know how to have a good time.

[the-cardigan-queen]

I did have a moment last night when I thought “does our friend even live in Spain? What if this is all an elaborate lie and he never even left Boston?” and now I can’t quite shake that thought. I may have listened to too many podcasts about scammers and fabulists.

[the-cardigan-queen]

I told my mom about the situation and her immediate response was “does he have a secret life he doesn’t want you to know about?”

It’d be funnier if my husband wasn’t heartbroken about not seeing his friend or, at least not getting the week long visit they’d planned.

[the-cardigan-queen]

I did have a moment last night when I thought “does our friend even live in Spain? What if this is all an elaborate lie and he never even left Boston?” and now I can’t quite shake that thought. I may have listened to too many podcasts about scammers and fabulists.

[the-cardigan-queen]

We’re leaving for Spain on Sunday to visit my husband’s best friend and said friend called this afternoon to say that we may need to cancel our trip because a close family friend died and he may need to fly to Maine for the funeral. I feel a tiny bit guilty that my first coherent statement was “I’m not canceling” but I’m not. I want to see him, I hope we get to see him, but if this ends up being a week of my husband and I tootling around Spain without our kids then so be it. Summer has broken me and I’ve been holding on the thread of a my first actual vacation in eight years and I’m not giving it up. I can’t. I need this.

[the-cardigan-queen]

I love how swift and emphatic the “DO NOT CANCEL” responses came in and we’re definitely not canceling. It was never on the table as far as I’m concerned.

To his credit, my husband had already explained to his friend that we’re not canceling our travel and checked out hotels before he told me about this development (I had a hellaciously stressful day yesterday so he thought it could wait until we got home and he was correct). We were meant to be staying with them and then traveling to Madrid together so it’s not ideal but we’re fully capable of figuring out travel and lodging ourselves even on short notice. Hopefully, we’ll at least get a couple days with him and who knows, maybe this is much ado about, well, not nothing because someone he was close to has died in possibly very bad circumstances but nothing that will materially impact this trip. I’m just going to listen to my Rick Steves podcast and make my packing list and hope for the best.

[the-cardigan-queen]

We’re leaving for Spain on Sunday to visit my husband’s best friend and said friend called this afternoon to say that we may need to cancel our trip because a close family friend died and he may need to fly to Maine for the funeral. I feel a tiny bit guilty that my first coherent statement was “I’m not canceling” but I’m not. I want to see him, I hope we get to see him, but if this ends up being a week of my husband and I tootling around Spain without our kids then so be it. Summer has broken me and I’ve been holding on the thread of a my first actual vacation in eight years and I’m not giving it up. I can’t. I need this.

[the-cardigan-queen]

Tonight, my big kid decided that bedtime was the best time to inform me that a full bottle of sunscreen had emptied into his backpack and then start unpacking sunscreen covered item ONTO OUR SOFA. Summer cannot end soon enough.

[the-cardigan-queen]

When my sister-in-law was here last month while I was in Chicago, I gave her free reign to tidy and organize the living room since it’s basically the playroom at this point and, honestly, it could use a good tidy. Well, I came home to the living room looking better than it has in ages (and the dining room looking worse which I didn’t think was possible) but it wasn’t really a sustainable tidy; she obviously starts grouping things like with like but then just starts making piles to get things out of the way and what we’re left with is a room where we can’t find things and there’s no obvious spot to put stuff back. So it looked great for a couple days and now it’s maybe worse than it was before.

However, the real issue is that we have a number of toys that we keep in the basement because the kids (mostly the 3yo) can’t have them unsupervised and/or we don’t want them in the room with the “nice” rug because they can be used as a weapon or make a big mess or have lots of tiny pieces we don’t want to lose. But she brought a bunch of that stuff upstairs and left it there when she left and the kids keep finding it before I do which is how I ended up vacuuming up bright green kinetic sand out of our rug because she got her hands on a sensory box thing while I was starting the laundry. The other day, they decided to use the poles from this fort building kit as swords while I was making dinner and we’re lucky no one lost an eye.

I know my mother-in-law had a talk with my sister-in-law a few years ago about how nannying and babysitting aren’t the same as parenting when she kept trying to give me “helpful” advice that I didn’t want or need. My thinking about the difference boiled down mostly to the fact that the priorities are different and parenting is a long game that you can’t clock out of in a way childcare isn’t. Like, it doesn’t help me to make elaborate routines out of meals to get them to eat lunch because I can’t recreate that for every meal, every day; I’m better off waiting out the hunger strikes and since no one’s going to fire me if I don’t get them to eat a proper meal, I can do that. Similarly, I don’t want to give them nonstop activities because I need them to learn how to entertain themselves and my job doesn’t depend on keeping them entertained or making sure they learn something.

But what I hadn’t really thought about and what she obviously hasn’t is that when she’s watching kids- mine or someone else’s- that’s really all she’s doing. I mean, I know some of the nanny gigs she had called for making meals for the kids and doing their laundry but some didn’t (private chef and maid) and even the one’s that did didn’t expect her to plan or shop for meals. When we’re home with our kids we’re also cooking the meals I planned and shopped for (usually with kids in tow) and doing laundry and yard work and assembling furniture and all the other million things that have to be done. And that’s why the kinetic sand lives in the basement! And why I need them to be able to entertain themselves! Because this is my life and not a job, all that stuff that’s not watching and entertaining them is also part and parcel of taking care of them. I have two close friends who were nannies for years- one of them live-in- and neither of them seem to be confused by this difference so I think this is just a her issue.

Anyway, I was hoping to get a pedicure this afternoon but I think instead I’ll be scouring the dining and living rooms for supervised play only toys that have been tidied into corners before we have a real disaster on our hands.

[the-cardigan-queen]

Y’all, I think I’m dying (my tummy hurts and I have a low grade fever)

[the-cardigan-queen]

Last week, my daughter emptied a full container of bright pink edible shimmer and yesterday she broke a full bottle of oregano so now our kitchen looks like we slaughtered a unicorn in there and smells like we cooked it up in an Italian stew. Life with toddlers is never dull!

[apolladay]

How old were you when you first had a grandparent die?

I wasn't born yet

less than a year old

1-5 years old

6-10 years old

11-20 years old

over 20 years old

I don't know/it's complicated

results/no grandparents have died yet

Voting ended onAug 5

[the-cardigan-queen]

I was planning on calling out sick tomorrow because I need to get a blood draw and, uh, I just need a day off between my vacations so I was plowing through my to-do list so I wouldn’t come back to a disaster on Friday. And then the camp director from my big kid’s camp called and said they think he has pinkeye and I need to come get him. He’s just a goopy kid! And his allergies are bad this week! But now I have to go get him and try to get him into the doctor and I hope I’m back in the office on Friday. At least it’s not the kid who keeps kicking me and can’t be left unsupervised for even five minutes? This sucks.

[the-cardigan-queen]

Yeah, probably just allergies but we’ve got antibiotic eye drops just in case and I have to keep him home tomorrow which is fine. Also a recommendation to see an ophthalmologist about his chronic eye goopiness because it’s likely there’s something up with his tear ducts/sinuses.

I am irritated that the camp director was dubious when I said it was allergies but didn’t mention that they had a visiting petting zoo. I respect the need to be cautious and do what they need to do to prevent spread of an infection but I’d already said I was coming to get him; maybe mention that he was petting an alpaca and holding a chicken earlier in the day after I tell you that he has pretty bad environmental allergies, dude. That’s relevant medical information!