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 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.

…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.

C: Dad, what would you say if we brought home a puppy without talking to you about it first?
D: I would probably say a lot of things, but I’d say most of them to Mommy.
C: Yeah, I bet you’d say to her exactly what I thought you’d say.
D: And what’s that?
C: “What the FUCK1NG HELL!??”

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.

EDIT: I want to clarify that the teacher I spoke to about as close to a supervisor as any one else at this school, where co-operative values indicate that the staff work together through a consensus and there is no principal. Also it was depression talking when I said “hate”. The teacher never used that word: she just said that the kids didn’t like me and felt like I came across as angry at them too easily and when they were not expecting it. She also said that I “replaced a teacher that they liked…” which implies, to me, that they *don’t* like me. She wasn’t sure if they disliked me personally, or if they just felt like they were suddenly stuck with a program where it was great for little kids but not for them.

I agree, with the gist of the comments: Shock! Middle schoolers who don’t like a new authority figure! The worst bit about this piece of feedback is how late it was in the coming. Now they’ve had it in their minds (and yes, there’s a lot of conforming to one another) that they don’t like me or After School. It is hard to change that, but I have to try.

At this school, these middle school kids apparently like all the OTHER teachers… just not the new one (me.) Who happens to be the mother of a “little kid” (second grader).

— end EDIT —

Here I am, the night before Mother’s Day.

My house is a mess.

I have two hours worth of cleaning at my daughter’s school that I have to do before the weekend is up.

My mom is coming to visit tomorrow morning, and sleeping over tomorrow night.

I have mother’s day presents for my mom, and mother-in-law: but the catch is I haven’t planted the flowers in the hanging pots I bought yet.

I just put my kids to bed about 10 minutes ago (yes, wow, that’s awfully late for them, isn’t it. Hmmm…)

I just started a brand new anti-depressant and I am on the lookout for brain zaps.

I met with a teacher that works at the school where I work just this morning to review how my job has been going. She was a kind of emissary from the rest of the staff who’d had a meeting and voiced their concerns and comments about my job performance so far. I found out that a) I’ve been showing up to work at the wrong time b) there are rules about the kids’ limits that nobody had bothered to tell me and c) it turns out that the fifth graders all hate me and hate going to after school. That was hard.

Of course, it’s not all bad with my job. The younger kids adore me (that’s the kindergarteners, the first graders, second graders, and third graders. The fourth graders are not quite sure. The seventh and eighth graders get along with me ok. It’s those damn middle school kids. The ones who pout and roll their eyes and won’t talk to me. They won’t tell me what they want to do but they also don’t like anything I suggest. The only thing they like is sitting together on the bench and chatting. I let them do that. They like that, but otherwise they hate me.

So: grades K-3: I’m great. 4: I’m not sure. 5-6: They hate me. 7-8: They like me. My feelings are a little hurt, but I am trying to rally myself to just keep trying. I’ll talk to the teachers of the kids who hate me and ask them for advice. Wonder what they do to not be hated by these pugnacious tweens with attytood.

As I go around cleaning here and there, thither and yon tonight, I have one thing on my mind. It’s the pouty face of the tween girl in my after school program most weeks. What can I do to get through to her?

I was thinking just now about how Carla is getting pretty co-operative about things she used to be downright impossible about. Like teeth brushing, for example.

C has had a rough time in this life as far as dental health goes. I blame it all on the fact that when she had her first trouble with cavities, we were broke and had lost our good dental insurance. Having no money, we turned to our new insurance for referrals within their network. We ended up with Dr. Nightmare and followed up with severe emotional trauma followed by months of therapy and now, years later, I think we are still feeling the pinch. The fillings that Dr. Nightmare so clumsily blasted into her three year old mouth are now cracking and needing replacement.  Still lacking good dental insurance, but now having learned our lesson about going to the in network option, we now pay, um, through the teeth. Our new dentist is an angel, and worth every penny– but that doesn’t stop Carla from thinking hard about her teeth and how they got that way.

She still sometimes mentions Dr. Nightmare, enough that his name has become a household name with enough villainy to it to put him in the same camp as George W. Bush.  Annie agrees heartily, even though she’s never even met the evil dentist (nor Dubya, for that matter.)

When it’s time to brush her teeth, and to floss them, she opens her mouth up willingly for me; she lets me at them. I do the best that I can.  But I am waiting for the thoughts to click into place…. At what point might she turn on me and ask how come I didn’t take better care of her teeth in the first place?

Which I ask myself, too. Though I DID start brushing her teeth daily once she even had teeth. I did what was recommended of me, even when she was a rebellious two year old.  She also nursed a lot, up until she was weaned at age two and a half.

Here I am, FIVE YEARS LATER, wondering HOW COULD I LET MY CHILD GET CAVITIES? And then further make the mistake of letting some A-Hole Dentist butcher her up. I STILL ACHE about this. I still doubt my abilities to protect her. To brush her teeth well enough.

And not just teeth, either. There’s the million and one things a mom’s supposed to do. What if I fail at another thing, and another? She’s on antibiotics this week as a preventative against the rare and unlikely complication of rheumatic fever as a result of an untreated strep infection.  We’ve missed some doses, and she knows this.

She stares hard at me and asks, shouldn’t she just take the missed dose together with her next one? I know that’s not how you’re supposed to deal with missed doses and I tell her so. The wheels in her mind are turning and turning, though.  I think she is disappointed in me– if taking medicine is important then how could I have missed giving her a dose?

Well, how could I?

Can someone toss me a rope down here, cuz I think I need something to grab onto. I wonder how I managed to mess up her teeth. What if she gets rheumatic fever. What if I don’t tell her about STD’s soon enough. What if I miss her prom. What if. What. if. What. What. What. If. If. If.

What if I to bed now and catch up on some sleep? Clearly, I am losing my mind.

Or, more likely, it was already gone. (see previous post).

PS… it turns out my first share of veggies will come next monday; and fruit in about three weeks or so. Will keep you posted.

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

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

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

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

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

Jennifer wrote to me the following message:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In case you’re not familiar with winter driving in Philadelphia, let me just tell you this: it is absolutely ridiculous. First of all, our city doesn’t get a lot of horrible winter weather, but when we do, it’s not often a big snowfall. No, what we get is ICE - ice falling from the sky, rain that turns to ice upon hitting the windshield, ice that forms along the wet streets, and snow that starts out as slush and then melts and freezes, and becomes ice once again.

And because this only happens once or twice a year, it seems that drivers around here are completely CLUELESS about what to do about icy roads.

Last night, after about an inch of powdery snow accumulated, a steady pelting of ice began around 4 PM. This ice continued to fall, mixed with rain, until about 7, at which point it was mostly rain. Rain on top of snow, on top of ice.

Where was I from 4 to 8 PM, last night, gentle readers? Why, in my car, of course! Cammy’s plane was scheduled to arrive in Philadelphia at 4:48 PM though of course it was delayed due to the icy weather.  She got to fly around and around Philadelphia in a holding pattern for about an hour or so while we inched along the evil Schuylkill Expressway  (har, har, expressway to fender benders).

Long story short? Read the title of this post.

Long story long? Well, my kids and I got to play “count the car accidents” while thanking our lucky stars that we were not #13 in the 12 car pile up that we witnessed directly in front of us.  After we got to drive around the bus full of weeping girls from Liverpool who just wanted to get to the airport to fly home, and all the others who were delayed by crashing on the bridge to I-95, we counted another 11 vehicles, including a school bus that all had slid on the ice and crash into guardrails and one another.

We didn’t crash.

I credit my dad with having taught me well how to use the gears of the car to navigate snow and ice without using the brakes. A single touch to the brakes on that bridge and I’d be blogging today about how we crashed on the bridge on our way to I-95.

When the weather is icy, I usually stay home. I was not happy to be taking my kids on such a harrowing journey, but I didn’t want them to be nervous so I made light of all the accidents. Luckily, the accidents really were all just fender benders– we did not see anyone who was seriously injured. Good thing for seatbelts, huh!

All the way to the airport, and while we sat idleing (illegally!) in the should near the airport (just under the huge flashing sign that said, NO P RK NG ON SHOULD R)  waiting for Cammy’s plane to come down, I clumsily (but excitingly!) recounted the story of Abdullah and the Magic Castle, hastily stolen from the book Castle in the Air. It kept the kids happy, as did the snacks I had brought.

Today is my first day of work - and I am exhausted.

In spite of all the ICE of yesterday, today it’s mostly soupy slushy mush, and not as dangerous. Although this morning a SEPTA bus crashed on our block. Yeah, I couldn’t believe it either: school is OPEN today. And that means AFTER SCHOOL is open, too.

And that means I have to work, too! But I don’t mind too much - because Cammy is here and all is well. I kept Annie home from pre-school  so that Cammy won’t have to try to navigate an unfamiliar neighborhood in the ice. And because it’s freaking INSANE that school is not closed today, in my opinion.

Then again, I am just kind of traumatized. I’ll get over it soon.

Now, for a hot a shower and another cup of coffee!

A little over two weeks ago, I had a conference with Carla’s teacher in which our habitual tardiness was a big issue. Since then, I have been making a new effort to get her to school on time — even a little early — EVERY day. It’s been quite good. We have not been late even once since. An important component of getting there on time has been Drob getting up, and making sure that C gets up and gets dressed, so that I can go downstairs ahead of everyone and start breakfast. Plus, Drob helps get lunches ready the night before. Having help, planning the morning events carefully, and also setting up clothes the night before all seem to make being on time every day possible.

Although I am relieved that we’re on time to school, and I am sure that the teacher thinks this is a very good thing, it’s kind of a let down. I mean, getting to school on time is so ordinary. Everyone else does it, apparently without much thinking about it. It’s just… normal. And when we do it too, that’s supposed to be just ordinary.

But it doesn’t feel just normal to me. It feels like a superhuman effort that requires a really large amount of energy and effort.  And I don’t see that for all the effort that we put into being on time, that there is a payoff of equal proportions. I could put this effort elsewhere in my day and accomplish Great Things.

My emotional state upon entering school in the morning is tense and expectant. Did we do it? Are we on time? Get up to the classroom… let’s check the clock! Phew! We did it ! 8:29! or 8:24! or sometimes, 8:30, exactly. We are here! We are here! Hey everyone, did you see that we are here?! Do you SEE what TIME it is?  If I had a tail, it would be wagging. I am looking around wildly for the biscuit and the pat on the head. I’m so pathological with respect to being prompt that even being on time is vaguely humiliating.

If I put this much energy into updating a website, or cleaning the house,  or balancing my business accounts, my whole life would be really orderly and a smoothly running machine. This would save me money and time.  Valuable things, no doubt. And I would be utterly exhausted.

It’s hard for me to accept that I have to keep up this level of effort, and for what? For this incredibly small payoff. The payoff is that C can get to school and put on her slippers and join the class at its very beginning, rather than missing a couple minutes of … well, of doing not much. It is so hard to accept. But apparently, like the first meal of the day, the first minutes of class are ripe with… um, miniscule social interactions that determine one’s social status in that whole grade school pecking order. Or, something. I dunno.

It will be a relief if this all gets easier somehow. Like if there was another adult around the house. Oh wait! There IS going to be another adult in the house! YAY CAMMY!

I will pick her up at the airport today. HOORAY! Can’t wait to see you honey!!