Sciread77

Finally getting a challenge up. 4 kids, bajillion pets, job, bakery, also trying to maintain health. Mostly I’m exhausted. We’re exhausted. I both know we need rest and can’t find a way to slow down. Mentally I’m in a pretty good place, all things considered. Kids are doing well.

I sit here taking a short break before bed. I had deliveries today as well as samples for potential wholesale customers. Oh. A week ago I catered lunch to the kids’ school and well over half the humans in the building ordered from us. Between that and adding pretzel dogs to wholesale I’ve been just flying through them. Tomorrow is gonna be rough. I’m already doing work for 3 and my backup for 3, and she’s backing up someone else meaning I’ll be doing 7 peoples jobs tomorrow. Plus watching L’enfant in the morning. Plus making a boatload of baked goods, serving retail customers, and making more deliveries. I had a small surprise project to add plywood to 4 little scooters from Home Depot to make them useful for some Homecoming event for Jessie’s school too. I’m really looking forward to bed tomorrow night! The Pokémon continues to grow and is officially our biggest dog. She’s not far off the size of the “big” goldendoodle across the street and just turned 6 months. She’s a sweet, snuggly dog who is also smart and has an absolutely insatiable appetite (compared to the adult dogs). She snuggles the boys to sleep. She calms Woody and Rex both. Super huge win. The bakery is going good. The rate is good but it can’t stop. There’s a lot of damage to make up for from the summer which should have been a season of major growth. Le sigh 😂 Now, though, I’m off to bed.

Greetings, and welcome to all! (I made it, barely). I’m a married parent of 4 kids aged 1-9. We own a small business, are building a house, and otherwise are quite busy. I’m ultimately an adventurer at heart, though I train similar to a lot of Rangers (and I’m something of a Druid Paladin which is also something of an equivalent to a Ranger). I love hiking, exploring, traveling, and other fun things with the family. Since shortly before joining Nerdfitness, my physical training is typically built around injury rehabilitation (which happens a bit more often due to autoimmune arthritis) and training to be able to travel, explore, and play with my family. I have a pretty effective Disney World training system, and try to ensure that at any point I’m strong enough to carry my whole family somewhere. That has become more difficult as the years go on but I can still do it for the most part. I am also an enthusiastic suburban homesteader bent on establishing an orchard and vegetable garden, so things can get pretty out-doorsy depending on my goals. My needs mean I do a variety of types of training, and my earliest two physical training goals were “run fast” and “be able to competitively play any sport I come across.” I prefer to avoid gyms and do a lot of body weight training. When I do lift weights it is at the YMCA or, more commonly, takes the form of children, sandbags, or logs. The bakery kept running while we were gone but unfortunately the manager was less than scrupulous and left us in a pretty bad way, so we’re back to running it with part time help and straining hard to bounce back. It’s particularly important because we gotta build it big enough to fully support us full time and here we are having just celebrated a year in and we’re not in track. Fortunately, we have someone whose entire job is sales call legwork. Goals: 1. Sleep. As best as possible. This is critical to managing my emotions as well as general health and quality of life. 2. Race training? This includes calisthenics, the race plan training, and loaded carries. Jessie is still hurt and we’re also exhausted with the start of school. That said, I had a pretty cool and unexpected experience lately- my forearms have stretch marks and are almost an inch bigger than they were. 3. Take one concrete step forward per day- at least one tangible, visible thing to make life better. This ranges from things as small as “dig out the replacement toaster” to as big as “reorganize the playroom.” I don’t have to complete the bigger ones as long as I make progress. -> Especially important since we’re moving in a year. 4. Take one concrete step forward per day career-wise. I need my job but I’m not satisfied in it and otherwise need a change. I need to hone/adapt skills and look for other opportunities. -> This still involves dramatically expanding bakery sales, and potentially moving into another remote job. 5. Home and Garden. Home is better than it was in a lot of ways. The basement is still awful and there’s a ton of stuff to do. I haven’t been in the garden in a significant way for 2 months and that’s sad. 6. Therapy. I have a new(er) diagnoses and new(er) medication that have been, it feels, pretty life changing. I finished intensive therapy that was also insanely helpful prior to that and I am continuing with less frequent sessions. My goal is to better learn how to manage ADHD and how to be a more connected, present, and supportive husband and father. I think I have been progressing well. I feel healthy. I am excited about how this has gone. I am working in anger and in particular not reflecting emotions. Sleep helps. So does therapy. The last 3 bakery days have been great. We catered a lunch at the kids’ school and it was almost twice the demand expected, and since my last post we’ve added 4 more wholesale customers and roughly doubled daily retail. Gotta keep expanding at this rate or greater.

The Pokémon is 4 1/2 lbs heavier. Probably more now lol. Rex has strep and we’re all tired even after a weekend of solid rest. Hopefully that doesn’t mean the rest of us have strep too. Inside is decorated for Halloween. We’ve also spent a lot of time playing Mario Party and the Overcooked games, too.

The Pokémon had her puppy doctor appointment Thursday where I received some unexpected, exciting, unsettling news. She’s a first Gen golden doodle. We expected she’d be, probably, around 60-80 lbs full grown. According to the vet, however, based on her current growth rate she’s going to be at 85-110 lbs and quite probably closer to 110 lbs. 0_o. She’s already as tall and long as Mama Dog and I plugged her age and weight into a golden doodle calculator. She’s gonna be a big girl.

She is and she isn’t. I mean, she’s a baby. She’ll get to the point where she sleeps through the night. And she’s getting better about potty training. She’s very smart and good natured, and listens well too. Still, I’ll be glad when she’s fully housebroken and sleeps all night long! It is getting better I think. Last night was the first night in a while that I didn’t feel just ridiculously sleepy before bed. I actually put away about 3 baskets of laundry! With the manager gone though, the bakery is a bit more of a handful. We’re also working to post regularly and drive in new business; it had slowed to a crawl whilst we were away for a variety of reasons and we really need to bump it back up. Fortunately, regular marketing really seems to be working. I just hope we can continue to grow retail business in multiples. Woody is doing MUCH better this year already.

The Pokémon is really doing well. The kids started school this week. Jessie’s been at school in meetings all week. Sleep has been difficult. We’re organizing the schedule for the school year, which is good, but we’ve also had trouble getting everyone to bed on time. There’s a lot of living beings in this house, (6 humans, 3 cats, 3 dogs, 2 hamsters, and a bearded dragon) which isn’t small but it’s a lot smaller when you include the pets and the fact that 3 of those 14 still have regular trouble going to sleep. In that regard I look forward to moving. Physically, I’m ok. I’m back to full time at the bakery with the manager gone which is better for my body but I’m striving to catch up on sleep. Over the summer I stopped getting up at 4 most days and chose instead to sleep another couple hours, but at best was maintaining hours of sleep. Now I need to be up early and keep just straight up sleeping through alarms. It doesn’t help that we also got colds and are just getting over them. The Pokémon made a massive mess downstairs. She got in the trash and ate a diaper, having ridiculous grossness herself caused by it. I have somewhere between 4 and 8 hours of heavy cleaning to do in mitigation and it isn’t optional. Poor baby. But also I wish she’d stayed out of the trash. Otherwise, home is slowly improving. We got rid of A LOT of stuff over the summer with even more to go still. It’s been hard to do my physical training other than everyday carrying of heavy stuff. I’ve been so tired I usually skip it and nap if I get the option. I have been getting back into push-ups and other relatively easy stuff. But not going too hard because my body is too tired to recover quickly. Rex is doing pretty well with the new baby Guinea pig. I’m excited about that. He also started reading a new book series. Careerwise, I also have been interviewing again. And I really enjoy being here at the bakery all day, too. I think I’ve been doing fairly well as far as therapy goes. I’ve been a lot less angry lately, and feeling more connected. I think it helps knowing that work stuff is more settled instead of up in the air.

1. Congrats on the promotion 2. Enting is getting so big!!

Tomorrow is the Pokemon’s first day of full-fledged service training. It’s a very exciting time. She’s calming down with 2 structured walks a day and 15-30 minutes of training. Which is about what is expected. Tonight was kinda stressful at first but it came together.

So the skinny pig’s funeral went well. We’re also dealing with a hyperactive service dog in training; while the kids were gone last week we worked with her maybe 10-15 minutes a day vs and hour and didn’t play with her so much, and we were gone a lot. She’s 4 months old. So she’s been waking up and trying to get anyone to play all night long. Last night was… less bad. We took her on a 30 minute walk today that was awful in the murderous heat, in part because of course she melted and shut down a bit more than halfway through. Still, it’s good that she has been virtually asleep the whole day. We’re planning another walk like that tonight. We brought home a New Guinea pig as a companion to our other one today and he seems to be doing ok. The previous one is still mourning the loss of his brother. His sad noises when I showed him the body were heartbreaking and he hasn’t made a happy noise since. We have a special event at the bakery tonight along with our friends, the owners of the other businesses on the strip. I’m excited for it. Jessie already took the kids out to a school thing in the heat and I super washed the Guinea habitat and the puppy kennel. Woody ate too close to bed and threw it up about an hour into the night so I cleaned that too. The only thing I’m not excited for is this terrible heat. I am also excited to move into the next phase for the bakery. As well as to potentially see Marinara for an actual social activity rather than just over business. I’m finding that’s the worst drawback of going into business with friends; when you’re trading off business responsibility and leaves you like ships passing in the night; dude is my best friend and one of Jessie’s best longtime friends, and Woody’s godfather. But we’ve barely seen each other socially for 10 months.

In other news, Rex’s skinny pig (mostly hairless Guinea pig) died unexpectedly yesterday. He got some GI thing and had an ER appointment at 9 pm, and was ok but then threw up and aspirated on the way there. Died in my 7-year-old’s arms and he’s absolutely devastated. This is my sweet, thoughtful animal lover (farmer, Goat Jesus, lover of orchards and dragons and dinosaurs) who found the bunnies when they died in 2019. We held a funeral and I’m gonna hollow out a small stump for a crypt that will travel with us. The bunnies are buried under the Crapemyrtle.

Thanks! Things took a turn. My cherry tree isn’t great and disease hit most of the berries while we were gone. Still, love it. Also finally gonna update the initial challenge now 😂

*****Finally UPDATED***** Greetings, and welcome to all! I’m a married parent of 4 kids aged 1-9. The last 3 weeks have been a long-anticipated pair of events, and the second I officially over tomorrow. I have gained at least 10 lbs (probably 15 or more) and it’s a bit uncomfortable. But I also didn’t want to travel Europe without partaking in the food and beverages. I’m ultimately an adventurer at heart, though I train similar to a lot of Rangers (and I’m something of a Druid Paladin which is also something of an equivalent to a Ranger). I love hiking, exploring, traveling, and other fun things with the family. Since shortly before joining Nerdfitness, my physical training is typically built around injury rehabilitation (which happens a bit more often due to autoimmune arthritis) and training to be able to travel, explore, and play with my family. I have a pretty effective Disney World training system, and try to ensure that at any point I’m strong enough to carry my whole family somewhere. That has become more difficult as the years go on but I can still do it for the most part. I am also an enthusiastic suburban homesteader bent on establishing an orchard and vegetable garden, so things can get pretty out-doorsy depending on my goals. My needs mean I do a variety of types of training, and my earliest two physical training goals were “run fast” and “be able to competitively play any sport I come across.” I prefer to avoid gyms and do a lot of body weight training. When I do lift weights it is at the YMCA or, more commonly, takes the form of children, sandbags, or logs. We’re training for one of the Disney races as a family. Though it’s mostly on hold due to a hip injury Jessie had. The last 2 events (travel) were pretty helpful in my training; I’ve been performing heavy carries to ensure I could carry luggage and children long distances and times, and frankly it was well worth all the effort. Homesteading is in full swing. Our tomatoes and berries are going crazy. I’m a bit sad I haven’t been home for most of it but Marinara and the neighbors have been ensuring none are going to waste. Healthwise, we’ve been living the keto lifestyle for most of the year and we’ve found it to be incredibly easy to stick to 99% of the time, meaning we’re seeing more success and I’m burning less willpower on food-related stuff. I am currently quite above past my arbitrary goal weight, and while I don’t much care about that I do care about my joints as well as how my clothes fit. The trip to Europe in particular was really good for me mentally, and I think for Jessie as well. We travel well together and I really enjoyed having the new experiences together. The bakery kept running while we were gone but unfortunately during that time and the immediate aftermath in which half our appliances died a lot of things went sideways. We’re stepping in to fix it. Goals: 1. Sleep. As best as possible. This is critical to managing my emotions as well as general health and quality of life. I am in a far better position now than at the beginning of the last challenge. 2. Race training? This includes calisthenics, the race plan training, and loaded carries. Jessie is still hurt and after 8 months got into a new GP, who prescribed physical therapy that can’t start for a month. 3. Take one concrete step forward per day- at least one tangible, visible thing to make life better. This ranges from things as small as “dig out the replacement toaster” to as big as “reorganize the playroom.” I don’t have to complete the bigger ones as long as I make progress. -> Especially important since we’re moving in a year. 4. Take one concrete step forward per day career-wise. I need my job but I’m not satisfied in it and otherwise need a change. I need to hone/adapt skills and look for other opportunities. -> This now involves expanding bakery sales, and potentially moving into another remote job. 5. Home and Garden. Home is a lot better. Most stuff is fixed though the washer, while functional, also leaks meaning the last fix wasn’t a complete one. 6. Therapy. I have a new(er) diagnoses and new(er) medication that have been, it feels, pretty life changing. I finished intensive therapy that was also insanely helpful prior to that and I am continuing with less frequent sessions. My goal is to better learn how to manage ADHD and how to be a more connected, present, and supportive husband and father. I think I have been progressing well. I feel healthy. I am excited about how this has gone. I am working on anger management and taking a page from the book of Mr. Fred Rogers. I had no idea that he struggled with a strong and volatile temper. He never wanted to be remembered as a saint because he didn’t want his example to be unachievable but I do think he is probably the best person who ever lived a full life. I will be looking to him as an example and we’ve decided to introduce the show as a regular part of our kids’ lives. Gods know it’s as helpful to me as it is to them. And I’m adding care of words as well to this goal for things don’t have to be yelled to hurt.

They finished the floors and we left to sign paperwork to build a house.

New floors are installed! They look great and are waaaay easier to clean. Time to move.