My Dad - Growing Up Sheehan

While this blog is generally about my girls and is called Growing up Luce, today I'm going to add a little about Growing up Sheehan.

George J. Sheehan III also known as Gj, G, Uncle, Grandpa, and Dad. He was an amazing son, brother, husband, uncle, Dad, Grandpa and friend. As many know he has struggled with Parkinson's for years. The last four years were particularly hard and how he pushed through for the last two years is amazing to me. He was a fighter and he loved us so much that he didn't want to leave. On Thurday night, June 11, he took his final breath. I hate thinking of him as he died and want to remember him as he was. So, here is the man I remember and what it was like Growing up Sheehan.

He was my Dad. He played with us. We played basketball, golf, pool, and poker to name a few. He was competitive and frankly the most athletic person I have ever known. He was gifted with a natural ability and he loved to play and had the patience to play with us when we were little. I didn't know any kids who had a basketball hoop in the back yard thereby ruining the grass. I didn't know anyone who had a cup in a hole in one corner of the yard so we could chip and putt. I didn't know anyone who had a basketball hoop attached to a beam in their living room. I also don't ever remember getting in trouble for destroying the grass, running through a fence to catch a football, or breaking the couch going for a rebound. Now I say he had the patience to play with us but let's not forget he was competitive...he had patience but also an expectation that we would work hard. We would want to win. That less than our best wasn't good enough. He pushed us to be the best we could be. I do not think I ever won any game we ever played in our family. He taught us if you wanted to win you had to be better. There was no going easy because I was the youngest or I was a girl. If I had to work harder to win that was just how it was. If I wanted to "play with the big boys" then suck it up and fight back. He did it in such a way though that it didn't defeat me. He made me want to keep fighting to win. If you don't know my Dad maybe that seems harsh but I wouldn't change it for the world. He treated me as an equal and taught me invaluable lessons.... I am capable of anything and if I want something I need to work hard. (As a funny side note: After 38 years I finally beat my brother in something athletic! Hard work pays off. Sometimes it just takes a long time! :) )

He was my Dad. He loved and protected us. No matter what we did we always knew my Dad had our back. He taught us that family was so important. As siblings, my brothers and I would fight like most kids do. Dad always taught us to have each other's backs when we turned to the world outside. Little did he know (or maybe he did) that it bonded us as siblings too. We never told on each other. I often threatened to tell but it got me nowhere as my brothers knew I never would go through with it. We had so much fun playing together why would we jeopardize that? As kids we were united and as a family we were a tight unit. Dad would help us out of any situation. Now I didn't have much need for this as I was pretty goody goody but it made me feel safe.  Watching a sibling come home in the middle of the night because he got the car stuck and not get in trouble let me know that it was safe to ask for help in any situation. I remember calling my Dad in a snowstorm driving back from the mall. I was petrified. I pulled over at a restaurant to call my Dad. He grabbed a friend and drove out in the storm and drove me home. No questions asked. No berating me for going out in the storm in the first place. All he cared about was that I was safe. He also loved us all equally. I once accused him of loving my brother more. Man, was he mad! I never made that accusation again. His guttural reaction to my words was enough to get his message across.

As we grew older and moved out of the house we would come back to visit. Once we were all home my dad would lay on the couch and go to sleep. Mom would worry that we didn't think Dad cared that we were home but we all knew the truth. Dad could sleep because we were home. His kids were all safe in his house so he could finally relax. He worried. He would come up to my college on Friday nights (gone by 7pm) with the pretense of taking me to dinner and making sure I had everything but I know it was really to lay eyes on me to make sure I was safe. (Also to deliver me homemade pasta sauce because, let's be honest, jar sauce is terrible.)

As I grew older and Dad grew weaker I was again so grateful that he gave us the gift of athletics, hard work, and family unity. I wanted to make him feel safe. Return that precious gift he gave me. When he could no longer move himself I'm sure it was scary to trust someone else to do it for him. Would he be dropped by accident? I loved being able to look him in the eye and tell him "I have you Dad. I promise I will not drop you. You made me strong and now I can move you. This is what you raised so trust me now." I believe he was very comforted by that. He did trust me to move him.

On his last night we were all with him while he slept. It was his time to go and we all knew it. He will live on in us. As I raise my girls to know they are capable, that hard work is not optional, and family is always a safe place, my Dad will live on in them.

I know he is in heaven and I wonder what he is doing....racing cars with Lully, fishing, playing basketball, or golfing. I do know though that he is free of the body Parkinson's trapped him inside. I'm grateful he is no longer suffering but I miss him.

School closed

Photo by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

Yesterday it was made official...All Massachusetts schools are closed for the remaining 2019-2020 school year.  We will continue with remote learning but no actually going into school. How do I feel about this? How do the kids feel about this? I'm not really sure. We are very fortunate. I recently read a post about how we are all in the same storm but we are not in the same boat.  This is absolutely true and I feel fortunate that I am in a very stable boat.

My kids are happy and content to do their work at their desks. They have no problem with staying fit and keeping an exercise routine in place. They do miss their friends but again I'm fortunate because they really like each other and have grown even closer during this time at home. Sometimes they work out together and sometimes they don't. Sometimes they watch tv together and sometimes they don't. They are both fine with their togetherness and their separate time. I love hearing them laugh together when they sit together at night.

I am mixed...some days I feel fine with the stay at home situation. Other days I feel trapped. I think this is mostly weather related. Bright sunny days I feel good. Dreary rainy days it feels like it will never end. There are positives and negatives to staying at home. I like having my kids not feel stressed to fit everything into their day. On the other hand, I worry about them missing out on key educational building blocks. The item that stresses me out the most though is the lack of clarity on when this will end. I am a planner. I look ahead and plan a strategy to be most effective for my family, each child individually, home projects, vacations, jobs, camps, etc etc. This time now leaves me unable to really plan for anything. This is NOT a good feeling for me. Planning makes me feel in control of life. I can always change plans based on life changes or roadblocks or unforeseen circumstances but that just means more planning. This period doesn't even allow for future planning because I don't know when it will end so that life can resume. The announcement that schools are going to remain on remote learning is a welcome decision. It means I can now plan for my kids to be at home for the remainder of the school year and I can stop playing the "what if" game in my head on that subject. I like to make a decision and move on. Sometimes I may not like the decisions made but I would rather have a decision I don't like then the unknown of no decision. So, while I wish we weren't in this situation at all, I guess I am on board with the remote learning decision as it removes another unknown from the equation.

Walking

I love to be outside. It is something that brings me joy. The fresh air is rejuvenating and when it is sunny it is so uplifting. Even when it is snowy it is beautiful. The spring brings new plants and flowers daily that sometimes I have to stop and take a photo like this one (on the left). The other great thing about being outside is that I can get moving. I am generally a pretty active person. In part, this is because I am just not good at sitting around doing nothing and in part because I believe that being fit is part of a healthy (long) life. On top of that I know that it makes me feel good once my workout is complete. With that said I always want my family to be fit and to feel good. I am always trying to find ways to engage my family in fitness. I hate not being near them to actually workout with them but COVID-19 has opened my eyes to another approach! I have started tele-walking. It has been great! My mom and my brother have been walking with me and we chat over the phone while we walk. I feel good that I'm helping them to get out and walk and I can be outside myself, walking and staying connected to my family! If you haven't tried tele-walking I highly recommend it. It is easier to get out and walk if you have someone to talk to while you are doing it.


As we are home during this crazy time try to get out for daily walks. Don't even think of it as exercise. Think of it as a mental health break from your day. Time to de-stress. Remember at work you get up from your desk and walk places multiple times a day. Going for a walk is just consolidating all those walks into one! :) Are you a numbers or goals person? I love numbers and data to see what I have accomplished. I love my Garmin watch for this reason. Yesterday I had a lot of walking...with my brother, my mother, both of my kids (at different times) and with Jason along with a couple of other workout items. I can see exactly what I completed for the day. I also like that it shows me what I have done over time like this picture of my steps over the last year. It is also a good check to see if the amount you think you are walking is actually what you do. I found that when I was working I thought I took a lot of steps because I was up and down from my desk a lot. In reality, it was not a lot. It made me realize that I needed to do more steps outside of work to be fit. It can also keep track of everywhere you have run/walked. So years from now when I can't remember exactly where I ran on a trip somewhere I can look it up and relive that run.

Whether you track what you are doing or not, you are worth it to take time for yourself. You deserve to be important too and sometimes you need to make a conscious decision to put your needs first. When you do that you will be better equipped to help and take care of others.

Stay at Home Life

Now that I have done a post on the work/life balance let's get some humor on my role as a stay at home mom. My life has not seen a major shift. I didn't go into the office anymore anyway. It was normal to not talk to people during the day. Yes, I miss running with my girlfriend but otherwise, my conversations during the day were limited to talking to my mom on her drive to work or talking to my brother at random times during the day. So really not much has changed....except that now it feels a little weird to have people in my house during the day that I don't speak to! They are there....seems like we should speak but we don't.  They have things to do. Jason has work which is just as busy as ever. The girls have zoom classes, homework, piano, art, and fitness that they work on daily. This was very weird to me to have them home but really inaccessible to me. I won't lie...it was hard to adjust. I kind of felt like "no one cares what I'm doing". That wasn't a good feeling. But then I realized that if I treated the days as business as usual then it wasn't about them not wanting to do things with me. It was about them doing the things they need to get done. It wasn't about me ignoring them. It was about me completing my daily tasks. I went back to running business as usual for myself. No more waiting around for them to be ready to do something with me. So what does this mean for me? I don't have to work out crazy schedules to get the kids where they need to be nor do I have to be ready to pick up at 2pm. My day just got longer with free time! I go for runs in the woods around my house, I go on nice long walks while talking to my mom, I work out either by myself or with one of the kids if it coincides, I continue to clean my house, make healthy meals,  and have started looking for projects that can get done. I decided to revamp my blog and have taken on being a Beautycounter Consultant. Things that are necessary, fun, and engaging.

I'll leave you today with a funny story from my cleaning adventures yesterday. I vacuumed and then began washing my floors. As I'm washing Jason came in the kitchen to get lunch so I paused and let him do his thing. I continued on once he left the kitchen and then onto the living room, hallway and the room the girls' desks are in. Once I got there I realized Sofia wasn't at her desk.

"Where's Fi?" I asked.
"I'm in the kitchen," she said.
"Ugh, I just washed the floor!", I said.
"Oh don't worry I have my crocs on," she said.

Do you see the humor there? I'm so happy I will have croc prints on my wet floor. Was it the shiny floor or the stools up on the counter that you missed as clues to a wet floor? I can choose to get mad and upset that she walked on my wet floors or I can laugh at the ridiculousness of it. I choose laughter because if this is the worst of how my life will have to adjust to Corona....people interrupting my cleaning, leaving dishes on the counter, lunch spanning from 11:30am-1:30pm, etc. I've got it pretty good. And if she doesn't pick up on the cleaning clues in the future I think washing floors may have to be added to their chore list!😂😂

Work/Life Balance

Work/life balance is not a separate being. We lived with it daily before COVID-19. We are fine with Jason having to hop on a work call or send e-mails or texts while he is home because it gives him the ability to be home and engaged with us as a family rather than being in the office for all hours during the week or having to go in on the weekend. We have come to realize that his work and our life can co-exist. We all benefit from this integration. He can be home and doing fun things with us or working with the kids on homework or hiking, etc and not feel like he is missing out on getting work done. Knowing he can respond when needed or take an hour sitting in the same room with us to get work done alleviates his stress and involves him with the family. Jason read a good book on it once by David Dewolfe about living an integrated life and it really helped to shift our mindset.

So during this time of COVID-19 maybe take the time to think about an integrated life. If your kids walk in on conference calls or you forget to put a conference call on mute while trying to make lunch for your kids don't worry about it. It is part of life. While sometimes it might feel embarrassing I think we should all see it as normal. Do we think"OMG what a loser" because their kids walked in? No, we find it funny or cute and it makes you a little more human. We learn more about ourselves and our family when we see our spouse, boyfriend, girlfriend, parents etc working. The professional side of ourselves is often hidden from our home life and now it is there for everyone to see. I read on social media about how people are learning things about their spouse. Comments like, "I'm married to the circle back guy" or the "stick a pin it is guy" etc. We do behave differently in the workplace because we need to be more professional or the situations just call for different types of conversations than at home. I think it is fun to see the business side.  I don't actually get to see much of Jason's business side since he goes upstairs into our office, closes the door, and works all day. Our home life is there for his work to see though (our kids are older though so they don't walk in on his conference calls). We had a good laugh when one of Jason's co-workers pointed out the diversity in our bookshelf that is behind Jason on all of his video calls. We hadn't really thought about it before but we have Rosamunde Pilcher (romance), David Baldacci (Suspense), Dr Seuess, The Couples series (thanks 1987 middle school scholastic catalog), and Leading Geeks, Steve Jobs, Learning Czech and many other varied reading options along with some amazing childhood artwork :).

Technology Adjustments

We all use technology in some form.  We accept that it is part of every day life.  I would like to also acknowledge that using technology has limitations and challenges.  For those people that are feeling challenged by it right now in the "time of Corona" I want to say you are not alone! Making changes on the fly to new products, services, and delivery mechanisms is challenging whether you are a baby boomer, Gen X, Millenial, Gen Z etc. It is hard because you aren't just making technology adjustments. You are making adjustments to communication. You are making adjustments to limit interpersonal contact. You are making adjustments to your personal freedoms whether to protect yourself, someone you love, or people you don't even know.

How do we stay truly connected without face to face interaction? How do teachers know if their students are understanding the material in real-time if they can't pick up on body language in a classroom? How do people stay focused for hours on end in front of a screen if they are used to having breaks between meetings or classes? How do teams build camaraderie if the only thing they do is interact in a meeting? These are real-world problems that once acknowledge can lead to change. I am a big proponent of voicing fears and concerns because until they are given a voice they just sit and fester and hold us back. How can we impact change if we can't admit that change is needed? I'm also a proponent of voicing positivity and laughing about life when it is ridiculous. So I will leave you with some positive thoughts/things to think about today.

1. Try a tele-walk with someone.  When we can't walk literally with a person put your earphones in
and your phone in your pocket and go for a walk at the same time that your friend/mom/dad/sibling etc do the same. It is amazing how refreshing this can be.

2. Go for daily walks or just sit outside in your yard, patio, driveway. Fresh air and sunshine do wonders for our mental health.

3. Get exercise. This doesn't mean start a really intense workout regimen. Start slow...go for a walk. If you feel like you are ready for more than a slow walk then try to speed up. Maybe graduate to a couch to 5K program. Check out some online streaming programs like www.dailyburn.com that have so many workout options for every fitness level. I'm happy to give ideas for programs or help you find a couch to 5K programs that would work for you.

4. Look at this time as a gift to try things you haven't tried, start eating healthy, start exercising, start calling people that you haven't spoken to in a while because life was so busy.

5. You can do this! Look at today and see what step you can take to make your life better than it was yesterday. Being positive is possible...start training your brain today so see the good.

Remote Learning 2.0

We are trucking away here at the Luce Family homestead.  The kids start Remote Learning 2.0 (as our schools are calling it) today. They are moving from Remote Learning 1.0 of maintenance learning to actually learning new content. It will be interesting to see how it goes. I’m fortunate as the girls recognize the need for routine and have been working every day on academics, piano, being creative, and staying fit. Jason is working from home every day but is really sequestered in the office and on conference calls for most of the day so I see him in the morning before his “commute” 😂, at lunch, and when he “comes home”. We have been going for walks almost everyday and have realized that the “old people” are onto something with their daily walks! We get time to chat and explore where we live and it is so calm and quiet. I am enjoying having everyone home and get to run/workout with the girls, do my own exercise, and walk with Jason so I have a lot of fitness options. It varies from day to day as I can’t run as far as Ali on her long runs nor as fast as her on her tempo runs but I get to run her “easy” runs and hill repeats with her. Usually, Sofia joins in on those runs too and it is fun to be with them and listen to them laugh.  I’m grateful they have each other. 

I’m still the family cook, house cleaner, grocery shopper, to-do list doer. My biggest and most complicated job is that of scheduler and it is currently on hold. Yes, I still schedule remote piano lesson and remote French lesson but that is it.  There is nothing else for me to really juggle. I find it a little disconcerting to not have to constantly juggle pickups, drop-offs, carpools, changing schedules to accommodate one offs etc. I realized the other night as I lay awake that my brain didn’t feel tired and I think it is because it is not in constant motion of scheduling. I’m trying to take it as a blessing that I get a reprieve from scheduling but honestly I look forward to getting back to it as it is like a giant jigsaw puzzle I get to complete every day!

That you Rona?

Coronavirus (COVID-19) - The virus that changed the world.  Living through a pandemic is kind of crazy.  Business is shut down unless it is considered essential. Grocery stores limit how much of certain items you can buy and toilet paper is the holy grail for some reason. Now stores limit how many people can enter the store at one time. You have to be at least 6 feet apart from others (except those you live with) and no visiting anyone. Schools are closed and kids are doing remote learning which is better than nothing but definitely not as good as in person. Some people still continue to visit with friends and not social distance which will, in the end, make this all last longer which is frustrating.

There are upsides to Corona though.....there are a lot of funny memes, there is no rushing to get anywhere, my kids have more time to read and play piano or create art, as a family we have been exploring the woods around our home and catching up on movie watching.  It took a pandemic for us to learn we have all these amazing trails steps from our house. In all fairness, we knew there were trails. We just didn't know they were these beautiful wide trails that were easy for walking and running on.  Given my dislike of ticks I had stayed out of the woods because I assumed the trails were narrow with ticks just waiting for me...hahaha. Now I make sure my clothes are treated with permethrin and I dose myself with off and go for walks and runs on those beautiful trails. Being outside is such a boost to my mental health.

We will be in this state of social distancing until at least May 4 so might as well try to enjoy the ride.

Fast Forward

I've been thinking about getting back to writing. It has been a while and a lot has happened since my last post. I did go back to work and did so for 4 years. It was fun and challenging. After 4 years of non-stop 5:45am - 9:45pm I decided I had enough and needed to slow down. The girls were busy with school and sports. Ali was at the gym every night from 5-9pm and Sofia had swim club every night and it was a 45-minute drive from home. I had started having trouble getting a full breath and realized that the stress of going full throttle for so long was taking its toll on me. I gave my notice and decided to stay home. It ended up being perfect timing because that summer we had a new septic system installed and put in an inground pool.  Two large projects that now I had time to manage!  The girls and Jason decided it was time for a change too. Ali decided she was done with gymnastics and Sofia decided she needed a break from club swim. Jason changed jobs and was not traveling very often. Now we went from non-stop speed to all being home for dinner.....sitting down at 6pm and realizing we had 4 hours until bedtime! That felt like an eternity. Anyway, life carried on and school started up. I was feeling achy and old and still had trouble getting a full breath.  I got a "cold" in December but kept doing all of my to-do lists including working out and running. By mid January I was still sick and went to my primary care doctor since I just couldn't seem to kick it and I was so tired! Nothing came of it and he told me it was a cold. Skip ahead a couple months and I changed doctors....low and behold I had mono and lyme disease. Crazy times....was I badass for keeping up with all my activities through mono and lyme or a little crazy for not taking it easy? I choose to think badass. :) Decided to have the family tested for lyme and both girls had it as well.  All on meds and the girls cleared up pretty quick. Apparently, I had mine for much longer so a year later I'm still on meds but hopefully will be wrapping them up soon. This leads me to my next post....the time of Coronavirus or COVID-19 whichever you prefer to call it.