When my poor addled brain has some space in it for actually absorbing words, I am going to hurry on back to this blog post which looks really interesting, but I can’t seem to focus right now.

How about you read it for me, and tell me about it?

What a month this has been! I’ve blogged quite a bit less than usual, but have lived quite a big more than usual.

Though I should be doing other things, I feel the need to take a little time to process, especially since this coming weekend promises to be quite busy.

I am really delighted with my new job. I am still trying to settle into a comfortable rhythm of each day, balancing my “free time” (Ha!) with my preparation time for the job. I have to figure out a way to be more efficient, because each week I seem to spend most of the mornings getting some portion of either snack or materials ready for the afternoon. Reminder to self: this is a half time job, not a full time one.  You can’t be spending all morning prepping for the afternoon and still expect to keep your business running as well.

In spite of my sense of frustration with my own continual squandering of time, I am very happy with the job itself. I have received so many kudos from parents and teachers about how good a job I am doing, that I have completely lost count. The initiatives that I have put into motion seem to be well received, and the only complaints I’ve had so far are from kids who want to play their hand-held video games or watch movies.  I’ve decided to limit the video games to one half hour period during the first choice time of the after school program.  This means that some of these cute little addicts are at times seriously jonesing for their games. Too bad! We have other things to do!

Some of the older kids really crave movie watching. I do not have movies on my schedule for the after school program at all. When I do, it will be something short — 30-45 minutes — rather than a full length feature film, and I will be choosing the movie in advance. The no-movie policy that we had this past wednesday caused quite a bit of whining, but we made it through somehow.  The fort we built out of newspapers and fabric swatches was more fun than a movie, as was bouncing on the trampoline. Plus the popsicle sticks and puffball crafts were really creative and interesting. On different days, we have made muffins, grilled cheese, and hummus. We have planted seeds in planters, begun planning a quilt project, and did magnet experiments. “You can watch movies at home; we have so much to do here without movies distracting us,” I told them. Mean teacher!

I also am trying to get a period of QUIET to happen. As a parent of a kid who stays in my own program, I’m a little frustrated with how hard it is to get her to do her homework. By the time we get home from after school, she’s really tired, and the next morning there is never quite enough time for homework. It’s a good thing her teacher is so understanding. But I wonder what other parents feel about getting kids to use some of their afterschool time to do homework. I have to think about how to accomplish this– it is not easy to manage a diverse group of kids AND have them be quiet enough for a handful of kids to sit and do homework. Hmmmm……

On the home front, we all seem to be adjusting well to live with Cammy. She is a treasure, really she is! I feel so lucky to have her helping me, it’s just such a relief. As time goes on, I am sure I will find more ways to help her, too. I love being able to help people– and when it works in such a way that it helps me too, well, it seems almost too good to be true. It’s like in the olden days, when extended families lived together and helped one another along. There is a lot of good in that kind of system.

It took me a while to figure how to introduce Cammy to others. “She’s my husband’s first cousin who moved here from Florida” is kind of wordy. “She’s our new nanny” is kind of snotty sounding and not really that honest, since she means so much more to me than that.  But now I have figured out what I will say when I next introduce her: “This is Cammy, she’s part of my family, and lives with us now.”

This month was probably the nicest February I’ve had in a long time. I usually just can’t wait to escape from February.  We even got to have a snow day — one of those lovely surprise snow days that are just snowy enough for good fun, but not so snowy that you actually need to dig the car out. I didn’t even touch a shovel, as I knew it would warm up the next day and clear the walks for us. Cammy got to sled for the first time in her life! Yay! Fun!

Even  though it was quite a good month, I am much looking ahead to spring.  Welcome, March.  I am waiting to see my snow follies pushing up through the earth.

IN NO PARTICULAR ORDER

Take out the trash, compile the recycling into bins, snuggle Annie, retrieve data from two different ailing hard drives for clients-who-are-friends, do the laundry, clear out the clutter in my bedroom, freecycle a crib, plan the after school program for next week and for today, write a newsletter, clean the kitchen, take Annie to preschool-that-started-about-an-hour-ago, do billing for my business, pay bills for the biz, buy myself some new shoes (I got paid today!), take a shower, clean the dining room, organize my classroom space, buy pet supplies, clean the cats’ boxes, clean the guinea pig cage, vacuum the kids’ rooms, play scrabulous,  eat breakfast, make coffee, update purchases for the biz bookkeeping, call my dad, call my mom, clean out the car, get my antidepressants rx refilled, take a nap.

Well, at least I got ONE thing done so far.

1. Mr. Clueless:

- expects I’ll remember his password

- thinks it’s okay to thinks it’s okay to not pay for his hosting/email service for nearly a year and then waste 20 minutes of my time while he struggles to remember his password

- will call me back if he can’t figure out how to use his Favorites menu to get back to the webmail interface

- wonders why I don’t want to call him back. Ever.

2. Ms. Passive Aggressive Biotch:

- thinks it’s okay to randomly decide to stop paying her quarterly bill in full and instead only send one month’s worth of the bill

- tells all her friends that she “can’t recommend” my business (hint: if they are anything like her, that’s fine with me)

- makes snide comments about how she had no IDEA that I was so BADLY in need of her payments… when I ask her to pay her bill.

- Sends stupid questions by mail but phrases them in a such a way that implies it’s OUR SERVICE that makes no sense.

- Uses way too many question marks ??????? in her email.

Ms. Cheap:

- decides to cancel her service, but only after using us for massive quantities of support for her transition, when her new web host has caused the problem in the first place. And in the second place. And in the third place. GRR!

I CAN HAS NEW CAREER?!

Ever since Harley first joined our household, there has a been a lot more hissing and arching of backs than we’d had previously. But I am really pleased to say that today, for the first time, all three cats have deigned to hang out with me on my bed at once.

Thus, I am now able to try to accomplish one of my favorite activities: the Three Cat Nap.

Wish my camera were working at the moment (batteries dead!) so I could get a photo of this historic event.

I did use my laptop to get Harley and Moonlight. Harley’s the one with white ears.

C: I think I want Hillary to win. She could be the first female president and that’s exciting. I think a woman should be in charge next. But if Obama wins, he’ll be the first african-american president and that would be exciting, too. Either way, it’s good.

A: You know who I think should be president?

C: Who?

A: Grandpa.

C: Why?

A: Because Grandpa would never lie. Not like George Bush.

OK, thanks Artemesia, you’ve tagged me, thus allowing me to put off cleaning the catboxes just a little longer today.

The Rules:

# Link to the person who tagged you
# Post the rules on your blog.
# Share seven random and/or weird facts about yourself on your blog.
# Tag seven random people at the end of your post, and include links to their blogs. (um, okay, but please know, oh randomly tagged people, that I truly don’t expect you to comply unless you are into it…)
# Leave a comment on their blogs so that they know they have been tagged. (being a total rule breaker, I am not even going to bother doing this… slacker!!!)

ONWARD!

1. I pretty much only wear Doc Martens (shoes). I have two pairs that I mainly alternate, and love them dearly. I have another pair, that I can’t seem to find, so I don’t wear them as much. Before these three pairs dominated my footwear scene, I had just one pair of black Doc Martens, that I had bought in England in 1994 and wore extensively for about ten years before I had to buy replacements.  Oh and in the summer, bare feet round the house, and crocs elsewhere. Oh, and for pants I wear Levi Jeans.

2. I always wanted to have two daughters, and never hoped — not once– for a son. I have two daughters and that suits me perfectly. Sometimes I crave little baby feet, but then that feeling ebbs away. I think I may really be done!

3.  Almost all of my furniture is hand-me-downs. Exceptions: our queen sized bed, and Carla’s loft bed from IKEA.

4. I stopped eating commercially processed pork because of what I read in The Omnivore’s Dilemma. I had already pretty much stopped eating conventionally processed beef (not being that fond of it anyway.) But pork? Oh GOD, I fucking love pork. Bacon! Ham! Pork Chops! Salami! Prosciutto! But what I read in that book saddened and disgusted me so deeply, that I won’t buy pork products unless I KNOW that they come from small farms that treat their pigs in a humane way, and slaughter them as humanely as possible. Being killed for meat in and of itself is not upsetting to me.  But horrid and painful living conditions for animals who are headed to eventual slaughter is unacceptable to me.

5. I like to paint my toenails blue in the summer. I had blue toenails to stare at when I gave birth to my first child. My husband had painted them for me, because I couldn’t reach my toes so well at that point.

6. I worry every day that I might lose my new job (as after school director) next year. I want to keep it so badly. It really hurts my feelings that when I was hired, I was told that a search for a new A/S director would be conducted for next year anyway. So I worry and try to do a really good job, and blabbermouth at everyone at school how much I love the job, the kids, the school, the program and I wear my heart on my sleeve about how dearly I want to keep this job.

7.  I have a lot of gray hair. It started turning gray at the ripe old age of 23. When I first noticed it, I cut my hair short, as I didn’t like sitting there in grad school staring at my long gray strands and wondering if grad school was the cause of the gray, or if it was perhaps my full time job as a head teacher of a group of 18 - 24 month old kids. Or perhaps the insanity of working full time and being in grad school full time simultaneously. These thoughts were more unwelcome than the hair itself. Today, though, I am at peace with my hair. I have never once dyed it in my entire life and I often give it any trims that I think it needs with my own pair of scissors.

Randomly tagged souls… hmmmm…. how does one randomly tag someone? Am I supposed to put the names of blogs into a hat and see who comes up? I’ll just list seven bloggers whose blogs I visit somewhat regularly, in no particular order. Swistle, Stacie, Cammy, Heather, MamaGeek, TBH, Neil Gaiman. (Ok, I seriously doubt that Neil Gaiman will take on this meme, but you never know. Neil, if you read this, holy cow, man you just made my day. I think you are just brilliant.)

I feel as though I haven’t posted in ages. It has been a wonderful week, and I just keep thinking about all the different things I’d like to write about. A little glimpse into my life, courtesy of these conversations between my conscience angel and my real self devil’s advocate:

Angel:  Well, good thing it’s a snow day! I can now get right to tidying up the living room and dining room, putting away the laundry and cleaning the cat boxes!

Devil: Sure, but there’s plenty of time to do all that boring stuff! Play with the kids in the snow! Blog about it! Take a nap! Drink hot cocoa! Read the rest of Midwives.

Angel: Um, sure, playing with the kids is good. They do need a mom who attends to them, rather than hyperfocusing on a clean house.

Devil (snortling with laughter): Yeah, this looks like a house that’s run by someone hyperfocused on cleanliness. NOT!

Angel: Oh shut it. We’re going out to play. I will do all this housework later. Plus I’ll plan next week’s after school program, update the website to reflect these plans, plan meals and shopping, and more. But first we do need to play. Before the stuff melts, ya know.

* * * Later on * * *

Angel: Well, that sure was fun. The girls can have their lunches now, and we all sure enjoyed the hot cocoa. Time to get to the living room mess. These wet clothes need to be dealt with, after all.

Devil: Sure, but don’t you think it would be good to blog a little about this?

Angel. Um… I should really not get sucked into the computer vortex. There is too much to do.

Devil: Yeah, but life is too rich to not examine it closely. Or so I’ve heard.

Angel: Riiiiiight…. just one little blog post then.

About a month ago, I wrote Jennifer a long, hand-written note telling her about my dad, his reasons for allowing her to be lost from his life, though it hurt him. I let her know how precarious his health status is. I explained how badly he wished he could see her again someday.

As time passed, began to think she’d decided that it was all a hoax, or that it was all too difficult. Perhaps, I worried, I’d done the wrong thing to barge in on her life and make such strong suggestions that she make an attempt to connect with her bio father and with me. I have wanted to find a way to fill this emptiness of the unknown sister. I’ve seen how much my father has suffered over his guilt, his regret.

I am a parent. I know what it is to love one’s child. Jennifer is a parent, too. I would think she’d have this same insight into the depth of feeling that one has for one’s child. This feeling doesn’t go away. I know it never went away for my dad, even though he relinquished her to be raised by his ex-wife and her new husband. Nothing can change that decision, or his loss of knowing her for her life. But knowing her now would heal him in a way. I think it would somehow relieve his ache, if he could see that she is really fine.

Enter me and my mad internet searching skillz. I barged in, tracked the lady down, and called her. Wrote her email and letters. My mind filled with What If this and What If that.

Never did I think the response would be what it finally was, today, in my email.

Jennifer wrote to me the following message:

Dear Pann, Thanks for the note. I’ve been trying to think/construct the thoughtful response it deserve.

Some people can write so eloquently, for me it is an agonizing process. First, you are a truly beautiful person to want to do this for your dad and I. I am thankful that you found me and we will have the opportunity to know each other!!!!!

Next, your dad should not feel any regret over what he did. I do not hate him or have any baggage regarding the situation.

Rather I know and have always known that all involved did what they did out of love for me and doing what they felt was in my best interest. I have respect for my father for having to make that hard decision.

Today blended family are the norm but back then the term didn’t even exist. My life turned out exactly the way it was intend to turn out with a happy childhood and a great mom and dad. This is true because of the sacrifice of our father, who I am sure was a great dad to you.
I am happy with the way things are. I do not feel the need to fix anything because nothing is broken. I am sorry but I don’t feel like I need to meet and reconnect with my father. I just feel at this time to leave things as is. Please know my family (the whole blended newly realized conglomerate) is in my thoughts and prayers. I pray I have the done the right thing and your opinion of me hasn’t waned.

Please keep in touch and I hope all is well.
God Bless,
Jennifer

This was not what I expected. I can’t imagine finding out that someone so closely related to me is still alive, still cares, and wants to connect with me, but deciding against it.

She’s happy with the way things are. Yes, but what about my dad? He is heart broken and always will be. She, and she alone, could ease that pain just by making one phone call. Just by saying to him what she said in the email - that she understands and bears him no ill will. That alone would go so far.

I don’t judge her harshly for making this decision. But maybe I do judge her a little. I just can’t ever see myself handling such a situation in that way. I am by nature very, very curious. I would want to know more, even if it was difficult. Life could only get richer from knowing one more father. Life could only be sweeter, knowing there’s one more soul in the world that feels just a little lighter, for having its emptiness slightly replenished.

I believe that whenever we reach out and give a little more than we are required, we get back so much more in return. Kindness is multiplied. Joy begets joy. Spread love, because it’s a renewable resource. This paragraph sounds unbearably corny, but there you have it. My philosophy of life in a nutshell.

I am confused by her note, too. She does say that she and I “will have the opportunity to know each other.” So she’s not closing the door on our relationship continuing. Yet I feel so strange to get to know her, but know all the while that she is not interested in knowing my father. When he dies, she will lose that chance forever. I will mourn him while she will continue not knowing the person that we had lost.

Can sisters of one father be so different? Of course. We are only half sisters, and raised in separate families and in different places. Oddly enough, she was raised in a different county in the same state as me - not that long of a drive away. How hard would it have been, to have allowed a visit or two!?

She is not to blame for that, of course. But whoever felt that a child should not know her father — just because she has a new one — that person is so wrong. She’s right though, that such blended families were not considered normal or healthy back then. How different today’s world is!

I am far from reconciled with this news. I am just reacting to it now for the first time. I received her message less than an hour ago, and decided that writing about it might help me.

That’s another way that she and I are quite different. For her, writing is difficult and agonizing, whereas for me it’s another form of breathing, and something I might just perish without. For her to have put together a note to me, I am sure it took a great deal of thought and effort. I need to respect that.

All in all, though, I confess that I am very sad about her decision. I am trying to restrain myself from arguing with her. How alienating would that be, to have this pesky little sister come on so strong, out of the blue, demanding, wheedling, begging! And yet… part of me feels like I should argue with her, and persuade her to change her mind because it’s just so important to me, to my dad. I feel like I can’t connect with her if this is how she wants to leave things with dad. I feel a sense of anxiety, impending doom. This man is not going to live very long! Then it will be too late! Then I will have to live with the knowledge that I didn’t do everything in my power to convince her to give him this scrap of herself. A phonecall. A note. An email. Something, for crying out loud.

I am struggling with this. Who is to say, what the right thing to do is? Perhaps I should have just given my father her address and phone number and let him do with it, whatever he wished. I didn’t think of that, though. I thought the easiest way to get to know her was to call her, and let her know about contacting her dad. I thought for sure she’d take that information, sleep on it, and then wake up ready to add another relative into her life.

Instead, I ended up adding another layer of separation between them - now I know that she doesn’t want to connect with him. What if he’d just called her that night, instead of me? Did I make things worse? I am really unsure. This is hard, and sad, in such unexpected ways.

Have you ever received an invitation to something and felt turned off right away by it?

What’s your gut response to this one? I am printing the whole thing here as it was forwarded to me, but with the names changed.

——–FWD———-

Maris says she has tried to send this message to you and it bounced back. So I am forwarding it for her.

- Louis

—– Original Message —–

From: Maris

To: (many family members whose names and email addresses have been removed, but the list did in fact, include my address. Don’t know why I didn’t get it)

Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 3:56 PM

Subject: Passover!

Dear everyone,

This year we will have a Seder on the actual first night of Passover, Saturday, April 19. It will be at our house. As the date nears, we can decide in the menu. If you’re hot to make something special, you can chime in now.

If you’d like me to arrange for rooms at a local motel, please let me know.

I hope everyone can make it.

Love,

Maris

—————-end of FWD message——-

I suppose that on the face of it, this message is not so bad. It was actually last year’s big family Seder that caused such a ruckus, and left a sour (or bitter? or at least, plague-ish) taste in my mouth. I think it was one event that made me seek out starting this blog in the first place, so that I could have a place to put some of my angry thoughts into order, although when I looked back to find the posts, I think I must have never quite gotten them down. I was really, very, very angry.

Some background information might be helpful in explaining.

In the not-too-distant past, Maris and her family would invite our budding family to stay in their spare beds in the finished basement of their very large and beautiful home in one of the rich suburbs of Connecticut. My family would snuggle up in a queen sized bed, with maybe a kid on some cushions on the floor. This way, we could visit for the Seder dinner, and not have to either drive the 4 hour trip back to Philadelphia and also not have to spend money on a motel. In the morning, we and other members of the younger generation, would all have breakfast together with our kids playing, and have a nice time bonding with third cousins and such before heading back home.

I always thanked Maris for sharing her home, for hosting such a nice dinner, for offering breakfast and a place to stay. I always complimented her on how lovely and comfortable her home was, and commented on how much I loved the tradition of staying over, and how it really made me feel like family.

Naturally, over time, our families all have kept growing. Maris has two daughters who are moms, too. In fact, the three of us had our first babies within six months of each other, and our second babies within 3 months of each other. Then one of her daughters had a third… So Maris has a total of 5 grandchildren, some of whom are rather loud and difficult. One of her daughters lives nearby her, the other lives about 3 hours away. I can completely understand that Maris would want to have her far-away daughter stay there with her, and of course great-grandma will stay there too.

But there’s still that big empty basement with the beds, and the three bedrooms upstairs. In other words, there is plenty of room for all of us and more to stay at her house. My children are very well behaved. I believe that our family has always been considerate and polite as guests at their house. So I feel really put off that we are no longer invited to stay over and be part of the family.

There’s that.

And there’s the Bad Stuff that Happened at Last Year’s Seder.

Looking back, it is all so very petty that I even don’t want to write it all out. And yet it is really hard to explain without giving the full story, so those of you with long attention spans can choose to Read the rest of this entry »