Sunday Post with Berls | Week of March 13th 2022

Week of March 13th 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

Sunday

Oh what a day. Of course the time change really didn’t help, but I think I was screwed before the day started. My brother-in-law (Kiko’s sister’s husband) needed help fixing up the house their going to be renting next month. And since Kiko is hoping he might be able to hook him up with a job later down the road, we decided it would be a good idea for him to help him out. So Saturday night Kiko we agreed that after I got groceries I would probably take him over to the house. It’s in an area where cops are particularly bad towards anyone driving while Mexican Male, so we don’t think it’s a good idea for Kiko to drive himself. It’s 25 minutes from our place… so there goes 2 hours of my day (1 hour round trip to take him and come home, another hour to pick him up and come home).

So I got up at 8:30 and got started with my miracle morning, visited a couple blogs and then groceries were ready at 10. Dante was still asleep (shocking!!) so I left to get groceries, just left Kiko with breakfast instructions for Dante if he woke up while I was gone. I got my groceries from Walmart, stopped at Whole Foods to drop off an Amazon return and grab this cauliflower dip that Walmart doesn’t carry. They didn’t have the frozen roast veggies I needed (Walmart had been out), so I also quickly stopped at Target. I was home right before 11 and Dante was still alseep. At that point he’d been asleep for 12 hours (thanks to time change), so I got him up and gave him breakfast and made Kiko’s breakfast while he called to see if they were going to need his help. They did and it took forever to get all the info he needed, so we weren’t out of the house until 12. Meaning I wasn’t home with Dante until 1… I had hoped to be at least 30 minutes into my meal prep by then.

So then I had meal prep to do, while taking care of Dante – who is not feeling 100%, still a little concerned about COVID, though he has no fever – and then we had the readalong chat… which I tried to do, while meal prepping and taking care of Dante. Multitasking for the win I guess. I enjoyed the chat, though I felt bad that I couldn’t be fully engaged. And then when I was cleaning up the garbage disposal broke. Thankfully Kiko was able to fix it easily as soon as he got home. Unfortunately, that is the same water source as our washing machine, so the 2 loads I planned to do next I couldn’t start. By then Dante was super fussy anyway, so I just played with him until I picked Kiko up at about 6:30. Then it was dinner and I spent the evening taking care of blog posts for the upcoming week. I’ll be doing laundry tomorrow I guess, while I work from home… if Dante goes to school. If he doesn’t go to school, I’m taking off. I can’t do both anymore. It’s too much. I didn’t clean bathrooms either. Ugh. I just ran out of time and I’m so tired, I have to just go to bed. Kiko’s getting Dante ready for bed (he napped in the car both ways today) and then I’ll put him down, take a shower and go to sleep myself.

Monday – Tuesday

Monday I woke up emotionally exhausted. I got to work and waited to see when Dante woke up how he would be feeling. Right when he woke up our power went out – yippee! But thankfully he was clearly not sick. No cough, no fever, nada. I let him sleep in and it was about 9 when he woke up… which was pretty close to his normal 8am, if you factor in the time change. It was late for him to get breakfast at daycare, so I had planned to feed him before taking him – but no power equals nothing to cook. So I called daycare and hallelujah, they still had breakfast for him. So I dropped him at daycare and made it back at 9:28, just in time for one of two interviews I had to conduct with the team for a couple open positions. Halfway through the first interview my power came back on and I was able to switch from my phone to my computer. I stayed busy all day between interviews, work, and bootcamp. I went to the gym and did my best, but emotionally I just wasn’t in it. After getting Dante, doing dinner, and getting Dante to bed — Kiko decided this was the perfect time to talk about budget. Really? I’m exhausted, need to get to bed and NOW you want to talk about how I don’t think we can afford to spend more money on rent/mortgage right now? So we have a long, painful talk where basically it’s reinforced that despite both of us working hard our entire lives, being very careful with money, etc. — we can’t afford more than we currently pay for rent. And honestly, if the expenses on groceries, electricity, and gas continue to trend as they have these past few months even that’s going to be a stretch. It’s just demoralizing. And more than my emotional scales can take. I went to bed on the verge of tears.

Today was better? Well perhaps I should say it was helpful. I had therapy today and the dam finally broke and I just got it all out. I realize my exhaustion is hyperbolizing my emotions right now and making me feel like our situation is forever, when in reality I’m working my ass off to get us to a better situation with this bootcamp. And even tough it has been less than I would like with my current instructor, I have never been so determined in my life. I’m not doing this on a whim or because I think it would be neat to code. I’m doing it because I HAVE to find a way to make a living wage, so that Dante can have a home in a school district that I will feel good sending him, that he will have the opportunities he needs to not be almost 40 and still struggling like I am.

Besides that – I did go into the office today and I was decently busy. I got some bootcamp done and I did go spend a little time with my brother and Zach. I’m in the office again tomorrow and I have a very busy day tomorrow. But I’m hoping I’ll still manage to make good bootcamp progress. Thankfully I’m not behind for the week so what I don’t accomplish tomorrow I can catch up on Thursday. Hoping to get some real sleep tonight, so that’s all I’ll say for now.

Wednesday

I’m still feeling super emotional but better? I did get to bed a little earlier yesterday, but I also woke up earlier (before my alarm) so I ended up still only getting 6 hours of sleep. Grr. I was in the office today and it went well – it was a busy, productive day. After work I went to my brothers, hung out a bit and worked on my bootcamp for today. I picked Dante up and he was playing with his teachers. When I came in he ran to me and said, “momma” which is HUGE. He’s said “momma” before but rarely directly at me. At home we did dinner, watched some tv, and then Kiko turned on music and we were all dancing for a bit. Then Kiko and Dante played while I cleaned up – finally got last load of laundry put away from this weekend. And I’m track to get to bed early tonight. About to get Dante to bed and then I’m on his heels!

Thursday

Today was much better. I FINALLY got 6.5 hours of sleep last night and I think that really helped. I had a busy but productive day. This morning when I dropped Dante off at daycare, I discovered a sign-up sheet on the door for his St. Patrick’s day picnic today that I had COMPLETELY missed. Oops! Only 1 parent had signed up too 🙁 They brought a platter of sandwiches for the kids and when I asked the teacher about it, she said that’s all she had so she wasn’t sure he was going to try and do the picnic. I told her “give me 30 minutes, I’ll get you what you need.” So I ran to Target and bought apple slices, watermelon chunks, blueberries, chips, and some St. Patrick’s Day cookies. There, now you have a picnic for 13 kids! I felt bad I had missed it, but I’m glad I caught it in time. At pickup Dante was in different clothes and very dirty – as in, he had a GREAT time and I was glad. Almost miss, but win!

I also met up with a couple friends today for a very late lunch (3pm) and had a nice time catching up. And then this evening after dinner and clean up, Dante and I had another dance party. It’s something he’s pulling me to do multiple times a week now and I really enjoy it. Nothing like his laughter and shaking his booty to cheer momma up. And I will not get everything I wanted to done tonight, but I’m going to bed anyway. I can’t keep living on no sleep. So, I will find a way to do less or be more productive or something!

Friday – Saturday

Friday was busy. I got another 6.5 hours sleep and was feeling much better. I had lots of meeting on Friday and it was probably about 3 before I had any time to work on my bootcamp work. And then I went and took a 5:15 spin class. As much as I love going to they gym, I’m going to be pausing my membership – I’m averaging 2 days a week (on a good week) and the membership is $160 a month. That’s too much for how little I’m managing to go – I didn’t mind it when I was averaging 5-6 classes each week. I’m going to pause it – one time fee of $35 – and start this membership for an at home Zumba program with an instructor I love. She has live streaming classes and also ones on record that you can pull up. I think if I could start working out in the middle of the day on my work from home days, I would be able to get more in – at my own schedule instead of at specific set class times; PLUS, her membership is only $30 a month. Much more affordable. So I have one more week on my current membership. I’m just hoping I won’t miss that group workout environment too much; I tend to struggle when I try to work out at home. But I have a great, supportive group with my nutrition program and I never really connected with anyone at my gym, so maybe I won’t miss it.  Oh almost forgot! I managed to get a Book Bonanza ticket on Friday. Yay!!! It’s in my metroplex so I was bummed to not have a ticket. I was going to come hang with everyone just the same, but now I get to come 🙂

Friday evening we did dinner and played, as usual. I did some coding work – trying to make some progress on our portfolio project. It’s slow going and we have just one week left. And then I lost myself in a book. Much needed and enjoyed. I still managed to get to bed an asleep by around 12/12:30. And since I didn’t wake up until almost 8, I got in a full 6 hrs 53 minutes of sleep!! Woot!

Saturday was breakfast for the family – Dante eggs and blueberries, Kiko’s usual pancakes and bacon, and I had my leftover sweet potato hash with poached eggs. Then I had bootcamp class and it went better than it’s gone so far. The instructor may finally be taking our feedback to heart (or knowing how to process it) and I actually felt like I understood a lot better this week. Maybe it’s also just starting to sink in? I plan on spending a lot of time tomorrow (well today/Sunday) working on the portfolio project, so fingers crossed. After bootcamp I spent some time with Dante playing and did my meal plan for the week. Then I took Dante for what’s becoming our standard Saturday afternoon walk to the park. We drive about 5 minutes away and park at this tennis court and then walk about 30 minutes to a really nice park. Dante is really comfortable with this park now and practically springs from the stroller to go running to the slides and he even climbed a ladder (with mom nervously holding on behind him lol) today. He did swings – his favorite – and we just ran around with me chasing him. It was a great time. On the walk back to the car (30 minutes or so), Dante kept dropping pieces of his clothes. 1 shoe. Another shoe. 1 sock. Another sock. His water bottle. I think if he weren’t strapped in, he would have started undressing more! LOL!

As soon as we got home, Dante climbed into his booster seat – I took that as a sign he was ready to eat. Kiko made him dinner real quick while I cleaned him up from the park (he was not happy to have to wait AND get clean). After he ate (I was not hungry – I really snacked the rest of the day), we put his clothes in the wash and then  I sat on the balcony, finishing up meal prep plans and grocery order and then doing some reading. Dante came out while I was working and played a bit and he also climbed into his swing. We just finished up putting away his laundry and got him to bed; I have one more load to put away… it might wait until tomorrow. I want to go to bed, but I also want it done. We’ll see. But today was a great day!

 

Blog News

Last week on Because Reading

• [14 Mar] Michelle’s Seasonal Reading List ~ Spring! #timetoread
• [15 Mar] Tell Me Something Tuesday: Getting Paid to Blog?
• [16 Mar] Silver Silence by Nalini Singh ★★★★
• [17 Mar] Magical Mojo by Kim Richardson ★★★½
• [18 Mar] Catch Me If You Can by Christina C. Jones ★★★½
• [19 Mar] Ocean Light by Nalini Singh ★★★★
• [20 Mar] Sunday Post with Berls | Week of March 13th 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 – 20 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. – So far so good! planning to get my posts for the week done today.
   2. Keep a blogging planner. – I’ve resumed this starting March and am doing great with it now that I have a better system.
   3. Visit & comment on 7 posts a week. I managed to visit blogs Monday – Thursday this week. Much better for me. Hoping to make the Sunday post rounds today.
   4. Reply to comments each week. Yep!!! Feeling great about how well I’ve done with this lately.
   5. Review books before starting a new book/on the same day -Not doing so hot on this. I was behind writing reviews and caught up… only now I haven’t written Ice Planet Barbarians or Tease reviews yet and have already started another audio book and print book. Whoops.
3. The Backlist Reader Challenge –  9/50 books
4. 2022 Audiobook Challenge –  24/75 books
5. 2022 Library Love Challenge –  6/24 books
6. 2022 Finishing the Series Challenge – My goal is 5 series. I’ve made progress on Mine by Cynthia Eden so far and also The Ivy Chronicles by Sophie Jordan.

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:

1. VVFP Breakfast, Lunch, Dinner – Did it! Technically Saturday I didn’t eat lunch or dinner.
2. Veggie pack snacks / snacks on plan – Did this everyday but Wed & Thursday
3. Step goal 6 days/ gym 2 days – did it.
4. 100 oz  + of water each day – did it
5. Sleep 6.5 hours each night – Did it on Wednesday, Thursday and Friday night.

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!)

Added to My Shelf

I’m trying to be more responsible about keeping track of the books I acquire, so I’m going to start sharing them again. If I share them here, surely I’ll remember to add them to Goodreads, right?

How was your week? What are you Reading?

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