Yesterday was hard. I don't know why. I just hit a wall. I felt like all I did was usher small, resistant people from one activity to the next, interspersed with nearly constant bouts of cleaning and tidying. A week and a half ago, we were isolating with another family -- seeing them out at parks and such, never inside -- and now they have up and moved to New Zealand. I've realized she was really my closest friend here. And her kids are my kids' ages. So it's a big loss. And it feels like the rest of my friend community has evaporated somehow. And I really, really want to be working right ..read more

I'm not sure I'm really "supposed" to be sharing a conflicts here but since I'm pretty sure no one is reading -- my own fault for never posting -- so I'm breaking the rules. Sergio, bless his tender heart, has offered that he wants to be "indispensable" to me. But last week we had a big conflict, and one of the issues he raised is that he felt taken for granted. And I don't want to place all the blame on him, because I can totally see where he was coming from. But... I find this concept super confusing as an SMC. In one of the examples he listed, he came over -- earlier than I expected, t ..read more

A few months ago, my therapist (started that a few months ago, too) suggested I consider opening my heart again. It sounded like a terrible idea. Life as a single person who wasn't looking and was, in fact, pretty adamantly opposed to romantic connection sounded safe. I almost never get hurt when I am single. And I was just recovering from a bout of social anxiety and depression triggered by a supplement my naturopath had suggested. (I'm really not a naturopath person, but she's an excellent clinician and there's a huge lack of them in Mexico.) But my ex-girlfriend from college was planning ..read more

I am nearing the end of my four-month course to become a pediatric sleep consultant and I'm so excited! I'm studying with the Family Sleep Institute and it's no small project to get certified. But it's so exciting to be learning something new, complementary but different than what I used to do, after thirteen years in my old job as a school based pediatric nurse practitioner. It also feels very strange to be a newbie again. I have to do three case studies, helping families with children of varying ages. But I ended up accepting four families so that I could get as much experience as I could ..read more

April was great! The girls had two weeks of spring break. On Thursday of the first week, we took the fancy first class bus ($20 for me, $10 for each of the girls) to Mexico City, about a four-hour ride. The first class buses here are so much nicer than the Greyhounds back home -- the seats are huge and lean way back and the leg area lifts up. Super comfy! Our dear friends from Brooklyn, Emily and Annabelle, who lived a floor below us for as long as my girls can remember, met us in Mexico City the next day. We had such a great time! I love Mexico City. It has more history than any other city ..read more

About a month ago, I went to Mexico City to see a good friend of mine, J, who is also an ex-girlfriend from college. Last time I saw her, perhaps two years prior, she had just left her marriage of seventeen years. She had felt distant and emotionally detached in the all the years of marriage and I was shocked to feel all my feelings for her come flooding back at that last visit. But given how recent the break-up was, and how raw she described herself as feeling -- despite her seeming more like herself than she had been in many years -- I didn't dare breathe a word of my feelings to her. I avoi ..read more