Life upheaval continues.
As I explained in the last post, I decided to run for local political office. The past week has been about filling out the paperwork. (Yes, MORE paperwork!)
To get on the ballot, I got 15 signatures over the weekend. The forms will get notarized tomorrow and hand delivered to the county office building. I had to get a new bank account, loan myself some campaign money, and then register all the money stuff with the money people at the state level. I’m paying very close attention to all the election laws, because I would rather avoid a George Santos situation.
I set up a campaign Facebook page and newsletter. I need headshots. I have to dust off my office clothes and buy some new items. I’m designing flyers and door hangers. I’m setting up campaign Venmo and PayPal accounts.
At the same that my evenings have gotten booked up with meetings and gatherings, Steve’s remote work life is ending. He has to be in New York City four days a week, with plans for a full return by this fall. So, there’s nobody at home to make dinner for the family or take Ian to his evening therapy sessions. We’ll come up with some new routines. Once the state funding actually begins, I’ll hire people to help us out. Other people do this, so we’ll figure it out, too.
Ian, Steve, and I will be gone for 12 days in Rome, Florence, the country side, and Venice. I hear that traveling is crazy right now, so I’m going to buy all our museum tickets later this afternoon.
Ian’s been having lots of medical/medication issues. I took him out of school for a week until we get him healthy again. Lots of phone calls to doctors and the school.
We’ve been so busy that I’m starting to fantasize about sitting in a hotel room away from everyone. Except for Steve. He can come, but nobody else. Italy will be fun, but it’s not going to be relaxing.
Once I finish off this crazy week, things should be cool. We should have a very quiet Memorial Day weekend, and I’m going to be militant about guarding that precious free time.
Apt. 11d 
As always, feel free to ignore my unsolicited advice…
But, while I know you are a magnificent cook, it is possible to sign up for a personal chef service. In this stressful time, if it works for you, it could make things much easier. There are meal services that can create medically tailored meals.
Admittedly, I have tried to encourage my parents to do this, in part because their diet is uniquely horrible. I think if they didn’t go out to dinner, they’d either starve to death or end up embalmed in their meals’ salt content.
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I too have that fantasy about the hotel room, and, my life is neither busy nor packed with responsibility. I want to do it sometime because I believe that the experience probably won’t live up to the fantasy I have in my head, because I will still be there.
I think I’m imagining some kind of solitary meditative experience, but all I would get would be that hotels really are less cluttered than my house. My brain would stay just as cluttered.
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Positive vibes for dealing with the clutter of health and school and politics and hope the Italy trip includes good food, adventures and experiences, and, yes, some relaxing!
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Bwahaha, I just had 2 nights in a hotel room all by myself. Went to NY to do mom-related stuff for 2 days and decided on a hotel instead of her couch. I watched Sunday night’s Succession on a smallish hotel room tv, while texting with my husband, who was most thrilled about (MaJoR SpOiLEr!!) Greg riding a Citibike.
Good luck on the foray into politics. I’d vote for you.
Jealous about your Italy trip. The stars didn’t align for us this year, but everything with my mom is so uncertain anyway.
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I’m doing about a week in a hotel room by myself in England in August.
I’m going to have busy, social days (seeing an old friend and my cousin and her large family and doing the sights), nights by myself, and no household responsibilities. I’ve done 2-3 nights of this sort of thing before, but I don’t think I’ve ever done a full week.
Crud, I just realized that I haven’t figured out laundry yet.
This is the first time I’ve left the North American continent since 1999.
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Ooh, you’ll have to report back.
I realized I’ve done this at conferences occasionally, but they are not the same, exactly. The last time, a failure was that the hotel (a resort style) had nothing walkable and I didn’t have a car and so any time I had alone wasn’t fun (and, of course, I was working).
I am seriously looking at workshops, right now, on flowers, but maybe art and photography later on as the kind of travel I would enjoy.
(I usually plan without laundry for 1 week, but need access for longer than that)
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“I just realized that I haven’t figured out laundry yet.”
When we went to London for a week last summer, we didn’t do laundry. Always overpack underwear and underpack overwear (pants/shirts/dresses etc). 2 pairs of shoes: 1 sandals, 1 more sturdy shoe (I also tend to wear my heavier clothes/shoes on the plane). I wore a lot of casual dresses last summer, fwiw. In fact, I noticed that a lot of women wore dresses and sneakers in Austria and Czechia. When we do a longer trip, I sometimes build in a rest/laundry day. In a jam, you can get small laundry sheets or tablets for washing in the sink.
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Traveling with friends is a thing in my mom cohort. Many have coordinate hiking trips, training to do stronger hikes. Hiking became a big social activity during the pandemic (which coincided with the children im the cohort being older), extending on the history of pacific northwest hikers/climber groups.
Others have travelled with friends to Europe, to vacation homes, etc. But, I’ve realized that I like solo activities (shopping, traveling, photography) where I don’t have to coordinate with others and get to engage in brownian motion with a gradient based on only my interests.
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I am reading Yglesias on education reform from the 90s: his most recent #5 post about teacher evaluation and tying it to pay and the analysis of effectiveness.
I know that Laura was in the thick of some of those ideas in their heyday and am very interested into the jump into applied political science in the form of running for elected office with goals in mind.
Yglesias’s view is that the coalition and ideas behind education reform, which he saw then as a coalition looking for reform not to end public education, but to improve it is largely dead. I followed the ideas then with a skeptical eye, but not the politics. Reading Yglesias, who was a supporter, doing a post-mortem is very interesting to me, and I wish we saw that kind of analysis on other complex policy questions. I do feel like he is being a wonk and as unbiased as one can be (though there is always some bias).
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I’ve been following his series on schools, too. But need to
start from the beginning and reread it all.
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