Stream of Consciousness

We just spent two wonderful weeks in Lexington, Kentucky with Jeremy's family, many dear friends, and for a few days some my family as well. We crammed in delicious places to eat (Kentucky Native Cafe, Bourbon n' Toulouse, Mellow Mushroom, Bella Notte, Saul Good, West Sixth Brewery, and of course Chipotle), Harrison and his cousin Oliver had a blast playing together (and Harrison LOVED Oliver's extensive toy collection), we played (and won!) many hands of Canasta with Jer's parents (ok we lost some too), we celebrated the wedding of two beautiful souls (and Harrison slept through the ceremony!), we had a small birthday party for Harrison with our families (it was Totoro themed), we helped the masses clear out the Whole Foods at Lexington Green on its last day (75% off everything = yes please!), we drowned in what felt like 100% humidity (and plenty of downpours), and when we left, it was with full hearts (and a queasy stomach because unfortunately I chose my one sick day of the century to be our day of cross country plane travel with a 14-month-old). But for real, you guys, FULL HEARTS.

And now we are back to "real life" for a week, and then an adjustment once again to a new "real life" is coming as I start working full time with Harrison in tow this coming Wednesday.

Lots of things going on this week and lots of things running through my mind. I'd really love to just binge watch Jane the Virgin season 3, and while admittedly I am already 5 episodes in, it is specifically because of that that there are so many things on my mental to do list right now. Day-to-day things have already piled up in the post-vacation sleepy haze, and I haven't quite kicked this stomach bug yet, though it's been ebbing a flowing, making me think that I have at certain points in time. My heart is still running on full from the past two weeks, and my brain keeps jumping from one thing to another, a constant stream of jumbled thoughts like what should I do with those lemons I got the other day (maybe this?) and how am I going to get all those mats out of Oscar's fur without sedating him? What should the meal plan be for my workweek and when am I going to have time for food prep? My friend Laci stayed at our place while we were gone and left us some seeds she started sprouting, therefore showing me how easy it is and now I want to sprout ALL THE THINGS with the same fervor I have for fermenting all the things. I ran some preliminary numbers a few months ago and found that with this job I am starting, we can pay down the rest of our student loans by the time it's over next September, if we continue to live frugally. But I haven't even updated June's expenses, or finished July's budget, and I don't see that as a great beginning to our debt takedown, and I want to run the numbers again to make a specific plan. But will the plan allow me to continue to have enough organic greens to make the green smoothie I've had for the past three days and am already obsessed with? And can I afford to buy our cats wet food? And what about our new old car that hopefully will last us until next year but in reality it needs some repairs and should we have just kept the Accord? And Harrison is really killing this elimination communication thing and I want to replace his cloth diapers with padded cotton underwear so he can play a more active role in pottying, and I love that at just shy of 14 months we are already able to think about underwear for him. And less diapers means not doing laundry every two days in our one-cubic-foot portable washer that has been so helpful but takes up the whole bathroom whenever we use it. And our bathroom is so dirty even when it is clean, and our landlord wasn't helpful when I asked about replacing the mildewed grout, and I really love our apartment because it is home (and it is rent controlled), but it was a bit of a weird thing to come home to it after being in a large clean house for two weeks, and visiting the large clean houses of our friends, and let's face it, our old apartment is a dump. A spacious, rent-controlled dump that works well for our purposes right now and we're staying for the unforeseeable future, but that doesn't make it any less of a dump. Can I use my 30th birthday in a few weeks to justify hiring someone to clean this place for me? It will probably still feel dirty. We're going to see a Beatles cover band on my birthday and I am so very excited about it. LA has so many opportunities that I've never had anywhere else, like seeing a Beatles cover band on my birthday (well in Lexington I saw Rain which was awesome, and in Louisville we went to Abbey Road on the River which was also awesome), and making the same full-time salary with my son as I did without my son, and being at the beach and the mountains on the same day and soaking in sunshine all the time and being surrounded by a diverse spectrum of humanity and being connected to the natural birthing community and all the same this place is so transient and it's hard after a trip away to not think about if I will someday be one of the masses that comes just to leave again like so many in my community already have. And there are things like SB277 that make me want to be transient more quickly than may be natural but there are things like illegal home births in other states that make me want to stay put, and how do you move out of state with three cats anyway? And SB277 makes me think of Nick Catone and the autopsy reports for his healthy dead child and his response. Healthy children don't die in their sleep for nothing and the whole thing makes me so frustrated. And sometimes I get down such a rabbit hole on the Internet that I need to put my phone away and do something else, but other times like yesterday I took a Buzzfeed quiz that told me I would be a House Elf if I lived in the Harry Potter world and I was all indignant about it so I took the quiz two more times and answered the questions differently but still truthfully and apparently I'm destined (doomed?) to be a house elf. Now where is that to do list?