A New York State of Mind...

Reagan, our second college girl. moved to New York this year to go to college. It was a process. A journey. An emotional dump truck of crap for two tumultuous years that finally righted itself and turns out to have been a good choice. Maybe that's why it has taken me so long to write about it.  I wanted to feel good about the move before I could get it all down in print.

I have been gathering thoughts in my head for her departure. Collecting them since last summer. They have been stuck there in my head, tumbling over each other. Often when I write this is my process. Lots of gathered thoughts tumbling around in my head until they quiet themselves and fall into place. These thoughts, these New York thoughts, have just been tumbling and tumbling, for months.

They refused to quiet. But, to be fair to them, they haven't had the peace or space to fall into place. They were crowded in  with thoughts of San Diego college girl turning 21 and graduating, middle school girl off to week long science camp and finishing her last year at middle school, high school girl's week long journalism program in New York followed by drill season and a crazy year of AP class hell, my self chosen unemployment and the list goes on and on. 

We struggled, my New York girl and I. We struggled heavily. We struggled through one year of middle school and four years of high school, with Junior and Senior year just a battle ground with little to no relief at any moment. It was a clash of personalities. I recently saw the movie Lady Bird. I don't really need to recount our struggles because the author of Lady Bird has already done this in a beautifully written screen play. Every mother and daughter should see the movie. It is the story of Reagan and I, and I am sure many more.

And when it was all said and done, when I thought we could take no more, when I was sure there was no hope for either of us..she moved across country uprooting from our small wine country farm town in Northern California to New York City. It should have been a disaster at every turn, but it wasn't.


It was a huge leap of faith for her father and I to commit to schooling across country. I waffled endlessly in my mind (and sometimes screaming it loudly at her in a slightly crazy. maniacal manor two inches from her face). Did she deserve to go? Should we trust someone who couldn't keep a room clean or follow household rules at home to survive in New York City? In the end we decided to go for it. 

The turn around was immediate. It started when we flew back to move her and get her situated in the dorms. Selfishly I am going to tell you right now, flying to college and then just buying all the stuff at the college was a WAY better experience then loading my car full of all the stuff and driving 8 hours to move it in. I was braced for arguments, tension, irritation, the overall yuckiness in mood we had experienced the last 5 years. It never came. We moved her in, she was enjoyable, I enjoyed her, we made decisions together easily about what she needed and didn't need. It was like I was in a dream. It was obvious she was in the right place. 

Definitely one of the top ten best decisions I have ever made. We talk a lot. Text every day. She asks for advice or calls just to check in with me. She got a job. She got good grades her first semester. She will randomly call and thank us for letting her live her dream. It all just really fell into place for her and us. 

It isn't always perfect. There are moments of heavy deep sighs from me and strong irritation from her. We had a total break down of communication for a week after she had been there for a month over some things. And we both mutually decided that six weeks was at least one week too long for her to be trapped in our small town and home when she was home on winter break

So she is staying this summer. After some back and forth it was decided that this was the right choice. I will go back in May and move her to wherever one moves when they are living in New York on a college budget. For Thanksgiving we will go to her.We rented a house in New Jersey and I will enjoy a bucket list item of cooking dinner for my family as we enjoy a New York kind of Holiday. 

What I am reminded of daily is how proud I am of her. How proud I am of us. The odds were stacked against us in those high school years. It is the hardest parenting I have ever done. People ask about her all the time...she is a bit of a novelty in traveling so far to school. It is a thrill to respond. I light up and share that she is doing great. She is thriving. She is happy. I go all out in explaining how great she is doing. I over compensate for years of being asked, and responding with a pained look on my face while I mumbled "fine" while chewing a whole through the side of my mouth. 

I will never feel like I parented her well during those rough years. I still will wake up at 4 am and remember the battlefield years and feel a little sick. I can still spend a random hour regretting the way I handled things. I will always have regrets.But, at the moment I needed to, at just the right moment, I am grateful that I made the right choice.

New York is a special and complicated place for our little family. On a day of great despair for many it gave of us a day of hope,  a day to be grateful for survival against the odds. It seems fitting to see our little Lady Bird there, now, surviving...and thriving.  

I am finishing this writing up in the audience at a dance competition. My third competitive dancer, possibly my 20th dance convention/competition and probably the 4.000th slow and emotional lyrical song I have listened to in my life as a dance mom. So I am tearing up, crying a little as finish this and look for an ending. The tears are out of unbelievable love for my New York girl and little bit because of my background music as I write our story.  

For a full experience in reading this I encourage you to find a slowed down version of I Need A Hero (Footloose circa 1984) or Breathe by Faith Hill.  

Vegas Baby!

Nicole is a Senior at SDSU. In what can only be defined as "shocking" she will graduate on time, in four years, this May. Not shocking because of who she is, but rather shocking because of who I am. She did not tell us or consult with us about the endeavor to complete college in four years, but rather ponied up and took three summer school classes last summer and then 20 units each semester this year. Had I been asked, I would have advised against this. I would have said, "Jesus. No! Don't do that." At the very least I would have said, "OK, do that, BUT work very limited hours." Guess who still worked about 30 hours a week? You can read blog posts of mine from about 10 years ago and know that Nicole hasn't changed. She is still over achieving and I am still, at my core, trying to force her to underachieve. We rarely find a middle ground. 

I am in San Diego helping her move. With one semester left, she has traded her college house filled with 5 roommates and headed to the beach to share an apartment with her boyfriend. You can pause to do your thinking and judging there, but it turns out her father and I just aren't conservative in this area. It also turns out she found a darling apartment a block up from the bay and in a neighborhood a lot safer than the one she left.

It is a luxury to be here helping her move. When our children were little I worked. And quite honestly I worked hard. For twenty years I worked full time and raised children. Now I don't work and I am adjusting to parenting young adults. This meant with the boyfriend out of town with a family emergency, I came to help with the move. And by help I mean we did it all ourselves, just she and I.  

There was the eight hour drive down with my car stuffed with beach cruisers and patio chairs, the renting and driving of the Uhaul in San Diego (not my most relaxing experience), the hoisting and lifting of beds and dressers, and then the making of lists. We visited Target, Marshalls, the grocery store and the Good Will several times. In between all of this, she worked.

Her working hours left me with some down time. It has been a weird year for me in terms of down time. Earlier this year I took our High school Jr. to New York to participate in a program for a week. I dropped her off and she stayed in the dorms while I had a week to myself in New York. I haven't had time to myself in 20+ years, and then within the course of a year two separate events and the retirement have left me with this grand luxury of time. 

This luxury of time has given me a chance to focus a little on myself. Time to focus on myself in the past has been limited to the half hour a week where all four children were at overlapping after school activities and I would park the car in a random parking lot (because it wasn't worth the time or effort to drive the car all the way home) where I may or may not have cried from exhaustion for the entire half hour. 

Focusing meant addressing some middle age weight that had been sneaking up on me. Something I like to address as middle aged fuckery. The 20 (or 30) pounds that appeared because it turns out you can't eat a big bowl of  popcorn with a peanut butter M and M chaser, sometimes accompanied by a glass of red wine, every night and still wear your jeans. It turns out I was smart to address the issue as I now have a Vegas situation looming ahead of me.

Not only is Nicole graduating, she is also turning 21 next month. I had always promised a Vegas trip. Nicole is young. Last man standing here. All of her high school and college friends have been 21 for at least a year, many for two. When the trip wasn't going to pan out with friends right at her birthday, I asked her if she and the boyfriend would want to go with her dad and I. I'm not going to lie, I was thrilled when she said yes. So, we started planning Vegas. And we are both very excited! 

My excitement includes finding a hotel with some spa amenities and gathering restaurant recommendations. Her excitement includes looking for "Sexy Vegas" dresses online. They are fabulous these  dresses. They are also very short, very tight, and very low cut. I am concerned about our Vegas selfies. I feel certain  the capri and tank top outfit I find "sexy" is going to look like Nicole went to Vegas with an Amish woman. So now, focusing on myself includes finding a "Sexy Vegas" dress that falls somewhere between Amish and Girls gone wild. Humor me when the pictures are posted and insist I kept the Amish portion to a minimum.

Better than my recent great luxury of time in my life, is the relationship I have with Nicole. I will not sugar coat what is the mother/daughter relationship during the teen years. It is complicated and difficult and energy sucking and defeating and tough, with brief (very brief, extremely brief) moments of joy thrown in to keep you hanging on to the belief that you can survive it all. I will have had the great pleasure of having done the whole dance five times. Once with my own mother and four times with my daughters. 

I came out the other side with Nicole. We talk every day. She asks for advice, she doesn't always take it, but she asks. We watch some TV shows together, some I choose and some she chooses. She over achieves, I listen and feel bad about my under achieving. I'm grateful. 

January 2018

I promised myself I would write. So I am. Here, at my desk...good, bad or indifferent... writing. January 2018.

I am coming off of a good year. I wasn't anxious or eager for it to end. Some years you just cannot wait for that new year to roll in. Too much bad, or too much negative, or maybe just too much of something. This wasn't one of those years for me. Lots of change in my family and it was all good change. That doesn't always happen.

It seemed like the country had a lot of bad. Nature seemed angry at us, or at the very least angry at California. I won't get into the political bad. Everyone has their opinion. I will say I am disinterested and numb to it all and this cannot be good. But, when I try, when I try to wake up and force myself to look at what is going on in politics...it just seems so surreal and possibly stupid, that I close back up again. 

The big AHA moment for me as I enter 2018 is that I really don't have "children" or "kids" anymore. They are two teens and two adults. Which is both joyful and challenging. The two teens are completely uninterested in the advice that I am still legally required by law to force upon them (this would be called "parenting" a concept that is lost in this household) and the two adults now ask for advice, which would be lovely if they followed any of the advice that was asked for, but they really do not.

There is a come uppance to it all because as I complain here, I realize I do the exact same thing to Naomi. I will frequently engage her in some type of conversation about my home and the decoration or up keep of it, ask a question and then immediately do something entirely different then the advice that she offered up. So there is a ridiculous never ending cycle to it all. I am lack luster in my attempt to break the cycle. 

I spend a lot of time texting my college friends. We live in all different parts of the United States. OK, we live in all different parts of California with one lone, sad situation of a dear friend stuck in Ohio (here after referred to snarkily as "the tundra"). This is not to offend the people of Ohio, but we are California girls and we need her back in flip flops and sunshine. I have several different threads (group messages that I refer to as threads, which wikipedia tells me is a real thing, but the two teens and two adults scoff at and mock me for...you know, if scoffing and mocking were allowed, but clearly they are not because that would be disrespectful and that does not happen in my house, of course). These texting threads are the perspective in life  that keep me sane when dealing with my life.

I'm watching The Bachelor. I know. You don't need to say anything, I know. But, the two adults watch it and I like to have topics of conversation with them that don't involve me giving the solicited, yet  ignored advice. So, here I am joining bachelor nation in its maybe 400th season.  

I only have one real observation. I have many, many observations, but only one real one. Only one that rolls over and over in my mind as I watch both the show and my brain cells spill out onto the carpet. 

While I may be new to watching the show in season 400, I am not new to it's concept. And while I, at age 49, am new to watching the show, I feel certain the 20+ girls ages 22 to whatever are not new to watching the show, nor it's concept either. Yet, there are several that seem shocked that the show goes on after they kiss this man and announce their love, or actually "deep, one of a kind connection" with him. It appears that at this moment they expect the bachelor to announce, "Yes, me too. Let's shut this whole thing down! ABC, host of 400 seasons...this time is different, We are going to wrap up tonight and let the other 20+ girls go home. It's a shocker, but we are doing it. Thank God I don't have a contract that expects me to hang in there for the next 15 episodes and since all you really wanted was for to find true love then you will be supportive of this decision."

That's all. That's my one real observation. I will spare you the many more that I have, because again, it is season 400. The thoughts have all been shared.


Right now, with this new found promise to write, I have about ten started and unfinished articles in the works. Some with great potential and some that are really just awful. But, I have decided that if I am going to get anywhere with posting blog pieces more frequently, good, bad or indifferent I am just going to have to post more frequently. Meaning...some may be really awful. 

And just like that...

Our youngest turned 13 at the end of July. This seems impossible. Surreal in a way I cannot wrap my head around. Mary is a teenager. I now have three teenagers and one almost adult. And in March I will have three teenagers and one adult. And next July I will be a stone's throw away from fifty.

It is happening, all this adulting and moving on. It doesn't matter if I am ready for it, it is happening. This summer found our oldest in Bali. Nicole was there to fulfill a college credit and teach English to the children. Her social media is full of lots of pictures. She had  the time of her life. None of the pictures have the non English speaking children, but lots of colorful landscape and colorful drinks.

Our high school Jr. was in New York this summer at a journalism program in Manhattan. It woke Paige up. She is ready now to think about college and leaving home and decide what kind of experience she will have in two years.

The college bound second born has been  home working four jobs before heading to New York for school in the fall. Reagan has a work ethic like no other. It was impressive. It is her time. Going across country is the right move for her. It isn't all rainbows and unicorns as she gets ready to go.  We draw battle lines. She wanting to be an adult. Me wanting her to do things my way.

They are adventurous. They have a bigger picture of life than the small town we chose to raise them in. This was by design. It was what I wanted for them. A big picture view of life and what is out there. It's both exciting and mind numbing in a way that is hard to describe. Because even though this is what I wanted for them, there is also the reality that this is what will lead them all away from us. Which I knew. Which I have been planning for, but still...planning is different than happening.

I quit my job. Some will say I "retired" and that is a nice word. But I was a teacher for 25 years, some of those years part time,  and I am not 50 so the state teacher retirement system isn't going to let me "retire." It's really a system only designed to benefit those that work for many years, in a row, and decide to leave well after 50. It's fine. It was time for me to go. I no longer agreed with the profession I was once so in love with. I wasn't teaching anymore so much as just giving a series of constant tests. With each test I was just saying, "THIS test is the important one!!!" Only really none of them were important. But this is a blog for another day.

I will miss the children. There were a few success stories along the way. A few I made a difference in their lives. Mostly I will miss my grade level partner. He was hard to leave. For ten years I had the best of the best. I do not say this lightly. I had worked with some REALLY good people before Ken. But Ken, he was gold. I did not have even one moment of one day that I was frustrated or angry or irritated or even vaguely annoyed. Every day I showed up, we smiled, we laughed, we enjoyed the day. He understood not to worry about the small things. He understood how to be flexible. He understood what is important. He understood it all. I was blessed.

In my new "retirement" I am subbing. I really love it. I am teaching and enjoying the children, without the stress of any kind of responsibility to the district. It is a good fit for me right now. On my second day of subbing I was displaced to the library. Basically the largest tree in Lodi had fallen on the classroom I was to teach in that day. No one was hurt, it happened in the night. It was surreal to be there on a day that changed the history of a school. It is a small country school and many generations have passed through it's doors and the memories associated with the beautiful tree are deeply felt. I arrived home that day to all of the trees behind my home gone. We back up to a railroad and they are in charge of the land. No warning given. They just cut down all the trees. My beautiful, peaceful, shady backyard. Ruined. And just like that in one day...trees, important, old, huge trees...all gone.


God is speaking to me. He is speaking to me loudly and with wood chippers. I need to quiet myself, be still and listen to what he is trying to say to me. This is not my strong suit. I am more of a "charge ahead and get it done (and done my way) kind of girl." But, even I know he is speaking to me. 


It's all just changing. It's changing and I have been excellent at embracing the changes and letting go, but in reality I was only good at letting go of  the change I had total control over. The changes I didn't have control over, I was hanging on to...tightly, with white knuckles and no blood flow. On tree day...there it was...change, big change I had no control over. Time to let go. So that is where I am and what I am trying to do. Trying to let go of things I have no control over. It's a process. But, you know God is speaking to me so I am working on it...If the trees mean something else, I will let you know.

I Am Exhuasted

I am fucking exhausted. If you are opposed to the F word, I get it, I understand, I will totally not mind if you don't read my blog, talk about me behind my back, or delete me as a facebook friend. I was kind and left it off the title, but the reality is this...I am 48 and I am fucking exhausted.
 
Not from kids or my full time job or my husband or any of the things that we hear complaints about on any given day.  Although all those things are exhausting. I am exhausted from just KEEPING MYSELF UP! I am working ridiculously hard and paying ridiculous amounts of money to look...OK.

Honestly, if I had put this kind of time and devotion in to myself in my 20's, I think I could have been a super model. At the very least had some kind of B level existence on reality TV or local beauty pageants. Certainly Miss Lodi Grape could have been within my reach if I had only put the time and energy and money into keeping myself up. But, I didn't. I washed my face, I guess. I worked out once in awhile, I guess. I lost weight when necessary to step up my dating game, or fit into my clothes post pregnancy.  But, compared to what needs to happen now, at 48, I did nothing!

My hair is colored. I can't complain about this because there was a time in my life when I had no hair, so it seems wrong to now complain about the time and money needed to keep up the hair I am now lucky to have. I have to buy expensive shampoo and conditioner for the hair I now am lucky to have and upkeep. Now that I am older the regular shampoos aren't good for my hair, they strip away the  expensive color I work so hard to drag myself in for every six weeks.

I wear contacts. Because it turns out middle age, with a little extra push from chemo, left me blind. I pretended I wasn't blind for a few years and just wore over the counter reader glasses for when I really "needed" them. The problem being I really "needed" them every minute I was awake. And because I was exhausted from keeping myself up, and because I had a fear of touching my eyeballs, I was just going to continue wearing the glasses and ignore that I didn't care for how they looked on me. So I wore them in my school picture one year. For those of you adults who do not go through the torture of taking the school photo after 18...it is awful. A terribly mean spirited torture involving cameras that left no one looking good at age ten, let alone in your 40's. It was a terrible shock to have the school picture delivered back to me that year. I left school at 2:15 and went straight to the eye doctor. Contacts ordered by 4:15.

The latest in my long list of middle age fuckery are my teeth. One tooth is a story of come uppance told in another blog post. The gist of which,  after a long winded humorous retell of karma is, I am currently toothless. At first I wore the flipper with a fake tooth out of vanity. Now, I just go toothless until the permanent tooth is installed (a year long process of ridiculousness that I am almost done with). Nothing says, "I am trying to keep up with middle age fuckery" like walking around town looking like a meth addict.The remaining teeth now stain more.  Age, coffee drinking and my recently added intake of red wine were working together to make this happen. My hygienist pointed this out to me at our last visit. I promptly told her, "I hear what you are saying about the wine. I will switch to Vodka."

Clothing is complicated as I refuse to get rid of the ten pounds needed to make clothing less complicated. So there is the need to purchase just the right size, in just the right style, that hits me in just the  right spots. I have committed recently to working out. However, work out clothes...exhausting, for all the reasons listed above, but with the added fun of large hand and leg movements.

I have to get my eyebrows waxed, yes, HAVE to...otherwise wiry short gray hairs will pop in and my brows will start to take on the look of Santa. When I go to my waxing place the lady is always disappointed in me. Often I do not make it in for waxing in a timely manner. I wait too long. This leads to muttering under the breath as she says things like, "Why are we waiting so long?" "This is lots to wax off."  She also wants me to wax my whole face. I don't have time for that, so I will say no. She will then question me, "You do not want to be beautiful?" Yes, yes I want to be beautiful!! But I am out of time! And I am broke from my hair care needs and special clothing constraints!

I am only touching the surface. there is so much more. Pedicures used to just be for pretty toes, now there is a dry skin situation. Lotion for my face and eye creams, mandatory not a fun purchase of frivolity. And the list goes on and on and on and....

It's all just a lot. I am trying to breathe through it. I am trying to be graceful in my acceptance of it all. Some days go better than others.

The Family Picture...

Christmas...about four years ago, I had a family picture taken. You know, the nice kind, the kind where we get all dressed up and go to Lodi Lake or some other great nature location (that we don't actually visit in our regular lives) and capture a little moment in time.

The last time I attempted such a thing it was 2002, I only had three children, and it was a horrific disaster of grand proportions that established my belief system that sometimes you need a drink WAY before 5 pm. I don't take posed pictures. There are no three months shots or two year pictures of my children. I have never been to the JC Penny or Sears photo department. I'm just uninterested. The girls all have one formal shot as babies taken at various locations. With Mary I had to go in to her daycare on picture day with a special outfit and beg the photographer to take one of her outside of the regular school pictures so that I would have a baby shot like the girls had. I think the photographer sensed my desperation and in a nice moment of "supply and demand" I may have paid more for Mary's picture than one would pay for say, a new stainless steel refrigerator.

I thought Mary's picture blended well with the other three. That is until  I was finishing our new and improved picture wall. I was attempting to place the baby photos with our new family shots. Mary watched the whole process. It took about a year to get this picture wall done. I cannot seem to commit to decorating, so the pictures first came off of their old wall. They then sat against their new wall for about eight months. It then took another four months to hang them, one by one, on the new wall. I was very happy with the outcome. Until Mary walked by and mumbled, "I don't know who you think you are trying to fool with that picture of me. It is obvious I am like two and the others are babies."

There are no school pictures after sixth grade. I only buy them through elementary school so that the girls will have class pictures to look back on when they are in college. I know this is necessary for when you are drinking with girlfriends and realize that someone you had a crush on is back in town, or someone you did not have a crush on turned out much better than expected. I am kind about buying yearbooks for this same reason.

For dance and sports pictures I have two words for you...Memory Mate. I could not even begin to tell you what is on any order form in terms of packages and what is available to me as a parent and memory keeper of the family. I only scan until I see the words "Memory Mate" (a combo photo set on one page with both a group shot and an individual).

All this being said, in 2002 I had a slight lapse in judgement. I had a moment, in hindsight a ridiculously stupid moment, where I envisioned a really beautiful, formal picture of my three beautiful girls. I should mention that at the time of this less than brilliant vision I was a stay at home mom for the first time in my life and it is possible that I was doing things that I THOUGHT I was supposed to do, not things that I SHOULD actually do in keeping with who I am as a person.

So, I set up the appointment, chose a day when our super sweet babysitter could go with us (since I took the babysitter, I must have had an inclination that it could possibly all go awry) and off we went. The super sweet babysitter is a good family friend. She was maybe 18 at the time. Now she is in her late twenties, married with a child of her own. This sweet girl has NOT forgotten the day, and I don't see any formal pictures of her child on Facebook, so I may have ruined it for her.

I bought ridiculously expensive matching outfits for the girls at a ridiculous expensive children's boutique. Only they didn't have one in my youngest child's s size so I bought her the boy one. Which seemed fine at the time, but in reality was a poor choice. My middle child was in a stage (not too different then the one that we are encountering during her teen years) of everything being difficult and a slight resistance to authority. So, she spent the time refusing to smile, sticking her tongue out at the photographer, and lifting her dress to show us her underwear whenever the camera would click. The day ended with us dragging ourselves home, me pouring a drink and apologizing to the babysitter that I could not offer her a drink at 18, even though I knew she needed one as badly as I did. There would be no formal photo again for 12 years. 

The family photo a few years ago went much better. There was a fair amount of bickering (all out sister screaming and yelling over important things like old brushes and socks), but the girls smiled, there was no tongue sticking out and no one showed their underwear, so there was a victory in that. It was our Christmas card picture that year and I loved it in every way.

Family pictures are not a given anymore. This year I didn't even have one of all of us together for our Christmas card. We were only all together as a family on the fourth of July, and we didn't take a family shot. My hardest "family" shots are in June at our dance recital. Years and years of Corey and I and our four girls. Now there are only three dancers, soon to be two, and Nicole does not make it home to watch the recital every year. It is those pictures, of just the five of us, that tug at my heart, that make me realize we will never be a family in the same way again.

We were together briefly at Christmas, I didn't get a family shot. We had such a short amount of time together I didn't want to harp on the photo. Graduation number two looms ahead of us and I hope to get a family shot then. But really, each year is more a "piecing together" of our lives than a complete puzzle. 

New home. No picture wall yet. It may take years. Maybe with all their senior pictures...I should start taking Mary Anne's now.

 

The Little Red Mama

My life with teenage girls is really just one long book of The Little Red Hen.
Who will take out the garbage? Not I, Not I, Not I, Not I
Who will help me unload the groceries? Not I, Not I, Not I, Not I

That is the more traditional version. My own version is a little more like this.
Who will clean their room? In a minute, In a minute, In a minute, In a minute
Who will put their clothes away? In a minute, In a minute, In a minute
Who will run this upstairs for me? In a minute, In a minute, In a minute

In a minute means...Not I, Not I, Not I, Not I

In a minute is a warped response that has no actual bearing on real time, as in a minute does not mean one minute at all. It means, "I am sort of listening to you, I understand there is something I am supposed to do, but I do not want to put down my crack (aka cell phone) to do it, so I will wait until you ask four more times and then scream it at me like a nutcase on the fifth time" and then the response will be, "Calm down, chill, I was going to do it."

Who needs a check for drill? I do, I do, I do, I do
Who needs a ride to a friend's house? I do, I do, I do, I do
Who needs papers signed for school at 7:55 in the morning? I do, I do, I do

And now the interpretation of time changes drastically. The minute, which above represented hours and hours, quickly dwindles down to seconds. The little Red Mama is expected to respond immediately and efficiently, like a super hero, producing rides and money with a quickness and speed that will save the world.

I created the beast, so it is really pointless for me to complain. We have been over committed for years with dance, basketball, softball, choir, swim...you name it we have done it. Years of rushing from one activity to another, shoving dinner at kids and handing out checks. Always rushed, never enough time. I probably didn't put enough time or energy into expecting help. It always seemed much easier to just do things myself.

The last time I wrote about being over committed, I was nervously preparing for competitive dance with our oldest. That ship has sailed and I am now on competitive dancer number three. A surprise, last minute, competitive dancer who gave up softball and committed when I least expected it. (There's a line, from The Godfather maybe? "Every time I think I'm out they just keep pulling me back in...").  

Life is not as busy for me as it was when I had dancer number one. While we are still over committed, life has taken it's natural course...one child gone to college, another child driving, my husband works in town and helps with logistical rides...not every responsibility is mine. I can, I dare say it out loud, breathe a little. And, the ability to breathe has left me a little more still and in that stillness, I have had the time to embrace competitive dancer number three. 

Even though I went reluctantly to competitive dance with child number one...the moment she stepped on stage, I bawled. I cried tears of pride and joy for probably hours at the competition. An embarrassing cry in front of others. The idea that she had fought for what she wanted, made it happen, and then on top of it all was a beautiful, talented, and most importantly confident dancer made me cry. And after that I supported fully without looking back. She paved the way for the rest, and competitive dance has been a part of our busy lives for a long time.

However, with the first two, I was still busy. Still shoving dinner at people, still driving all over town for three hours after work every day, and still balancing my own schedule and the schedules of five other people. My mind ran constantly with times, dates, lessons, car pool pick ups, and the list goes on. Some of this still exists, but not at the same grand level. With Mary I find that I can enjoy the competitions and conventions. Because  my time is different, it is something we plan and look forward to instead of another thing I need to plan and find coverage for. 

I am sure many would wonder why I invest all the time and money into this. And, as stated above, I clearly did so at the expense of having helpful children who jump up to do chores. I wondered myself in my first over committed blog. At the time I jokingly referenced getting them ready for such aspirations as Rockette, Miss California, and Dallas Cowboy Cheerleader. Clearly those are all still on the table, but now with six years of perspective on it, I know why I do it. It has been answered for me.

The time and the money didn't go into creating professional dancers, it went in to creating confident girls, and they are, all of them in their own way...confident girls. Confident girls who know how to present themselves, who speak for themselves, who problem solve, who work with others, and who, let's be clear, can tap and shimmy with the best of them. We chose a good dance teacher too. One who leads by example and emphasizes the importance of strong character in her dancers above the importance of winning. 

So this Little Red Mama marches on. Competitive dance and high school swim season are on our horizon as Sr. year drill captain winds down. With my time to breathe and enjoy some things I rushed to and through in the past, I am also trying to curb the "In a minute" responses.  Big sigh...one step forward, two steps...

The idea was always to keep them busy. Too busy for trouble. I may have succeeded. However, in this blog, time to breathe may also mean time for wine. Wine is also handy when the "In a minute" responses are in coming at me rapidly. 

Who will visit mommy in rehab? Not I. Not I. Not I. Not I.