I am fine. February fever didn’t really strike me so much. I feel like I must have dodged a bullet.

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.

Sometimes I sit down to write a post for this blog and I get all hung up on the TITLE.

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.

Lately I’ve had the opportunity to spend time with each of my children, alone, away from her sister.

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.

Annie (6) has a squishy hot pink pillow. It is a kid-sized pillow, meant to be put in a pillow case and used as one would a typical pillow on a bed. That’s not how she uses it, though. Pillow cases be damned, this cute hot pink pillow cannot be covered. And it’s not for putting your head on, silly. It’s for clinging to.

She lays down in bed, and takes the squishy thing into her arms and pulls it close to her. She squeezes it, and hugs it in a cozy and loving manner. This is what she calls “clinging” to the pillow. Sure, sometimes she takes the stuffed animal of her choice to bed with her, bestowing upon “Calico” (a cat), or “Cloe” (a bear), or
“Sammy” (penguin), or even sometimes “Steel” (a labrador puppy), her good graces and unmitigated kid love. But the hot pink pillow remains a constant in her bedtime clinging routine.

The other constant is wanting snuggles. From me, or if that’s not an option, Drob is another acceptable snuggler. Tonight she waited up for me to come give her snuggles. It was late; with my work schedule and such this week, we didn’t eat dinner until well after 8 PM, perhaps even after 9. We gorged ourselves on this fantastic rhubarb cobbler and Drob read from the chapter book we are currently engrossed in (Peter and the Star Catchers).

So it was quite late when bedtime came, about 10:15PM. I was bustling around (I’m in a really really good mood, though I can’t really say why) and I didn’t want to go snuggle right away. I figured that with how late it was, and what a long busy day, that her eyes would shut and she’d be out cold before her head even hit the pillow. Or at least as soon as she started to cling to her pink pillow.

She called out to me, from her room, however, asking for snuggles. I bustled five more minutes, wanting to get the most out of my unusually high energy level. Walking down the hall to put away some stuff in the linen closet, she heard my footsteps and called out to me again.

“I’m WAITing here, you know!”

I was very surprised that she was still awake. I finished putting away the sheets and towels and walked over to her room.

I laid down on her bed, and drew her into my arms. She was clinging her pillow, and I was enveloping her into my arms. She told me, “Ah! You’re clinging me!” I was, too, I was holding her in a tight kind of snuggle, all wrapped up safe and close in my arms. She had her pink pillow in her arms, cozy and secure. I realized that for her, the clinging she does to her pillow is a kind of replica of the kind of snuggles she wants from me.

“Mommies are better for clinging than pillows, I guess,” I told her. She answered, “yeah and they smell better than pillows, too.” This is not surprising, especially since her cling-pillow is one which doesn’t have a pillow case to keep it fresh!

I laid there, and held her as she fell asleep. In the dim light coming from the hallway, I could see her sweet features up close. Her eyes, closed, I could see her black eye lashes resting on her soft pink cheeks. I could see the tenderness of her clinging to her pillow, and watched as she slipped deeper into sleep. Her grip on the pillow relaxed– she was clearly getting some good rest.

How much longer will I be able to hold her and watch her fall asleep, content and safe in my arms? I am a little sad that I don’t still do this with Carla, her older sister. I think I still would snuggle Carla to sleep if only a) she didn’t have a loft bed or b) if she didn’t wet the bed. Carla is a kid who seems to want extra physical affection. She still loves to sit on my lap and get lots of hugs, and piggy back rides. I make a point of giving her the opportunity for physical closeness, because I know that eventually she’ll want more distance as she becomes more of a tween.

The tenderness of holding your child as she falls asleep is wonderful. I adore both of my girls tremendously, and I swell with pride at their many acheivements. It’s no wonder that the simple joy of watching them sleep still fills me with happiness.

It is raining and chilly today. I wish I had a full day to just snuggle under the blankets. That’s not what my day will look like, though I could sneak about an hour of that in, if I really wanted to.

It is the last day of school today, and dismissal is at noon. Unfortunately, I have to start After School at noon, and will have some kids for a while. Maybe even some until close to 6 PM. Tonight there is an end-of-year celebration at a classmate of Annie’s house. It starts 5:30 PM. I hope I am able to leave school before 6 PM tonight. Next year’s academic calendar indicates that there will not be after school provided on the last day of school. This is good for me, but of course, not so good for working parents whose jobs don’t give a hoot that it’s the last day of school!

We don’t live in a very family friendly country. I think it may be getting a little bit better, though. Some things seem to be shifting, and certainly some companies are trying to do right by the parents they employ. It always seems to me that the people who need each dollar the most are the ones who are most penalized by the system. Poor folk. People working by the hour, and not much per hour at that, really get screwed when they have to get their kids from school earlier than usual. I wish it weren’t so.

So, I have about a bit more than one hour before I head back to the school. This weather sucks, because we’ll be all couped up indoors. I should think of something fabulous to do with the kids, but right now I’m thinking we’ll watch a movie. Some kids will be fine with that, others will complain — and rightly so– because we did that yesterday.

I am looking back on my first full year of being an after school teacher. I think I did pretty well, considering the various challenges I had. I would like to do better next year. Specifically, I would like to increase and improve my communication to parents. I never started the email list that I meant to, and that’s just dumb. It would have been really helpful, so why didn’t I make one? I don’t know. I think I just got swept up in all the other things I do.

Next year, I’d also like to find additional ways of getting my own kids to be elsewhere during after school. I think they are too exhausted by the current system, even if they mostly like after school very much. Drob has been very dedicated, and he is a wonderful father. He has been making himself available to pick up the girls, or sometimes just Carla, early from after school once a week. I hope we can do that again. Their grandpa also has picked up the kids sometimes, so hopefully that can happen again next year. I wonder if Cammy can get them sometimes next year? I don’t know what she’ll be doing.

Yes, gentle readers (all, what, four of you?), Cammy still lives with us. Things are quite different now, though. She kind of quit being our nanny last summer, and got a full time job doing something else. This left me without back up during the school year. Unfortunately, her job ended, and she’s looking for work again. I wish I could offer her the kind of work she wants, but there is no way I can get her health insurance, or anything like full time pay. Not sure if she’s ever going to go back to school. Even though she does technically live here, I see her only about once a week, maybe twice. And briefly. She comes, changes her clothes, and leaves. Obviously, this is not the peachy situation it once was, back when she was helping with the kids on a regular basis. She does still babysit from time to time, but that doesn’t really constitute the type of support I was looking for when I invited her to live with us.

My depression being what it currently is, I haven’t really made any efforts to discuss this situation with her. One problem I’m having is that I seem to be withdrawing from people around me, though not the children. I feel like it’s hard to communicate. I hope that after I finish my teaching work (in two weeks), that I can work on my emotional health. I am just not feeling like myself, and it’s a problem. I believe this will pass, but may be a bit rocky for a while.

One good thing, though… the rain is good for my garden. So that’s looking on the bright side!

Yesterday I managed to put more plants into the ground, in spite of the hungry bunny patrol that has once again hopped through and under the fence around the garden. Damn those cute little bunnies!

Apparently they like petunia blossoms, as well as little baby sunflower plants. The “sonic spike” which buzzes every 30 seconds apparently has no effect on bunnies. Well, it was worth a try. I think I might have to go with a hot pepper spray on the ornamentals to deter bunnies. I’ve also started to add a layer of chicken wire around the fence, in hopes of closing up the holes a bit more, making it more challenging for the little critters to enter the garden.

I’d LOVE to be able to just go and do more garden work, but the club where my community garden is located is not yet open full time. It is only open on the weekends until June 22, or thereabouts. So far, I’ve put in 3 varieties of tomatoes (Early Girl, Roma, Yellow Pear), four varieties of basil, three peppers, cucumbers (seeds just sprouted!), sunflowers, petunias, marigolds, cauliflower, watermelon (seeds), green beans, yellow wax beans, and swiss chard (seeds). I’ve filled about two thirds of the space!

I also have eggplant and okra which I’d like to grow, as well as cantaloupe. I also want to add nasturtiums, but don’t have any plants or seeds as of yet. I read that nasturtiums are good for protecting / helping melons. I would really, really, really like to see my melons succeed this year – both cantaloupes and watermelon. As I recall, the bunnies are pretty fond of watermelon vines as well as the tender petunia flowers that they gobbled up so far.

My mind could get full just on garden thoughts alone.

Yet there’s so much more going on in my brain right now. There’s tax issues to be resolved with the city (again?!?). There’s summer camp, which I’m running for two weeks, (one week from now, yikes!). There’s shopping to be done for Carla’s horseback riding camp (she needs some low boots.) There’s the never ending housework — and the house currently is a real wreck. UGH!

There’s so much, I’m overwhelmed. I do wish it was just time to think about the garden and nothing else. There’s also the yard and the hedges, and the gardens at home which need attention. I’d happily give it to them, too, but for the other house work which needs doing.

I also have to get a large amount of book-keeping, billing, and bill paying done for the small biz that I am putatively running. You can’t pay bills if you don’t send out the billing, and you can’t send out the billing if you don’t enter the book-keeping information. And you can’t keep track of bills if you don’t enter the expenses into the computer! ARGH!

Nasturtiums. I need nasturtiums.

Yesterday Drob told me he was concerned that I seemed “out of control.”

Oh, I thought, you noticed?

Only, I don’t know if “control” is the right word. I think maybe slightly out of order might be accurate. I don’t really feel right. I am not getting enough done, perhaps. Or I’m finding myself in these brain loops, my thoughts disorganized and swirl from one topic to another.

Last weekend I also stayed up all night and didn’t even feel tired. I felt perfectly alert and just kept doing housecleaning. I was doing very thorough cleaning. I cleaned WALLS and FLOORS. I scrubbed down places that hadn’t been cleaned, well, ever. I took down a dirty curtain from a window, washed it, was dissatisfied with the result, and then I attempted to dye it red. It came out pink, but I like it anyway.

Was that a manic night? I wonder? I did it because my mom was coming to visit. I did it because my house seemed to be so dingy and dirty. I did it because I was worried about Lucky, and rightly so, since he died a couple days later. I wanted to get my house to a comfortable state.

Now, we’re a few days later. The house is falling apart again. I guess this house really requires a daily vigilance, and for that, I don’t seem to have the where-with-all.

Daily laundry, daily dishes. What I’m doing instead? I’m thinking. I’m reading email. I’m relating to people. I’m thinking and planning for my job working with children. I’m researching projects for the summer camp I’m going to run. I’m wondering how to get more kids to sign up for camp. There’s much to think about– and my internal dialogue sometimes prevents me from getting things done in the real world.

This morning I didn’t feel like taking a shower. I’d taken one yesterday, and still felt perfectly clean. But D wanted me to shower– we used to always shower together. (Most couples do this, right?) I just wanted more sleep. Am I slacking in my hygeine? Is this a depression thing?

My real test for whether I am having bad depression problems is when thoughts of death go through my head. This hasn’t been happening, at least not like it did in the past. I have had fleeting death thoughts, like WHAT IF kind of thoughts, which are not the same as COME HITHER, OH GRIM REAPER or the sad, self-hating kind of I DESERVE TO DIE, I AM A VILE PIECE OF TRASH…. these thoughts have been unwelcome visitors to my mind in the past.

I am glad that I’m not thinking these kinds of thoughts, as they are very upsetting. I am mostly doing pretty well. A few times recently, however, I’ve found the kind of death thought showing up that run along the lines of “Oh, dear, it would be such a SHAME if I couldn’t go to work today, like, if I got run over by a bus because my shoelace was undone and I tripped and the bus driver happened to not notice me…..”

Or, “Gee, I sure hope my kitten wasn’t actually rabid and we didn’t know it…. he did bite me three times. I sure hope I don’t die from rabies. Who would teach in my place?”

These implausible, unlikely, and uncomfortable thoughts of death are quite fleeting. But are they a symptom of my depression worsening? I guess I could ask my doctor. Wouldn’t that be a revolutionary thought?

That adorable little kitten died the day before yesterday, early in the morning. I’d held him all night, trying very hard to give him some nourishment. He could not or would not drink– not from a kitten bottle, not from a dropper. He was fading fast and I knew it. Every now and again he’d make sad, sad, mewling noises, and stretch his body out in a gruesome and sad way. So sad.

Yesterday was Annie’s sixth birthday, too. She came to our bedroom in the morning of her birthday. “Good morning, Happy Birthday,” I told her. “Lucky died,” said Drob, explaining my sad face and the little still bundle of black and white fluff still sitting on the bed.

It was very hard to be cheery and full of excitement. Lucky was just a tiny, sick little kitten and there was nothing more we could do for him. Annie was not as affected by his death as I was. I think she just understood, that he could die, from the beginning. He’d been so obviously ill over the last few days. I was ever hopeful.

Still, the bigger lesson is there, and it’s not an easy one. The little kitten showed us that you can care, and offer comfort even when it doesn’t result in a happy ending. I showed my children that you can care, and still lose something precious. Life does go on when there is a loss. That’s an important lesson.

Another lesson here is that when you think about it, you realize that ALL life on earth is temporary. We live just a little while. What will we do when we are here? Where will we go when we go? We don’t know– but we can think about the impact we make on others during our little lives. We can love large. We can offer hope. We can try, and we can fail, but that never negates the trying itself.

It’s all cats all the time lately.

I found this tiny little kitten in the middle of the street, no momma cat around to be seen. Poor little thing.

It’s pouring rain right now– it has been a dreadfully wet week. Today we had cloudy skies and the rain held off during the day but there was no sun. Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, rain, rain, rain. No wonder this little spunky kitten has such a bad cold.

ACHOOO!

Imagine this tiny little kitten, out in all that awful rain! And where was momma cat?

He’s about 6 weeks old, which is about when kittens wean. However, he doesn’t know how to eat regular food yet, so we are dropper feeding him! Such a little bitty thing he is!

The girls are calling him “Lucky.”

I can’t remember a more active, productive, and social weekend than this past one.

I am so tired, and it’s such a Monday.

It was a good weekend, though, and I still can’t understand where I got so much energy?! Saturday morning was a flurry of house cleaning to ready the house for an appraisal, while I shooed the kids outside to play with three neighbor kids. Somehow we managed to at least make the house seem more like average people live here, instead of say, crack addicted squatters. And, how it was possible for me to go out on Saturday night, get a tad lit, and come home at 3 AM… and then rise and shine at 8 AM the next morning, when I brewed some coffee, made pancakes from scratch for my family plus my friend and her daughter who’d slept over to babysit while I was out (thanks!!!!)… and the pancakes were GOOD! They had a choice of plain, apple, banana, walnut, and chocolate chip, or some combo therein.

Then after my friend and her daughter went home, I raced to the food store, did a quick grocery shopping just in time to get home for me to karmic-ly repay for the babysitting, as Annie’s friend Maggie came over for a 6 hour playdate. And it was hot out. We had fun with water play, I can tell you that for sure.

Plus, somehow, before the weekend was out I managed to clean out all the cat boxes, do about 5 loads of laundry and thoroughly clean the guinea pigs cage.

PLUS, I even managed to squeeze in a phonecall to my mom. PHEW!
I am exhausted just thinking about it. I need another weekend to relax, now, please?