It came down to thinking about spending four days driving… and how was that going to feel.  Nope. Couldn’t do it.

I took the kids to Chincoteague, Virginia, instead and we had a ball.  It’s a little summer fun town, and kinda deserted in March, which we oddly enjoyed. We saw wild ponies!

Thus, March passed successfully.

April is here, with flowers, and I planted stuff and that’s where we are now.

Little smiling green bits of arugala are peeking up at me; I have teeny seedlings of romanesco cauliflower (broccoli?), and meanwhile I’ve put in peas and I’m waiting to see them grow and flourish.

All around is flowering trees, rain storms, the smell after the rain, the changeability of it all. April, rushing  by.

That’s where I am now. Just thought I should say.

Pros and Cons time:

Pros – sense of adventure, listening to lots of books on CD in the car is fun, good to see my dad because who knows when I will see him next otherwise since he’s old and he lives in Florida full time now, the kids want to go, it’s beautiful there, I love seeing the birds and the beaches, I love going on adventures, there have I come full circle now with the adventure thing?

Cons – that’s a lot of driving, that’s a lot of gas, my car is old and am I risking its continued existence by doing such a thing? Should I call the Car Talk guys? We don’t have a great option for where to stay this time, other than the 3 of us can stay on the fold out couch in their living room. Which means we will be in the way or else have to get up early and clear up the bed every day. And at night, the damn TV will be on and on and on while Dad watching annoying cable TV and all of the damn annoying commercials, and in the early morning we’ll be in the way of the early bird Dad’s wife! And did I mention that’s a lot of driving?

This isn’t so good… the con’s paragraph is longer. But each thought inside each Pro or Con isn’t equally weighted. I think we need to assign some numbers here in order to make a quantitative decision.

Pros… Scale of 1 to 10, 1o being most important…

See Dad- 9 See Florida’s beauty- 6 Have adventures with kids- 7 It’s what the kids want- 8 Listening to books on CD is fun- 4… So that’s five items in favor of the trip, with a cumulative average of “7″ on the scale of 1 to 10 of “important”.

Cons… Scale of 1 to 10, 10 is most important

Lots of driving, 5; Lots of Gas (and thereby money), 5; Risk to Car, 2; Accomodations Minimal, 5; In step-mom’s way, 4; The fucking TV, 6; So that’s six objections… and their value on average… about 4.5 on the scale of “important” whatever that means.

So… if I can think of ONE more important reason in favor of going, I think I will have to go, just have to.

MEANWHILE… I am thinking about the niceness of growing things. I spent a lovely weekend yesterday and the day before really enjoying spring-like weather (in February! whoa, man!) I mucked out my compost bin and moved it to its previous location, and stirred up and was pleased to see LOTS of good soil/compost for spreading all around. I did a ton of raking of old leaves, which eventually will go into the compost bin with the kitchen scraps.

Now I have a pile of seeds that are talking to me… oh, not literally, do not worry I’m not actually insane.  Though the calculations above concerning Florida seem a little whackadoo, I will admit.

The cynical part of me really despises this holiday. I look at all the build-up and see yet another religious holiday that is dressed up for the commercial benefit of our economy, of our sales and purchases and how they can be pumped up a bit more.

But there’s a part me that just loves this day, too. I work with kids. So I receive lovely little notes, with hearts, and sometimes candy, and I can enjoy that a great deal. There is sincerity, amid the chaos of the world, and it often comes from small people.

Because my parking spot was taken.

I blew my top. I blew my horn.  I got out of the car and yelled at the empty street. I got into the car and sat there fuming. I used choice vocabulary.  All because of a parking space, you ask?  What the hell?

It was an emotional reaction, so there’s part of me that wants to say, hey look, I can’t really explain it.  I was just mad. Really mad.  I can tell you the rationalizations that I have for expressing so much rage.

It’s fairly simple to rationalize this reaction.  You have to know something about my geographic location:  I’m live in a neighborhood in the city of Philadelphia, in which day after day, our particular streets are usually pretty empty and there’s ample parking. This is not true of many neighborhoods in my city, but it is true here. Usually, if someone is in “my spot” I just park a few feet down from there.  However, it’s February, and our street is still extremely cluttered with a foot of snow that fell several weeks ago.  There are two spots on my side street, which are clear of snow, and which are MY SPOTS because I spent several hours clearing them.  Shoveling heavy snow and ice to make it possible to park there.

The custom around these parts is not to park in people’s spots. It’s just considered bad manners.  People will put out chairs, or other obstacles to make this clear, most of the time.  I had recycling bins out to mark our spots.  It turns out that my husband hadn’t put them on the street, however, when he had gone to work, so someone had parked a big pickup truck right in the middle of my hard-earned parking places.

What particularly made me angry was the fact that a driver of such a large, rugged truck with its large, rugged wheels really should not have had much trouble parking on the un-claimed, poorly cleared, icy areas on the other side of the main street.  He or she did not need to park on my clear, dry, parking spots. Yes, spots. For this truck had not only taken up ONE space, no indeed. He or she had parked in such a way as to block BOTH of them. It made me unreasonably angry.

I had my tantrum in front of my two girls. My girls rarely see me angry.  Sure, there’s the occasional spat with my husband.  Or I get peeved about politics or other idiocy. But they hardly ever see an example of my on a full-on, furious, demon-like rampage.  I was beyond agitated. I was loud, and outrageous. I wrote a nasty note, which my seven year old read over my shoulder.  She commented that she wouldn’t say the note out loud as it evidently contained a word which she’s not supposed to know, let alone use.

Smart kid.

But now, it’s quite a few days since my tantrum, and I’m thinking it all over, trying to see what part of the human condition is illuminated by all that noise and bluster. I simply didn’t need to make such a big deal over having to park somewhere else. There was another place to park, after all, even though it was trickier, further from home and covered with a dangerous, slippery, pile of ice.  But I did, because I just felt like I had to, express that rage.

I’ve gone through a range of emotions while processing my own “bad” behavior.   I was self-righteous at first, because I am a hard worker and I shouldn’t have had to work for some jerk to take away my hard-earned prize. I was embarrassed, after a bit, because of making such a fuss.  But now I’ve come to the new rationalization, that I did myself some good that evening.  I let myself and my kids know that when I feel, really feel mad, that I can express that emotion.

I can let it out, and then let it go. Let it out, people.  And then let it go.  That’s is the moral of this blog post.

You can look around at the goings-on and let out a complaint.  Here are some fabulous examples of complaints, taken from real life:

“Ugh, my jeans are too tight.”

“I don’t have any clean underwear.”

“This dinner tastes too spicy.”

“I am sick and tired of all the snow. Can it be spring now?”

These and many more, and variants therein, I am sure you may have heard, or uttered, or at least thought.  I know that they are familiar and comforting to me in some way.

The best part of letting yourself complain, is that having voiced your discontent, it now gives you a direction in which to take your onerous situation.

Whining is a special type of complaining. It goes from merely stating the matter of discontent and takes it on the offensive. Now it’s time to take your complaint, and make the other people around you suffer, too! Just whip out the whining and you can punish those around you who are probably responsible for your misery anyway!

If you are someone who works with children, as I am, you will likely be familiar enough with whining at the pinnacle of its form, so that you will not be in need of any further example. Besides, making specific examples of whining in which they can be differentiated from the odd complaint is more difficult in written text. It would require a fair amount of inflection, for whining is that linguistic equivalent of the old fingernails-on-blackboard sound one hears in old fashioned classrooms.

In my work with children, both in a school setting and at home with my own daughters, I have to admit, it can be challenging responding to and dealing with complaints. Whining complaints are the worst, however.  If you work with kids enough, you may find that you grow either more immune to the pain of whining, or perhaps instead you grow less tolerant of it.  I think there are days when I lean one way, and other days when I go the other direction.

Whining from adults is the hardest to tolerate.  Complaints, on the other hand, are merely a call to action.  No matter who it is initiating the complaint, this is a function of human critical thought. It can be acceptable, even desirable, but only when the complaint is followed up with action of some sort.

I myself like to complain a bit now and then, as it reminds me and motivates me to do stuff. The lack of clean underwear can spawn some flurry of trips to the basement to wash clothing.  The tightness of jeans could inspire me to lay off sweets for a while.  Indeed, I encourage everyone out there to complain a bit.  And then LISTEN to yourself.  Whatever it was that bugged you enough to complain, do something about it.

But, please, don’t whine. At least not where I can hear you!

The truth is, we had severe weather. I think that is preferable in some ways to the usual blah and super cold, or the usual wet rainy miserable bitter cold which can happen. I think it is weird how we all seem able to connect and talk about weather. The outside world matters to me, even on days when I stay in my pajamas all day. Like today. I am still clad in blue flannel PJs, with white snowflakes on them. 

My work of course involves being outside with kids. Rainy cold weather is no fun, and we’re all cooped up and miserable. Unfortunately, I hear the forecast for Monday and Tuesday involves much rainy dreariness. I am not thrilled with that, but have you ever thought how lucky you are to know what is coming? I mean really, we had over two feet of snow and I knew it was coming. I bought a lot of groceries.

Which also makes me feel lucky and grateful. We had enough money for groceries. And we had heat. And still are doing fine. 

My kids and their peers at school did a fundraiser for Haiti and gathered more than one thousand dollars to be sent to Haiti in the form of aid for the earthquake survivors. I am so proud of the kids for making a difference. 

So we have one more week of February. Why is February the shortest month of the year? So we can survive it, of course, or so I’ve always figured. March can come blow down the door and spill our soup upon the floor. We’ll lap it up and roar for more. 

Random selection of pictures and one valentine.

I guess I kind of forgot to blog for the last three months. I don’t know where the summer went, it was gone in a flash.

I can’t possibly catch you all up on what I’ve been up to. So I’m going to just jump back into this, putting together three thoughts and call it a day.

1) It is time for me to consider that I may be just another adult with Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder.  This disorder, with its truly annoying and inglorious name, sure has a lot of symptoms that fit my personality. It’s always tempting to sit down with a diagnostic book and self-diagnose.  My husband feels strongly that I fit the ADHD mold. I just don’t really want to cop to this. I don’t want to have ANOTHER diagnosis. ANOTHER thing that is wrong with me. But that’s just negativity taking over.

2) It is one hell of a crap ass, cold rainy and miserable day out there. I just want to hide under the covers all day. Alas, that is not likely to happen. But maybe a little tiny half hour nap after lunch wouldn’t hurt anyone?

3) My daughters are really doing great in school this year. I am so proud of them. One of the things that seems to be helping Carla is that she is taking a stimulant to treat her ADHD. It works for her, it seems. If it works for her, would it work for me too?  Meanwhile, though, I’m sticking to coffee. Lots and lots of it.

You know, I really can be distracted rather easily sometimes. I know I opened up this website so I could write about something that was in my mind. Then I saw the TITLE area and lost my train of thought. I started to write: Beautiful Summer, and Life in the Slow Lane, and Birthday Blues, and… well then I thought all of those were fairly nice titles but have nothing to do with what I wanted to write about.

Which was?

Yeah, I’m easily distracted. This is something of a running joke in our household. Which one of us has the ADD, again? The one thing I keep coming back to which makes me deny having ADD (or ADHD, if you prefer) is that I made it all the way through college and grad school without any medication or treatment for ADD. That was six long years of being educated— lots of papers all handed in on time, lots of exams prepared for and taken, no incompletes, no withdrawing from classes… So, that makes me think there’s no way I could really have this disorder and still get by. And with a 4.0 GPA in grad school– and a 3.7 GPA in college.

Or maybe I just do well at school stuff. Is the single-minded structure of go-to-class, do-your-homework enough structure to make me succeed? I don’t know, really, but I am proud that I was so good at school.

My attitude fluctuates greatly. My default setting is “I can do anything I set my mind to.” Of course, I know that’s not exactly true. There are some things I probably cannot accomplish, but that would probably also be the fact that I don’t WANT to put my mind to them.

Today I want to put my mind to putting down some adhesive tiles in my children’s bathroom. I’m going to cover over the old tiles that are there, because they are cracked and incomplete, with sections of the floor that is just kinda grungy cement. I would take a before and after picture, but yesterday Carla and I managed to break my digital camera. Maybe I can borrow a camera from someone else, though.

I asked Drob if he was okay with me putting down these adhesive tiles over the floor in there, because they aren’t exactly high quality. They are pretty, though. I figure it’ll make an improvement, maybe last a couple of years. Maybe by then, we’ll have enough money to really fix up the bathroom for real.

He said, “Hmm… you might find it difficult.”

“Meh!” was my response. Difficult? Pshaw. I don’t think so!

What’s difficult is getting organized, getting a shower, finding all the things I need to do it, cleaning the floor before applying the tiles, finding a good cutting tool to trim them to the right size. Once I do all that, I’m gold. It’s gonna be a cinch.

Carla is turning nine on Saturday. We’re going to have one of my favorite kinds of birthday parties: Low key, low tech, getting down with nature at a park with a creek nearby. We’ll wade in the creek, eat watermelon and cake, hang out and chat, maybe do a pinyata. And that’s all. Easy.

I like easy stuff.

Easy stuff? Okay, now I know what to title this entry, incoherent though it may have been.

I know there’s a lot of work to be done, but I’m feeling so much better thanks to summer being here. There’s still some big challenges ahead but I feel like I can face them.

I seriously have to wonder if I should continue my teaching job. On the one hand, I do enjoy it. On the other, it sure did give me a lot of stress this year. Annoyingly, even though my performance was evaluated by the community, I STILL have not received an evaluation from Personnel. I did hear from them verbally (”You have nothing to worry about…”); nevertheless, I feel really annoyed that I haven’t been given my evaluation letter or any official feedback.

If they weren’t going to take my evaluation seriously, what did I need to have so much stress and anxiety about?

And sadly, it really all boils down to one family. One cuckoo family can have such a horribly big negative impact on my psyche? That seems really unfair. If not for this one family, this one child’s problematic behavior, would I have spent the last month of school feeling like a mental patient?

The relief I feel is truly tangible. But what about next year? I can’t help but ask myself… is that kid coming back next year? Rumor has it that he might not. Of course, there’s always conflict, in any job. Could be anyone, any kid– and I have to be strong enough to handle it.

If this was trial by fire, then the question is whether I am now forged by fire, or just burnt out? I will think about this, more.

That sentence is not a healthy one — hang on a minute while I take it out back and shoot it to put it out of its misery.

There.

Starting again now.

I have had the chance to spend some nice long chunks of time with each of my girls. Carla and I went shopping together, and doing other errands in a leisurely way on Sunday. Then on Monday, Carla was at camp, so Annie and I got to cuddle and watch a movie together. By evening, Annie and I were on our way to New York to visit my mom, and in preparation for going to the funeral this morning. On the drive up to NY, Annie suddenly said pensively, “I hate what we’re doing right now.”

Alarmed, I replied, “What, just sitting in the car waiting for the time to pass so we can get to Nonna’s house?” I figured she was probably just getting bored stiff.

“No, not that,” she answered. “I just hate that our car is polluting as we go.”

I’m back home now. I missed my big girl (Carla) but I really did enjoy getting some time just with Annie. Annie is so ridiculously chatty and sunny, her personality is shiny and bright as a new copper penny. She bursts with song, stories, and creativity. It can be a little daunting, I guess, for the uninitiated.

But luckily I am her Mommy. So I’m prepared to appreciate her endless prattle (oops, I mean, fabulous gift of the gab), as well as her harmonica playing (don’t knock it till you’ve heard it!), and she is quite the singer / songwriter. Said Annie, “Ok, Mom, I’m going to play you some harmonica songs now, and you’re going to have to listen, cause you’re my Mommy!” Can you say CAPTIVE AUDIENCE?

It was really fun actually, riding home from NY today in the car, with her in the backseat. We hit some rather heavy rain, and she decided that was because of Mother Nature crying her heart out over global warming, harmful pollution, and the passing of my Aunt Aileen.

She decided that the only way to calm Mother Nature’s nerves was to sing to her. So we sang. And we sang, and we sang some more. Singing in the Rain, Raindrops keep Fallin’ On my Head, Robin in the Rain, Yellow Submarine, Red Red Robin, Bushel and a Peck, Michael Row Your Boat Ashore, Her Majesty, Clementine, You are My Sunshine…. and more. I was so pleased to be able to remember the words, or most of them!

I actually really love singing in the car. (When Carla is in the car with me, she tells me to be quiet, that I give her a headache. Annie, by contrast, eggs me on, and sings along when she knows the words.)

Anyway, when we finally had passed through the cloud burst and out the other side, Mother Nature rewarded us mightily with a beautiful rainbow. The huge wonderful kind that any happy child colors over and over and over again in their notebooks. We sang our hearts out even more after that. It was really stunning. I kept having to make myself focus on the driving. So we sang even more. Rainbow Connection, Somewhere over the Rainbow, and LOTS of renditions of You Are My Sunshine.

Annie is really sensitive, in a lot of ways, but she’s also a pretty happy kid. Carla is more of a mystery to me, and keeps a lot of her thoughts to herself. When the three of us are together, the two of them interact MUCH more with each other than with me directly. I butt in to their little arguments when they get out of hand, or get on my nerves a bit much.

And so, it’s very nice to have had these individual times with each of them. I look forward to figuring out more ways to work individual attention time into our schedules. I feel much closer to each child, as a result of the time we spent together. This should not come as a surprise to me, but yet it does. It is really eye-opening to think that these children, as vital to me as they are, haven’t gotten much special Mom Time all year long, even though they are with me for hours. The poor dears have to share me, not only with each other, but also with a dozen or more of their peers.

I really must think about ways to make this better for them next year. Sigh.