Uncle

(Subtitle: The Second Dropped Ball In Ten Days)

So much for the day off I wrote about in yesterday's post.  Not 15 minutes after I got up from the computer, a text came in from a friend: " Do we have a meeting tonight?"

And of course, we did.  Glad she was paying attention, because I'd forgotten about it completely, although it was in the back of my head as recently as last Friday afternoon.  I chair the committee, FFS--forgetting about the meeting meant that I hadn't sent out the usual reminder email about it, drafted the agenda, or written up the minutes from the last meeting yet (the latter is not usually my job, but the secretary missed last month's meeting.)  Guess how I spent my late afternoon and early evening?

The meeting went fine, actually--good attendance and very productive.  But it bugs the daylights out of me that I would have spaced on it entirely but for that text.  THERE IS TOO MUCH GOING ON RIGHT NOW.  

Just a small sampling of the things on the to-do list rattling around in my head at the moment:

*Draft field use charges for our town park (don't even ask why I have to do this, but it's legitimate, not meddling)
*Collect money for Thing One's teacher's end of year class gift (class mom)
*Get gifts for Thing Two and Petunia's teachers
*Gather agenda items for the next school board subcommittee meeting
*Get the town summer camp's art supplies out of my basement
*Buy ice cream toppings for Thing One's G&T party, Italian ices for his regular class end of year party, condiments for Thing Two's baseball picnic, and dishwasher detergent before we run out and have a domestic crisis
*Take my car in for service
*Get straight which of the kids' schools has half days on which days between now and the end of the school year
*Buy birthday presents for two birthday parties
*Make arrangements for the dog to be boarded when we go away this weekend
*RSVP for the school graduation ceremony (must attend as BOE member)
*Get sitter for said school graduation ceremony
*Fold four loads of laundry
AND
*Have a full-blown stress fit

This doesn't even include keeping up with three kids' worth of the regular daily routine...homework, activities, cleaning, etc.

The end of the year is always insane, but this is as bad as it's ever been.  And in fairness, I do have to admit that a lot of it is my own fault: I don't have to be a class mom or the chair of this, that and the other thing.  Usually things space themselves out a little better, though!  Right now I am just getting hammered.
 
This being the case, I identify a LOT with Jen Hatmaker, who recently wrote a blog post entitled Worst End Of School Year Mom Ever.  This has gone viral on Facebook.  Seriously, if you have small kids (or probably even bigger kids), go read it.  If at least some parts of it don't make you cringe in recognition, I want to know your secret.

This was the part that really did it for me:

"The emails coming in for All Of The Things – class gift, end of year letters, luncheon signup, party supplies, awards ceremonies, pictures for the slide shows, final projects – are like a tsunami of doom. They are endless. I mean, they will never ever end. There is no end of it. I will never finish and turn it all in and get it to the (correct) Room Mom and get it all emailed and I am pretty sure the final week of school will never be over and this is the end for me.
 
Brandon:
 
“You don’t have to do all that, you know. Just blow it off.”
 
Me, staring blankly:
 
“Well, what a lovely thought you’re having there in your brain. How nice for you to be thinking that thought. I want to live in your imaginary world where my failure to do the School Stuff doesn’t mean our kid is the only one not wearing a purple shirt or didn’t have his pictures in the slideshow or didn’t bring in a handmade card for his teacher like every other student. I’ll just ‘blow it off’ and our kids can work it out with their therapists later.”
 
“Touchy.”

 'Tsunami of Doom' is a great description of my inbox.  And I don't want my kids to be the only ones left out either.  Thank God we aren't having to do school projects or make costumes right now or that would absolutely, no question, be the end of me!  

Enough already...

Land Of The Free

Now that the spring sports seasons are finally over, the after-school calendar looks radically different.  Amazing how much more down time we have with baseball and travel soccer both scratched from the list!

Thing Two's baseball game this past Thursday night was his last of the season.  Thing One's official travel soccer season ended with this weekend's tournament.  They went 2-0-2 (two wins, two ties) in their bracket and placed second.  The weather was in the mid-90s and muggy both days: by the fourth game, they were exhausted and running entirely on adrenaline and sugar.  And of course, that fourth game was against the best team in their bracket, one which had beaten them at every meeting this season.  Our boys dug deep and came back from a 2-0 deficit to tie them, with Thing One scoring the tying goal off a corner kick with only a few minutes left in the fourth quarter--a great way for him to end the season!  We have a whole two weeks (ugh) off before his summer soccer league starts...I don't remember sports being this crazy when I was a kid.  

The kids' taekwondo attendance has fallen off a cliff the past couple of months with all the other stuff going on (they've been lucky to get to class once a week) and we will pick that back up starting tomorrow.

But today, we are having a day off.   Petunia is drawing pictures, the boys are peacefully playing computer games, and I am celebrating the fact that I am NOT driving anyone anywhere!

A Quiet Kind Of Day

There's no such thing as a day without anything that needs doing here, but the frenetic pace and activity-to-activity-to-activity standard dictated by my usual overstuffed to-do list have been blessedly absent today.  Despite the early start--why must all three of my menfolk arise so bloody early in the morning??  Nobody other than me and Petunia seems capable of sleeping past 6AM, even on a weekend--it has been oddly peaceful so far.

Himself and Thing One have been at a soccer tournament all day.  The younger two and I pottered up to the grocery store for canning jars and sugar and pectin after breakfast, and then out to the orchard, where we found that the jam strawberries won't be ready until next week.  Of course, we bought some of the eating berries just to eat (how do you pass up fresh strawberries?), and now have red-stained fingers and lips.  Then the younger two had soccer practice, but I couldn't tell you what they worked on.  I sat with the dog and my friend J in the shade of a big tree by the field, out of the searing heat, and we chatted while they played.

Home again, I checked the chemicals in the pool, fixed lunch for the kids, and helped Petunia decorate cupcakes for a picnic this evening.  She got red and silver sprinkles all over the place and I don't care.

Probably because I wasn't in such a stressed-out rush today, I was able to notice and appreciate my surroundings more than usual.  My part of the world is rural and peaceful, full of fields and ancient deciduous trees and stone walls.  The primary colors are the blues and greens and browns/grays of nature, and even in the heat today, I was struck by the beauty around me.  It's not a majestic, Rocky Mountains sort of gut-striking, just-try-and-ignore-me splendor, but the more subtle tree- and farm-covered rolling hill variety that is much more easily overlooked by a distracted mind.

Which made me think of a Robert Brault quotation: "I regret less the road not taken than my all-fired hurry along the road I took."

Indeed.  The days pass slowly but the years quickly, and I miss too much of what goes on around me for my brain being somewhere else, preoccupied with another responsibility.  Perhaps I should hang this quotation over my desk to remind me of days like today.

What A Waste

Today was apparently the day for me to be stuck behind slow-moving drivers.  Constantly and never-endingly and nerve-grindingly.

I admit freely that my patience is not what it could be.  My eldest, at the age of about 5, actually prayed out loud on one occasion for God to give me more of it.  Out of the mouths of babes, indeed.  People who drive slowly in front of me on two-lane roads with no passing lanes make me particularly nuts.  (Hi, Grandpa!  Yes, I'm channeling you.  Hope you're getting a good laugh out of it from up there.  At least the worst thing my kids have learned from my commentary on other drivers in recent memory is the epithet "flaming moron," which, although far from ideal, does still beat what you used to call the drivers of the trucks you got stuck behind back in the day.)

Anyway, the weather today was clear and sunny.  Roads were free of construction.  No deer in sight.  And yet this guy I was following on the way to pick up Petunia after school was driving between 5 and 15 MPH below the speed limit the whole way.  If he'd been old, I would have contained myself, I swear.  But he wasn't.  And the real kicker?  He was driving a red Corvette!

It's just not right, I tell ya.

He Did It!

Thing Two's last baseball game of the season was tonight.  Although he was hitting well for most of the season, for the last few games he has been the king of strikeouts.  Not sure what happened, but all of a sudden something changed with his swing and he hasn't been able to buy a hit to save his life.  He's been down about it, and it's been tough.  We really didn't want him to end the season in a slump and have that to remember his first real baseball season by for the next ten months.

Tonight, he batted three times.  The first time, blessedly, he got a hit.  A dribbling worm-burner, but enough to get him to first, and he subsequently came in for a run.  The second time, he struck out.  It all came down to the third at-bat for him.

Which, as my old friend Murphy's Law would have it, came in the bottom of the last inning with his team down one run and two outs already on the books.  NOT, to put it mildly, a situation in which you want your kid to be batting if he's in a slump and it's the last game of the season.  Another strikeout would mean game over and a loss.  We cringed in expectation through the first two strikes.

But the third time he swung, he hit a whopper of a line drive that brought in two runs, the second of which won the game for his team!  You've rarely seen a happier boy.  Or happier parents!

I'm Not Being Paid For This Post

However, Coolibar, if you see this, I'm definitely willing to discuss becoming a spokesperson.

If you ever see me on the sidelines at one of my kids' many (many) soccer or baseball games, you'll be able to pick me out immediately.  I'll be the tall woman wearing the big hat.  I have a collection of a good half-dozen broad-brimmed hats, all SPF50 and mostly from Coolibar.  I also have a lovely collection of SPF50 long-sleeved and short-sleeved T-shirts, which I wear (along with one of said hats) while watching my kids play sports, gardening, cleaning the pool, walking the dog, or doing pretty much anything else outside during daylight hours.

And before you ask, I'm not a Goth or neo-vampire sort by any means.  This is just the sad consequence of having genetically Irish skin that spent the better part of its childhood years outside in the tropics before the invention of effective sunscreens!  My dermatologist has informed me that I've had my full lifetime's sun exposure and then some already and that I should stay out of the sun as much as possible going forward.  This not being even remotely practical given my life situation, I stay out of the sun as much as I can and wear some combination of these UV-protecting items when I can't.  And go through sunblock by the gallon, too.

Many of the older SPF50 fabrics are very heavy, which is tough when it's already hot outside.  You melt like a popsicle within minutes of going outside wearing those.  But I saw something new on the Coolibar website a while back, and suggested to Himself that the kids get me one for Mother's Day.    It's a very lightweight long-sleeved sun wrap, with sun protection that supposedly lasts even through a lifetime of washes.  I wore mine through my entire recent vacation to North Carolina, LOVED it, and ordered two more in different colors from my smartphone during the drive home!  The white one now lives permanently in my car, so I always have it with me if I need it (along with a big tube of sunblock and my favorite sunhat.)

Like I said, I'm not being paid to put this out there and have no ties to this company whatsoever (except for the large amount of money that I spend there)...I just really love this wrap and thought I'd share in case anyone else has the same kind of need to avoid sun that I do!  Please consider this a public service announcement.

      

Representing For The Old Folks

Last night, I tested for my Blue belt in Taekwondo.  It's the sixth belt from the bottom in the hierarchy at this dojo, somewhere in the upper middle in overall rank.

For the last three of my belt tests, I've been the only person over the age of 20 testing!  (Note that I am looking 40 squarely in the eyeballs.)  There are a number of other adults in the program, but their testing schedules are somehow thoroughly out of sync with mine, and last night's test group was unusually small.  There were only 7 of us: me, a 17 year-old girl, and five kids ranging in age from about 8 to 11.  To put it mildly, I stuck out a bit.

I know the 17 year-old well.  She attends many of the same classes that I do, and we happen to have the same first name, even spelled the same uncommon way.  She is a phenomenal athlete, energetic, beautiful and blessed with everything but belief in her own abilities.  (Oh, how I remember being 17...)  She's a belt level ahead of me, but we had to do many of the same exercises during the test.

No matter how hard I try, there are some things that she can do effortlessly that will just not happen with this body of mine.  She has youth and energy and non-creaky joints on her side.  But the thing is, we weren't in competition.  We were side by side, both doing the best we could.  Do my backward rolls or front breakfalls or jump spin kicks look quite as good as hers do?  No.  But as long as they're the best that I can do, that doesn't matter.

I went into last night's test with some serious misgivings.  In addition to my usual catalog of aches and pains, I'd tripped at a picnic the day before and gashed the area between my right thumb and index finger on the corner of a deck railing while trying to catch myself, also tweaking my 'good' knee in the process.  Then, at class yesterday morning, I discovered that the bandage I had on my hand would not stay on through all the twisting hand motions that go with the territory.  I went into the test last night wearing two knee braces (rather than the usual one) and with my palm wrapped in three layers of medical tape to keep the &%*$# bandage on.  I texted Himself right before going in to tell him that I had no lofty goals for this particular test: I just wanted to get through it without either embarrassing or hurting myself and come out with a new belt.

As it happened, it actually went pretty well.  The test was tough but fair.  Could I have done better?  Sure.  Always.  But I did a lot better than I thought I was going to do, all things considered.  Especially since the instructor assigned to partner with me for the test happens to be one of the most demanding.  (Can anyone say "Murphy's Law??)  By the end of the test, I was exhausted, red-faced, and absolutely dripping in sweat.  But also still focused and upright, and I handled everything they threw at me.

I have my new belt.

I worked hard for it.

But the best part?  These tests are open to the public, and we had a decent crowd last night.  In the hallway afterward, a woman came up to me and said that I'd inspired her to try taking the classes as well.  That she thought it was cool to see someone her own age up in front of everyone with all those kids.  That if I can do it, there's no reason why she can't.  And there isn't.  I hope to see her in class soon.

Right after that conversation, I walked my tired self down to the locker room, did a quick Superman-style change from taekwondo gi to business casual attire and makeup, and drove like a bat out of hell across town to take part in a school board meeting!  A multi-hat evening for this Mama...