Got caught up with the day job yesterday and once I punched the proverbial clock for the day I immediately pivoted to dinner/Daphne time until 9pm. After which I was way too tired to sit down and write.

So, what’s going on…

Daph is still doing well-ish at school. We did have another bite incident on a teacher-aide last week, which makes 3 on the year so far, I think? Obviously this isn’t great, but we’re doing what we can there. I will say that the whole mainstreaming experiment will come to a screeching halt the moment she bites/hurts another child at school, though. We’re hoping against hope that will never be the case.

She also bit Jen’s phone, breaking yet another screen. Unfortunately the phone was new, but not new enough, to be covered under AppleCare. So we’d be looking at shelling out over $1,200 to pay off the old phone and pay for the new, non-cracked one. That ain’t happening. At least not right now.
And yes, words cannot adequately convey my frustration there.
We’ve already spent somewhere in the vicinity of $3,500 on various Apple products this year…all but one of which (my replacement phone after having my old one for 6 years) was due to Daphne biting them and cracking the glass.

There’s also been talk of layoffs at my day job due to some corporate maneuverings. I don’t think I’m necessarily at risk (I don’t think), but that kind of thing sets me right on edge. The acquisition & aggressive closure of my family’s company was a pretty traumatic event in my life, and the specter of it still haunts me when these things arise. Also this will mark the 3rd time since then that the company I’ve worked for has been acquired, so it’s not getting any easier.

I’m remedying this anxiety as best I can by taking daily walks around the farm and just trying to be present and thankful for what I have in the moment.

But it does have me on edge, sullen, and quicker to anger than I might be otherwise. And there’s always a price to be paid on the other side of stress…

Okay, in more pleasant news, there’s certainly a weekend in the hopper.

The plan right now is the board game group meet-up on Saturday night (it’s already been a month since the last one!), then Jen and I are going to test out a babysitter for the first time with Daphne on Sunday afternoon. The two of them are already acquainted through school, so everyone knows what it is they’re getting into here. She’s going to come over for a couple hours while Jen and I step away for rare non-parent time and, if it works out, we’ll try to do that once-a-month or so.
We’ve also been invited to a snowbird going-away party on Sunday. A couple folks from the aforementioned gaming group are heading down to Florida for the winter, so our plan is to drop in Sunday evening and say hi/goodbye.

Speaking of goodbye, I need to get back to it.

See you next week.

j.s.