This, my friends, is a grilled cheese sandwich with tomato dipping sauce. It’s got smoked gouda and multigrain bread with garlic salt, and the sauce has extra spicy paprika and Italian herbs in it. My 12-year-old made it for me. I guess tutoring online kids has its perks after all.

Mr. Robot finally found a suitable job–I think it officially starts in December but the offer has been made and accepted and he’s already starting the pages and pages of paperwork that always seems to come with a new job. This means we can loosen up our budget and relax for the holidays, and Robot can stop pretending he loves to smile and talk about himself.

It also means I can focus on the online school thing and preparing for the holidays without having to scramble for a job myself. This is good, because my son will almost certainly have to start online school in January, so next semester I’ll be tutoring two of my three kids. Tutoring him, I suspect, will be a lot different from tutoring my youngest. With her, it was problems with the school staff that forced us online. With him, he’s just so caught up in that restless emo phase so many of us go through that he’s about to flunk out of school if we don’t try something. I’m hoping that going online will give him an easier schedule, less distractions, and let me give him more hands-on help until he can get a handle on his feelings about everything. Of course, he could just as easily decide I’ve ruined his life putting him online and refuse any and all help we can offer. I guess we’ll see in January.

In the meantime, we’ve had mixed success in finding a rhythm that works for us. Youngest is pretty mellow company, which helps a lot. She works steadily through midday while I stay available to help, then when she’s done early enough we do grocery shopping and chores or hit the climbing gym or something else for a bit of fun. Online school is not ideal for either of us but we’re making it work pretty well. Making myself a schedule has helped me make real self care a priority and feel a bit more productive, but I’m still fighting that urge to push too hard and berate myself when I have to compromise or don’t have the energy to give things my best.

I’m still feeling so unbalanced, like I’m always braced for the next emergency. Part of me feels like I’m just not fit for parenthood or maybe even life in general, but it’s not like you can quit parenting or adulthood like you can with other jobs or projects. I just have to dig deep and find the energy to keep going.

Keeping up my spiritual practice helps, though my skeptic side still feels a bit weird about pouring so much energy into it. I even set an alarm last night so I could get up and watch the lunar eclipse and contemplate the stars. Santa Fe is very dark at night so we can stargaze right on our balcony. It’s one of the reasons we moved here. I don’t own anything that will take good eclipse photos; we just sat and watched the magic. I wish everything were as easy and peaceful as that.