- I interviewed for a job last week. I didn’t get it. This is basically fine, childcare hassles yada yada, but every failure finds an interesting new corner of my self-esteem to take a bite out of, and this one hurt in ways I wasn’t expecting. I’m not at all sure why I’m feeling so vulnerable right now, but there it is. Sucks. I had a whole 5 things written up about just how much it sucks, before I got over myself.
- Everything else aside, it really does kind of suck being unable to put my strongest skills to good use. I’m a so-so designer and a subpar hausfrau, but a solid gold editor. Too bad nobody gets to see that, these days. It used to be nice, being useful.
- A couple of people said nice things to me on Twitter yesterday when I was feeling sucky, and I still felt sucky, but it really helped. Sometimes the support of relative strangers means more than that of your best friends, because they’re not just being loyal, or biased; those compliments must really be based on something. Aw. That’s… really nice. (Also: Twitter is weird, because you can chat a lot with people who have no reason to know who you are, actually. It’s quite cool realising that they know you more than you maybe thought.)
- Got out and took a walk on the local hills on Saturday. (Well, I say hills. But turns out from the top, we were looking down on the Üetliberg. Views right over Lake Zurich and Alps everywhere. Apparently we’re higher than we think!) Perfect autumn day; beautiful spot. Hideously whiny kids. How is it that other parents take small kids on walks and everyone apparently enjoys it? What are we doing wrong? See, I’m not even a good mommy. The evidence is compelling.
- School holidays (starting today) don’t stress me out as much as they used to. I can even enjoy some aspects, like skipping the school morning hustle. This is partly because the kids are big enough to not need constant entertainment, and partly because they’re big enough to have stuff scheduled (whether playdates or day camps or whatever). As of next year, I’ll even be able to schedule some day camp stuff for both of them together! It’s such a big improvement. I’ll still be happy when term starts again, but: this is quite nice too.
No 37 of #52recipes: pear and almond tart, although mine didn’t look anything like that (squishy pears, whatchagonnado). Using bought almond filling, not made from scratch, because I did not have two hours but I did have a pack of filling. One day I will learn to Plan Ahead and Read the Recipe in Advance, but this was not that day.
Woolly thoughts (and fuzzy logic) 
Nope, their children whine too. Guaranteed. They just waited until you were out of earshot. We went to a Mango Groove concert last year and A was so awful I ended up in tears. So if you’re a bad mom, then so are we all. Pass the gin. – Tracy
Thank FSM. I mean, I’m so sorry about your awful experience, but phew. And bottoms up!
(Mango Groove was my first ever concert, btw…)
Agreed that it’s the children’s nature and not anything to do with your parenting. Kids are stinkers!!!!! Also, school holidays already? Whew! We only get friday off for “fall break”, which if you ask me, one day off doesn’t really make it a break… but oh well.
One day is totally not a break! But your summer holiday is much longer than ours, I think. We have five holidays through the year (!), each one two weeks long, except five weeks in summer.
Oh lord, I cannot do anything no matter how nice with K1 without her falling apart at some point because it’s all too awful.