Countdown to Forty

Yesterday was my 39th birthday.  It was a pretty awful day.  My husband and children did nothing for me.  I mean, I didn't even get wished a happy birthday until maybe 10 in the morning, hours after everyone was up. And then around three in the afternoon my husband suggests going grocery shopping to make me a birthday dinner. Ummm, no thanks.  You don't plan a birthday dinner for someone at dinner time the day of the birthday. I made dinner myself, and cleaned up the mess. The kids didn't even know it was my birthday until my parents came down and told them and then told them to say happy birthday. By then, it'd have been better if we had just pretended it wasn't my birthday at all.

Not exactly the kick off to my final year of the thirties I'd been hoping for. I think all moms at some point want to just run away and leave it all behind. We don't because there are little moments of happiness that keep us around. Yesterday, I just wanted a different life altogether. I think I was perceived as being spoiled because I was upset I didn't get presents or taken to a fancy dinner.  That makes me even sadder because what I really wanted was just a little effort. A day to not have to think about what's for dinner. A day where instead of me talking about and planning for others, someone planned something, anything, for me.

But I'm still here. I did the dishes, threw in a couple loads of laundry, carted the boys to school, went grocery shopping, and called the vet. I stay committed to this because the alternative of leaving would destroy my children and eventually me, knowing what I had done to them. Plus, most of it is the life I chose and it's the life I want. I like caring for my kids and my home and my husband. I find great joy in it, truly. And my husband really isn't that bad of a guy. He slipped up, as I certainly have done in the past.

So we move onto another day, another week, another year. As October draws to a close, I look towards November with some plan of action in mind. This morning I totaled our food expenses, which for us includes grocery bills, eating out, and miscellaneous purchases of diapers, toiletries, etc.  It was over $1400.  How? Why? What? Completely excessive and inexcusable. I'm not even going to mention the food we've tossed in the trash.  I don't find myself to be a wasteful person. I'm frugal and money conscious, and this part, of all parts of my life, is ridiculous that I spend this much money sometimes literally throwing it away.

So my next step is to get a handle on this spending on FOOD!  I'm not much of a couponer, preferring to buy store brand and sales. Most of the coupons I find I don't really care for the products. But, I did go onto Target.com and printed out some coupons. I'm also going on a cash only basis. Once the cash is gone, it's gone. In addition, I'm bringing a calculator with me to the grocery store. My thriftiness in buying generic and sale items isn't enough. I need to really assess what we need and what can stay on the shelf. I realize as I type this that there are women out there who spend $150 a month on groceries for like a family of ten. Well, I'm not her and I know that none of these ideas of mine are novel or earth-shattering. I'm just trying to rein in the spending a little and stay in a $600/month grocery budget. Maybe the $150/month budget will come in time, but not this November.

 

The First Steps

Today I took the first steps to refocusing myself.  Step one:  No. More. Facebook.  There are things I love about Facebook.  There's a support group for SM parents, and since there are so few of us, it's been very comforting and crazy informative.  I love keeping in touch with my cousins and other family members who live far away.  And I like keeping up with old high school friends, which is weird because most people want to forget high school.  But lately, Facebook makes me sadder than it does happy.  For one, friends I thought were good friends, are not.  Things I used to think they were too busy for in general turned out to be things they were too busy for just me.  It also fosters a false sense of community.  I'm "friends" with far too many local people who really don't care to be a real friend and I no longer have time for people like that in my life. And finally it makes me miss people, people who would be good, loyal friends again if I lived closer to them. But I don't.  So it's time to just take an indefinite break.

Second step:  Focusing on what I can control and letting go of what I can't.  I'm done with superintendent meetings and principal meetings.  It sounds like giving up, but it's not.  It's being realistic.  Without community support, there isn't much I can do and it's a huge expense of energy and emotions that could otherwise be spent on my family and myself.  I need to focus on cutting grocery expenses, for real, because that is in my control as much as I let it get out of control.  The other big thing I need to realize that is not in my control, and this is HUGE, is the state of my house.  My house is my refuge and I used to believe that it's one of the few things in my life that I can control.  I can keep it clean and nicely decorated, but I'm not the only person who lives here.  There are four other people and an old cat and an old dog.  They all have a piece of this house and render its overall state out of my control. I can focus on just a tiny piece of it at a time and I'm going to have to let the other stuff go.  Maybe then I won't have a major meltdown when my husband throws his nicely folded underwear haphazardly into a drawer--true story, it wasn't pretty.  And with that mindset, today I cleaned all three bedrooms in record time.

And finally step three:  Giving thanks.  I used to religiously write in a gratitude journal every night and for some inexplicable reason I stopped.  I write down five elements of my day that brought me joy or happiness. Sometimes it's big things, like my kids and husband.  Sometimes it's wrestling the dryer sheet out of the cat's mouth before he swallows it and then eventually barfs it up.  I record funny things the kids said or did, milestones they've reached, or the book I'm enjoying at the moment.  It ends the day on a positive and helps to drive out the negative thoughts.

A.N.T.'s

I can only liken it to the high of having a new baby and then that coming off the high and sinking lower than ever before.  Last spring, when I finished that teaching job from hell and all but abandoned traditional teaching forever, I felt like the world was so bright with possibilities.  And to give me that little added boost, I wrote an article in thirty minutes, sent it off to "Scary Mommy" and, yes, they will publish it.  This blog got hundreds of views, people actually commented on posts I'd written.  And then we left for vacation, in the mountains, secluded, and this new life I had seemingly given birth to is perfect.

But we returned from vacation, and "Scary Mommy" had declined more pieces, and they hadn't paid me for the one that did get published, and I could think of nothing but complaining to write on my blog, not to mention the pressure to "be a blogger" and all the design that accompanies it.  I thought that maybe it would be a source of income, but as I read more about it, I felt this tremendous pressure to be something I was not.  First, I didn't want to whore out my project.  My blog was never meant to be this depiction of a perfect life and how your life could be perfect, too.  It was meant to be a log of how I take life one day at a time and force myself into finding happiness when the big things get way too big.  Suddenly the blog was one of the way too big things.

A.N.T.'s started infiltrating my life.  Automatic Negative Thoughts.  I don't really like to write.  It's not for me.  Blogging is more for professional writers/graphic designers.  That's not really my thing.  I experienced a little bit of a lag and immediately talked myself out of writing and blogging altogether.  And what made it easier was my children returning to school.  We began therapy again for my oldest son with selective mutism. Since school started, the boys' school has had one evacuation and two lockdowns as a result of threats.  The school has not been handling the situation as well as they could.  It was the perfect excuse to say my focus can't be with writing/blogging at this time.  

Only, I have been finding myself getting unhappier by the day to the point where I'd say I'm clinically depressed.  My body aches.  I've gained weight.  I sleep during the day, have insomnia at night.  I'm obsessing about money and all the things we can't afford (like private school or moving) and who is there for me and who isn't.  And my cat is sick.  My fifteen year old cat suddenly starting drinking obsessively.  He's had two UTI's and is losing weight.  The vet has offered no preventable or manageable solutions other than antibiotics when the infections occur nor have they said he's dying, but they are very content to bill me hundreds of dollars at each visit and send me home to clean cat urine out of rugs or comforters.  It's exhausting and just sad.  

But suddenly two weeks ago I got mad at myself over something.  "Scary Mommy" hadn't paid me and I just let them not pay me.  I never followed through with it.  I actually used it as a "sign" that I wasn't meant to be a writer.  How stupid was that?!?!  I wrote a piece that people loved and I deserved to be paid.  I emailed them and the issue was immediately resolved.  Just a glitch in processing a new writer.  The cat remained sick, the school remained broken, my son continues to have SM, but there was a little glimmer a couple of weeks ago.

That glimmer spurred me to write another article.  I don't know if it's been accepted yet, but I wrote it and sent it.  It was a step.  And it means enough to me to keep putting it out there until it is published.  It was written to bring awareness to selective mutism, so that's not something I'm willing to give up on.  While writing it, I started missing my blog, my blog from last year where I was writing about scrapbooking and books and finding fun projects to do around the house, anything to distract me from life.

Even though I was missing my blog, I had yet to sit down at the computer and write.  Last Wednesday was the most recent lockdown at my boys' school.  The oldest was too scared to eat his lunch.  The middle was denied bathroom access, wet his pants, and was left to sit in it for the remainder of the day.  The school had yet to address what was really happening.  On top of this, the school continued to trudge through ridiculous amounts of meaningless homework...I won't go into details, but I feel like I'm homeschooling my kid with all the work and modifications I'm making to the work that the teacher doesn't have time for, apparently.  I went to the board of education meeting last week incensed only to be met with denial that the school has any sort of problem.  We met with the superintendent on Monday to, in his words "hit the reset button".  He's very good at saying what you want to hear, but no change ever comes of it, and we walked away feeling empty.

On Tuesday there was a parent meeting to address the lockdowns, a week after the third incident.  There was an element of hysteria at the meeting, parents calling for metal detectors, others crying because they don't want metal detectors.  Others are on a witch hunt to punish the perpetrator(s).  What did I want to know?  How does this happen three times and you have no idea who it is?  They are just now implementing and following through on bathroom logs.  As of Tuesday, they have yet to limit the number of students out at the bathroom.  Are more frequent checks of the bathroom being put into place?  The answers were, of course, yes those plans are going to be put into action.  Why aren't they already put in place?  Some schools this is just policy from day one, and you're saying it wasn't put into place after the first incident.  Our kids had metal detector wands used on them and bomb sniffing dogs going through their belongings twice because you have no idea who was in the bathroom in a block of time and can only narrow it down to fifty kids?  The meeting ended with some parents praising the school for all it's doing (denial that their kid is in a potentially unsafe position) and others just shaking their heads.  

That was us, just shaking our heads and feeling powerless to do anything.  I have never been so down as I was yesterday.  I had surpassed sadness and anger.  I felt like it all was just hopeless, the school, the cat, all of it.  

This Sunday I turn thirty-nine.  As I lied in bed last night, I realized that it is hopeless, those things.  My cat is going to die and the school isn't going to change over night.  But I had one thing going for me, this blog.  And I remembered what happened last year when I focus on the blog and the projects I had attached to it, my life changed.  I got out of the house and landed a teaching job.  And though it didn't turn out the way I wanted, at least I knew.  I grew as a person, moved forward.  I'm back to sitting still and I hate it.  I don't want to be a blob at forty who is so achy she feels like she's seventy.  

I'm now focusing on what I can control and change in my life, and that is me.  I can control the fate of this blog.  I can learn about how to develop it slowly and within my terms of what I want it to be.  I can keep writing and let it be what it is.  And I can change my body and what I eat.  I can control that, and it's really time I start.  

On Sunday it'll be 365 days not just to happiness, but to FORTY!    

Defeated

Tonight I left my boys' back-to-school night feeling completely and utterly defeated with tears in my eyes. Over what?  Dress code. Yes, you read that right...dress code.  The school had been in uniforms for the past five years or so and this year decided to discontinue them due to parent and student outcry. I was 100 percent supportive of the decision, which is neither here nor there. But on Sunday night we received a phone blast reviewing the new dress code policy and one of the items was no camouflage...no camouflage anything. This struck me as odd seeing as how the print is very popular and yes, we bought a few items with camo print. I'm typically pretty good at reading through policies, but I missed the no camo. I called the school who said they weren't sure of the reason for it on the policy and directed me to the superintendent's office. I called and left two messages with no response.

Tonight I saw the superintendent, inquired about whether he had received my messages to which he responded he did, and politely asked him to call me tomorrow.  He brought me into the hallway and informed me that he was intentionally ignoring my messages. He said he was refusing to answer any questions regarding dress code because the decision had been made months ago. I said I just wanted to know the reasoning behind the no camouflage, which he couldn't or wouldn't give me a reason nor would he answer my questioning as to the type of research put into this new dress code (we are the only school district in a 10 mile radius, maybe more, with this restriction). He began to raise his voice to me saying I could have completed surveys, attended board meetings, etc.  There was one survey which I completed and one board meeting which I attended. I couldn't get in a syllable without him interrupting me and finally he said he wasn't speaking with me about this at back-to-school night.  I asked him to call me!  He initiated the discussion which quickly turned confrontation.

Where do I go from here? We live in such a small district, only two schools total.  One elementary school.  One middle/high school. We puff out our chest because we have the small town, personal touch, but your question doesn't matter, your concerns don't matter, you will be ignored. I won't even pretend to hear what you have to say. I will say right to your face, I'm ignoring you. How does that trickle down to our students?

Reason #2 To Love South Jersey...This One is Easy

Ever since I was a little girl, I've always had a hard time with sleeping...at night. It's why I nap so much. I used to say I was having "bad thoughts" and my mom would try to help me think good thoughts.  When I was very little, it was wolves. I was so scared of wolves, because, you know, living in the suburban East Coast we have that problem. As I got older, sometime around when the show Rescue 911 came out, I became afraid of dying of carbon monoxide poisoning. A lot of people on that show got sick from that. Any time I'd get a headache at night I was sure it was carbon monoxide.  I even bought my dad a CO detector for his birthday. I'm sure that tops the list of weird gifts kids get their parents, but are really for them.  I used to say to myself that I would know if it was CO if I was dead in the morning, and somehow that got me through the night.  It doesn't make sense to me either.  I suppose even at the age of ten I realized I was being completely irrational.  And I also realize now that if you suspect CO, it's not a let's-wait-and-see situation.  My house is fully equipped with detectors as an adult.

Now as an adult I rarely worry about CO poisoning, except on the rare occasion when I obsess about the back up battery failing during a power outage. My worries are much greater as an adult, as I'm sure most of you can relate to. Some are just as irrational, but too many are not. Too many horrors that no one would have thought of before are now very real realities in our world. It's not as easy to say, "That can't happen to me," as it once used to be. Random acts of violence are all too common. And falling into irreparable debt is sometimes right there, knocking on my door. My coping mechanism as an adult makes a lot more sense. I simply say to myself that everyone I love is currently tucked safely into bed and that at this very moment all is right with my world.  Sometimes I even get up and check on the boys and watch them sleep. It calms me and helps me to sleep again. (That and maybe a melatonin or ZZZQuil.) Sometimes.

Recently I couldn't do that as easily because my parents took all three boys to their house for a couple days.  This happens maybe once a year, if I'm lucky. It's a very unsettling feeling having them out of the house. There is a great emptiness. I used to think I'd be one of those moms who was going to be independent and still have her own life and be okay with sending the kids off for a week while my husband and I take an anniversary trip to Bermuda. First, we can't afford a Bermuda trip. Second, no one will take my kids for a week. I beg to get one weekend. And third, I don't want to leave them for that long! I couple of nights suits us all just fine. It allows us to miss each other just enough.

Anyway, those nights I wasn't able to say that at least at this moment the things I love most are tucked safely in their beds just a few feet from my own bed. My husband and I, having the interrupted alone time, also spent some quality time discussing moving.  Moving can be exciting, but more often it's unsettling, literally.  With those thoughts racing in my mind and an eerie quiet over the house, sleep was difficult.

I first started to try and once again find contentedness with my situation while simultaneously finding peace with knowing that my children are in good hands and I then expressed my gratitude to God for the doctors that are located right here in South Jersey and Philadelphia. All three of my boys have needed to see a pediatric urologist for three different reasons, but the most serious reason involved my middle son, Eli.  I've written about it before, but he had an enlarged kidney at my 20 week ultrasound that did not resolve itself at birth.  A very long story short, he's fine and has never had a related problem with it. Just a few weeks ago we went for his 18 month exam and the doctor said it finally looked in the "normal" range.  The drive to this urologist, who is a part of a group of doctors who is nationally ranked, is a little over twenty minutes.  The tests we had to endure during Eli's first two years of life were performed just over the bridge, ten minutes away, at St. Christopher's pediatric hospital.  Sitting in the urologist's and St. Chris's waiting rooms over the years, I know people travel long distances to see these doctors, which in and of itself is a hardship let alone whatever ailment is afflicting their child.

We are also just thirty minutes from one of the few selective mutism treatment centers in the world. My oldest son has mild SM and while some people fly across the Atlantic Ocean to get to Jenkintown, PA, we live thirty minutes from the SMart Center and received treatment for it last summer.  Our funds have run out and we can no longer afford treatment there, but I recently learned that CHOP (Children's Hospital of Philadelphia) has a therapist who specializes in anxiety disorders, including SM.

So there you have it, reason #2 I love South Jersey...not just love it but feel blessed to be here...is for medical professionals at the top of their field that are right in my backyard for my kids.

I...Love...South Jersey??? Because of the food...

Okay, so this is quite difficult for me to write because yet again we suffered another disappointment yesterday in terms of where we live.  My boys have been asking for a few years now to play basketball, only there isn't a rec league in our area.  There is a program at the Catholic church, but it's only for members, and since we aren't Catholic, we're out of luck.

At the end of the school year a flyer came out asking if anyone was interested in a youth basketball league.  I imagine that they got quite a good response, given that our park basketball courts are always full, we are literally across the bridge from Philly, and who doesn't love basketball?  Even I love basketball, and I don't really love any sport.  They soon sent out a follow up email asking for ages and contact information and then sent out a little over a month ago an email announcing two free clinics, one of which was suppose to be this Saturday.  I marked my calendar.

Yesterday, just a few days short of the clinic, I get an email saying, casually, that they are changing the day to Sunday.  No explanation as to why, just that it was switched.  My boys can't go, and I wonder how many other kids can't go.  And so it begins, the last minute changes and disorganization.  The turn out they originally anticipated isn't there, and suddenly it's the community's fault and the phrase "cancelled due to lack of interest" is thrown out there.  But, it's not lack of interest.  It's lack of getting your shit together.  With a fledgling organization, you have to cross your t's and dot your i's.  People will give up on you and won't give you a second chance if you drop the ball.  And to drop the ball on your first event??  Well, it's discouraging to say the least.

I realize that this is not a problem unique to my area of the country.  It's just another disappointment in a long string of disappointments.  We believed our district started instrument lessons in the third grade, and when they didn't, we had assumed it was fourth grade, only to find out it's actually fifth grade, which is far too late. My friend's kids in a different state are playing classical pieces by the fifth grade, while our concert was "Hot Cross Buns" (I'm not even exaggerating.).  They cut the foreign language program at the elementary level, not to save money, but because they didn't see its import and reallocated the money elsewhere.  We are fighting right now to keep the local Scout troop viable because over the past few years it was so poorly run they nearly lost all their members.  My husband has stepped up and is leading a den and is also trying to be a force with the organization of the entire troop, but the word is out there that the program is a dud and recruiting new members is difficult.  He also stepped up and volunteered to assistant coach our oldest son's soccer team because two of the coaches left the team when their sons tried out for the "A" team and made it. The second soccer team was formed because, according to the coaches, there was a group of boys who wanted to play and didn't have a team and any kid who is eight years old and wants to play soccer, should be able to play soccer.  We were told that the team would stay together and build their bonds as a team through the years growing a sense of loyalty and pride, but the first opportunity to try out for the "better" team, they took it.  Luckily two other dads and my husband volunteered to keep it going.

I just feel that there is nothing we can get behind here.  We are willing to volunteer and help out in anyway we can, but with every organization I feel it's a struggle to just survive it.  At any moment it feels as though it could be pulled from under our feet.  It's exhausting to try and be apart of so many things at a "keep it going" level, and with the lack of opportunities at the school district level, where there is nothing we can do, no matter how heartfelt your speech at the school board meeting is, it's downright infuriating.

So we sit at home, put the kids to bed early, and order takeout to have some quiet time and discuss our current predicament with basketball or soccer or scouts or how will we pay for private music lessons, just as we did last night.  And here comes the good part...the food in South Jersey.  It's plentiful and 100 percent authentic.  I fell in love with Damascus, but there were about four, maybe five eateries in town, only one of which was a real restaurant.  There were a couple cafes and one taco shop whose proprietor's name was Joe Killian.  Now, we didn't eat there and Joe could have a Mexican mother who married some Irish dude and they somehow settled in the mountains of Virginia and they could have been the best tacos I had ever eaten.  I'm not knocking Joe's, remember.  I'm trying to find a reason to like where I live now, and my Mexican restaurant is two minutes away and the lady who owns it is named Juanita and my favorite dish is the dish her village in Mexico is know for.

We have pizzerias galore, and while not all of them are as great as their North Jersey counterparts, which I grew up eating, they can still be classified as real pizza.  I have a sushi joint on speed dial and the whole Japanese family who runs the place knows me by first name.  Our favorite family restaurant for a special celebration is actually an Indian restaurant about twenty minutes away, and any Indian restaurant in South Jersey is pretty much guaranteed to have an Indian chef.  My favorite Italian place just up the rode from the Indian place is operated by a family right off the boat and is Zagat rated as one of the best Italian restaurants in the country!  I've eaten Greek, Brazilian, Vietnamese, and even Burmese, all authentically cooked and served and all delicious.

There aren't too many places that offer such a selection of cultural tastings in such a compact space.  And I like food...all. kinds. of. food.  So in that respect, South Jersey and I are a perfect fit.  And when disappointments arise, as they often do, there is always some comfort food awaiting us just minutes away.     

Vacation, All I Ever Wanted

Injuries suffered while on vacation:

       Sprained wrist

       Sprained ankle

       Baseball sized bruise

       Scraped knee

       Scraped elbow

       About 15 other miscellaneous bruises and cuts

And those were just mine.

We went to Damascus, Virginia which is, I'm pretty sure, part of the Smokey Mountains and home to the Virginia Creeper Trail, an old railroad line that has since been converted to a bike trail.  The entire trail is 34 miles, but most people who come to Damascus just to a 17 mile stretch from Whitetop down into Damascus.  My best friend suggested the vacation to us as she and her family have been down twice and described it as the best vacation they've ever had.  So we decided to venture there as well and cross a new state off our list.

In addition to my injuries, one kid fell on a hike and scraped his knee.  Another impaled himself with a campfire skewer (minor injury) and fell out of bed giving himself a "deep" bruise on his foot that required a trip to Urgent Care.  My injuries were all acquired from a very uncool wipeout on my bike about 5 miles down the trail.  Eli was riding behind me on one of the half bike attachments and we think his wheel might have caught on a post throwing us off balance.  We both went down, but I sustained all the injuries which were black.  Yes, my scrapes and much of my skin was black.  The trail is lined with coal, so when you fall it gets into your skin and they call it tattooing.  I have no tattoos, and I was definitely not into getting this kind either.  I guess you could say the Creeper Trail was a Creeper Fail...but it so wasn't.

I'm suffering from vacation withdraw...bad.  This was our first vacation in three years and was easily one of the best vacations we ever had, but the tragic flaw was that it was set in absolute, attainable heaven.  I'm almost (almost) happy I fell because it really slowed us down.  Instead of flying down the Creeper Trail on a bike, I got to walk six miles of it taking in all the scenery. (Didn't I mention that?  After my fall, I had to walk six miles out of a forest before I could get to help.)  Rushing streams and cloud topped mountains.  Even when the thunderstorm hit and my kids started to freak out and all I wanted to do was sit and cry, I still was able to recognize the beauty around me.  And then there was our cabin.

We stayed at a little cabin (the area is peppered with cabins and cottages throughout the mountain) just across from the trail.  Our view...a Christmas tree farm down the side of a mountain.  An elderly couple rents out the cabin on their property.  She bakes a chocolate cake on your first night there and he talks firewood and pocketknives.

So on our ride home as we left the Smokeys and passed through Shenandoah heading into the rush of D.C. and then Baltimore and then Philly, I realized that of all the beautiful places we could have chosen to live, we chose one of the least picturesque parts of the United States.  And it's not just about being pretty.  It's crowded!  I mean a lot, a lot of people.  We went grocery shopping in Virginia at 11 o'clock on a Saturday morning.  There were maybe ten cars in the parking lot.  Have you ever been grocery shopping at any time, let alone on a Saturday, in South Jersey? There are never just ten cars in the parking lot.  I had all three kids and my husband with me plus it was a half hour trip into town and then another half hour back out and we were still finished with a full grocery order faster than when we run up to the Shoprite that's five minutes from our house for a few items.

This was one of the first vacations where I felt more at home on vacation than I do where I actually live.  I suppose that's it.  Whenever I'm at the beach, I always picture myself living there, but there are always a lot fewer people than what's really at the beach.  Not to mention that I'm loaded with cash. Most vacations you say it was nice to visit, but then you're glad to be back home.  Well, not this one.

Since I'm still not 100 percent and it won't be easy for me to get out in the garden, I've decided for the month of August to focus on some of the positives of living where I do in the hopes of shaking off this discontent.    

Summer Cleaning...Check!

Today I will be able to check off the final room on my cleaning list.  It's a bit of a colossus, our finished basement.  It serves as a family room, play room, laundry room, and office to me.  It typically is strewn with miscellaneous toys, video games, blankets, pillows, papers, dirty laundry, and the bane of the existence...Legos!  I don't touch Legos as far as cleaning up.  They apparently have specific bins in which they belong, but to me they all look the same...little daggers ready to slice into my feet and twist my ankles.

But, after today, everything will have been dusted, vacuumed, wiped clean, Windexed.  It's never all clean, all at the same time, but at least now I'm in a position to maintain.  I'm sorry, but this is important to me.  The number one piece of advice people gave me while working was to not worry so much about having a clean house.  So I tried not to worry and my house became scuzzy and I felt awful.  It actually got to the point where it was physically painful to sit in my living room and look around at the mess.  My skin crawled.  For me, a clean house is sanity.  It represents an organized life and a sense of control over my life, at least my little piece of the world contained in those walls.

Oh, don't worry!  Having three boys and a husband has kept me real in terms of what is realistically expected and "clean" is a relative term.  At any given moment, there is a very high possibility that there is pee on my bathroom floor and something sticky is on one of the kitchen walls.  There is always a pile of something somewhere that belongs elsewhere.  Usually, I take it in stride and roll with it, cleaning it in stride.  Every now and then I have a small meltdown which is a sign to my family that the overall state of a room has crossed the line and they all pitch in and clean. Even they are starting to sense the line of disorder and will begin to straighten up unprompted by me.

My summer projects list, which I guess you can say were "challenges" just not very fun or distracting ones, is now considerably shorter.  The remainder of my list includes the garden--this is a part of my life where the threshold for order needs to be reigned in...A LOT.  I don't have weeds.  I have weed trees.  Part of the reason it gets out of control is the sun.  And bugs.  And it hurts my back.  And things grow much bigger than when I originally planted them.  I guess you can say I don't like gardening.  I like the thought of it.  I appreciate nice gardens.  I in no way know how to design them and maintain them.  It's a problem, but the neighbors are starting to stop and look for all the wrong reasons you want them to stop and look at your landscaping.  Too bad they can't see the inside of my house.  There have actually been people that come in and are literally amazed at how nice it is on the inside.  It's not really all that nice, but I think their expectations have been considerably lowered based on the state of my outside and they are pleasantly surprised.  Maybe I should keep this trend going.

 

People...People Who Don't Need People

One good thing about teaching was that it distracted me enough that I forgot about how I don't like where I live.  Pool season was a stark reminder.  I hate going to the pool for many reasons.  One, I hate the sun, or rather the sun hates me.  My skin prickles and turns beet red in a matter of seconds. It physically hurts me to be in the sun. Two, it's a lot of work.  You have to pack everything up, carry it all to the car, then to the pool, then back to the car, then back inside, and back to it's proper place.  I try to give some responsibility to my boys, but it usually results in our lunch cooler being swung around resulting in either a smashed lunch or a strangled brother.  Three, I have three boys at three different stages of swimming who want to swim in three different pools, some of whom are restricted to certain pools only.  I can't hop in and swim in the deep end with Boy 1 because Boy 3 isn't allowed yet in that pool.  Four, my boys are, well, my boys.  While most 9 and 6 and nearly 4 year old boys are off swimming with their friends in whatever section of the pool they want, my boys are socially stunted, choosing to stay with each other and refusing to learn how to swim.  Oh, don't judge me that my kids can't yet swim.  They've had swim lessons since they were three, every summer.  I don't know why they can't swim.  I'm assuming it's because they are mine. The youngest still refuses to go in any pool other than the one foot pool, which then often results in the other two wanting to stay with him, so there we all are, the baby pool gang.  And finally, my last reason for hating the pool...people.  At the pool is where I feel the most socially self-conscious.  While other moms are chatting each other up, watching each other's kids, there I am alone juggling all three of mine.  There is no place I feel so friendless as at the pool.  There are a few moms I see on occasion, but for the most part I'm flying solo, which wouldn't be so bad if I could just sit back, let the kids run, read a book in the shade.  Be aloof.  But not yet.  I am forced to be present.

I keep telling myself that eventually we'll hit the summer where they're off doing their own thing, and I'm sure that summer is closer than I realize.  Every now and then I catch glimpses of it.  For now, though, I'm stuck keeping vigilance while my mind wanders to the countryside where I imagine my own private retreat, pool included, and allow discontent to wash over me.  I've found myself once again stalking Realtor.com dreaming of a different life.  Seriously, I'm totally pathetic.

So this is where I somehow need to turn the pool into a positive.  Aaannnddd....I've drawn a blank.  I have no idea how to do this.  I think it might just be something I need to suffer through as a sacrifice for the betterment of my children.  And in the meantime, pray for rainy days.

Disclaimer

I'm getting published!  Yep, I wrote a piece for ScaryMommy.com and it got accepted.  Then it occurred to me that people might actually travel to my blog and read it.  That has me freaking out a bit.  Most of my blog was dedicated to my monthly challenges, but I'm pretty sure occasionally I mentioned a relative or two, maybe put their business out there that they really wouldn't have wanted me to.  I've been going over and over in my head whether or not to go back in and delete those parts. The thing is, I really don't have time.  Like I said before, I'm trying very hard to find purpose once again in my life at home, and finding that purpose takes time, especially when it comes to my three little boys.  I can't be worried about what others are going to think.  This I can say, that I never lie, so what you see is true, at least according to my side or perception of the story.  And if anyone was hurt, that was certainly not my intention.  Most likely what was written was in a moment of my own pain, so I'm sorry if you don't like it, but it was what was real for me in that moment.

The second disclaimer when reading this blog is that I have absolutely no intention of making it a work of literary genius. Most times I write in the early morning before the kids are awake, so who knows how well my brain is functioning.  In many ways this is a free flow of consciousness, a dialogue between you, the reader, and myself.  I do try to proofread, but there is very little editing of content.  And despite my English background, there are going to be grammar errors, colloquialisms, fragments, and cliches.  Get over it, snobs!

  

Repurposing Myself

My last post was in early March before I abandoned the blog and I think I remember doing something about monthly challenges to keep me distracted from life.  If I remember correctly, I finished out my February challenge which was to read one book a week from my stockpile of "to read" books, and then I went into full blown survival mode and abandoned the challenges as well.

I thought about jumping into the challenges again this July, but whoa, too much pressure.  I haven't even been off a week nor do I remember any of the challenges I had originally planned.  What I have felt the need to do is put me back together.  I fell apart in the last few months, and as a result, so did everything else, my house, my kids, my marriage.  I am very fortunate in the fact that my husband and children were all very understanding and patient with me, but now it's time, finally, to start putting it all back together.

My life had become purposeless.  Survival mode is very much about just running through the motions without any real purpose, and since before this job I was running through the motions of wife and mother without realizing it, I had a lot of work to do.

My first purpose in life was to make a clean home for myself and my family.  Even the husband agreed on this one as there was mold rings in the toilets and the windows were so dirty you couldn't really see out of some of them.  Last week, for the first time ever I might add, we both set to deep cleaning the house one room a day.  This was always something I did with purpose and passion, but for the first time my husband also found the purpose in it.  I'm sure he won't describe it as the soul stirring experience I've found it to be, but the fact that we are restoring order together is very therapeutic for me and I feel it's a step in the right direction as far as once again finding ourselves on the same page.

The cleaning is still in process.  My next step is finding purpose again with my children.  I mean, they are the ones I really neglected not just while working in survival mode, but way back months, maybe even years ago.  Not neglect in the not feeding leaving them home alone sense, but neglect in the soulful way.  So in the last week, I purposefully planned some activities to do with my boys, things I used to do with them all the time and somehow forgot about.  The first was to create a summer Book Bingo reading challenge for each of them.  I stumbled across this idea last year on Pinterest.  You create a bingo sheet and each square is a different type of book to read or a different place to read to read a book.  Some ideas:

read a book in a tent
read a book the librarian chooses for you
read a book with a girl main character
read a book on the beach

You get the idea.  For the first three bingos they make, I take them to Five Below to pick out a little toy.  Then they have to finish out the page and we go someplace "special."  (They pick Chuck E. Cheese. Blah!)  These bingo sheets are so motivating.  My oldest is something of a reluctant reader.  He would rather me read to him than read on his own.  These sheets have him reading constantly, different material, on his own.  Anyway, I digress a bit.  I promised my oldest a reading nook.  I have two crib mattresses in brand new condition that I can't give away so I told him I'd use them to make a nook and never did.  His room was the first we tackled to clean and I finally fulfilled my promise to him and made him a reading nook in his closet.  He needed that.  He needed a hideaway.  He needed a little kick in the pants to get him reading.  He needed his mom to keep her promises.

Another activity I planned to do over a year ago was paint giant letters, their initials, and hang them in their rooms as decoration.  Saturday was a rainy day and we put the cleaning on hold for a bit so I could call each one up and paint.  For ten minutes at a time, I sat with each of my boys and painted, chatted, and destressed together.

And finally, I'm putting purpose back in not only my relationships with my kids, but in my cooking again.  I actually watched a new cooking show.  My husband and I used to watch the Food Network all the time, and we ate well when we did.  Somewhere along the way we stopped, probably around the same time life lost its flavor, we decided to take a literal turn with that and not really enjoy cooking anymore.  I decided to find purpose again in what I feed my family and incorporate the boys into this.  Each week one of them gets to plan, shop for, and cook a meal.  We started this week and Eli and I made Caesar salad with homemade dressing, grilled naan pizzas, and chocolate pudding pie with homemade whipped cream.  I took my son to the grocery store.  We went to the grocery store and shopped together.  He nearly caused two avalanches of breaking jars, but I was there with him.  I had stopped grocery shopping with my kids.  It had become too stressful and I somehow made it into another excuse not to be with them.  I was cheating them of a life experience.  No more.  I might not take all three of them with me--that's just crazy talk--but from now on I hope to continue to include them in these tasks.  Next week Sal has decided on some sort of soup, so I've been told.

So that's life right now.  Finding purpose in everything I do.  Hell, I'm even watching TV with purpose again.  Before we'd sit down and just settled for sitcom reruns.  Don't get me wrong, Big Bang Theory marathons are awesome, but they lack purpose when you've already seen them a few hundred times.  I've committed to watching Orange is the New Black.  My husband thought it was going to be another Downton Abbey and, well, let's just say his attention is held just a little better by lesbian jail sex than early 20th century tablescapes.

For the last six months, and for up to a year or more before that, I thought that my purpose was to provide (financially) for my family.  And, yes, I did need to contribute.  Most of us do.  But that is a sidenote as a wife and mother.  Repurposing is big these days: cribs into benches, TV consoles into bookshelves or puppet theaters, crib mattresses into reading nooks.  This job allowed me to repurpose myself, strip down my original contributions to my family and find new, more useful, and creative ways to be apart of their lives.

I'm Back!

I'm back!  To sum up the last six months in detail would be impossibly painful, so I'm going to give some very general highlights.  Here goes.  I had the worst group of students ever in my teaching career.  There was no controlling them.  It was every teacher's worst nightmare.  And it wasn't that they were "bad" kids.  No, they were "good" kids and had nothing better going on than to try and sneak out of class and wander the hallways and whistle and throw paper airplanes.  It was like I was in an even worse version of Saved by the Bell.  It's why I had to abandon the blog.  They were total creepers.  I had set up an Instagram account and within a week, they found me and this is why I never learned how to work the Instagram and probably never will.

Now, don't get me wrong.  There were good kids.  Really good, likable kids that I will miss and would have liked to follow through their high school careers.  But, sadly they were such a small part of my day, and pretty much every day was hell, that it was very hard to maintain my focus on them. And then let's add in the crazy co-workers who, let's see, insulted my classroom management, told me I would rip the community apart, questioned my intelligence, insulted my online job, told me how to raise my children, and told me all that's wrong with the community I live in.  So much for colleague support.

And to top it all off, I realized soon into the experience, right after they locked me into a contract, that they never had any intention of hiring me permanently.  They never stopped in to see me teach.  They barely checked in on me at all.  They wanted all the drama from the last teacher to be kept behind closed doors and they threw me to the dogs, basically.  In the end, they cut the position.  They made it sound promising for me and to another long term substitute, and then hung us both out to dry.

(Okay, right now I have to apologize for my overuse of cliches.  I use them so much because this place was one giant cliche that there is no other way to describe my experience than use as many cliches as possible.)

The fact that they cut the position actually did me a huge favor.  I had already decided I wasn't returning no matter what, but this didn't set well with several people around me, namely my mother.  It was easier for her to accept I wouldn't have a job next year if I didn't have the opportunity of turning one down.  It kind of woke her up to the world of education, too.  Teachers are pawns, just like in any other company (though that Sam Adams commercial makes me want to go make beer!) and she didn't get that.  She just assumed because of my dedication and work ethic that they'd "create" a position for me.  Yeah, no.

On my particularly bad days I would zone out on my prep period or during lunch by looking at old Facebook photos and posts.  Once again, Facebook to the rescue.  I found all these posts about things I used to do with the older boys when they were little.  I cooked with them, did (very easy) crafts, took them to little kiddie places like farms and inside playgrounds.  I realized how detached I had become as a mother, running through the paces of feedings, drop offs, pick ups, and so on.

I prayed for this job, as some of you might remember.  I thought going back to work would be my answer to all our problems.  And it was.  It just wasn't the outcome I expected.  Well played, God.  And thanks for the extra cash.

Ha! If I Do Say So Myself

This is my latest Facebook post.  I thought it was witty, sort of, so I thought I'd share.

I have successfully lost 5 pounds in the month of January. I call it the "Go Back to Work and Stop Stuffing Food in Your Mouth Every Time You Pass the Kitchen Diet". Other titles considered:
I'm Too Tired To Eat Diet

My Anxiety Has Finally Surpassed that of Stress Eater; Maybe I'll Be One of those Skinny Bitches Who Can't Eat When She's Stressed Diet

Desk? What Desk? I'm a High School Teacher Who Teaches In Four Different Classrooms Fitness Regime

February Challenge...Because I Need All the Escape I Can Get

Yesterday marked probably one of my worst teaching days ever.  [Three times I have attempted to describe this one class I teach, and I just can't bring myself to do it.  They are awful.  That's all you need to know for now.]  So, I have this awful class and I have been instructed to make every single exception I can in terms of their grades because of the situation with them not really having a single teacher for more than two weeks.  They see me as a complete joke with no authority and think they have it figured out that their old teacher is coming back, which she might...Worse than that, the other teachers seem to also think I'm a fool for doing this job at regular substitute pay while lesson planning, grading, and calling parents.  Maybe I am.  One teacher went so far as to tell me that if I think this will lead to a permanent position, I'm fooling myself.  Maybe I am.

But, you see, this week we went back to the Friends school we saw in the fall.  We met with the Dean of Students and had a small "interview" for us to have some of our questions answered.  We also had to deal with a child who has some severe behavioral issues interacting with Sal and Eli at our current school.  All that said, we want more than ever to be able to send our kids to this school.

[One week later...]

Okay.  Life got in the way of this post big time.  And by life, I mean laundry and grocery shopping and cleaning (not that much cleaning) and other places to go and things to do.  I began this past week with almost as much anxiety as I had my first week back to work.  The week got progressively better. The students got progressively better.  The staff got progressively better.

And I began my February challenge, which is also part of my year-long reading project.  Last year I endeavored to reread all my favorite books, which was so totally fun.  But along the way, I continued to accumulate new books:  free ones from the library, birthday presents, a few Target sales, and ones passed to me from friends saying I should read them.  My little pile I started on my bedside table is now halfway to the ceiling.  The challenge is to get through all these books (and try not to add too many more to the pile) by the end of the year.  This goes against completely everything I am as a reader, but I'm approaching hoarding status (well, as close as I'll ever get to being a hoarder--one stack of books halfway to the ceiling) and I've been seeing these reading challenges on Pinterest, so I thought a little binge reading, just for  a year, might be fun.

February challenge, thus, is to read one book a week for the month of February.  I realize that to some readers this in no way sounds like a challenge, but I'm a very slow reader and I rarely read for more than twenty minutes at a time.  It takes me at least a month to get through a book.  So four books in a month is kind of a big deal.  I haven't done that since college, which doesn't count because reading as an English major in college is sort of your job and you have to blaze through all the material.

I began last Monday night and I am purposefully choosing smaller, quick reads to meet this challenge.  My first one that I'm hoping to finish tomorrow night is Mindy Kaling's Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me?  She's funny and nerdy and as cute as can be, so my "binge" reading hasn't been all too painful.  Not sure where I'll go next, but I have a few thinner ones I'm eyeing up.

But, here's the giant monkey wrench...Monday I begin two major units with my classes:  To Kill a Mockingbird and Julius Ceasar.  So, I did read TKaM about fifteen years ago on my own.  Never once read it in a class, and I was suppose to read it with my freshman at my old high school, but I always managed to finagle my way out of it; therefore, I'm co-reading that with Kaling's book.  And as far as Julius Ceasar...I took a Shakespeare class in high school and one again in college.  Both teacher and professor thought it better to choose a small selection of Shakespeare's plays and delve into them rather than plowing through as many plays as possible.  Now I've read a lot of Shakespeare, but not Julius Ceasar, which I kind of need to read, like all of it, this weekend.

So there's my February challenge:  read four new books, a Shakespearean tragedy, and a civil rights drama in about fifteen to twenty minutes each night.  I say doable!

Working Woman

I have successfully navigated my way back into full time teaching.  It was not a pretty or graceful transition, but it was successful nonetheless.  I was nervous the first day, as expected.  Not expected was the car ride home.  I believe I was suffering from sensory overload.  Seven hours under fluorescent lights surrounded by constant teenage noise and bodies did not do my body good.  I had so much anxiety trying to come down from the day that I spent most of the night vomiting in the bathroom.  (I told you it wasn't pretty.)  I convinced myself that I made the absolute worst decision of my life and I was locked into it until June.

Flash forward three weeks and maybe it wasn't the worst decision.  It's definitely doable.  Week two was complete exhaustion; week three not much better, but better...a little.  So, yeah, maybe I can get through to June, and yeah, maybe I can return permanently to teaching.  I'll somehow have to figure out how to sleep without taking Z-Quil.  Bottom line is that it's teaching.  It's all the the crap that teachers have to deal with, but it's not quite as bad as the crap that I dealt with at my old schools.  It's a nice, small district with relatively good kids.  

Sadly, my January challenge of ten Julia Childs's recipes didn't even get started let alone completed, but I'm going easy on myself.  Returning to work and surviving it (not something I thought I'd do that first night hanging over the toilet in the middle of the night) was challenge enough.  I have continued my ongoing reading challenge.  For the month of January I picked up The DaVinci Code.  This is an unusual book for me to choose as a favorite.  It's "action and adventure" and very Indiana Jones-esque (not my thing at all).  I think the fact that half the book takes place in Paris and the other half takes place in London was the draw.  It's a very intriguing topic, too, with the ancient secret groups and the "real" holy grail.  I read the illustrated edition that provides pictures of the artwork and architecture referenced in the book, some of which I have seen in person, is another factor in enjoying the book.

I plan on starting a new reading challenge for the next twelve months in February, when I started this past reading challenge.  For now, I'm rereading To Kill a Mockingbird.  It's funny because I often picked this book up in the past year to reread, but put it back on the shelf for something else.  The reason I finally settled on it two nights ago, just one week before my reading challenge is to end, had nothing to do with the challenge at all.  I'm going to be teaching it.  I'm taking this sort of as a sign that somehow this tiny part of my life, this reading challenge, this thing that's in many ways driven this past year, inspired me to start this blog and try other challenges, is now very strongly connecting to this new part of my life, a very big part of my life.  

I've been feeling God's hand at work a lot in the past three weeks.  As difficult as what this has been, I feel as though I've been waiting for a door to open and this is it.  Whether it be the job that lasts forever or a lesson to show me what I need to do for the rest of my life, it's clear I need to be there now.

Happy New Year!

Tomorrow is January which means I should be embarking on my January challenge, but quite frankly I don't have a challenge at hand.  When I first concocted this monthly challenge idea, January was going to be a tribute to the person who initially gave me the idea in the first place, Julie Powell, author of Julie and Julia.  I was prepared to make ten recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking.  And who's to say I won't still accomplish that?  January is a long, cold month.  It is perfectly conceivable that I will pick that challenge up in a week or two.  But for now, I must concentrate on the next five or six days.

You see, on December 15th I got a call from another school district close by to interview for a long term substitute position.  My expectations for myself were low, seeing as how great I did in the last interview.  And typically when my expectations are low is when I do my best.  I pulled an old skirt, sweater, and shoes out of my closet, ignoring the suit I bought for the first interview.  I let me hair go naturally curly instead of straightening it, and I donned my daily glasses rather than put in my contacts.  I also did no research on this district, not completely by choice, as the school has very little material on its website.

It was the best interview I ever had.  They actually asked thought-provoking questions that allowed them to get to know me not only as an educator, but as a person.  I really liked these people, and I've heard great things about this district.  Long story, short, I got the job.  The question is that I don't really know what the job is.  At the start of my interview it was long term substitute position through to the end of the year.  At the end of the interview they said there actually was a small possibility that the person who was currently out would be coming back, but he/she wouldn't be coming back to this particular position.  That sounded hopeful for me in that this could possibly turn into something permanent.  Then I met with the superintendent that Friday and what started as a long term substitute, somehow morphed into a per diem position.  Apparently, the person's doctor's note is good only through the end of January and they can't hire me as a long term substitute.  I've been given no details as to why this person is currently out except that it's a medical reason and he/she hasn't been in the classroom for some time.  It's been described as, and I can't remember which word exactly, but "tricky" or "sticky."

January 6th is my first day.  I am simultaneously excited and scared shitless.  Luckily, I haven't had that much time to dwell on all the unknowns because Milo came down that Sunday before Christmas with what I'm assuming was a mild case of the flu.  I was a day to follow and pretty much missed out on all the last minute Christmas preparations.  Christmas is a bit of a blur to me, and I have been sitting here the last couple of days trying to figure out where days have gone.  I missed a day visiting my dad's family (yet another year), but did make it up to visit some other family.  And the last two days we've spent cleaning and prepping freezer meals to prepare for my return to full time teaching.

I have to say that Bell-Bell kept us going, through the flu and all!  My husband thankfully picked up the challenge for me in the final few days, but we managed to get all of the little activities in.  Here they are:

December 18th:  Drive around and look at Christmas lights.  This was the night of Eli's winter concert.  It was Sal's winter concert night the year before, so it was my sole purpose to avoid what happened last year...a cat whose tail needed amputating.  We ate and were out of the house a half hour early, so we drove around town and looked at the lights.  After the concert we headed a few towns over to a disgusting display of unnecessary electricity that spans an entire street.  The kids ooohed and ahhhed and then asked to go home.

December 19th:  Watch a favorite Christmas movie.  I was hoping they'd pick Elf, but we ended up watching Frozen.  Eh, close enough to Christmas.

December 20th:  Visit Longwood Gardens.  This was a bit of a disaster.  My boys are used to going here during the day during non-peak times.  They pretty much have the run of the place and they do just that, run all over the place.  With ten times the amount of people and add in total darkness, there wasn't much place for them to go.  This was also the day just before Milo came down with the flu, so we ended up leaving early.

December 21st:  Write Christmas cards for your friends.  Simple.

December 22nd:  Visit Santa at the mall.  OK, so Bell-Bell was suppose to not bring anything on this day.  We were completely wiped out with illness and school activities and all the other crap that we were going to skip out on this one activity.  But, that morning, Eli comes bounding back up the stairs shouting that we were visiting Santa.  What??  My mind reeled.  How did this kid know that was suppose to be the activity for the day when Bell-Bell didn't bring a note?  Sure enough, there was the note.  My husband forgot to throw away the paper, or did he?  Maybe Bell-Bell was at work again?  Milo and I sat this one out.

December 23rd: Wrap presents for family members.

December 24th:  Decorate sugar cookies for Santa.  This has been a four or five year Christmas tradition.  I make cutouts and on Christmas Eve day we decorate.  My mom and dad came down, so she took over this activity with the older boys.

And that marked the end of Bell-Bell for this Christmas season.  He did his job and, with the exception of being sick, he managed to keep the Christmas melancholy at bay.

Now we look towards 2015.  Eli asked me yesterday what my New Year's resolution was.  Ha!  Sorry to disappoint, kid, but this year there will be no resolutions.  I have no idea what this year will bring, but clearly big changes are in store for me.  I certainly don't need to impose any more self-help upon my already stressed self.  I suppose I already set in motion during 2014 a series of events that would alter my life forever, all the way back to last spring when I prepared my career portfolio and filled out my first application in some ten years.  This year my "resolution" is simply to ride the wave.  What will be, will be.  Happy New Year, all!