I’ve been a little reluctant to post a new post after that sweet, sweet letter that D wrote me. I just kept coming back to my blog and re-reading it. I know that I am loved. I will be fine. We’ll get through, it, whatever it may be.

Yet life and its insecurities rage on. I don’t know if it’s safe to write about using illegal drugs on one’s blog, no matter how anonymous it is (and this one’s not all that successful at anonymity!) So I am only going to say this: that if I were to be the sort of gal who enjoys a puff or two of a relaxing kind of smoke from time to time when the kiddos are safely put away on their shelves, then now would be a pretty good time to seek such relaxation.

In fact, D and I are both pretty anxious right now. I hadn’t mentioned this before (probably because of denial, shame, or whatever) but we’re being sued by the lovely city of brotherly love. It’s because apparently our accountant made a mistake on our 2001, or maybe it was our 2002, tax returns. It seems that our city taxes were not filed, or not filed properly.

Since I’m someone whose eyes glaze over and ears seemed stuffed with fluff whenever taxes are discussed, I honestly don’t fully get what happened, or when, or why. I just know that our tax situation requires that a (new) professional accountant deal with it. In order to avoid the $5000 fine and being required to appear at a hearing, the city requires that we file (or re-file, if it was filed) no later than three days before the hearing. If we do, the hearing’s cancelled, the $5000 fine is avoided.

The hearing is August 11. When we’re in upstate NY on vacation. Talking to the accountant’s office today, he said they’d get right to it and work on our taxes. Um… please hurry the fuck up, ok? I mentioned to the clerk I spoke with that there’s this little $5000 fine we’re trying to avoid, and the little lawsuit we’re trying to have dropped… and the best he could say is that they’re going to get started on it right away.

Anxiety much? Now you can understand why I might just be interested in something that might take the edge off. Ease the freak-out a little.

I am also anxious about packing for our vacation (remember my little problem with packing for a ONE NIGHT STAY recently? Well how’s about a two week trip to the middle of nowhere NY where you have to drive 30 miles to get anywhere civilized?) I am perhaps equally anxious about preparing for next year and working as the after school teacher at this wonderful little school. It’s like being pregnant in a way. You get to this point where you suddenly remember OH SHIT! I’M GOING TO GIVE BIRTH! AM I READY FOR THIS?

The fact is I am NOT ready. I am far from ready. I also am not feeling ready for the simple daily life functions of getting my kids up daily, dressed, fed and out the door to go to school on time each day. I am not ready to pay my business bills, either. I really need to do much more, or else face serious consequences.

It’s also 11:52 AM and I am not ready to feed my kids their lunch today. I didn’t get them an adequate breakfast, yet, either, though they both ate something.

And here I am just lolling in anxiety to the point where I wonder if it would be a good idea to take part in some kind of relaxing herbal refreshment (what my pals and I sometimes called it when we were teens).

I need to get my shit together. Perhaps the first thing to do is get dressed and go buy some food. I’ll need some snacks later on if I go with the whole herbal refreshment plan, anyway.

I think cooking with a crock is awesome… even though I don’t know what I am doing, things seem to turn out yummy.

(Hey, kids, this isn’t a restaurant. You’re getting what I cooked for dinner and you’re going to like it.)

That approach isn’t all that successful, but hey, if they’re hungry, they’ll eat, right?

I had an anxiety dream about my job that starts in the fall. In my dream, the school year had begun, and I forgot to show up to work. Instead, I tried just picking up my kids and going home. I was greeted by all the kids there at school, who were all hungry and tired from their first day of school. What’s for snack? was the constant refrain. It was then I realized that I was supposed to be their after school teacher.

And I’d kind of forgotten to prepare for that, as I also forgot to show up to the job. I rooted then through the pantry, trying to find some snacks left over from camp. Then I tried to get the kids to do some kind of activity. The hostility from the older kids was intense. They rolled their eyes at me, walked out of the room, snickering behind their hands. It was awful.

When I woke up from this, my heart was beating kind of fast. I realized with a jolt that the summer is halfway gone. What am I doing this summer, I asked myself? My life is so disorganized. I have no structure. I am not taking care of business, and I’m not getting this place ship-shape. I am not planning ahead for the fall.

That dream was a wake-up call. I need to get myself in order. But I feel really stuck, paralyzed. I don’t know what I can do to get out of this feeling of trying to move a mountain. I am just able to get to OT appointments and provide three meals (sometimes just two) to the kids each day.

This is not an easy place to be, mentally. I feel really stuck.

The last few weeks have been kind of hectic, in a summery kind of way. I’ve been driving Annie three times a week to her occupational therapy sessions. It’s kind of far from home, but not really far from the pool where we swim, so we’ve been trying to fit going there to swim into the day’s plans. Of course this requires planning ahead, making sure we have food with us or eat before we go. It’s all good things, but the driving is still pretty tiring for me. Happily, where I swim is also where I garden. This year’s garden got started a lot later than last year’s somehow. I don’t really know why or how that happened. Actually, I do know. I was working: having two jobs really took a lot of time away from when I would usually do my garden planning and planting seedlings.

In between, I am trying to keep up with email, and phonecalls from clients. Thankfully the requests have been light. Earlier this week I spent several hours catching up on way past due book-keeping: I realized that it had been more than six months since I’d balanced the business checking account. Not good. I’m still not caught up with that.

On the good side of things, I am finding time to cook, and this is a good thing, given that a) I love food b) I’m responsible for feeding the lot of us and c) our CSA is staring to come through with some lovely produce. I’d bought some beef stew cubes on discount — these were not just any old feedlot beef cubes, oh no! From a small farm, naturally raised, humanely treated cows. Happy cows. I can eat happy cows. As long as they have a good life before they’re killed and I eat them, I don’t have a problem with beef. Strange logic behind food, isn’t it? I still keep the meat that I eat fairly limited, and don’t eat it that often. I don’t feel like I have the moral fiber to be a vegetarian. It requires such self discipline.

Anyway, I finally pulled out the crockpot and made some beef stew, using the onions, cabbage and potatoes from our CSA delivery, along with the delicious basil they included. I’m looking forward to eating this stew today — it’s supposed to be even better a couple days later. I used this and that as the liquid in the stew: some mystery stock I found in my freezer, some sherry wine, some chicken broth, a little wine vinegar. A shake of oregano and pepper.

Unfortunately, the girls aren’t as keen to try things like this, but when I prepare the fresh produce simply, they are more apt to enjoy it. Carla, especially, has had a real turnaround in trying the fresh foods. She’s come to understand that fresh, local, and organic are all adjectives that seem to go with “tastes good”. I have had to be a little bit deceptive about it, though. I know she’s said in the past she does not like squash. Period. Yuck. Ick. Blech.

So the other day when C came downstairs to the kitchen as I was pan frying some crookneck yellow squash, I thought fast when she said “Mmm! That smells delicious! What’s for dinner, Mama?” I knew if I said, “this is squash” she would turn up her nose. Instead I said, “This is called Crookneck. Wanna try a piece?” She loved it. Ate several pieces, and then next night asked me to make her some more. I decided to call the zucchini by their French/British name, courgettes. This did not entire her to try it, unfortunately. After all, the girl does have her standards: courgettes, are after all, GREEN. GREEN means “be wary, be very, very wary.”

Now that’s she’s 8 years old, I expect her to be more mature. And she is, though she’s also developing that pesky sense of injustice that you seem to find in older children. She got a new virtual interactive pet for her birthday (I gave her a gift card to Target, and let her pick her own present). This requires being able to go on their website, and by the time we got home from her birthday dinner last night, it was too late at night to log in. We also gave her a bicycle, which she was too terrified to try riding. In the morning, she proceeded to get up early (in spite of going to bed late last night) and nag me about getting up so she could log in. I finally told her that we’d do it at 9 am, but that before then I was not getting up. When we finally did try to login, their stupid website was down. “Thanks for stopping by! The Hasbro Web sites are undergoing routine maintenance and are temporarily unavailable. We apologize for any inconvenience and welcome you to check back after midnight Eastern time (GMT -5).” She rolled her eyes and said, “That is so stupid! This is supposed to be a website for kids! We’re not allowed to check back after midnight!”

The squabbling continues. Annie has taken to humming to herself, in a tuneless kid kind of way. This gives Carla a headache. And C’s birthday presents caused A to cry that she herself wasn’t getting enough toys. And back and forth. Oh, the nuisance of this! Thankfully, this is only sometimes, and generally not at all if we’re out and about. I guess they get bored after a few hours of occupying themselves.

I find myself alternatively grateful to them for amusing themselves and then annoyed with them for quarreling. Writing this down just now made me realize I’m kind of being a whiner.

I think it’s because I haven’t been getting enough sleep, too. Whatever the reason, I’m kind of just floating along. My thoughts aren’t really that organized. This post feels like a rambling mess, which is about what my life is like. In spite of all this whining, I am still quite grateful for the life I have. It could be a whole lot worse.

Reminder to myself: future posts on early tweenish-ness… and on the garden update … and fears about the future.

…that cup of ice coffee I enjoyed with dinner.

At some point during the weekend, I came to see everything around me as being at a level of filth that was just intolerable. The house had begun to look and smell like the inside of a car that has been on a cross country trip with four young children. I wondered what kind of mentally ill person was responsible around here, anyway? Who would let themselves live in this fashion? Dishes, piled up… flies were delighted but not me. I suddenly had this flash of shock as I thought about how it must seem to my kids, to live in such a messy place. I think it was getting on their nerves as much as mine, as they frolicked about and teased each other mercilessly.

I have a pretty low tolerance for when they are squabbling. I wouldn’t mind that much, but for the telling. Mom, Annie won’t give me back my half of the silly putty… Mom, Carla bumped me with her head! Mom! Maaaa-ommmm! It makes me say things like “well negotiate with her. Offer her something in exchange. Distract her. And if that doesn’t work, then GO TO YOUR ROOM BECAUSE I DON’T WANT TO HEAR ABOUT IT! Do you need a trip to the ER? No, so why are you trying to get me involved here??” (Mother of the year award coming right up! Sarcasm: just one more service I provide!)

But amid such mess as was our house, the squabbling just kind of fit right in. I found myself recalling information I’d gathered way back in my grad school days– learning about how the environment that a person is in can really shape their behavior. Of course they were going to be miserable in this house in the heat, the awful humidity… with me being busy playing scrabulous washing the dishes and preparing meals

rather than playing with them, and with every surface for play already cluttered with toys, and laundry and quite possibly guinea pig turds.

Something, something, had to pull me out of this squalid existence. It feels like today we suddenly started to really tip the scales and head in the right direction. In fact, it’s been a solid week of chipping away at the dishes, the laundry, and sweeping up, and so forth. D helped a great deal with this long weekend of ours. The weather had a way of helping as well, because today was off and on rainy rather than perfect pool weather, so I didn’t get up to the pool (or my garden).

In addition to doing a bunch of laundry, D came up with an innovative way for us to communicate the things we’d like each other to do over the course of a day. He suggested that we each make a list of three items for the other — it could be anything you want your partner to do for you from Give a Backrub to Mow the Lawn to Put the Kids to Bed to Apply for a New Job. Anything at all. The rules: Only put three things on the list. Expect that 2 out of 3 Ain’t Bad. 3 out of 3 is a pleasant surprise. And 1 out of 3 is Not So Good.

So, I looked around and realized that the huge laundry clutter in our bedroom was really getting me down, and yet I had no desire to sort and put it all away. I put that as one of his 3 things, and lo and behold! He did that task. This then inspired me to further clean up our bedroom, and I swept the room out and cleared out under the bed as well. I would certainly never have done that if the dresser were still cluttered. You see? The environment of my bedroom was paralyzing me from doing anything to improve it, because the dresser was a hurtle that seemed too awful to tackle. My bedroom closet is still a horrible mess and a monolith that I am not sure I can tackle. But with the dresser clear, I feel a little more easy about giving it a try.

D had been wishing I’d cook up a big yummy dinner, with lots of leftovers for him to take to work over the week, so he wrote that on his list. Getting this information early in the day gave me a chance to think ahead: sure, I can cook dinner, I thought. Dinner is important to me, too, and I like cooking. This in turn helped me get focused on grocery shopping, and planning some meals for the week. I ended up making a big pot of curried chicken, a pot of basmati rice, baked BBQ chicken legs, and a big container of salad. I also prepped some things for tomorrow’s dinner.

What tends to happen to Drob and I, is that our creativity kicks in when we have a problem to solve. The novelty of a creative way to handle expectations is very helpful to me. I can deal with small, concrete wishes, written on a piece of paper in a way that I cannot deal with a houseful of chaotic needs ricocheting off the walls.

I don’t know if this will be something we continue long term– it often happens that we have a good system going that Really Works until, that is, it stops working. Then … we try something else.

In my dream world, there are all these Very Clever Solutions to Life’s Problems… I find My Little Ways and teach the secrets to successful and happy living to my kids. I tell them all this Wise and Awesome stuff and they are able to help run the household like a well-oiled machine.

The truth be told, I really hope to someday be able to have some level of organization that I can pass along to my kids. How can I expect them to clean their rooms, or find their shoes, if all around them is a constant whirlwind of chaos? In short, I can’t expect that of them, in that circumstance.

There needs to be a system in place, and it needs to be consistent and simple. And when I forgot to do it, there needs to be a fail-safe way of getting back on target.

So far, though, I don’t have this magic bullet. I just have my creativity, my unreliable energy levels, and a husband who is a lot like me. And I have coffee. That counts for something, as surely I am going to need it in the morning.

Today was Monday.

I keep forgetting that, though. Somewhere over the weekend, I realized that summer is really here at last. So begins what kind of feels like an eternal weekend. There is no school. There is no After School. There is no childcare.

Plus, Cammy is off in Florida doing wild-n-crazy schtuff to celebrate reaching age 21. Plus visiting her mom, and sisters. She’ll be back within 3 weeks, so it’s not that dire or anything.

But anyway, here am I suddenly — going from the high intensity of running camp for two weeks, to the completely different world of being here. And I have no childcare.

I am not a stay at home mom. I never have identified myself that way. I think it’s more apt to say that now that it’s summer it’s my kids who stay at home. Although that is not strictly accurate either.

Today Annie had her first session of occupational therapy, thus beginning a sixty day treatment period, in which she’ll have about three sessions each week. Her therapy is located about 40 minutes away from home (by car). Annie is healthy and developmentally advanced for her age in many ways, but for one. She seems to be a bit delayed in developing her fine motor skills. This is mostly showing up in the way that she grasps a pencil: with her hand in a fist, rather than with her pointer and thumb working together in a tripod.

While she’s quite talented at drawing with this grasp, it’s something of a red flag. Upon getting her evaluated, I was surprised to learn that her “core strength” and “upper body strength” are in need of development. This “laxity” as they call it is one of the reasons that she is so darn flexible (she can put her foot behind her head!).

Luckily the therapy began in the summer: I can’t imagine how I’d ever manage to do this during the school year! It is also reassuring that the therapy is really pretty fun for Annie. I watched today as she got to swing in a big inner tube (working on balance and core body strength), roll on an exercise ball, and color with special shorty crayons. Her therapist was positive and friendly and good at establishing rapport.

Thus begins my summer. I will also be taking my kids to swimming lessons. And I’ll be working in our corner of a community garden, which over the last few weekends Drob and I worked very hard to get started. We still have a good deal of space to add things to, and I’m still in the dreamy phase of “what ELSE is fun to grow” even though at this point, I don’t think I’ll start too much more by seed. Maybe some cukes if the ones I put in two weekends ago still look sad and pathetic. I may have started them (indoors) too early and waited to long to put them in the ground.

Oh yeah, and of course I have a lot of catching up to do with the business that I still run. Clients still send me updates for their websites, and I still have to send out invoices for web hosting and other services, and call people back when they have a question or two. Making return phonecalls is one of the worst challenges, now that the kids are home from school. I just despise making phonecalls when I will be interrupted by squeaky lil ones. I feel terribly unprofessional when that happens, so I often don’t call people back.

Instead, I try to address their message by responding via email. This is not always possible, naturally. I would not be able to do this if the reason for their call is that their email is down. Hah!

Meanwhile, there’s a ton of catching up to do around the old homestead where laundry and dishes and grocery shopping fell completely by the wayside during the two weeks of frenzied day camp activities.

Summer is here, oh yes. Time to relax, garden, do bookkeeping, pay bills, wash clothes, do dishes, cook and clean, mop floors, clean catboxes, organize children’s rooms, generate invoices, go to occupational therapy, and swim lessons, and update client websites.

Summer… that time of year when there’s just nothing to do but sleep late and laze about the house drinking iced tea and eating little cucumber sandwiches.

I have had some trouble when I try to embed a video in my posts. I actually know what’s behind the technical problem, but the only solution I have had so far is to make the post and then don’t edit it… if I edit it at all, the code gets messed up and then you can’t see the video. That’s why there’s a big blank white space on my recent post “CSA pickup day”. Here’s the video that is supposed to appear there…

In spite of the difficulties, I do love my job.

Nevertheless, on days like today, when it’s warm but not hot, and the ground is nice and moist from yesterday’s rain, I would normally have had the leisure time to do some gardening after picking the girls up from school. I would normally be able to be there for them, to get C to do her homework after school, and to get together some dinner for them at a reasonable hour.

This doesn’t happen too well if I am not home after school! I miss being able to cuddle and hang out with my kids in the afternoon. I miss having that extra time at home when I am not scheduled to be working.

It suddenly dawned on me this week that I have two jobs now. Well, three, if you count “Mom” as a job title. No wonder I am feeling kind of overwhelmed. I was struggling to get things done before I was working in the afternoons and early evening. Now I have even less time to do my freelance / business keeping — and it shows. The bookkeeping is in an atrocious state.

There are bills unpaid, late fees, work unbilled… It is not good.

I feel stretched and sad and I’m second guessing myself. Should I really take on this job as After School teacher? Is it worth it? Is my family’s loss of my time and energy in the afternoons and evenings worth the pay I get from teaching? Does my own personal satisfaction with the work make up for the fact that I miss my old life?

I think it does. It is just so hard to adjust. I keep reminding myself that summer is nearly here. Then I’ll have dropped to one fewer job and I will be able to garden and play and cuddle and cook. And work on my business bookkeeping.

I just found out that my CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) has scheduled their first pick up date on May 5. This is so exciting! I have NO IDEA what they’ll be offering, but I figure it’ll be some of the early spring lettuces, perhaps spinach, as well. These are things that grow well early on. I

If you have no idea what a CSA is, here’s a description of the program that I’ve joined this year.  In a nutshell, it’s a pay-in-advance program that gives the farmers much-needed funds early on when they are planting, and in return for this, you get a monthly or semi-monthly allotment of fresh veggies (and fruits).  My CSA also offers fresh dairy and eggs to order.

Because we want to support local agriculture, and because we like to eat fresh, healthy, organic food, joining a CSA seemed like a good match for us.  I don’t yet know how this will affect my weekly cycle of food shopping, nor how it will affect our family’s menu.

I do know that in spite of my life under a rock (cozy down here!) I have heard tell of a number of food shortages across the globe.  A quick search on good using the terms “food shortage” will open your eyes quickly to the fact that shortages have been on the radar and the seem to be likely to continue. One story I heard concerned a plague of rats that attacked mass quantities of grain in India — other stories involve the US growing corn for ethanol instead of growing food. Climate change related weather problems have caused a shortage: and prices are soaring. Food pantries are at a thirty-year low.

And waiting for me at a designated pickup on May 5th will be my family’s first box of fresh produce that we’ve already paid for. I wasn’t expecting our CSA participation to have any effect on my personally, other than a good feeling to be helping local farmers– and a nice assortment of fresh produce on our table. In addition, though, I feel like we’ve managed to do something smart to help our own family through what could be a summer of highly expensive fruits and veggies.

In the height of summer harvest, I am planning (for the first time in my life) to start canning things. I have never done it before, but now seems like a good time to do it.  I have friends who’ve done this before who have said they’ll be delighted to help me do it.  With a food shortage on the horizon, it seems really smart to get local food, and save it. Doing it now when we want to, will be a big help for someday — when we may have to.

This morning I got to be the victor in the Tiramisu competition: mine didn’t fall over (as much). Does anyone else feel funny about eating vast quantities of raw egg? If the stuff wasn’t so freaking delicious, I’d avoid it like the plague.

Some readers may not realize that my mom isn’t from the U.S.; she’s a citizen of the U.S.A. at this time, but was in fact born and raised in Italy. Two of her best friends (a pair of sisters) from Italy happen to live in New Jersey, and one of them is my godmother. Easter — every year– is held at my mom’s house. PERIOD. And Sonia and Milena (my godmother and her sister) come to share easter dinner with us. Every year.

It’s nice to have traditions. I’m sitting right now in the living room while the three of them yak in the kitchen. Their Italian is dotted with dialect; what I actually think of as lazy italian, though that may be unfair or inaccurate. It’s hard to explain to someone who doesn’t know the language: but to me, hearing the dialect always sounds like chickens clucking.

Thus, they are in the kitchen clucking. I’m not really following the conversation, though I can understand italian quite well. When I tune into what they are saying, I realize that I am not listening because I am not interested.

Dinner was filled with a number of awkward moments; I’d crack some rather lame jokes and be met with quiet stares that seem to be trying to figure out what I’m saying. My godmother and her sister both speak english just as badly as any american; plus a heavier accent.

“Did they broke their egg?” asked one of them about the easter eggs.

I have to restrain myself from correcting the way I would if my kids (who don’t make such grammatical errors) had said the same.

My mom’s english is not flawed, however. She speaks perfectly, with just a hint of an accent. People have a hard time placing where she’s from when they hear her speak. For the longest time, I didn’t think she had an accent at all. I simply could not hear it.

Now I can hear it, though, and part of me wonders if her accent somehow got stronger since I was a kid. Like maybe she’s just not bothering to speak properly anymore. The word “the” is a good example. Now when she says it, it sounds more like “duh” which bugs me.

I guess a lot of things she does and says bug me. (Can you tell she doesn’t read this blog?!) Though I can’t fault the food: predictably exquisite.

This morning she decided I’d slept long enough. Get up, she told me, your kids are hungry. I’d not slept well; just felt really ill at ease, tired, and also a little worried that C would wet the bed. (7 year old Carla, that is, not Cammy!!!) So I waited til about 2 AM and took C to the bathroom and emptied her before I went to sleep myself. So you can imagine I was pretty sleepy when my mom decided at 8:30 that I was really sleeping way too late.

The girls had apparently been up for about an hour at that point: and they were hungry and yet my mom didn’t bother to offer them any food or drink. (NICE ! HOSPITALITY! SUCH ! A ! GREAT !!! GRANNY!)

“I’m going out for my walk,” she told me, adding: “There’s english muffins in the fridge, and a little coffee left over.” Bleary eyed, I dragged myself downstairs and fed my hungry kids.

When she got back, she made sure to tell me that I had to get dressed now, and make the antipasto, and cut up the bread, and do it in such and such an order and such and such a way. She is such a control freak: she didn’t want me, for some reason, to make the antipasto until I’d changed out of my nightshirt and into regular clothes.

This continual combination of criticizing me with telling me what to do is the sort of thing that makes my skin crawl and also makes me heave great sighs of relief as as soon as we leave my mom’s. It’ll be good to be back on the road. Soon!

Serenity! Soon!