Week 131: Samey
March 6, 2021
- There is a shop in Penge which we drive past sometimes on the way out of London. It is a teddy bear shop called “Bearly Trading”. According to the local facebook group it closed about 20 years ago because the owner died but the family kept the shop as a memorial. There is even a painting you can buy of it: https://www.thedragongallery.com/product-page/bearly-trading-penge. I wish it was still open! I’d buy myself a bear as a good-bye present from London.
- This week both kids had colds. This is baby C’s first ever cold and uh, the little dude did not do well.
- With a lot of perseverance and focus, I achieved near-enough-wash-box zero, which is really something when you consider that I have 2 children under 4 and those guys are disgusting.
- I was meant to attend a virtual tour of a nursery but despite them reminding me, I still forgot to show up. I have forgotten to go to a bunch of things in the past year. Forgot to meet Tatiana in the park, forgot to cancel a visit from an estate agent, now this. It’s probably both the pandemic making every day seem very samey - smoothing them out and removing any facets the get purchase on - and the lack of sleep associated with having a baby. Actually E doesn’t sleep through the night either so I don’t think Lachie or I have had an uninterrupted night’s sleep for about a year now. I don’t even really think about how tired I am anymore. I’m ready for a nap at any time.
- The Keeping In Touch day was alright. Touch was kept. I found it quite hard to follow what was going on in some of the meetings, my work muscles have atrophied again but they’ll come back. It’s a bummer to still all be working from home. I’d have been much much more jazzed to be having a KIT day in the office. I tried to wear some nice clothes despite still being at home, but unfortunately at lunchtime I became acutely aware of how much food both my children smear on me during the course of an hour and it made me feel very edgy. On the other hand, having a KIT day from home did mean I could sit at my computer and have the baby presented to me whenever he needed feeding rather than having to pump.
- Probably, unlike last time, I won’t have to go down into a depressing little room in the bowels of the FT office to express milk. Me and Lachie and the kids will continue this blend of working and parenting in a big mush only I’ll be doing the work and he’ll be doing most of the parenting. I’ll be able to pump on some days but on others, I’ll just feed C instead of pumping. This way of living clearly has upsides but I like and hope to return to the clean delineation of “work” and “home” that’s given when the work happens in a different place.