I work in an office 3 days a week and, on those mornings, I prepare a smoothie to take with me for my breakfast.
I make it the night before, as buzzing up a smoothie at 6am is likely to wake my toddler and I’d rather not do that to him, or my wife. So I blitz it up and pop it in the fridge and take it with me to drink at my desk. I also make a coffee for the train journey but that’s not the point of this story.
A while back my old, Aldi, smoothie maker was starting to die so I bite the bullet, literally, buying a Nutribullet as the reviews suggested it was the best one for my needs (thanks, as always, to The Wirecutter review team). I have the large cup for it, with the ‘drinking lid’ add-on which means I can just make my smoothie, pop the drinking lid on and go. It’s fab, I can’t recommend it highly enough, it’s handled everything I’ve thrown in it with ease; frozen fruit, walnuts, spinach leaves and more.
Once it’s made and in the fridge, the bladed section needs cleaned (you screw the ‘cup’ onto it, then invert it and push down to activate the WHIZZZZ). Once cleaned, we’ve just been popping the bladed section back in the base unit out of the way; and yes the unit sits at the back of the counter out of reach of our toddler.
The ingredients for my smoothies vary a little but mostly consist of a banana, oat or almond milk, protein powder, milled chia seeds and a lingonberry mix, and from there sometimes a bit of peanut butter, some frozen mango or avocado, maybe some strawberries, a splash of apple juice, it really just depends what’s available. The cups come with a separate lid too, so I find myself, particularly on a Sunday, just popping bits and bobs in in the cup, snapping the lid on and putting it back in the fridge. It’s where all the bits of fruit that Jack decides he doesn’t want usually end up (or takes one bite off, I’m not fussy).
The other morning, I’d been compiling my shake throughout Bank Holiday Monday, and on Monday evening whilst Becca gave Jack a bath, I got ready to blitz it up ready for Tuesday morning. I glanced over at the base unit, with the bladed section already sitting in it, waiting for me to lift it out and screw it onto the cup.
A teeny tiny part of my brain reminded me NOT to tip the cup ONTO the blades. Gravity would not be my friend. I even giggled a little at the thought. Hey, I was tired, it had been a long (good) Bank Holiday weekend.
I fetched the cup from the fridge, unscrewed the cap and, despite having laughed at myself about it a few seconds early, actually had to catch myself to NOT do what I’d just told myself not to do!!
Even as I got the bladed section out of the base, and screwed it down onto the cup, part of my brain was STILL thinking .. this isn’t right, is it??
The moral of the story is, whilst I did not tip a full smoothie cup of ingredients onto the base unit (and the kitchen counter and likely the floor), my brain was very close to doing just that.
Twice!
No, YOU are tired.
Month: May 2024
How NOT to make a smoothie
The Guilty Father
It’s early Sunday morning, it’s been a ‘night’ and my plans for Sunday were looking a bit rocky. I was up early, drinking a coffee and going over all this in my head. I felt conflicted, and a bit desolate as I couldn’t seem to find a good solution. It’s something I’ve noticed creeping into my thoughts more and more when it comes to pretty much anything to do with my son and my wife. I am old enough to be wise enough (which isn’t all that much) to know that there is rarely a clear path when life throws up the little hiccups it seems to enjoy.
A quick summary then:
- Dad guilt: my son woke up on Saturday night at midnight and was wheezing and crying and threw up (a little, just cos he was coughing). He wanted his Mum, so she “slept” on the floor with him next to her last night. She was up at 5am to go to work. She was already exhausted, now this.
- Friend guilt: I convinced my mate to sign up to cycle 55 miles at Etape Caledonia. I got injured, couldn’t train, so he’s doing it solo. His first cycling event. Ugh.
The plan on Sunday morning was for my mother-in-law (AKA Granny Morna) to stay over and look after Jack while Becca is at work, so I can head up to Pitlochry to surprise my mate at the finish line. But if he’s ill, despite the fact he went back to sleep ok, he still lost a couple of hours of sleep so at best I thought he’d be a tired and grumpy, at worst he was getting ill again. The revised plan was to let him sleep as long as he needed and take it from there, and trust that he’d be ok so I should head off to Pitlochry. He normally gets up between 7 and 7:30, but we thought we’d let it go to 8:30.
My train was at 8:20am, so I would have to leave the house at 8:10 at the latest to get the train.
Now, I know mother-in-law can handle a tired toddler (she raised two kids of her own after all) but if he was ill then I decided to cancel going to Pitlochry. I wanted to be there to help.
My problem was that, if I wanted to get to Pitlochry in time to catch my mate finishing the cycle event, then I’d have needed to leave before he woke up so I had no way of seeing how he was when he woke. Becca was convinced he would be fine, but without seeing it for myself I knew I would just feel awful if I’d taken off and then it turned out he was ill.
After all, my plans were optional. It was going to be a nice thing to do for my friend (he’s one of the 3 I’ve had for 30 years!) and it would mean a lot to me to support him. Plus he didn’t even know about it as it was to be a surprise so I figured that while I’d be personally disappointed, my mate would’ve been none the wiser.
There I sat, going over all the scenarios in my mind (I know, I know) and then a noise from upstairs. Jack was awake! 7:20am. I went upstairs and he was sitting there, smiling at me as I knelt down next to him. I asked him if he wanted to come downstairs with me and he throw his arms up ready for me to pick him up. He seemed fine, he was fine! I made his breakfast, fed the dogs, Granny Morna came down and that got even bigger smiles from Jack and then, content that he was fine I announced that was going out (technically I said I was ‘going to work’ cos he seems to accept that when either one of his parents has to leave the house). He said ‘bye bye Daddy’ and we waved at each other through the window as I walked down the garden path.
On the train to meet another friend who was going to drive us up to Pitlochry, I sat and pondered how I get my head around making decisions when there doesn’t seem to be a ‘good’ one to make. Logically I can tell myself that sometimes making the decision is the only thing you can do, and then adjust to the consequences. Logically I can tell myself that the vast majority of the time, no matter what scenarios I think through, by and large things work out just fine. Logically.
But I still felt guilty. Guilty that Becca ended up sleeping on the floor, when it was me who went through when Jack first cried out. Guilty that Morna might not have a great morning with Jack and it would be a struggle (even though he seemed fine). Guilty that Becca would have Jack until I got home mid-afternoon and she does so much.
Logically, again, I can tell myself that I’m a good Dad. I do what I can, when I can. I spend time with him as much as I can. I work full-time but start super-early just so I can make it home in enough time to play with him after dinner, before bed. I look after him on Saturday and Sunday mornings when Becca is working, I love him more than anything in this entire world.
But that guilt, wow it weighs heavy. And whilst I know all of this will pass, and that whilst he has yet another ear infection and we will have another week or so of struggling to get him to take his antibiotics, that too will pass.
It’s probably been the hardest part of learning how to bring up our son. Always the feeling of doing more for him, doing things differently, learning and growing whilst I fumble from day to day. I’m bad for not setting time aside for myself but right now this is the most important thing I’ll ever do, so why do I need time for me? Why shouldn’t I concentrate every spare minute I have on our amazing child? Thankfully my wife keeps me in check but that also brings a level of guilt, that she is having to ‘mother’ me as well when she was so so much to think about all the time!
The title of this blog wasn’t an accident. I am very happy, and very aware of my imperfections, and whilst I don’t settle with them, I do sit with them, study them and try and find ways to improve upon them to at least iron them a little flatter, file the sharp edges a little more every day. It’s been my mindset for a long time now. And having Jack arrive in our lives brought it into sharp focus, all those little things I didn’t like about myself, not the big scary horrible things, but the ones I notice but let slide because they weren’t hurting anyone (else), suddenly become things that I could pass on to my son.
So I strive to be better, and yesterday that meant sitting with all those guilty feelings and understanding them. shrinking them down to what they actual were, feeling them get smaller and smaller until they disappeared.
There will be more times like these, but I am more and more confident of being able to navigate them, of showing up and dealing with them with an assurance in my own mind that I will do the right thing most of the time. And when I don’t? I’ll apologise, learn, and it’ll be better next time.
Not easy but I wouldn’t change it for the world.
Busy busy
It does mean that between my work, and having to be in the office 3 days a week, and spending time with my son, that I’ve not always been the best at finding time for me. I’ve barely been out on my bike, nor managed more than a few runs as, barely halfway through Couch-to-5KM I developed a bit of a niggle in my knee which meant I had to rest for a few weeks, got a physio session to sort it but still means I had to out of doing Etape Caledonia this year. I feel doubly bad for that as I’d talked two of my friends into it and, as one of them also dropped out, my mate is now doing it on his own, his first organised cycle too!
Elsewhere, Jack continues to amaze and delight. He is enjoying a daredevil stage at the moment which is wonderful and terrifying all at the same time, and he flits between being barely a toddler to a young child in an instant, it’s quite startling. We are very lucky that we have a good routine that he understands so for the most part (I mean, he’s a toddler) meals, bath time and bed time mostly go without a hitch. And I’ve just jinxed it…
In a couple of weeks we are heading up north, and will be sleeping with him in a tent. It will be his first time (technically his second but he was still a baby the first time on Mull) so it’ll be interesting to see how he adjusts to it, and how the adjustment goes when we get back. That said, with all the fresh air, and the fact that Granny and Grandpa will be there too, we are pretty confident then sleep won’t be a problem for him as he’ll be exhausted.
Heading into the summer months and on into October, I’m aware that my son is heading towards his 3rd birthday. He’s increasingly independent and we trust him and can leave him ‘unattended’ (in the next room!) to happily play with his toys, or stoating about the back garden looking for ‘wee spidurrs’ and ‘weuyrms’ and hopefully a ‘wee ant!’.
And, inspired by my unstoppable force of nature of a wife (who’s currently smashing her C25K, and slotting in the odd yoga session when she can), I’ve even managed to sort out a few cycles for myself and will be signing up for the local gym soon too. I’m 50, not getting any younger etc etc and definitely not getting any more flexible, or stronger, or lighter with my present, very sedentary, lifestyle. I want to be around for many years to come to enjoy watching the person my son will grow up to be so I need to start taking better care of myself. And yes, I’m posting this wholly for accountability purposes!
Fit for 50 was a goal but I’ll take Fit for 55 if that’s what it takes!