Today’s inspiration is Hamlet.

What my reader might envy about my life is the time that I have to do things at home. Like most humans, I squander my resources. I am sorry to say, that here I am at home, while the kids are at school and sometimes I really waste that time.

Sometimes, I use it industriously to do egregious tasks.

Sometimes, I squander it in personally enjoyable activities, such as reading or napping.

Sometimes, I decide I should memorize speeches from Hamlet. That’s one thing I did today.  I am trying to commit to memory the speech in which Hamlet describes his depression, how he really knows that the world, the air, mankind, etc., are amazing and all that, but his attitude sucks and he is Not Pleased.

To test my learning of it so far, I am going to try to write it out now.

I have of late, wherefore I know not , lost all my mirth.  … What a piece of work is  a man, how noble in reason. How infinite in faculty. In form and moving how admirable, in action.  How like an angel, in apprehension… How like a God!

It’s close, but not quite right. If you are a Shakespearean scholar, you’ll notice my funny punctuation.  A quick trip to Wikipedia and you may talk like a scholar, too, for there it explains how in different places where this brilliant speech is committed to paper, there are different punctuation marks. I don’t recall which is what, and why, but I did decide to memorize and say this speech to myself as it most made sense. So, I am saying that in apprehension, man is like an angel, rather than in action.  Daring, I know. That’s me.

It’s not like we didn’t KNOW this day was coming. There is red everywhere you look, and hearts, and candy, and the media likes a good sales holiday as much as the stores all do.  You know that it is St. Valentine’s Day, because it’s when you’re supposed to really think about, indulge in, and enjoy LOVE in all its gaudy aspects.

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.

I dream a lot.  In my family, it’s become something of a hum-drum conversation. I wake up, and I want to share my dreams with everyone, and I’m still a little surprised or offended that people aren’t fully fascinated with the goings-on of my brain overnight.

When I was first taking an anti-depressant drug, I think it was Lexapro, I was finding that my dreams were ultra vivid, and much like movies in my head.  They were fully visual, with complete colors, details, sounds, even smells.  They were very real.  I figured that my mind was simply responding to a stimulation due to an increase in serotonin from the medicine.

I actually stopped taking anti-depressants approximately 10 months ago, and dreams were the least of my concerns at this radical departure.  Because I’ve had a variety of symptoms of mental depression, the worst of which were the suicidal thoughts, I took anti-depressants for a few years.  But sometime last summer I came to a place in my life that felt safe, secure, happy, and I began to wonder if I really needed the anti-depressants anymore.

I decreased them, and eventually was off entirely. All was well. I’m still well, and have made it through most of winter, including the difficulties associated with the winter holidays.  I have weathered quite a bit of anxiety about our financial situation– and a big concern that our children would not only have stop going to private school next year, but be forced to stay home THIS YEAR as well, because we didn’t have enough money to pay up on our current tuition.

All of this uncertainty, anxiety and fear are real, and I feel so proud to have coped so far.  I still have uncertainty but things are looking up.

And I’m pleased to say, I still dream lot.  What is the meaning of our dreams? If they are merely the idle playtime of the brain, why do some dreams seem to guide us, others just seem to be there to please us, and yet others make us wake in fearful sweats, grasping for reality as much as the blankets bunched up at our feet?

I woke up this morning feeling sweet.  My dreams had been good, so very good. I didn’t seek reality in the morning light to try to figure out whether a feeling of well-being was really called for.  I just accepted my good mood and went on to make pancakes and coffee.

After dropping off the kids to school, I put away laundry, and made my bed.  Then I had the urge to write, and write and write. Could be the  coffee, but it could be the dreams, too.

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.

My oldest aunt — my father’s sister– passed away last week. She’d been in and out of the hospital with chest pains, and her health was poor. She was also apparently botching her medications. There is some speculation among family members that she knew what she was doing with the medications, and may have been mis-using them on purpose.

Depression in the family is so rampant. I wonder who else is suffering? My Aunt Aileen could have probably lived a much longer life, but she was fairly poor, living on Social Security. She has little education.

In spite of her poor health, she loved her family above all else. A couple days before she died, I received an anniversary card from her, because she always remembered birthdays and anniversaries. She took care to make her own cards.

She had a great interest in genealogy. She sent me a packet in the mail a couple years ago, with family history information, and a request to give her information about our family that I might have, such as my kids birthdays, and so forth. I decided to do one better, and I found geni.com, a website where you can make elaborate family trees, and your family members can collaborate together online.

Aunt Aileen LOVED geni.com, and she worked very hard entering our family information there. Geni.com also gave her the ability to send email greetings for anniversaries and birthdays. This weekend, I received an email from my dead aunt.

Even in death, she remembered us. Spooky.

So tomorrow I am going to her funeral. Annie decided she wants to come along, while Carla isn’t going to. Carla is taking horseback riding lessons as a part of day camp, and I don’t want her to miss it. The funeral is in New York, so some travel is necessary. It’s odd that Annie wants to go, as she didn’t know Aileen at all.

I’ll be glad to have my little sunshine with me. She makes me happy in spite of with her constant cheerful chatter.

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.

I’m half way through the busiest two weeks of my year. This is when I am directing and teaching a summer camp. It is only for two weeks, but it is intense.

Last week’s camp theme was essentially Science & Art and the huge fun messes you can make in both. I had 14 kids in the group, ages 5 to 8. We explored flubber (a gooey mixture of Borax and Elmer’s Glue), baking soda and vinegar explosions, splatter painting, diet soda + mentos candy explosions, and more. It was fun. We also spent a good amount of time playing with the hose in the school yard. Reports back from parents indicated that the kids had a blast.

I was thinking about this whole experience, the intensity of it, the corresponding emotions that go with it. Last year was my first time ever doing a job of this level of intensity and responsibility with kids. Wait, no, that’s not true. I used to work in a daycare center where I was the Lead Teacher. I did that for about 10 months during graduate school. But the fact is, those were essentially BABIES, I mean, large toddlers are still babies really. My classroom back then was filled with little children, all between 18 months and two years old. The needs for activities for essentially pre-verbal children are quite different from working with a largely literate group of school aged children.

I put a tremendous amount of research and effort into last year’s camp. I was insanely anxious– filled with worry that kids wouldn’t like the camp, that I’d lose my patience, that there would be insanity and chaos, and that kids would be unhappy, bored, whiny, and above all complain to their parents and other teachers about my obvious lack of competence. And, in addition, my anxiety said in a whispered frantic tone to my pounding heart, more than likely I’d be fired when the kids under my care ended up being rushed to the ER due to my frank incompetence at even keeping them safe, let alone happy.

Wow. I think I suffered a similar bout of anxiety prior to this year’s camp, although I’d like to think that it was somewhat less intense. It’s important to note that last year’s camp was quite successful. None of the bad things I worried about actually happened. Kids came back to school in the fall and actually told me that the two weeks they spent with me were the best day camp weeks of their entire summer. Sure, they loved the swimming and field trips, and special programming featured at other camps, but it was the FUN and the comfort and the sheer joyfulness of camp with me that came back to them when they thought about what was good about camp.

So you’d think that I have nothing to worry about. Why so much anxiety? I don’t know, to be perfectly honest. I am now halfway through my camp experience for the year. The first week went very well. I love the group of kids I have– and I have a homogenous age group unlike last year’s wide age range. It is nice to be able to talk to them about what we’re going to do, they listen well (mostly!) and they seem to be cooperative (mostly!).

Next week our theme will be world travel. I haven’t picked all our activities yet, so this weekend I have to do a little shopping, and some planning. I love the idea of doing multicultural crafts, cooking, and activities. I got the idea to have each child make a passport for themselves, and then we’ll stamp them each time we “visit” another country.

I think it’s going to be a good week, fun and exhausting in many ways. Then… onto the summer. Hoorah!

I went to PennDOT today to get my photo taken for my driver’s license.

Now, I know, and you know, that driver’s license photos are always unflattering, right? But PennDOT is kind and wise, or maybe just kinda wise. They let you see your photo before it is printed on your license. You can do it over if you don’t like it. As much as you want.

My first try was awful. I’d tried to smile, and it just looked like gas, or something, and WHOAH, HELLO DOUBLE CHIN! Yikes! I asked her to do it over.

The second try was better, but also looked bizarre. Who is that crazy lady, was my first thought. Then I remembered, oh yeah, that’s me. The smile was kind of rictus-looking, but the chins were a little less obvious. The hair looked okay for a crazy lady.

On the other hand, a few nights ago I went out to a party* with Drob, and I got all dressed up. I even put body makeup on my boobages. Glittery boobages! I borrowed a swanky sexy red dress and did my hair and put on makeup. I can’t believe there are people who actually do that every day! Ok, not the dress, but the rest of it. Everyone told me I looked great (hot, beautiful, pretty, awesome, etc.) That was nice. Should have gotten my driver’s license photo done that night. Of course, that isn’t possible, and there’s something wrong about getting your driver’s license photo taken when you are stumbling around, having had too many mojito’s.

Still, and anyway, it’s good to know that I can clean up nice from time to time. I had the worst headache ever the next morning, but I don’t regret it at all. It’s not like I made out with random strangers and puked on my shoes. THAT would be a crazy party.

*Fundraiser for school! Does that count? Yes, it does, because I got kinda drunk and danced around in a distinctly undignified way.

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?

Code red — high likelihood of parental freak out.

Oddly enough, it’s the squeakiness of my left shoe, that seems to be irking me the most. I’m not at all flustered by the play dates, only mildly disturbed by the massive pile of dishes (oh HAI, dishes, you back again?! %^?!@@#!). I’m just a little bugged by the kitty in heat who makes a lot of those little eeping and beeping noises, and who keeps stepping on my hands as I try to write this blog post. The fact that she’s a stinky little cat doesn’t bother me, and it’s rather cute the way she demands physical affection constantly.

But my shoe. UGH. My Damned Left Shoe!

You see, I’m a very weird woman, this much my friends all know (and hopefully love, for the most part). I pretty much wear the same shoes and the same (style, size) jeans every day. (I have about 8 pairs of the same damn jeans). My shoes are Dr. Martens, and I love them dearly. But OH NO!!! I have worn out the bottom of my left shoe, and it has a little hole which leads to the air pocket (Air Wairs! Yay!), and that air pocket goes Squish, Squish every time I step with it.

I hate shoe shopping. (another sign that I am not a normal woman, right?) So I usually shop online for shoes and have them shipped to me. After all, I always buy the same brand, same size, so not a big risk. But you know what??? GRRR! I can’t seem to find the right shoes for me. Even the internet is against me.

And as I walk around trying to get things done around here (and there is MUCH to do), Squish, Step, Squish, Step…. UGH. I am going nuts from this.

Watch out world, the entropy level of the Pann household has hit an all time high, and the sound of doom goes Squish.