Sunday Post with Berls | Week of July 3rd 2022

Week of July 3rd 2022

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kim @ Caffeinated Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news~ A post to recap the past week on your blog and showcase books and things we have received. Share news about what is coming up on our blog for the week ahead.

News at Home

I’m going to try doing a one sentence summary of each day moving forward… I realize some of you enjoy my lenghty posts but I imagine some of you would like to be able to just get a quick version. Initially I was going to put the quick version first but it feels like a spoiler for those that do want to read the whole thing LOL! So I’m moved it to the end of each day.

Sunday

I woke up earlier than I had planned today – but that was good because I managed to get in some blog visiting before Dante woke up. Then it was his breakfast, Kiko’s breakfast, a quick shower, grocery pickup and then off to my friend Melissa’s for a play date. Dante had a blast as always – her son is about 15 months older than Dante and he has a big boy bike with training wheels. Dante kept playing with it and eventually he hopped on it all on his own! I rushed over, afraid he would fall. Not only did he not fall, but he tried to pedal! Gah, he’s getting so big. Then they have these lights that you can turn on/off from two different switches. Dante realized that I ran back and forth turning it on at one line and off at the other. At one point her older son (he’s 7) Jr decided to get in on the fun and while Dante was at one switch he snuck up to the other one. Dante turned the light on and Jr turned it off. Dante paused, looked up, and let out a huge giggle. They did that for like a solid 15 minutes. It was great. Melissa and I had a few drinks and just talked and at one point we were both crying. It’s been a stressful couple months for both of us and it’s just good to have a good friend who I can sit and laugh and cry with. We ended up leaving around 9, and Dante fell asleep in the care. I didn’t get really anything done like I should have this weekend and I do work tomorrow. So we’ll see how things go. Kiko and Dante are off and home tomorrow so yeah, it’ll be interesting I think.

The quick version: Dante and I went on a playdate and it was exactly what the doctor ordered! Dante had a blast, attempted to ride a big-boy bike with training wheels and I had good mommy time with a bestie.

Monday

Today I woke up on schedule, but instead of doing my morning routine I spent some time trying to get my bujo setup since I finished out the one I started in January with June. Looks like I’ll get 6 months out of my bujos moving forward. And I just don’t do well without my bujo, so it’s a priority. I got my cover page and key finished, then I penciled in the other pages I need to do before starting this week’s spread. Dante woke up around 8am and I got him breakfast — which he did not eat. I tried oatmel AND eggs. He’s been coughing and I thought it was his allergies since we recently stopped his zyrtec to see how he did… but this morning I started worrying that he’s actually getting sick. Kiko woke up around 8 too, but he is on call and had to go fix an AC. I was working today because I figured Kiko could take care of Dante… thankfully he made it make ONE minute before the start of my work day with my daily scrum meeting. He took care of Dante all day and by 4pm when Dante went down for a nap it looked like a hurricane had hit! Kiko and I have very different styles – I try to have Dante picking up with me as we go, Kiko let’s messes ensue. But he was happy. I woke Dante up at 6 and he was quite hot. I took his temperature and it was 100.1… so low-grade fever. Not high enough that he can’t go to school tomorrow UNLESS he wakes up worse tomorrow. Dinner he didn’t eat much — ended up eating some doritos and a gerber fruit/veggie pouch. So yeah, not thinking he’s feeling quite great. I’m really hoping he wakes up ok tomorrow because that will make tomorrow very hard – trying to do a job that I’m a newbie at with a sick kid. Speaking of work…

Today was rough. I’ve now had my computer for a week and we’re STILL trying to get me setup. This M1 chip is causing a lot of trouble. But I also just feel like an idiot! I expected to have challenges working in the code – but setting up my developer environment?! That I was not expecting. At one point today I was on a call with my lead for over an hour trying to get some things setup. He never seemed bothered by me and he was stumped a few times too – but I just feel so anxious to not seem incompetent. I did end the day on a good note. We have my environment working and then we pull up the app, to get an error that he hasn’t seen. He tells me to send him the error and we’ll both do some Googling and see if we can figure it out. And guess who figured it out? ME!!! That made me feel a lot better. But, all that to say, I don’t feel good about trying to take on working WITH a sick kid at home tomorrow. So very much crossing all my fingers that Dante wakes up feeling well.

Also these damn fireworks! Ugh I always hated them and this year I hate them even more because I am NOT celebrating Independence Day. I do not feel that this country is living up to the ideals we’re supposed to be celebrating and at this current moment I’m anything BUT proud to be an American. I saw some protests going on saying “Fuck the Fourth” and I have to say, I agree. I find myself wondering – when is it THE MOMENT? You know, the moment where it’s time to jump ship? What was the moment that those who were paying attention fled Nazi Germany? Fled Iran? Because I really don’t want to be someone who missed the moment if it comes to that here.

Well tomorrow may be a rough day, so trying to get to bed early-ish. Still so much catching up to do from my unproductive weekend!

The quick version: Dante may be getting sick. Work was rough – I’m feeling incompetent and really hope I start figuring shit out soon.

Tuesday

Damn it, I want to be able to say nothing eventful is going on… but that was not today. Dante woke up with a slight cough but no fever so I decided to go ahead and send him to school. Work got off to go a good start, I got started on my FIRST real coding assignment and was deep in it when I got a call from his daycare (around 3pm) that Dante had a fever of 101.1. So I ran up to the school to pick him up after letting our lead engineer know what was going on. I called the doctor and they made us an appointment for tomorrow morning – they don’t want him to come today because they wanted to give enough time for them to be able to see what’s going on (? I’m not a doctor but ok…). I had planned on coming home and trying to do some work with him but he was burning up. He probably would have just lay down but seeing him like that I NEEDED to be holding him. His fever did come down about 1.5 – 2 hours after getting the Tyelnol and he started to play. When Kiko came home I prepped the casserole I had planned for the week (and planned to make after work before picking up Dante from daycare) and then sat down to try and finish my coding assignment. Then we had dinner and I held Dante for a bit. Then I got back at it and well, I’m stumped. We got Dante to bed and I decided to give myself a break by cleaning up the kitchen… which turned into cleaning the fridge. I clean when I need to think. So I pulled everything out, scrubbed the shelves and reloaded (honeslty only took me about 30 minutes). By time I was done I realized that I was going to have to ask Gaurav (my lead engineer for help on my project). I had really wanted to finish it before tomorrow – it’s a simple bug and our sprint ends today so I wanted to carry my considerably light weight. I messaged him just as an FYI – not really expecting to hear back until tomorrow. He replied immediately “Hey no worries. Take it easy. You dn’t need to stress out on this task which is not urgent right now. We can take it to the next sprint as well so no real rush.” So yeah, he probably thinks I’m a nut job, on top of incompetent LOL (Y’all being a perfectionist SUCKS! I realize I am being unfair with myself).

Anyway it’s 10:15 and I need to try and wrap up for bed, seeing as tomorrow is going to be a rough day – meetings, code work, and Dante home with me (plus taking him to the doctor).

The quick version: Work was hard (because I’m a perfectionist) and Dante come home sick. The end lol.

Wednesday

Well today and yesterday have a lot in common — frustrating. I did not sleep well because I was anxious about Dante. He woke up around 3:30am but did not have fever, just was crying. He came to bed with us and slept with us until almost 5 – something he’s never done, he’s a sleep in his own bed baby. He woke up at 5 crying again. I rocked him in the rocking chair and he fell asleep in my arms. I lay him down in his bed and he slept there until 7:45 am. Still no fever this morning, but as he refused his breakfast of all the favorite things it was quite clear that he was clearly not feeling well (not to mention the rough night). He played while I had a few meetings and then we had his doctor’s appointment at 10:20. Turns out he has an ear infection! Quite a relief, as ear infections tend to be easily treated. They said they would call in his prescription and we headed home. I went through a drive thru in an attempt to get more favorite foods that he might eat on the way.

At home I sat him down with his food and got to work — I wrote up my story for the next sprint (startign today at noon) and Dante ate some french fries. He snubbed the chicken nuggets, but asked for a fruit/veggie pouch. And he drank his milk again. Oh and he’s been sucking down the water, so that’s good. Then I called Walmart Pharmacy (we had to switch from CVS to Walmart or Sam’s Pharmacy with the new insurance — annoying but also makes sense since I know work for Walmart/Sam’s) to check on the status of Dante’s prescription. They didn’t have it. So I called the doctor’s office – to find that they would be closed until 1:30. Grrr. I wanted to run out on Kiko’s lunch break to pick up the prescription so I could get it into Dante! So I called them at 1:30, was transferred to the nurse line, where I had to leave a message. They called back 10 minutes later and said they had sent the prescription to CVS (despite my telling them to send it to Walmart) and CVS had sent it back and so they had sent it to Walmart. But that explains why Walmart didn’t have it when I called, it was getting bounced around. So I got off the phone with them and called Walmart. To find that they were now closed for lunch until 2:30. *sobs*

I decided I had about 40 minutes, let me see if I can get some help with the error I was trying to fix last night. Thankfully Adam was available and hopped on a call with me. He said I had it right – and I was even right about why it wasn’t working, yay! – and showed me that they are using Redux. Not fun, I hated Redux in my bootcamp, but time to read up on it. He agrees that Redux is not fun and needlessly complicated – so that was nice. I got off with him right about 2:30 and called Walmart. They had recieved the prescription but were actually getting ready to call me because they didn’t have the formula that Dante needed in stock. They could have it by tomorrow or they could put his prescription into the wider Walmart/Sam’s system and I could get it from another store. Obviously, I chose the second option. His system wasn’t letting him look up the other stores that would carry it though … kinda funny that the tech was letting him down and that’s now what I do – but not for Pharmacy or for Walmart. My Walmart has a Sam’s Club right below it so I called that Sam’s. They also did not have it, but their system WAS working (yay!) and they were able to tell me the nearest Sam’s that had it – which was 15 minutes away. So then I called that Sam’s club and they confirmed they could have it ready by 5pm as it would take a little bit to get the prescription transferred over. They actually had it ready in about 30 minutes but at that point Dante was napping and Kiko was working so there was really no way that I could go get it — if it had been the store 5 minutes away Kiko could have come and watched Dante while I ran out, but 15 minutes was going to take too long. So we decided I would go as soon as he came home from work.

Since Dante was napping I was able to get in some real focused work and finish fixing the bug that I had started on with Adam earlier and submitted my first pull request! I feel like a real engineer now lol (even if that fix took me like 6 hours to resolve and it probably would have taken everyone else on the team like 30 minutes to 1 hour… shhh!). Dante woke up at 4:30 crying and was pretty inconsolable. He kept tugging on his ear (first time he’s done that this whole illness) so I decided his ear must be hurting and gave him some Tylenol. I also decided I would cut out of work 30 minutes early… kinda sucks with me being a new employee but everyone seems to be really lax about taking off for things like this. Kiko was home at 5:15 and I rushed out (during rush hour…grrr) to get Dante’s precription. I was home around 6 — Kiko called me once when I was out because Dante was crying inconsolably again. Poor baby 🙁 I told him to see if Dante would let him do a cold compress, otherwise I didn’t know what to do. When I got home we immediately did the antibiotics and Kiko had to rush out because he’s (of course) on call and he (of course) got a call while I was out. Dante was pretty fussy still but he lay on me and we had on some cartoons. Kiko got back around 7 and we did dinner… Dante ate nothing and threw up a little bit (it was basically water). He kept reaching for food and then putting it back – like “I’m hungry but this doesn’t feel right.”

We tried to relax a bit and Dante even helped me clean up again, despite not feeling well. He was trying to play and I’m hoping that means all the meds are starting to work. He went to bed a little early — we have him some Motrin to hopefully keep away the pain tonight — and I’m praying he wakes up feeling well tomorrow. I have a lot of work to do – and it’s challenging work that I need to be able to focus on.

Oh all the things I ordered for Dante’s lunches came in today — the bento boxes were huge! I must not have looked at the measurements 🙁 So I’m sending them back and spent maybe 1 hour searching Amazon, Target, Walmart, The Container Store, etc. until I found some that will work and are not huge. It’s now 11pm and I’m just exhausted and ready for bed!

The quick version: Today was a series of frustrations. Dante has an ear infection and there was a huge mess trying to get his prescription. Work was actually fine, I was just very distracted. Exhausted and praying for a healthy Dante tomorrow!

Thursday

A MUCH better day! Dante woke up feeling well – I actually woke him at 8:15 to take him to give him his meds and take him to school. Work went really well – my bug fix had a couple comments of things for me to do and I understood the suggestions (yay!) and was able to implement them (double yay!). So the code has been sent to the dev branch (triple yay!). Y’all it’s official, I’m an engineer lol 😉

I heard from Dante’s ABA clinic that they are expecting the final authorization tomorrow, as they spoke to insurance today. So we’re on schedule for him to start ABA on Monday. Meaning tomorrow is his LAST DAY at his daycare. What?! I’m so emotional about it. Like when I really think about it, I want to cry. I don’t understand my emotions – I guess it’s just a big change? It’s not like he’s graduating or something… I don’t know, but yeah I want to cry. And then I realized that I really should have had a plan of a gift for the teachers or something! It’s last minute so I bought a pack of thank you cards from Target that I will write up tomorrow. And then I bought a few variety gift bags of Lindor Truffles. And I’m thinking I’ll also give them a picture of Dante with his name and date on the back, something to remember him. <== writing that made me cry. WTF!

This evening Dante was a little fussy, clearly not 100% yet. But he had a good day at school, so that’s good. I hate that he’s sick on his last week 🙁 Guess who’s tearing up again? grr. I played Fall Guys with Phil, Zach and their friend for a bit and then I’m headed to bed. I’m off tomorrow to enjoy Book Bonanza!

The quick version: A better day – Dante went to school and work went well. Looks like tomorrow is really Dante’s last day at his school and I’m feeling SUPER emotional about it!

Friday

Today was great, but full of emotions! Dante woke up happy and we got him off to school without too much fuss. Since I was 99% it was his last day I got pictures with his teachers — he wasn’t really into it but we tried lol. I share on Instagram, if you’d like to see (they are commical). Then I came home and got myself ready for Book Bonanza. I stopped at Whole Foods on the way to do an Amazon return of the lunch boxes I got Dante that were WAY too big. The others were supposed to arrive today by 10pm (still says arriving today by 10 on the statusand it’s 10:53 lol). But as long as I get them before Sunday afternoon I’m good.

Then I metup with Brandee, Linda and Denise at Book Bonanza. Some people are INTENSE but we are taking the laid back approach. We didn’t attend any of the panels, opting to sit and chat instead. I was sitting on the floor writing out thank you cards for a bit while we waited for it to be lunch time (our tickets include bag lunches). Lunch was served at 12, but we knew it was going to be a big rush, so we waited until 12:30, which worked out perfectly as I had a 12pm call with the ABA center to go over details for next week. The first thing she told me was that they had officially recieved the authorization this morning! Yay!! She emailed me a copy so I have it for our records. He’s set for 6 months. Then we went over some of the details for next week, including a scheduling miscommunication. I thought he would attend from 8:30 – 3 and instead he’s scheduled 9 – 3. Which honestly makes sense, since we’re getting 30 hours and 8:30 – 3 would put him over 30 minutes each day. But I start work at 9 with a meeting, so I can’t be in the middle of drop off at 9. She said I could drop him a few minutes early, like 8:55. So that will work. I’ll just take my 9am meeting in the car. She started to say I could do 8:45 – 2:45 but I already have speech setup from 3 – 4 on Thursdays and Fridays. So hopefully this works. I feel like it should be fine, since I live 10 minutes away and should be home by time the meeting is over. If it ends up not working, we can make adjustments, but I don’t want to have to mess with his speech and everything. On Monday I’m going to come at 2:30pm to do a meeting with them to go over his treatment plan. They said the first couple weeks they’re really going to focus on helping him feel happy and safe and getting to know him. After that, they will start really working on goals. Overall good. I’m nervous – not because of anything on their part – just it’s a big change.

In fact, I’m feeling ALL the emotions. I called daycare as soon as I got off with them to let them know that it’s 100% official that today is his last day. And as I was talking to them, I started to cry. He’s been going there since he was 6 weeks old (with a year off for COVID). And he’s been so incredibly happy and safe… it’s just been good. I’m sad to leave and to think he might not see them ever again. They said to come back and visit and I’d like to… but I feel like that’s one of those things you say you do, but does it really ever happen? Gah, I’m getting emotional typing this again.

After that I let myself get lost in Book Bonanza. We had lunch and then it was time to meet the authors. I took the masked, no hug approach for Dante’s sake. I wasn’t the only one, but one of the few. I didn’t feel judged though, which was nice. It means I didn’t get any pictures – but I did get signatures and have some great conversations. I think my favorite conversation was either with Staci Hart about her Wasted Words series or Sonali Dev about her Rajes series. Ironically both are Jane Austen retellings done really well! I also had fun with Max Monroe – they’re as hilarious as their books – and Kayley Loring. There were several others but those are my highlights.

Oh and Book Bonanza is being held at the Gaylord Texan, where I worked from 2004 – 2008. It was my first grown up job and where I started spreading my wings. So how cool that I ran into people I worked with! I was not expecting that and had a blast catching up.

Then I picked up Dante from school – grabbed a few more pictures (I was really sad to have missed one of his favorite teachers and we didn’t get a picture) and said goodbye. He was even LESS into the pictures this evening than he was this morning! I gave them personalized thank you cards, with a picture of Dante and a bag of Lindor Truffles each (8 teachers/office staff that I picked out as being special to Dante).

After that it was home for dinner, playtime and bedtime. I just finished meal planning for next week and I’m super anxious about packing Dante’s meals – so afraid he won’t eat well… but maybe this will be an opportunity to start getting him to like more foods? I’m sticking with familiar favorites this week, since he’s having so much change already. And I put in our grocery order for Sunday morning to secure my spot, but I may add some things (I usually remember things last minute). And I’m off to bed now!

The quick version: Big day with lots of emotions. Dante’s approval came through so it’s his last day of daycare and I’m very emotional about it. I’m nervous about all the changes and sad to leave a place he’s been so happy. And then I had day 1 of Book Bonanza – spent time with Brandee, Linda, and Densie plus had some great author conversations and even caught up with people I haven’t seen in over a decade!

Saturday

A GREAT DAY! I woke up at 7 because I have an internal clock that hates me, but that actually gave me a little time to work on some things before Dante woke up at 8am. And I guess at least it’s nat a 5am internal clock, right? Dante still didn’t eat great but he was in a good mood and we played a bunch while I also worked on setting up my BUJO a bit for next week. When Kiko woke up he made himself eggs – he’s done with pancakes for a bit! – and he made some eggs and toast for Dante too and Dante ate them! So I’m thinking maybe Dante doesn’t like my eggs anymore and only Kiko’s? I’m going to test it out tomorrow morning because I have eggs on the menu for next week’s center meals and I want to make them however he’ll eat them. Since Dante was doing so well, Kiko sent me off to day 2 of Book Bonanza (thanks Kiko!) and I had a really nice time with Brandee, Linda and Denise. I actually had visited almost all the authors I really wanted to see already, so I spent a lot of time today visiting authors who were just sitting at their tables alone. I feel sorry for them — you know this was costly and I imagine many are introverts who find this challenging! — and I have some fun conversations. I’m honest and tell them I haven’t read their books and ask them where I should start. I actually bought 1 book because I had so much fun with the author. I also saw more old coworkers! Apparently they had heard they should be watching for me. How fun, right?! I was there from 12 – 6… definitely not the full festivities but a good dose considering that I have so much happening in life.

It occured to me on my drive out there that if I just bring my laptop with me for Dante’s Center drop off I probably can find somewhere to sit an take my first meeting and then drive home. I messaged the BCBA to ask if there’s somewhere in the buidling I could work for a few minutes and she said there was a cafe but she didn’t believe they have internet. I tested out the hotspot on my phone today though and I think that will be fine. She said I could use an office on Monday but it wouldn’t really work long term and honestly I’d rather just got to the little cafe really quick. I think being in the same space as Dante would be potentially distratcting for him (he’d hear my voice maybe or see me pass by when I leave) and a clean break at drop off is better. But I’m hoping this plan will work. I think it will be good.

I had promised Kiko I’d bring home dinner, so I grabbed some chinese (we have really bad chinese near us so we figured I could try something on the way home and maybe it would be better — he liked it, I did not). Dante was so happy to see me when I got home and we had a really nice night. And he ate really well. And apparently ate a good lunch. So yay! Oh and the containers I ordered for his meals arrived – they are the right size this time and are going to work perfect! I’m going to try and get some blogging done tonight so I’m not rushing too much tomorrow and then headed to bed 🙂

The quick version: Another really great day at Book Bonanza! And Dante seems to be feeling a lot better. All together, a winning day!

Blog News

If you participate in Can You Read a Series in A Month, be sure to enter the giveaway!

Last week on Because Reading

• [4 Jul] It’s Monday! What Berls is Reading July 4th 2022
• [5 Jul] Tell Me Something Tuesday: Book Turned Movie
• [9 Jul] #MyTBRList Results and Linky: July 2022
• [10 Jul] Sunday Post with Berls | Week of July 3rd 2022

Challenge update

This week I finished:

I’m participating in 7 Challenges, plus the Goodreads Challenge, this year. Here’s how I’m doing.

1. COYER Seasons & COYER Community 2022 –
   1. Winter – 22 books (final count for Winter)
   2. Spring -33 books (final count for Spring)
   3. Summer -3 books
2. Bookish Resolutions – This was a challenge that Michelle used to do without me and she took last year off. This year we’re bringing it back together. Details on post, but basically I’m setting 5 “bookish” goals for the year: Here are my goals:
   1. Blog ahead at least 1 week. Getting back on track – hopefully will be blogged for this week by end of day tomorrow.
   2. Keep a blogging planner. ugh nope. But definitely a goal for this week.
   3. Visit & comment on 7 posts a week.  Yes! The latter half of this week I was not good on the visiting but I did so much better overall this week
   4. Reply to comments each week. No 🙁 Sorry y’all it was visiting over replying. this week maybe? It’s going to be a week with lots of change so IDK for sure.
   5. Review books before starting a new book/on the same day – No… and not likely to happen moving forward either. My new goal I think is to get reviews written over the weekend for the books I read that week.
3. The Backlist Reader Challenge –  34/50 books
4. 2022 Audiobook Challenge –  57/75 books
5. 2022 Library Love Challenge –  21/24 books
6. 2022 Finishing the Series Challenge – My goal is 5 series.
   • In Progress:
     1. Mine by Cynthia Eden- read book 4 & 5 this year, still need to read 6.
   • Completed:
     1. The Ivy Chronicles by Sophie Jordan – read books 2 and 3 this year, finishing the series.
     2. Amos Decker by David Bald Baldacci – read books 2-6 (#7 expected later this year)
     3. Witchless in Seattle by Dakota Cassidy – read books 8-13 this year
     4. Georgina Kincaid by Richelle Mead – read books 3-6 this year (thanks to Anne for realizing I could coutn this one!)

FitReaders (hosted by Jen @ That’s What I’m Talking About & Felicia The Geeky Blogger)

My big goal for 2022 is to lose weight every month. I’m not setting a specific number goal; I just need to make sure I’m going the right direction (down) every month. I will weigh in on the last (or first) day of each month only (so I don’t get too attached to the scale).

My goals for this week were…

None! I just wanted to make it through this week really. But next week I’m really hoping to get myself back on track. I have my meal plan for the week and goals in my BUJO.

Weight gain/loss for the year so far:

• +3.9 pounds Feb 1.
• -3.0 pounds March 1 (for the year, so total loss for Feb was 6.9 lbs!)
• -3.0  pounds April 1 (for the year, so no new loss in March, but no gain)
• -7.0 pounds April 30 (for the year, down 4 pounds in April)
• -3.4 pounds July 1 (for the year, up 3.6 pounds in June)

Added to My Shelf

I have a few from Tantor and then there’s the books I got from Book Bonanza but I need time to go through them all. So look for that update next week 🙂

How was your week? What are you Reading?

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