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.

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. 

On 8/22/2022 at 5:52 PM, Aquarii said:

It sounds like things have been crazy over in your neck of the woods. Sounds like that pup is quite the handful.

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!

On 8/22/2022 at 5:52 PM, Aquarii said:

 

Adjusting to new sleep schedules/returning to school year sleep schedules is always rough. I hope that you will all be able to slip into a better routine soon. I know running on sleep deprivation just makes everything feel harder.

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. 

On 7/31/2022 at 8:33 AM, Cortavion said:

Jumping in to follow -- also a parent (of teens) and an olding man who enjoys growing blueberries and blackberries in the back yard. I'm not quite up to homesteading, but I might get enough to start making some wine...

 

All the best in the challenge!

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. 
 

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. 

I’ve been quiet, too quiet. 
 

We’ve been very busy with all the failing appliances and new flooring coming in. I’m installing some of the subfloor today; the plywood was delivered yesterday. Finger is still gonna lose the nail at some point but it’s finally calmed down.

We’re also still looking at houses we may want to buy. Up in the air on that; simultaneously really don’t want to move/buy in this market and yet also don’t want to have to go through the expense and hassle of remodeling enough for everyone to move in. 
 

This is basically an event following an event with an injury. I’m not excited about it right now, as everything is kinda happening at once. 1 car down, switching phone services, kids activities, work, bakery, impending deadlines, and we all have some cold so instead of finishing my day job before everyone gets up I’m sleeping RIGHT through my alarms. 

8 minutes ago, sarakingdom said:

Please bandage those fingers like q-tips immediately. My delicate eyes need protection from reading more of your digital mishaps.

Oh I absolutely have. Be assured that they’re only uncovered when I’m drying/soaking/reapplying antibiotic ointment to them! 

Laundromat was a bust; L’enfant didn’t wake up until 7. Instead I carried the piano outside to set on the curb. I can still lift it. My one finger is hurting a lot though. I keep hitting it. 
 

We’re gonna hit the laundromat today then.

So Bo Peep keeps calling the puppy Woody’s “Surface Dog.”  So that’s her name on here now lol. We filled our collapsible dog pool for her yesterday. As a golden doodle she is 1000% water dog. She got a much-needed bath yesterday in the pool, which she didn’t care for but she did enjoy being in the pool. As one does, she snubbed the towel and grass to dry off in favor of doing summersaults on the rocks and through the holly bushes. Sausage dog also got a bath, hated it, and appeared betrayed 😂. Mamma dog stayed inside as she’s currently pretty darned clean and it was really hot.  

So it’s a billion degrees out (108) and the younger kids all opted out of their eldest bro’s baseball game tonight. L’enfant is actually sleeping and I’m not entirely sure he isn’t down for the night. The others are downstairs in Tyne basement where it is cool. 
 

This nail keeps catching on stuff. Not hurting THAT much, mostly brief shocks but grossing me out.  I’m over it. Really sick of the whole situation. 
 

I was going to go up to the laundromat tonight but since L’enfant is sleeping I’m planning to take down the rest of the piano, clear that room, and prep it for the subfloor we gotta put down this week. The whole fridge thing torpedoed our plans to do it over this long weekend.  I hope the dumb nail thing doesn’t get in the way. If anyone has any tips on dealing with that crap let me know. I’ve had something of a complex since 2 childhood incidents, a 2-lb can of beans destroying my big toes nail and a giant splinter going under my nail to the knuckle requiring the nail to be shaved off, bad complicated by that scene at the end of Robocop where that bad guy falls into the toxic sludge and his nails are all pried up. Annoyingly, the worst nail now is the splinter nail. Bleck. Argh. Roar. Etc. 

The new fridge is here. It’s got almost 5 additional cubic feet of storage and is somehow also smaller than the other one? It’s nice to have a working fridge again. 
 

We’re also replacing our bed. The mattress is older than Woody. It’s still pretty comfortable compared to the bed I had when Jessie and I met-a 20-year old thing dead as a doornail- but it’s been time to replace this one as a main bed for quite some time. The base and everything will be going downstairs to the playroom, which we plan to morph into a crafting room after sorting, clearing, and organizing the toys. 

So Friday I smashed 2 fingers in the garage door. It really screwed up bowling. I bowled the last game lefty and got a 55, my worst game since hitting adulthood. Then I caught one of the nails, which is already dying, and it pried up. I’m ok pain wise, it’s sort of achy, but it freaks me out something fierce. It isn’t ready to

come off yet, sadly. 
 

The puppy is a joy and also a total baby. She’s perfect in temperament but she’s also a lot. I can’t wait for training to start. Woody loves her. 
 

Otherwise we’ve been reorganizing our rooms and getting rid of stuff. There is just too much. We also still have to put the plywood down for our flooring but before we do that I think we need to fix the bedrooms. Which won’t take that wrong to get decent. Then we can focus emptying and prepping the main floor. 

34 minutes ago, Ann of Owlshire said:

 

Amazing! You’re better traveled than I am, and I live here! 
 

I’ve been all over the US and a lot of places in North America. I’m thrilled to finally have added some of Europe to the list. Especially the stuff we saw! On the old Bucket List I checked off seeing the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, Versailles, a gondola ride with my Love in Venice, and seeing Pompeii. It was out of this world. 

34 minutes ago, Ann of Owlshire said:

 

 

Haha, yeah. I’m expecting a big fat punch of homesickness when we go to see old friends in Seattle in the coming days, but… I don’t think it’ll be enough to make me want to give up life in Merry Old England (despite the UK’s flaws - no place is a utopia, unfortunately). 

No place is perfect. Some places are less imperfect than others. Personally, I’d like to be in France or Canada. Paris is great.  The traffic is awful, though; I always thought I’d be more of a Lyon person to live. In any case, I'm the only French speaker in the house and that’d be super hard on the kids but the UK transition would be a lot easier on them. And Canada is also pretty great and closer still. But maybe also a little too close to the US for comfort in a situation like that?

Still, England or Scotland would be awesome. 
 

6 hours ago, Ann of Owlshire said:

Oooh! I missed it! Where did you go?

London, Paris, Venice, Rome, Pompeii, Sorento, Capri, and briefly to Naples. Then we flew home for a night, grabbed the kids, their grandmas, and flew to meet my parents, sister, and grandmas in Orange Beach, AL. It was incredible. I want to move to Europe more than ever. I could have stayed in London, Paris, or Venice. I’d move to the UK or France tomorrow.  Most of my posting last challenge was re: the trip. 

Then, as Jessie noted, spending the first half of June in countries with substantially better social nets, with attitudes generally far more geared towards taking care of the world and each other, and then returning to the US to immediately have major rights stripped away and a dozen others threatened is some major whiplash. And I’m with her in not wanting to live in and raise Bo Peep (or her brothers) in that kind of environment. She wants to move to the UK, and while I’m torn I’m also supportive. It’s more of a logistical challenge. I  wish I knew more about immigrating there, most of my focus has been Canada, Italy, and France. But we’d rather the kids not have to learn a second language just to function as well.  
 

Also had another personal blow, in that I found my Italian grandparents/great grandparents apparently all angrily renounced their citizenships about 100 years ago; if true it probably torpedoes my ability to obtain the Italian dual citizenship I’ve been pursuing. Which would at least get easier travel access to the EU even if not the UK. 
 

On 6/27/2022 at 12:10 PM, Ranger Hal said:

I'm glad you had a wonderful time!

Me too!

On 6/27/2022 at 12:10 PM, Ranger Hal said:

 

It's super awesome that you got the help you needed to keep things running while you were on your trip!

I’m quite grateful we did. 

On 6/27/2022 at 12:10 PM, Ranger Hal said:

 

FYI, it looks like somehow you managed to double-post your challenge.

Awesome!! 😂 it figures, we had bad reception and it timed out. I’ll delete one. 
 

It turns out that, apparently, most of the weight gain was from dehydration. Because we didn’t eat much differently at Orange Beach, certainly not on keto, but we did drink lots of water and instead of continuing to gain we shed a lot of fluid and are only up a few pounds respectively. Which is a pretty nice little boost. My most major complaint about Europe is the relative dearth of public restrooms, which made it really hard to drink adequate amounts of water while on tour. But it wouldn’t be much of a problem living there as far as I can tell. 
 

We picked up service pup On the way home from the airport. The Daschund is crabby (kinda scared of the bigger pup with 3-month-old energy) but momma dog instantly took to her. Woody has been hanging with her a lot, and I think the responsibility of hanging with her and training her will also be very good for him. 
 

I am pretty tired. Our airport was a good ways away from the main condo and we had to stay a couple extra days. The second condo we stayed at wasn’t great. I don’t really like any of the sky rise condos at all. But I was up late Sunday night packing. We made our flight and made it home. I slept reasonable well but the new Pokémon was up with the rest of the doggos at 4:30 sharp ready to go potty again. I normally get up then anyway but I was gonna take a couple extra hours just because I’m so tired from travel. 
 

We’re crashing back into keto. I’m looking forward to getting back in since my joints are starting to bother me again. This week we have to get both our washer and refrigerator fixed and I’m not terribly excited about that. 
 

We bought Rex a kid’s guide to French and he’s been studying it ever since we got back. I’m super excited to have someone to speak French out loud with at home and, even better, to hear him using it in everyday interactions. I bring it up partly because just heard him say “C’est bonne” to Woody while they were playing Minecraft together. 
 

I think I’m going to put more effort into learning Italian. It was actually a little shocking how little of it I understood and it’s the one real family language. Also, my grandma is actually interested in me learning in now  as opposed to 25 years ago when I first wanted to. Plus, it’s pretty, Jessie is interested, and our friend and guide speaks it. 
 

Woody had his first baseball game tonight. They won pretty hard, like 16-6. He has a batting average of 1000 across 3 at-bats and sprinted faster than I’ve ever seen him run. The Pokémon went with us as did momma dog and they were both fantastic. I mean, momma dog is amazing anywhere we take her which is why she always goes to kids sports stuff. Our Daschund stayed home because apparently his collar is missing? Gotta check with Marinara on that. He’s also rude with the barking. 
 

In any case, I’m getting L’enfant to sleep then going to my downstairs office for a late work night.  But it’s been a pretty good day altogether.