Hi LaMa, I mistyped. I do allow my daughter to do video games, but she will fill up her spare time with them if I let her, so it's good to have creative projects for her for when I have to cook and clean and have some down time for myself in the summer. I do a couple of video games, too, during breaks in the day and have to watch that I don't do too much.
Hi Cate, J started making his own eggs and protein shakes for body building just recently. It was a scary process - caught him with the lid off the high speed blender stirring with a fork, and he ruined one fry pan, but has the hang of things now. I think it is part of him trying to be nicer to me, so I don't mind the kitchen being harder to clean from him attempting cooking. He also didn't get practical skills growing up - 4 kids and parents who didn't speak much English and didn't teach their kids Tagalog because back then people thought it would slow kids down to learn 2 languages (it does at first, but then they catch up and are multilingual - J loves languages, so he would have preferred that I am sure.)
I had a weird day yesterday. J took my daughter to get her hair bleached and dyed turquoise after music camp, and it took hours and hours that I spent mindlessly waiting. I hadn't planned anything for the afternoon, and was still tired out from vacation, so took it easy and puttered around the house and watched a Netflix series on a woman who goes back in time and becomes a healer in Ireland 200 years ago - I love people who love plants. I am finding it hard to adjust to the cool foggy summer here after Hawaii, plus I am bored and restless and want to be taking art classes or doing something intellectually stimulating. Even the patents I am working on are mechanically focused and don't require me to use my brain to figure out. So I overate and didn't stick to IF, but today is a new day and I took K to music camp and am at a cafe figuring out JavaScript graphics so my brain gets a workout. I do want to start learning to drum again, too - it requires muscle memory and not thinking and reminds me of figuring out how to meditate.
I also joined an online group of caregivers of dementia/Alzheimers. The weird thing is that the mood changes that people describe in their posts and lack of logical capabilities and inability to find the right words to express themselves have been lifelong problems for my mom, so it's hard to see where her basic personality and normal abilities end, and her new impairments begin. I did read a great Buddhist article on dealing with difficult people - basically imagining being them and seeing the world as they do and seeing how hard things would be if you were them. That helped a ton, because if I were a person with a hair-trigger temper and very little tolerance for change because I was not good at figuring out new situations, having my body and mind fall apart while still having enough insight to know that was happening would be horrible. But still reading how bad things can get with dementia really worries me and makes me feel restless and trapped. I am going to buy a book called The 36 Hour Day about how to get medical help and learn more about dementia because frankly I am pretty freaked out about it all. Sorry this is so long - I really needed to vent!
