First World problems

Wordle 233 5/6

⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
⬜⬜🟨🟩🟨
🟨⬜⬜🟩🟩
⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩

The night before last I didn't get much sleep, and yesterday morning I didn't get much time to myself. The kid woke up at the usual time if not earlier even though it was Sunday. Although I will give her credit for something. Instead of watching TV until breakfast was on the table, she only watched about an hour, and then got interested in an arts and crafts project from the Chinese New Year event the night before. 

At 10 we took her to a friend's birthday party. It was in a playground, walking distance from home but we haven't been there in a while. Partly because we have less free time to fill than we did in 2020 and early 2021, partly because it's February. While she was playing and T. was supervising, I went to Eastern Market to run a few errands. (We had walked to the playground, 0.7 miles, and I walked another 1.3 miles on those errands, both figures one-way. Good for me.) After that, the kid practiced her guitar and had lunch. Then another friend of hers came over to play for over 2 hours. 

Meanwhile I was doing the laundry and a little cleaning, and T. was working on personal stuff on her computer. Among other things she was planning a trip for this summer. It's a big milestone birthday for me and she has been focused on a trip overseas as a present. I don't mind but it's not a high priority. Things that are high priorities for me:

• A new bike (we might call it a birthday present but probably won't wait for my birthday)
  
• Some home renovations we've been planning (won't be done this year or even the next but I guess we can hope we can make some progress)
• A return to normalcy (hah!)

Travel, on the other hand, is just a matter of balancing expense against stress against fun. We can hope that things will be better in six months but right now the stress is high and fun is low of anything like this. I can't help accentuating the negative. 20 years ago I thought of myself as the sort of person who liked travel, but I'm not sure how true that ever was, and now all I can think of is the difficulty of keeping the kid out of trouble in a place where neither T. nor I speaks the local language, and coronavirus-related issues.

I have tried to be clear about this with T. and therefore I haven't felt too bad about not being too active in trip planning. Until yesterday, when she actually admitted that she was getting nervous about the expense and risk of the latest plan, and I said I'm OK if we wind up doing something more low-key or nothing at all. (I think I've said so before, and I think I was polite about it both then and now...) She shifted gears to researching simpler options but I'm not sure how she would feel about that.