Note To Self

In future, do not allow Thing Two to sit near me in the stands when Thing One's basketball team is playing.

Although they did end up winning the game, and they are a very good team in general, today everything seemed off for some reason--their passes weren't tight, their shots weren't dropping, and, in particular, they couldn't find a rebound with both hands and a flashlight.  Pure grit and a few key shots got them through, and we were proud that they had the mental toughness to pull it off, to be sure.  I was trying really, really hard to only make positive comments to the team and to keep whatever other mumbling I might have been doing under my breath entirely to myself.

However, deep in the third period, a small voice in front of me piped up, "For the love of Christ, will you REBOUND???" (fortunately, not loudly enough to be heard on-court, and quickly shushed), and I realized that my resident little pitcher was able to hear my muttered commentary from his seat in front of me.  Bad mother moment number I don't even know what!

Different Stage, Same Game

I had to stop at at the grocery store quickly on my way home from taekwondo class today.  As I was standing in one aisle, mentally deliberating, a young and very frazzled-looking mother came around the corner toward me.  Her son, perhaps 18 months old or so, was half-reclining in the seat of her shopping cart, his curly head thrown back with abandon and his screams echoing through the store.  I have to admit, my immediate reaction was to smile, but I did hastily explain to the mother that my smile was purely of the "been-there, done-that, no-judgment-implied" variety.  (Thing Two in particular had some truly memorable meltdowns in shopping carts in his day.)  She and I had a brief chat--which established that the hysterics were because he didn't like the new toothbrush that she had chosen for him--and then she moved on. 

As it happened, I was lingering in that particular aisle because I was trying to choose a deodorant for Thing One, his first.  He is blessedly non-stinky so far (except for his soccer shinguards and cleats: dear God; those could be weaponized), but since he's coming up on eleven, I know that those days are numbered.  We're working on establishing good personal hygiene habits before he actually needs them.  I was trying to decide what I wanted my preadolescent son to smell like: adventure? ironman? everest? extreme?  Gel form? Stick form?  All of a sudden, it seemed like a terribly personal decision to be making for somebody else, even if he is currently a ten year-old boy who could care less. 

Much like the other mother, I was shopping for my little boy.  Except that mine is no longer quite so little, and this is only one of the first, easier steps toward him really becoming big and gone and no longer mine.  For a moment there, I would have gone back to him being the toddler in the cart, screams and all, in order to buy myself more years with him.  That not being possible, he's going to get a REALLY big hug to go along with his new deodorant when he gets home from school today!

 

   

If The Temperature Doesn't Go Above Freezing Soon, I Am Going To Lose My Freaking Mind

The HIGH temperature yesterday was 12 degrees Fahrenheit in my neck of the woods.  Since I for damned sure wasn't going outside in that nonsense if I didn't have to, I spent the entire day packing away all the Christmas decorations into their boxes instead.  The season is now officially over, I guess.

Today, the high was a comparatively balmy 21.  (Freaking winter.)  I spent the day doing dishes and laundry and sorting through about 75% of the great, towering stacks of paper that formerly occupied every flat surface in my office.  The recycling guy will probably get a hernia from trying to move my can, but I can see the top of my desk for the first time in years.

All of this unaccustomed household industriousness is setting a very bad precedent.  If this weather keeps up, I'll soon find myself washing floors and scrubbing toilets for indoor entertainment, and that will never do.  Tomorrow, I get out of this house if I have to do it in Eskimo boots and a parka!

Bus Math (n.)

Collectively, the mental calculations involved with figuring out (usually in an early-morning, undercaffeinated state) exactly what time the school bus will be arriving at your house on that day, because the school has a delayed opening or early dismissal that is changing the usual schedule.

The schools in our area have weather-related delayed openings of either 90 minutes or two hours depending on the circumstances.  This morning's was a 90 minute delay, the result of the ridiculously frigid temperature outside.  Friends of mine with children attending three or more area schools (which are populated by age, and all of which share the same school bus fleet, resulting in staggered bus pickup and dropoff times to begin with) were doubtless spiking their coffee by 8AM.

Is it spring yet??

Quiet

I've always wondered how three otherwise very intelligent kids could be completely oblivious to cues in my word choice, tone and posture that would suggest we might possibly (ha!) be in a little bit of a hurry.  The whole sense-of-urgency thing is invariably lost in translation.  So, on school mornings I often find myself saying things like,  "The bus will be here in five minutes!  Go put on your shoes and coat!" and being met with blank faces, dawdling, news of missing mittens, or worse, "But Mom, I'm not done with this game on my DS yet!"  Growl.  Today was their first day back to school in two weeks, and so there was even more rust than usual on the morning gears, but they did all manage to get onto the bus without me having to lose my gourd at anyone: that never bodes well for the rest of the day.

With them gone (and Himself gone from the crack of dawn, as is his habit) the house was very, very quiet.  The freezing, pouring rain outside took away any desire I had to be productive: I sat down at the computer and contemplated the effort that would be required to go upstairs, get dressed, and start dealing with the Christmas decorations, my major task for the day.  Then I had another cup of coffee instead.

For all the craziness that marked our holiday, all went well.  A good Christmas, safe travels to and from the West Coast, and wonderful visit with family in between.  For all my stress and worry about not being able to get everything done, everything did in fact get done, albeit at significant cost to my nervous system in the form of excess caffeine.  It's over, January is now upon us, and "normal" life as we know it has finally returned.  I've had this song in my head all day:

Time to hibernate from the vicious cold, rest and regroup!

New Year's Resolutions: Five Days Late And Probably A Dollar Short Too

My first job out of grad school was in a completely football-mad Southern state (is there any other kind??), and one of my colleagues at that job had actually played on the state university's national championship-winning football team a few decades earlier.  He was in his mid-fifties to my mid-twenties at the time, and a true Southern gentleman.  Ours was an interesting partnership: he despised electronic technology in all forms and had our office secretary print out all his emails for him so that he could respond to them by phone, so I handled most of our collective computer work.  In return, he served as one of the best mentors I've ever had, patiently explaining how to calculate net present values and how to think about structuring deals.  Over the year or so I worked there, we became very close: I think his regard for me was almost paternal because of the age difference.

At any rate, one day he told me that he'd asked his wife to sponsor me for membership in the Junior League.  Anyone who knows anything about either this organization or the South will recognize that this is the highest possible honor that can be bestowed by people of a certain mindset and generation, especially when the recipient is a damned Yankee!  From a man whose daughter had formally made her debut at the annual ball (gowned and white-gloved and properly escorted, of course) and whose wife was a leader in society, this was the most kind and generous and mindboggling of offers.  As it happens, it was also terrifying and not at all well-directed, since I am NOT the Junior League sort, but the sentiment and compliment behind the offer did not go unappreciated.  As it happened, Himself was recruited for his current job in another state very soon afterward, so I was able to respectfully decline the honor without hurting his feelings.

One day early on, the two of us were working on a deal together.  Out of the clear blue sky, he asked me why I didn't take better care of my hands: i.e., why they weren't manicured.  (See above regarding my not being Junior League material.)  By the way, this was asked with legitimate curiosity, not in any inappropriate way whatsoever.  To his way of thinking, it was odd that I didn't make the time for the salon, and since I understood his frame of reference by that point, I didn't take offense.  Since I was used to my hands being banged up and washed repeatedly over the course of the days in lab, I just didn't consider it a priority at the time.  The question stuck with me, though.

Fast forward a goodly number of years, most of which were hard on my hands--diapers and washing and cooking and dishes and the inevitable repeated bathings in Purell because of kid-germs.  I'm on the other side of a lot of that stuff now, and starting to think again about me instead of just the kids all the time.  I happened to look at my nails one day before Christmas, noted that they were on the raggedy side, and out of nowhere, I was suddenly back in that office.    

I'm still not a society belle, and likely never will be.  But the thought occurred to me that there's nothing wrong with taking a little time to do the best I can with what I have, not for anyone else, but for ME.  Because I'm worth the time and effort, dammit, not because I care what anyone else thinks.  The end result of that thought process (see, I'm finally getting to the point!) was the following two resolutions for 2014:

1) I will make an effort to keep my hands lotioned and polished, and

(for good measure)  

2) I will figure out how to use a curling iron once and for all and do something with my wild wavy mane other than dragging all of it back into a knot on the back of my head every morning.

Ambitious and world-changing, right??  Ha.  Very small potatoes even in the small picture, let alone the big picture.  But when I look better, I feel better about myself, and this is a small start.

Oh, I have other goals as well.  The usual ones: lose some weight to ease the pressure on my knees, develop better pushup form, be more patient and present with my kids, etc.  I'll work on those as well, I promise.  But 40 years into my life, I'm beginning to realize that I can be a priority too, and that there's no shame in taking the time to make myself look like something other than a dowdy mom every once in a while.  So there.  (The next makeover: the lingerie drawer!!!)

There is a new curling iron on my bathroom sink, and I raised a glass of wine at dinner with my sparkly red nails a-shining in a silent toast to my former mentor.  Happy 2014 to me, and to all of you as well!  May your wishes come true, be they big or small.

        

                

Back For Good Now

What a wonderful, wonderful trip: grandparents and skiing and cousins and games and good food and exploring and fun.  And 16 geocaches for me, too.  Not that there was any doubt that either one of my parents love me, but both accompanied me on separate caching forays and found themselves in places where they would NEVER otherwise have set so much as a toe: definitive proof!  Mom ended up climbing around on top of two different very large piles of lava rocks, and Dad standing on top of a three-foot wall, hanging onto the wire fencing above it with one hand and digging around in a tree with the other.

Murphy's Law being what it is, we were scheduled to fly home into the teeth of the storm that hit the East Coast on Thursday evening.  There was not so much as a snowflake the entire week we were gone, mind you.  I never thought we'd get out of San Francisco: I was confidently expecting a ground stop until the second that the wheels lifted off, and the pilot told us that we were carrying an extra hour's worth of fuel in case we needed to divert.  Himself was cool as a cucumber, refusing to get drawn into my web of stress.  He actually fell asleep in the departure lounge as I was pacing a path between our seats and the bank of monitors!  Fat lot of good all my worrying did me, and it wouldn't have been helpful even if we had gotten stuck...unfortunately, positive thinking is not my strongest suit.  As it happened, we landed about ten minutes before the storm struck--probably one of the last flights in--and had a truly miserable drive home in the snow, but that was the extent of the problem.  Whew.  And school was cancelled Friday, which gave the kids a chance to sleep in and readjust themselves to this time zone.

Woke up this morning to an overnight low well into the negative numbers: ugh.  (Which of course did not stop me from bundling up and heading out to be the first finder of a new nearby geocache, because I am certifiably insane.)  Welcome back to reality.  Basketball practices, basketball game, birthday party; just a normal Saturday.  And not necessarily a bad thing...without the usual routine, special trips are less special, and our life is a good one even if it isn't very exciting most of the time.

Happy New Year from the frozen tundra...

Mama D