Turning Right on Red: Atlanta, Fall 2019 retrospective

Hard to believe that the last time I posted was the beginning of the summer. Back then I had so many hopes and aspirations and the summer felt too short to do hardly anything at all. But I came back to a surprisingly different Decatur. It's been a much better year with much more enjoyable student and classes. Teaching has been fine this year although I don't know if it's changed my mind about teaching as a career.

Nevertheless, looking back at my previous post from June here are a few reactions off the bat:
*I was right about the names and numbers comment - Misha is here now and while he had a few easier earlier days, it's definitely been harder having a second child. You have to be incredibly selfless to be a good parent and at least while I am in this newborn black hole, I can't imagine having more children right now. Everyone is tired in the house.

*Summer - It was a lot of fun. We ended up (still) traveling quite a bit. I forgot (or maybe just never got around to it) about posting some photos and comments about our summer travels so I will retroactively do that with my next post.

*Russian - I did work on it some but not as much I would have liked. I was back on the Duolingo train but as I advanced I got more and more frustrated with the emphasis on exact spelling and long, random sentences that didn't seem like everyday conversation type phrases. I will keep working on my Russian during future vacations but will switch to Babel or perhaps something I pay for. I also definitely did not put in 15 min.-30 min./day.

*Reading - While I read the French book I needed to read for school and a few Atlantic magazines, I didn't even catch up on the latter. 1 hour a day from two summers back seems crazy with a toddler around and when Helena wasn't with me was when I wanted to go out, play golf, tennis, or hang with friends. I read a tiny amount but no progress on the Poison Wood Bible. I did start "How to Talk so Kids will Listen and Listen so Kids Will Talk" after visiting Tobin in San Fran. and slowly making my way through it. Helena is a very difficult age for following directions and cooperating with us so this has been a little bit helpful.

*Running - exercise in general has really fallen off the map. Walking the dog is nice, running is not so fun, and I barely do it at all now if I am being honest with myself. I would like do more but not sure when as I don't have a lot of downtime and it's not very enjoyable.

*T.V. - So there's a realistic goal and the explanation in some part, for why my reading has gone out the window from what it used to be. I watched the new, and disappointing, Black Mirror Season, and more recently finished True Detective Season #3 (slow but pretty good), and Atlanta Season #2 (good, but not as good as the first season).

*Helena time -did a fair number of activities on my wish list there so that was good. Helena continued getting into gymnastics and developing into an expert young climber and a very solid tricyclist now too. Languages have been a natural development of course and even though she mostly speaks in English, she definitely understands most French and Russian. It was fun going to Russian singing class a few weeks ago and weird. Still haven't gotten the hang of tennis yet, need to work on that some more as recently I've been hammering away with colors and not sure why it's been so hard for her to get that.

*House stuff- got through some but not all of the prep. work, so much more to do and now with two houses, ugh. It's been nice moving into a bigger, nicer house but it is honestly at times too big, even with our expanded family of 4. I think part of it might just be buyers' remorse.

*Therapy -This was a fail. I did the research and got some options to do some free trials but no one looked great and didn't know how to decide so didn't decide anything at all.

*2 ideas to research - another fail. Just couldn't find the time or maybe didn't prioritize it but it seems like I underestimated just how much time the house move would take. Every summer for the past few it seems like there's been some big purchase that occupies more of my time than I would have thought.

*School prep. - I did use some of the summer for it and I am glad I did. It's funny though how you can never do enough. Sooner or later you end up in the grind and it's once again a slog to get through all of my school work and still try to be present with my family, especially Helena now.

Overall I am doing ok, just tired so much of the time. I guess that's normal with a newborn and it's been interesting remembering everything from 2.5 years ago with Helena. It's surprising how quickly we forgot things. I guess that's why I have a blog, to remember more.

Signing off for now and until next time.
AK