Hamster Wheel Days

You have those days, don’t you?  Where you try to pack everything in, speed up faster and faster and somehow think you CAN do it all!  Make three meals, check.  Homemade tortillas too, check.  Chisel away at that messed-up cast iron pan you picked up for cheap, check.  Homeschool (sort of), check.  Run for half an hour, check.  Make a shoulderbag for your swap buddy, check (but not too closely!). Fix the fundraiser ticket-ordering on your son’s preschool website, check.  Grocery shop, check. 

These are the days that I foolishly try to ‘compensate’ for thinking I’m lazy the other days. 

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It's been a hard day

Then again, they’re all hard, aren’t they?  Always a mix of beautiful and painful, easy and traumatic, passionate and shrinking.  Some weeks the balance seems swayed one way or another, and inevitably I find myself wishing things were different.  It’s so easy to get lost in dreams, if-onlys, and hopes that we lose sight of the delicious moments that lay their heads down on our shoulders and snuggle.  It’s the savoring, or simply the recognition of those blips of perfection that make the day a good one.  Destination matters, and directions count, but the joy?  It’s all in the journey. 

It was a good day in the end, a very good day.  A perfect mix of angst, accomplishment, old and new faces, favorite haunts, sunshine, claustrophobic travel, sweaty and sleepy boys, and love.  How was yours?

Friday Roundup (of sorts!)

Can you see it in my eyes? I’m waiting … This has been a weird week for me.  I found myself on strike at the beginning of my week, being willing to read emails but not responding to them, and spending little time online.  I’m tired of creating obligations for myself, and then becoming resentful when they get boringly repetitive!  So I took a break.  I found my groove a bit on Wednesday, and actually answered most emails, but haven’t compiled a list of blog finds because I didn’t read too many of them.  So it’s not a Friday Roundup in the traditional sense, it’s more a roundup of my mental ramblings.

You know how it feels when you’re ready for a change, but can’t quite get to it yet, or even articulate it coherently to anyone? 

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Procrastination

I don’t know why I do it.  I procrastinate, and I do it daily.  I’m always behind, running late, just missing the bus, hurrying the kids, feeling guilty about that tucked-under-the-pile project that never gets air … the list goes on.  I’m not sure if I’ve always been this way, I really can’t remember.  I know I’ve never been the first one out the door, but my memories of rushing only go back to high school.  That probably means I always have been this way, and once my mom stopped cajoling me to get moving, I’ve been the late one.
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Motherhood as a relationship

I joined in on the Perfect Moms Finish Last preview call today (thanks Carley!) and aside from a great-sounding series of classes (I’d definitely join it if I had my pennies lined up!) one thing really stuck in my head.  She referred to an essay by Judith Stadtman Tucker called The New Future of Motherhood.  The part that caught my real attention was the idea that we shouldn’t label motherhood as a job, but as a relationship.  It’s not something to be graded on, assessed at, promoted to, or fired from.  It’s not something to perfect.  It’s simply unhelpful to apply the job analogy, as it implies so many things that frame motherhood in the wrong context.  Relationships are messy, complicated, two-sided, and cover every possible range of emotions. They’re a lifelong pursuit, and something that we often feel ambivalent about.  I am Douglas and Fynn’s mother.  They are my kids: a relationship that we’ll be working on for the rest of our lives, in various states of harmony, volatility, and depth.  I like that.

This obviously relates to the Q of the Week about competitive motherhood … if it’s a relationship who are we competing with?! 

Daddy's Girl

I just finished reading Love and Other Impossible Pursuits, by Ayelet Waldman.  I’d seen her books recommended many times, and when stalking the library shelves yesterday for the first time in ages, I saw her name and grabbed the only book they had by her.  I devoured it: her writing is luminous, sharp, and stark all at once.  As I finished it less in just over a day, you might say I was hooked :). 
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I'm scared.

Thanks to a snow-day yesterday, the number of home-alone-with-no-kids days in my forseeable future was reduced to one.  That’s this Friday: Douglas’ last day of public school for the forseeable future.  The voluntary end of my day-time free time.  This scares the living daylights out of me.  I LOVE my free time, and have counted on it to get things done.  Things like work (ok, less of it than I’d like to admit, but I  still work at warp speed when I do get to it!), running, shopping w/out a stroller and whiners, blogging, you name it: things that are easier done without a kid or two in tow.  And I’m giving up my two free days a week, and will now have two kids on the other days that I just had one.
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I'm missing my grandma

she loves me.Do you ever pre-mourn something?  Something you know is inevitable, so you start processing the feelings in advance, even though it hasn’t happened?  I’ve been doing that the last couple of weeks, for my grandma.  She’s 93, in an extended-care facility, and while reasonably healthy she’s slowly losing her mind.  I’ve dreamed about her packing her bags to leave, heard reports from my mom that her short-term memory is gone, and am afraid that she won’t know me at all the next time I see her.  She very well may be around for a few more years, but she won’t be Grambie to me.  She’ll be like her own mother, the one I remember mostly as a frail bird perched on the edge of her bed in a nursing home, spitting cookie-bits across the room when she couldn’t gum them well enough.  I never really knew my great-grandmother before she was senile, so there wasn’t a relationship to mourn.
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Let the next phase begin ...

It seems the decison has been reached.  Kid’s been consulted and agrees wholeheartedly.  Books are being sent, veterans consulted, devil’s advocate input sought, and logic argued.  While I’m quite aware of a whole host of potential issues, and unaware of many others that will rear their not-so-pretty heads, I’m certain in my heart that this is the right move to make.  It’s time.  The final tipping point may well have been this bit, though it all started about 2 years ago.  We’re pulling Douglas out of school next month, and teaching him at home.
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Where do you fit your own work in?

A recent site/logo design, that I actually enjoyed doing, but not the fitting-it-in part. I’m obviously more or less a SAHM, with a WAHM component that fluctuates wildly.  Much of that fluctuation is due to procrastination, because quite frankly I may be a very competent web designer, but I don’t *want* to do it unless I have to, or it’s for personal reasons.  I love a good challenge, but not when money/reputation/groceries are on the line.  I don’t want to have to work.  There, I said it.  I don’t.  I’m sick and tired of it, and while I find it fulfilling and empowering and challenging and all that, I’m tired of it. 
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Schooling Choices and Creativity

I’m in a quandry.  Douglas is not happy at school.  It’s been brewing for awhile, and I’ve tried for several years to get him into a different type of school.  He’s in 2nd grade in a regular public school, subject to the restrictions of the lumbering systems known as NYC Department of Ed.  Some schools are better than others, and there are tons of options, but none of them have seemed perfect for him.  I know there are charter and private schools that would be more open/creative but we haven’t gotten him in anywhere. The clip below was posted by a friend of mine on FB, and it really hit home.  Creativity is NOT encouraged in the public school system, and he’s overflowing with it.  (It’s Sir Ken Robinson talking about creating an education system that nurtures (rather than undermines) creativity.  Take a look:

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Random thought of the day

Took a hot bath today after a freezing cold run, and still felt cold.  I lay in the bath as it drained, somehow hoping I would feel warmer.  The sensation of my body verrrry slowly losing buoyancy and feeling heavy again almost made me feel paralyzed, like I’d been drained of my very essence.  I wondered if that’s what death feels like. 

I’m really not feeling morbid, despite the last couple of posts, but contemplative, and the sensation was so strong that I wanted to share it.  I also needed a post for today, and that was the most memorable thought of the day.

Happy end of the weekend, and may the back-to-monday blues not hit too hard!  I tried denial, gave it up almost immediately, but am refusing (wisely I think) to not look at my to-do list until tomorrow morning after the school-scramble. 

Sweet dreams!

SaneMom

Dreams : Do you believe in them?

I had a dream last night about my grandmother (she’s 93 and I’ve talked about her before).  In the dream she was packing her bags to leave, and had almost everything tucked away in several suitcases.  The last one had just a little more room in it, and was lying open waiting for it’s last thing to be stowed.  I woke up and felt a little uneasy.  My mom mentioned a few days ago that her last conversation with Grambie wasn’t as coherent as usual, and while that’s not unusual my radar went off a bit.  So upon mentioning it to my husband this morning, and getting his “Call her!” reaction, I did.  She sounded chipper and with it, though her memory wasn’t too great.  I took the dream as a warning though, and will try to call her more often. 

I’ve had plenty of dreams that were weirdly accurate.

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Self Expression

I hiked over to BAM a couple of nights ago, and saw the movie The Young Victoria.  I enjoyed it, though I found it remarkably straight-up for BAM’s typical fare (they’re definitely an art house) and it didn’t particularly touch me.  (Yes, that means I didn’t cry.  Don’t ask why I dripped a little at the end of The Princess and the Frog last weekend, I honestly can’t remember though I’m sure I had a valid reason.)  What DID touch me was the preview sequence that showcased a lot of BAM’s theatre offerings.  The amount of raw self expression that dripped off the screen in those couple of minutes was enough to ooze up the aisle and into my heart.  For the first time in my life, I had a craving to act. 
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The Best Thing I Never Knew I Needed*

Here’s to a new decade, a new year, and a somewhat clean slate!  As I’m resolving to at least complete the first month of NaBloPoMo, I’ll try to give a nod most days to their chosen theme of BEST.  To start my year off with some gratitude (which I’ve been short on lately), here are the top ten BEST things from 2009, in no particular order …

1. We all stayed healthy.  No flu, a few colds and coughs and sore muscles, but absolutely nothing I can label as sick.  I think Fynn had a fever of 100 for one day?  Pretty amazing for a family of 4 with two kids in school!

2. We took a long road trip that included territory-scouting for where we’d like to move, lots of family, a wedding, some good camping, and a second visit to my 93-year-old grandmother. 

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Happy New Year!

my husband’s latest snow sculpture, and i love the reflectiveness of it :)It’s been a quiet week here, but I wanted to take the time to wish you all a most Happy New Year, and hope that it brings you peace and joy!

It’s no surprise that I’ve been chewing a bit on where to take SaneMoms, and haven’t been posting as much as I’d like.  I’m making a commitment to NaBloPoMo for January, and hope it kicks my ass into gear!  The theme for the month is BEST, which I think is a fabulous way to start off a new year as a woman and a mom.  I’ve been struggling with a lot of negative thinking and depression lately, and while a lot of it needs to be hauled out of my emotional closets and dealt with, focusing on the BEST things about life is just what I need for a bit of perspective.  I hope you’ll join me :).  There will be lots of questions and room for comment, and I look forward to sharing the journey with you! 

Smelling the flowers

I tend to be a no-nonsense kind of task-tackler, and too often focus on the getting there, missing the scenery.  I came across this quote in some newsletter I accidentally got subscribed to (hate how that happens!) and thought it was exactly what I needed to hear. 

It’s by John Keasler, and is featured in Stephen Covey’s book Everyday Greatness.

 

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright told how a lecture he received at the age of nine helped set his philosophy of life.

An uncle, a stolid, no-nonsense type, had taken him for a long walk across a snow-covered field. At the far side, his uncle told him to look back at their two sets of tracks.

“See my boy,” he said, “how your footprints go aimlessly back and forth from those trees, to the cattle, back to the fence and then over there to where you were throwing sticks? But notice how my path comes straight across, directly to my goal. You should never forget this lesson.”

“And I never did,” Wright said, grinning. “I determined right then not to miss most things in life, as my uncle had.”

I love it.

Btw, has anyone read any Stephen Covey, and have any thoughts on it?  I’ve heard good things, but never picked one up.  Just curious what other moms think.

 

When is it too much?

We all have our escapes.  One of my favorites happens to be reading mom-blogs as I’m sure you know if you’ve been around here much.  I don’t have that many that I follow regularly, and I’ve slowed down my reading times, but I still use them as a real escape/pleasure several times a week. 

One of my favorites is P-dub aka The Pioneer Woman, and I recently referred my house-mate “A” to one of her recipes that I thought she’d love, thus introducing her to the site.  At dinner the next night, we had mutual friends over and were all sitting around the table chatting.  A had made a dessert she found on p-Dub’s Tasty Kitchen, and the subject of mom-blogs came up as we were devouring it’s pear and ginger crispiness.  Being my philosophical self, I tried to analyze why P-Dub and dooce, the two most-read blogs I was aware of, were so popular.  Things like transparency, honesty, great photography, and belches-and-all reality were tossed around for a minute or two. 

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Surprise stats

I put up a post about a year and a half ago that was just a link to a news article that caught my eye.  The subject was women who wish they’d never had kids.  The part that caught my eye was about how unprepared we often are (I certainly wasn’t aware!) for the psychological aspects of the shift to motherhood.  How our identities change, how we deal with what we have to change or give up or rework, and the complexities of our self-image as it relates to our kids.  It’s tough! I certainly don’t wish that I’d never had kids, though I do have my brief moments of wondering what it would have been like without them.  It takes about 2 seconds flat for me to feel empty and a bit adrift.  I can’t envision life without them, nor do I want it. 

What I’m finding hard to is the amount of hits I’m still getting on that old blog post (it’s a lot!, and is at #1 on google for “wish i never had kids”), and what some people are saying in the comments.

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Remembering 9/11/01

My heart goes out to the ones who suffer more on this day than any other.   Wishing you healing, peace, and comfort.  While my loved ones all came through the day unscathed, it makes me even more thankful for the love and health of my family.  I hold them a little tighter today, and let my mind barely touch on the thoughts of losing them.  Any mom’s nightmare, to lose a child or a spouse.  So many did.  So many do.  My reminder to be thankful for every day.