Wednesday Whatevers

I don't have the energy for this.  I'm sort of forcing it, so when it sucks, you'll know why.
But here's what's happening, in all its randomness.

I turned 42.  And lived to tell about it.  No end of the world or anything, which I really wasn't expecting anyway.  It was actually a pretty stinkin' good birthday.  People who were supposed to remember the day actually did...a few that I didn't expect to surprised me with greetings and salutations, and it was just NICE.  And throughout the course of the celebratory weekend, these notable things occurred:

My dad prepared a lovely dinner for the family on Thursday night.
Family from out of town visited unexpectedly, "forcing" us to stay out 'til the wee hours of the morning visiting with them.
We had a very pleasant, although unplanned, Friday evening with good friends.
We spent the day Saturday with family again, enjoying good food and drinks and fun.
We painted the town red...or at least muted shades of mauve and rose...on Saturday night, again with great friends and good music.
We spent Sunday with yet more family.
The overall theme was friends and family--that's what it's all about, after all.
I get tired again just reading about all of the activity.  Right now, hibernating sounds pretty good.

It was also during the weekend that Andrew wrecked a motorized vehicle for the first time when he drove a mini-dirt bike through a rail fence, breaking two of the rails and narrowly escaping a nasty run-in with the barbed wire fence strung on the other side.  Whew, I'm glad I didn't see it!  What I am grateful for, in addition to the fact that he wasn't injured (other than a scrape on his chin) was that he walked away with a healthy fear of speed and a lesson in listening carefully.  And while I wondered THEN where my little boy went, I wondered even more when he came home from school today talking about wanting a leather jacket, one of those leather clips for his pocketknife, and leather pants, complete with "one of those chains you can hook to your pants." Apparently, I'm raising a motorcycle hood.  Fonzi would be proud.

I have a long list of work grumbles that I won't bore the public with.  Middle school drama isn't strictly for the kids, apparently.  But aside from that, I am feeling a great deal of stress professionally.  Okay, maybe I will bore you a bit...without being specific, let me just express the fact that IN GENERAL, it's difficult to go through life always being told what you're doing wrong or what you're not doing and should be.  We could probably all benefit from that lesson for our own workplaces and homes.  I just don't think that constantly pointing out where failures occurred is productive, healthy, or even ethical.  Everyone needs positive, consistent, and fair feedback.  Without specifics, and without even acknowledging that I'm talking about myself here, I would like to say that you just can't keep piling things on to someone's "plate" without expecting that plate to overflow.  It's a little discouraging for the focus to always be on the carrot that fell in the floor, instead of on all of the other things that teachers do well.  We, and the many great things we do during the course of a day...or week...or year...are taken for granted, from the bottom rungs of the hierarchy to the top.  While I don't look for sympathy for doing a job that I love, (and doing a damn good job of it, I might add), I do look for...I don't know.  Understanding? I also don't look for someone or something to trip me while I'm carrying the plate, just to see if I can hold on.  Uggh, rant over.

On a positive note, I love getting coupons from restaurants.  Good job, Byers Street Bistro and Sauced, for sending me $10.00 off birthday presents.   You're damn skippy I'll use them, and spend all the more money for saving a little.  And FYI, marketing people who care about this stuff, the actual postcard in the mail is SO much more effective for this girl than an email sitting in my inbox.  I might use the others too, but I'm more likely to use the one that's cluttering up my kitchen counter!  And when you say "any purchase," you do mean beer, right?  'Cause that's what I'm buying!

Another positive note to end on?  Wednesday dinners are also "whatevers."  It's my Grump Day Hump Day Karate Night Strategy for Survival...so bring on the leftover chili, Mr. Microwave.

I have a whole bunch of things swirling around in this brain of mine right now, and it's making me sort of dizzy.  Chalk it up to a rough time of year, or a seasonal change, or exposure to too many fluorescent lights, or coming down off the "high" of a long weekend vacation, but whatever it is, it feels...unsettled.  This blog has always been a great way for me to at least put a finger on "the thing," but I'm also inspired today by a professional book study in which I'm participating.  Ms. Super Teacher who wrote the book talks some smack about how she's Queen of Teaching Writing and also finds time in her day to write for at least fifteen minutes daily.  I might not be able to publish a book and tell everyone I know the right way to teach writing, but I can at least sit my butt down here for a few minutes a day (aaackkk!) and get something flowing.  Maybe.  It might not be pleasant, but maybe it will be good anyway.

So, it's fall.  Officially.  And I don't really hate fall...I don't.  But it makes me very sad.  As if the leaves turning brown and the flowers dying weren't enough to do that, this time of year will always and forever be The Time of Year In Which Edna Died.  There's nothing I can do about that.  But on beautiful afternoons like today, on which the sun is shining and the air is warm, I will always, always, ALWAYS feel that there is something ugly and catastrophic waiting just around the corner.  There were many afternoons like this one that I spent in the car on the way to the hospital or my parents' house after school.  I'd be listening to Rick Springfield sing about being "one passenger" on the train of life, or about time standing still, or many of the other songs on that particular album that seemed to be so apropos at the time, and I would have to pull over and cry.  There was, and is, something about the grief that I was already feeling even before her death and the striking beauty of the colors and the angle of the sun and the music...and I would be overwhelmed.  And then I would have to collect myself, fix my face, and go and be the strong one who handled things and pretended it would all be okay. 

And my birthday approaches.  I never was big on birthdays--even the monumental ones, like 16, 18, and 21, were always sort of awful.  41 is not good.  I don't like it, and we are not friends.  I'm staring down the barrel of my child-bearing years being over, when they never really started.  I'm looking at wrinkles and crows' feet around my eyes.  I'm listening to creaky knees and adjusting to being old enough to be Big Time Rush's mom.  I'm sure this is probably as much to do with my character and personality as anything, but birthdays have always sucked.  At the risk of sounding like Molly Ringwald in Sixteen Candles, it has just always felt like an anti-climactic bunch of nothing.  No one asks me what I want to do, or what I want...and when they do, I can't even tell them, because I don't want to do anything, nor is there anything I want.  But then I get upset when they listen and I'm nonplussed.  Edna was the only person that ever did my birthday right, ever.  And she did it without asking, which is amazing.

We did just return from a fabulous three-day beach trip, and I'm grateful for that.  But, of course, it also has its flip side, which is that I'm really sort of angry that this is the first time we've been since 2009.  We should have been going all along, and seeing the absolute joy on Andrew's face as he played in the surf, or ran around the very windy beach with a beach towel flapping out behind him as he pretended to fly like a superhero really makes me wish we had.  I love the lake, and our days there far outnumber any beach vacations we would have taken.  But having and maintaining a place there (humble though it is) takes our resources--both money and time--and there simply isn't enough of either to go around.  My dad talks about the memories Andrew will have of the lake for a lifetime, and he equates it to his own childhood memories of spending summers on the Jersey Shore with his extended family...and I WANT Andrew to have that, I do.  But I also want him to have other experiences, so at some point, I guess we're going to have to examine the issue and decide what's more important.  Ugh. 

Ah, well.  In the words of Scarlett O'Hara, "Tomorrow is another day." 

It's Over Already?

I am finding it hard to find the time to write lately, with all that has been going on. I know this is a stress reaction, but I sometimes feel like I'm on five or six different conveyor belts at the same time, and they're all moving in different directions and at varying speeds. Understandably, I can't keep my footing in any kind of graceful way, and I usually end up letting one belt carry me away before I realize what's happening and have to jump back onto all of them. The "belt" carrying me away right now is obviously Edna's medical condition and the overwhelming desire to drop everything else to be there with her. I don't know--maybe a juggling metaphor would have been better, even though it's kind of trite; besides, the juggler is usually in control of how many things to put into the air, and if there's one thing I'm not right now, it's in control.

But, I promised an update, and there are other things going on that are write-worthy here and there, so here goes, a month in review:

My youngest sister Anna turned 21 early this month. Unfortunately, her birthday was a couple of days after her mom's cancer diagnosis, so she'll always have that to deal with, but we all had a nice dinner out with drinks at our new favorite local Mexican restaurant to celebrate, and everyone had as good a time as we possibly could (margaritas in gigantic glasses helped that along).

Andrew is learning things at a still-incredible-for-me-to-watch rate. He's starting to write, and sometimes it's even legible. He wrote Anna's name all by himself on the outside of her birthday card.

We've been hurting financially, largely due to the cold weather and having to heat this monstrosity, so we find cheap entertainment where and when we can. We took advantage of one exceptionally warm day to take a little nature walk through our wooded lot, which is so thick with undergrowth during the warm seasons that we don't try it. Andrew was impressed and took to the woods like a champ. We also took advantage of a coupon to a local inflatable center--you know those places with the huge jumpy things. Andrew went straight for the playhouse, pirate ship, and kitchen stuff and mostly avoided the inflatables because of rowdy bigger kids whose parents were too pre-occupied to watch them. He did finally get his turn at a "batting cage" with a floating ball held up by an airstream, which was pretty cool. He hit it more than I could have.
Indoor recreation is not only free, we can stay warm too. Andrew loves to cook--his favorites are "eggies"and pancakes, but he also enjoys making pizzas, strombolis (see below), and even gourmet toast. When he's not in the kitchen working on haute cuisine, he's practicing for the professional hallway bowling circuit and getting ready for the Toddler NBA draft. And what's a good game of basketball without an audience? Last, but not least, nothing says "fun" like a good trip to the recycling center. Who knew throwing beer bottles in the dumpster one by one to hear them smash could be so much fun?

As we move into the last weekend of January, we're looking forward to more good news on the medical front for Edna, James' 40th birthday celebration this weekend, and Andrew's first professional non-daytime babysitter, which better go well, because we're actually paying for it. ---Tamara