Finding the balance in bitching

I am ALL FOR a good venting.  It's at least 75% of the reason I continue to write this blog (since my medication generally keeps me from being an at-complete-loose-ends mood-disordered mama).

But sometimes, even though I am pro-vent, I just tire of public venting.  My own included.  Even this, what I'm typing, is a vent.

A sad, tired vent.

What I have on my mind today is not the rainy forecast for Halloween which is setting people off like I cannot believe.  Those who are FOR switching trick-or-treating day.  Those who are AGAINST it.  I'm reading Team of Rivals about the arguments for and against abolishing slavery in 1854, so anything that is not this intense seems pretty darn childish and fairly surreal.

What I have on my mind is breast cancer, another topic that has gotten all sorts of "debate."  People who lambast all the pink colors of October and "Save the Ta-Tas" talk.

I'm certainly no huge fan of pink October since it brings to mind my nervous breakdown of 2004 when I thought nipple eczema from nursing (and complicated by undiagnosed anxiety) was inflammatory breast cancer that ended up with me seeing a surgeon and having a breast ultrasound.

Pink October also brings to mind my own mother's bout with breast cancer and what a scary time that was for my family.

And today, when all I'm hearing and reading is a near-constant bitch-fest over trick-or-treating, a sweet friend of mine attended the funeral for a sweet friend of hers who died this past weekend from metastatic breast cancer.

I hate people who try to give me rational perspective when I'm disgruntled about something.  Who try to talk me down from whatever it is I'm going off about.  Because sometimes I just need to vent.  We all do.

But today, and possibly tomorrow, I'm not going to bitch about much of anything because I bet the kids of the mom who passed this weekend would love nothing more than to trick-or-treat with her in a thunderstorm.  I'm not going to bitch about the nerve pain in my shoulder caused by sleeping in a twin bed with my 6-year-old because it pales in comparison to the pain of chemo and radiation and stem cell transplants.

I'm going to be the voice of my own rational perspective.  For at least another day.

Sorta like "Shit my dad says"

Except this is called, "Shit I do for my kid that is COMPLETELY absurd."

I will not let the kids use our camera, so when N told me she wanted to have a fall photo shoot for her 18" doll, I agreed.  Very reluctantly.

But I did it anyway.
(Isn't this the chant of parents everywhere?)

And do you know what is even more absurd than doing a fall photo shoot for a doll when one is not an executive for Journey Girls or American Girl or American Doll or Our Generation?

It is taking a photo of the doll in the tree......

Not being happy with the way the light creates a shadow on the doll's face, and moving the doll around to take a better picture without shadow.

Work it, girl!!!  The camera loves you!

Need to remember to take my own prescription

This post is not about my Lexapro, which is my lifeblood that I never forget to take.

This post is about remembering to heed what I tell my mom friends who start to freak out about which school her child will or will not attend.

The local district is in the thick of middle/high school Open Houses and tours, and I considered starting to research schools and make visits, but I have decided against it for numerous reasons.

1. N is only in the 4th grade.
2. I've got enough sh*t on my plate without adding school tours to the list especially if I don't absolutely HAVE to.
3. Even though N is in AP classes, she just retook the test to see if she can improve her score.  It makes more sense to wait to see how she did before I go tramping all over the city.

As much as I like the idea of choice, I do not like the reality of it.  I feel about school selection the way I feel when I'm in the frozen section of the grocery attempting to decide which flavor of ice cream I want to purchase.  I am paralyzed with questions.....

What flavor do I want now?  Is this the flavor I will want on the weekend when I typically eat ice cream?  What flavor do I think D will like?  Should I just get vanilla and add chocolate sauce to it?  Maybe I should instead get a novelty treat (like fudge bars) for a change of pace?  

The worst of it is that I am attempting to read the future for someone who is not me.  I think I know who N is right now, but I'm not a mind-reader nor do I have Cassandra-like skills.  I like the idea of her attending a certain downtown middle school, but would she be better as a "big fish in a small pond" of our local neighborhood school?

Ultimately, I have to go back to that prescription I give my mom friends when they start to hyperventilate. Your child will do fine wherever he/she goes because you, as the parent, are focused on education and value it.  You read to him/her.  You go to conferences and are involved at school and do everything you can to ensure that education is a priority.

Now quit fretting.
And perhaps take an extra half-dose of your Lexapro. 

It gets easier, and it doesn't

I once thought having an infant was difficult, but now I realize that when I had an infant I didn't expect very much from myself.  I slept instead of staying up to read.  I napped when the baby napped.  Despite having a 6-year-old who wakes me like a baby, I don't give myself permission to be a tired momma who does nothing and doesn't feel like a sad sack of stuff because of it.

I once thought having two little boys age 2 and under was exhausting, but now I realize that having a 6-year-old and 4-year-old is more tiring because some tissue paper and measuring cups isn't fascinating to them anymore.  They need to be "entertained" in a way they didn't when they were smaller, and that requires more effort on my part (or more guilt if I just let them vegetate in front of the tv for awhile).

I once thought being with my children all day long, 13+ hours, listening to them fight, having all 3 of them talk to me at once would be easier once I only had one to deal with most of the day.  I thought that my energy reserve from not being with all three of them would allow me to function more gracefully in the 6 hours of the day that I am with them.  But I now realize that having 3 children with me, who fight with each other and all talk to me or need things from me at the same time, is just plain tiring, whether it is 12+ hours or half of that.

(Sometimes I think the daily "break of one child" is a curse because I forget the chaos of morning only to remember it when afternoon chaos commences.)

I once thought (because I'd heard some urban legend) that parenting gets easier as kids get older, but I haven't found that to be the case with kids 9, 6 and 4 years old.

It simply gets different.  

It's the most wonderful time of the year (for me)

I love fall.

Always have.

Sixteen years ago, before fall was all the rage for getting married, D and I chose this time of year to exchange vows.

As a kid, I remember walking up my street at dusk, hearing the leaves in the trees, feeling the cool breeze and watching birds congregate as they prepared for their long journeys south.  It was magical.

Purple, brown, orange....these are the colors that speak to me.  Not the pastel and pretty of spring.  Or the greens and reds of winter/Christmas.

And now, with children, I especially love the fall.  It brings the routine of school back into my life.  It brings lots of fun activities that don't involve spending loads of money or filling stockings or shopping.

I've always felt a bit of an old soul, and maybe this explains, in part, why I have always enjoyed the fall, a time of reflection on what has passed and what is to come; a time of cooling with a hint of warmth still at your back.

Trick or treating at our local zoo

G's kindergarten field trip to a nearby farm

Our family pumpkin-picking excursion yesterday

Annual fun playing in the leaves at Mamaw's house

Why an old, used notebook is genius

We have an abundance of old notebooks.  N loves to draw so my neighbor has passed along half-used notebooks from when her children were in high school and college.

With G learning to read and write, it occurred to me that he would probably like a notebook of his own for writing letters and words.  This became especially clear once I started getting notes from him on my desk and bed.

And so I told him that he was getting his own notebook, just like N.

Wowee-Wow!  Talk about an excited kid.

This is what has been happening.

I started by asking him to help me think of words that rhyme with hug.

Then I told him I was going to write him a note, to which he replied:

Last night he nearly threw a fit because I told him we couldn't do rhyming words since it was so close to bedtime.

Today he did this on his own---thinking of words that rhyme with jump.

This is waiting for him on his bed (after I noticed him reading some of his Brand New Reader books to himself).

I forgot how completely cool it is when one's child becomes literate.  

The shine came off it

The shine is off the teaching gig.  (Just like it is off marriage and child-rearing and every other thing in life.)

I am still enjoying myself tremendously, but a parent complained to my boss about the books I had chosen which made me doubt myself in the classroom and my literature choices and everything about taking this position.

It's been nearly a decade since I've taught, so I had been able to put a nice rose-colored patina on my time in the classroom, forgetting how many times parents weren't always and in every case 100% happy with what I did.

My skin is thin after all these years.

It has taken almost two weeks for me to stop thinking every phone call is a potential parent complaint, that every email is going to be a parent with concerns.

I know I am a good teacher.  I know because there have been numerous times when my students have said, "Well, I never thought about it like that" or "I didn't pay any attention to that" with their eyes agog with realization.  Because I was able to say last week to my high school students, "I wonder what someone would think if they walked in here and tried to decipher this stuff on the whiteboard:  Atticus Finch, Aslan, Jesus, Batman (not the hero they want, but the hero they need)."

I know because in all this work I am doing and have done to prepare to discuss these novels, I am learning so much, and if I am learning (having read these books at least a couple times and at age 40 with life experience under my belt) then I know these young people under my wings have to be learning too.

This is my story, and I'm sticking with it.