I see that I haven’t posted anything of note in more than a month and a half. Odd, since I still spend time on the computer – I just dont find time to post, that’s all.
The house feels strangely empty without Annika here. She’s on her second day of day care, which seems to be harder on us than it is on her. She seems to be doing fine with it, happy and cooing when I leave her and happy (at least yesterday) to see me when I picked her up. She’s at a great age, increasingly interactive with the world and the environment around her. She is (predictably) extremely attached to Jyotsna – if she’s in the room, she barely looks at me.
J. was half time in April, which meant that I had to compress my work day (and everything else – working out, personal errands, etc) before 1pm, which is when she started to get ready to go to work. Then I was on duty for the afternoon, and then we took care of her together for her evening routine, and then dinner and then.. .maybe a little bit of TV to zone out on, and then we’d go to bed. Needless to say, I havent been getting much work done.
Now J. is working full-time, albeit on a compressed schedule (seeing patients from 10am-5pm straight through, no lunch break) with Fridays off and weekend call. While this is a new schedule that we’re getting used to, it’s working so far in the sense that Jyotsna has some time in the morning before she goes to work. If A. is sleeping, J. goes to work and I drop her off to day care. If she happens to get up in time, J. can drop her off. Conversely, J.. will pick her up from work at the end of the day, unless if she’s late and then I pick her up. We do this Tuesday. Wednesday and Thursday – Monday I take her all day, and Friday Jyotsna takes her all day. It’s a reasonable balance that gives me some time to actually get work done. If today is any indication, hopefully it will.
I dont’ know if I have anything particularly interesting or insightful to say here. I have some old incomplete posts that I shall post just now, just to have them here. (One is about the India trip in Feb., and the other is about healthcare.) Parenthood is at the same time both more wonderful and more challenging than I expected, which shouldn’t be a surprise. It’s hard to truly fathom how radical your compass shifts.
Case in point – last Monday was our second anniversary. We had planned to go out to a French restaurant in Falls Church, and we had Jay ready to come over to babysit. But we were both cranky and over-tired, and the prospect of going to an 8:30 dinner just filled us both with a large sense of “eh”. So we went to bed around 9pm on our anniversary night, and turned over and went to bed. And while that was a bit sucky, it’s the new normal. This Friday we’re trying again, and hopefully we’ll both have more energy to enjoy it.
Despite the fullness of the schedule, I took a creative writing workshop in April, four consecutive Wednesdays at the community college. I didn’t expect much from the class and the instructor – from his CV, he’s a sometimes published author, best known for some old Star Trek short stories. I expected him to be a bit pretentious and full of hot air, but he was surprisingly thoughtful and honest with his critique and support. The exercises were interesting, and I connected back to a creative process that I thought lay fallow for many, many years. I’ve been encouraged by some of the feedback, and am trying to work in a writing habit nightly to take advantage of this renewed momentum. The group that was in the class decided to form a writing group to continue the support, so we’ll try every other Wednesday for now and see how it goes. I have a few story ideas that are now brewing – but what’s most important is that I’m actually enjoying the process of creation, as opposed to being overly fixated on creating a “good” product. I don’t know if I’ll avail myself of LJ to try to exercise that muscle, but I might.
What else? Random miscellany, mostly. Going to New Orleans in a couple of weeks – Annika’s first plane trip – for Rohan’s graduation. I’m dreading it and welcoming it. The trip is going to suck, but I am looking forward to being around family and being able to have somebody want to watch Annika while we can maybe go out and enjoy a night out later than 8pm.