It started out as a strange week. It's only gotten stranger. We started on Sunday with a birthday. That, at least, was expected.
Then Monday the boys had a half-day at school and David and I had whole days at school. It was "Back to School" day. So for all of us, it wasn't a usual Monday at all.
Monday night it started to rain and at the same time cool down. The temperature difference between Monday and Tuesday was 10 degrees. 32 degrees C on Monday, 22 yesterday.
Monday night we also had a bit of a medical crisis with one of our boys. David ended up taking him to the Japanese version of the ER (which required more than half an hour of ringing around to find on a public holiday). Thankfully it was quickly solved, but it was stressful at the time. And we only got about five hours sleep that night.
Yesterday David and I floated through our wedding anniversary, neither of us are fantastic with sleep-loss. Our son slept in till 10.30a.m., and got to school by lunch time. So my day wasn't as I expected it to be either.
Then this morning we received an email from school before 6.30am saying that school was cancelled for the day. We have a typhoon headed right for us. Not that it is dangerous outside at this point (set to intensify later in the afternoon), but the train system usually shuts down at these times and the school didn't want to risk getting kids to school and not being able to get them home again. We've already done that once this year (on March 11, earthquake day) and it wasn't fun. But the teachers were still expected to be at school at 8 a.m. Therefore, I have another at-home-with-the-boys day. I still haven't fully recovered from 11 weeks of that over the summer! And I have another one coming on Friday as it is a planned Professional Development day for the teachers.
This has turned out to be an even stranger week than we thought it would be. I wonder if tomorrow might be something like a normal day. If it is, then it will be the only one in the week.
To tally it up, this week we've had a sudden temperature and season change, multiple changes in school and work routine and a change in sleep patterns. Thankfully we're not dealing with a hospitalisation too. If there is something I'm acutely aware of, it is that our family doesn't cope all that well with the unexpected nor change. This kind of week throws up "Caution" signs for me. Therefore I am not going to hold myself to high expectations this week. That would be asking for just too much stress.How do you/your family manage in times of unexpected change?
I tend not to go too well if unexpected change is thrown into the mix, especially in the late afternoon/early evening demanding period. Today we had a power failure at 5.30 just as I was starting dinner.
ReplyDeleteFortunately the power wasn't off for hours, but I coped very ineffectively by having a meltdown (tiredness probably didn't help). Fortunately Chris and the boys picked up the slack for me. If I'm less tired I might be able to just hang in there and persevere. I think your point about not having high expectations in these situations helps.
Hope the typhoon doesn't cause too much damage.