Update.

Ack! Sorry, it’s been a while. I was losing it for a bit there, esp at the end of last week (enough for Jeremy to take a look at me and ask if I needed to go back on antidepressants and/or therapy), but I’ve mostly re-righted myself. I feel good and even and well rested. I needed to back off on all the things, working at the hospital, working at work, worrying about college for Vince (<- this is the big one). Vince and I were in a terrible cycle where I was nagging him too much and he was getting despondent and we were upset at each other.

Mid-last week, Vince got a few applications in (Pitt, UMinn, Calpoly SLO & Calpoly-Pomona) and it was so painful for me to get Vince to do these things that Jeremy unilaterally took over starting on Friday and basically forbade me from looking at any college websites. I actually do not want, at all, to be involved in Vince’s college application experience, I think he should do all of it, but he does need some help and guidance and if I’m helping, I can get obsessed and too invested. I want to be only his mother where I give hugs/support/snacks/youtube video breaks and not his educational consultant where I tell him how to spin his extracurricular activities and estimate the odds of him getting into various engineering programs. I’m very good at applying to college and much less good at being a patient mother, but the priorities are such that I need to lean into my unnatural tendencies. Jeremy spent the weekend (I know that already a week has passed) coaxing Vince to write essays and looking over applications for completion and he fell into bed on those days (Sat & Sun) exhausted. I happily spent the weekend shopping for pants (what are the Levi’s 501 version of pants for girls? I just want to buy one type of pants forever and ever. None of this changing fashion stuff.) and eating hamburgers (twice) and thinking about becoming a vegetarian (after this very last hamburger) and generally staying out of the house. I’m happy Jeremy took over as then he realized how much work goes into each application and then he was more sympathetic to why the heck I was going crazy. I’m mainly going crazy because Vince is not doing college in any way shape or form the way I would do college. He wants to hand things in on the last day. He’s not willing to slave over wording on essays. I freak out because OMG, what happens if the web site crashes on the last day and you can’t submit it and I would have written all my essays in the summer. But you know, I wouldn’t have done high school the way he did high school. I think he had way more fun than I did. Fun is worth something, right? I think I’m incapable of having fun.

I think over the past week, I’ve slid into the other side. It’s always a fine balance. Now I’m bored. What to do? Learn spanish? Read Middlemarch? Learn to rock climb? Ping pong? Cooking? My motivation is low. It’s dark early. I want to just snuggle in my bed. I need a dog that snuggles with me. Maxi is no good for that purpose. I subscribed to the NYTimes cooking app and cooked a dinner for the family this week. Today I bought semolina flour and cardamom pods for an almond cake this weekend. Now Jeremy is giving me the side-eye. He knows when I start venturing into cooking meals for the family, I’m not busy enough.