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By Sally Torbey
About this blog: About this blog: I have enjoyed parenting five children in Palo Alto for the past two decades and have opinions about everything to do with parenting kids (and dogs). The goal of my blog is to share the good times and discuss the ...
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About this blog: About this blog: I have enjoyed parenting five children in Palo Alto for the past two decades and have opinions about everything to do with parenting kids (and dogs). The goal of my blog is to share the good times and discuss the challenges of having a satisfying family life in a community where parents set a high bar for themselves, their children, and the schools and organizations that educate and socialize them. I grew up in the Midwest, attended a small liberal arts college on the East Coast and graduated from medical school in Chicago. I left a pediatric residency to care for our then infant son and spent the next dozen years contentedly gestating and lactating while having four more children. My husband grew up in the Middle East, came to the US for graduate school and works in high tech. Our eldest son graduated from a UC, and after working in the Middle East for a few years, now attends law school in NYC. Our eldest daughter graduated from a Midwestern Big Ten University and is a journalist in Texas. Our middle child studies engineering at a UC. The youngest two girls are in middle and high school in PAUSD. We are celebrating 20 years as PAUSD parents! I volunteer in the public schools, our church, and scouting.
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Enjoying jetlag
Uploaded: Jan 5, 2017
We spent the holidays in my husband’s country of origin, Lebanon. After 10 days of continuous feasting and feting with relatives and friends in a time zone 10 hours ahead of California, we are all jetlagged and sleep-deprived. There hasn’t been a period of two hours since our return that the entire household has been asleep as our biological clocks are out of sync and someone is always awake and rummaging in the kitchen for sustenance in the wee hours of the morning. After his quiet “staycation” at the kennel, the dog doesn’t know what to make of all the commotion!
I am finding myself most productive between 2 am and 5 am. It is amazing how much I can get done in the calm and quiet of the night without the distraction of emails, texts, and phone calls, or the ruckus of leaf blowers, wood chippers and construction vehicles. For the first time in 25 years I am caught up with the laundry and ironing. I have responded to all correspondence, planned our February ski vacation, and have dinner prepared each day by 9am. I am considering adopting a nocturnal life style. Of course, the downside is I can’t complete any task that actually requires sustained concentration or a working memory and I fell asleep last night at 8pm. But the upside is that to accomplish anything in this compromised state I have to be focused and mindful. Avoiding my usual habits of multi-tasking and ruminating have increased my productivity!
Today’s
New York Times had an article with tips to make 2017 “the year that you quiet all those negative thoughts swirling around your brain.” Swirling thoughts is a pretty typical state of my brain in normal circumstances, but such activity has been remarkably absent since our return. I resolve to relish and sustain this new-found calm, be it the result of a festive and joyous holiday, or just jetlag!
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