On Mother’s Day…

It’s the second Sunday in May.  We are celebrating mothers and motherhood, and I am decidedly less confident about my capabilities in this arena than I was even a year ago.  It’s been a challenging year, this.

I have two kids.  The older one turns 12 in 13 days.  She has grown about a foot during her first year of middle school.  She has bobbed her hair, which is darling and also gives her a more mature air.  And she got her ears pierced.  And…she’s just gotten braces, which has changed the look of her face even more.  Do I know this girl?  She is tall and big and developing in ways that have nothing to do with my own biological history.  I was a shrimpy child, a very late bloomer, a girl with poor vision, straight teeth, and a wild head of hair. She is none of this.

My girl is sociable and thoughtful, most of the time, but increasingly moody and in need of rest.  She needs to bathe more, to wash her hair more, to do more chores around the house.  I am proud of her for being her own girl, for not seeming to care that her hair is dirty or that her clothes are getting tighter, and for having figured out middle school in about a week.  I mostly try to stay out of her way and cheer her on, with the occasional reminder and check-in.

My younger one, on the other hand, is a challenge.  Is he really ADHD?  Is he “exuberant” in the psycho-social sense of the word? Possibly.  I don’t know for certain.  And I don’t know that we are going to formally find out.  Part of me would rather not have him live with the labeling for the rest of his life.  There are signs, though:  He does not take direction well.  He does not stay on target in most tasks (reading and playing computer games are notable exceptions).  He can be destructive in very creative ways.  He is honest when he says, “I usually don’t make the same bad choice two times.”  

And he is a lovable little fellow.  He is smart, smarter than me, I dare say (at least I know more than he does, for now!).  His lateral and tangential thinking sometimes take my breath away. He invents episodes that would be wonderful, if true. He loves to interact with adults, who tend to be utterly charmed by him.  At a party last night, at least three grown women wanted to take him home with them.  And he is a sweet soul; he is not a teaser or a bully.  All of that said, he is extremely challenging.  He does not transfer the idea that if one thing is a bad idea, two things are twice as bad.  He lies (badly) to cover his tracks.  He gets in trouble way too much for his own good.

I love them so much I feel my heart bursting.  I want them to be happy, healthy, and successful on their own terms.  It hurts me profoundly to see them uncomfortable or sad, or to hear that they have done wrong (mostly him for that last bit).  They are challenging and tiring.  They are full of wonder and amazement.  They make my life richer than I could have ever imagined and I feel blessed to know them and call them mine.

No one ever said that parenting was easy, and while I get more sleep now than I did during the early years, I worry more.  I suspect this will continue, as I come to terms with the realities of their personalities and their choices. And I suspect I am not the only mother who has felt this way…

Dear Mr. President (an open letter)

Dear Mr. President,

How excited am I that you touched down at Tinker AFB yesterday and spent the night right here in Oklahoma City!  I find that I am experiencing a swirl of emotions as a result of your visit and I hope you won’t mind my sharing them with you (and with the rest of my loyal readership).

First of all, I like you.  I like you for some unusual reasons.  For example, you look a lot my dad.  Now I know that sounds weird, but he only lived to be 43, so my images of him are frozen at this time in his life.  You’ve got a few years on him, now, but let’s not split hairs.  Through the 60s, my father (whose hair was very curly and unruly) sported a hair style not too different from yours.  And his ears stuck out.  And he was also very lean and tall and carried himself with purpose.   Plus he was a lefty and wrote with a hook, just like you do.  Not to mention, he had a great smile. I think he was a better bowler than you, Mr. President, but he couldn’t carry a tune in a bucket, so I will call it even.

Here’s another reason I like you:  we graduated from the same college.  I am friends with people who know you at Columbia, as Barry, but beyond that I have some understanding of how hard those years in New York must have been.  New York was just getting back on its feet, so to speak.  Plus, Columbia treated its transfer students very shabbily then (I matriculated the Fall after you graduated), did not provide housing for them, and shunted them into various difficult situations.  The coolness of the place was a reason I was attracted to it, actually, because I didn’t want to be spoon-fed.  I wonder who you had for your Core classes, as I really adored most of those professors  and continue to appreciate Columbia for sticking with its unified curriculum.  You are the first US President to have earned a Columbia College degree and I couldn’t be more proud to share that experience with you.

I am admittedly less proud of the lack of respect on display as you spend a few hours in Oklahoma, the state that is now my home.  I weep for the people of this state, who are as a whole less educated and less informed than most, also more addicted to prescription drugs, more incarcerated, more willing to deregulate guns and also to regulate a woman’s body.  Because of my life circumstances, which I try not to take for granted, I am able to avoid some of these horrendous situations and protect my children from them, as well.  But when I read the postings of anonymous Oklahomans, I feel ill.  I understand that all of the state’s leadership is somehow unavailable during this trip, which is a statement unto itself, and I pray that you know that there are some people here in the state who believe in you.

Have I been 100% thrilled or satisfied with your Presidency? No, and I suspect that you haven’t been, either.  I wish you had pushed harder in the first two years, when the Democrats controlled both houses, because I believe you could have advanced more of your agenda.  You are a man who sees the shades of gray when others are firmly committed to either the black or the white, and I hope you will continue to govern the country with that attention to nuance.

I wish you safe travels, Mr. President, through Oklahoma and beyond. Godspeed!

President of Something

If you’ve read my previous posts, or if you know me (which you probably do), you may understand that I’m an “all in” type.  

Four years ago, I was invited to join the board of a non-profit.  My small goal was to establish a monthly event that was consistent, free, and open to the public.  That went pretty well.  I also got involved in some of the annual event planning and other ad-hoc activities of the group.

Three years ago, I was elected Vice President.  During this year, I assisted with a new selective program that required an application and interviews in addition to the stuff from the year before.  Our President, who had served faithfully for many years, really needed to step down for a number of reasons.

Two years ago, she did.  And I became President of Something.  As such, I have created an enormous amount of work for myself:

1) Membership drive.  My goals was 50 members last year (we made it to 58) and 75 for this year (currently at 77, and may make it to 80 before it’s all over).

2) Educational programming for children and adults:  Identifying, interviewing, hiring, and paying teachers.  Locating and negotiating with venues.  Advertising and recruiting students.  Making photocopies and providing other materials as instructional support.  Right now I need to find a teacher for our summer camp, as the previous one, who was fantastic, just had a baby and will be moving soon.

3) External relations:  With our donors, members, friends, media outlets, government and ngo affiliates, educational partners, email hits, mailbox, etc.  I could, and probably should, spend most of my time as President on this.  But I cannot, as these other items eat into my time (what time?).  I do send out at least one email a month and create a newsletter quarterly to promote our activities.

4) Showing up:  As President, I need to be at a lot of, if not all of, our activities.  In addition to the monthly event I helped establish, there’s usually one other public event each month, plus a board meeting and the ongoing educational stuff (see #2)

5) Board relations:  Recruiting and maintaining a group of volunteers who are busy themselves.  Taking time to thank people and praise them, as there’s not a lot of other recognition available.

6) Other duties as assigned.  Random emails.  Special requests.  Interesting propositions.  PayPal.  Keeping track of money in and out.

Now, I do have a lot of help from the Board. And I enjoy the Board as a group and individually.  I love the events we plan and pull off.  I am thrilled that we have now offered classes to dozens of kids and adults in just over a year of offering them for the first time.  And I am thrilled that more and more community members are interested in supporting our efforts as members.  These are the intangible rewards that make it worth doing. The officers are very reliable and willing to listen to me vent, when necessary.  The rest of the board steps up in different ways, but it would be helpful if we designates more activities to particular board members.  Perhaps this is a project I can work on… when I have time.

 

“How does she do it?” Work-out edition

I like Facebook.  I enjoy keeping up with local stuff, friends far and near, old and new, as well as students current and former and assorted other colleagues and acquaintances.  And I tend to post about what all has happened during a given day, activity-wise, concerning the four of us in the nuclear fam.

Many, many times, these posts inspire my friends to comment in ways like, “How do you do all of that in one day?” or “Just reading about your activities makes me tired.”  Suffice to say, I do a lot of things, a number of which don’t involve a huge time investment and yet together amount to a great deal.  I don’t always have time to explain how I’ve fit it all in, but this time, I will pause to reflect.

A year ago almost to the day, I started working out  5-6 times per week.  With the exception of vacations during July and October, and for 2 weeks in December, I have maintained this commitment for the whole year, something I have never done before in my whole long life.

How did I do it?  Mainly in 6-week increments, and with professional help.  By that I mean I purchased the “Slim in 6″ Program through a friend who is a BeachBody coach  and I followed its schedule to a T.  For 6 weeks.  Then I did a maintenance program for a couple of weeks before moving to the “Slim Series,” which was more flexible but had some longer (80-mimute) workouts.  In the fall, I switched to strength training with “Chalean Extreme,” whose workouts are shorter but quite intense.  I am 2 months into a 90-day program.

How did I do it?  Scheduling!  By design, my paid job is mainly organized around the hours of 8 and 2, so that I can get my kids to school and be home for them afterwards.  It turns out that the best time for me to work out is actually when the kids are just home from school, busy with a snack and homework, and maybe a little downtime online or watching tv.  If I work that window properly, I am finished by 4 pm and still have the evening ahead of us, together.  I have trained my daughter to answer the phone and protect me from outside interruptions.  I am a little surprise by how well it has worked.

Weekends have been trickier; I usually rest on one of these days.  We often go to the Y as a family on Saturdays, in which case I take a wonderful yoga class.  After a lifetime of attaching myself to classes (something I still enjoy), I find that I am much more consistent at home because I cannot excuse myself from working out if I can’t get to the class for some reason, and unless the power goes out, there’s no reason why I can’t find 45 minutes in my day to get a sweat on.

In the mean time, I have become a BeachBody coach myself.  I can help customers select a work-out program and support them on their journey, just as my coach has done for me.  Do I have time for that?  Not really, but I do enjoy sharing my success with others who are ready to make some changes in their lives, too.

Feeding the soul, on skates.

What do I have time for?  Well, a girl has got to eat, and bathe, and take some kind of care of herself.  This involves mental and physical self-care.  This weekend, I have been doing quite a bit of both, and am feeling really good about it, even though I could be more on top of things for my Paid Job, my Unpaid Job, and my Home Life.

Yesterday, we went ice skating as a family.  Oklahoma City is still a small enough town that the temporary wintertime rink does not attract throngs of skaters on a lovely Saturday afternoon.  As a former New Yorker, I have both paid through the nose to skate at Rockefeller Center (which might be on some people’s bucket lists) and paid a fraction to skate at the rink in Central Park, but both involve huge masses of fellow participants (mostly tourists at the former, and New Yorkers on a lark at the latter).  Life in New York involves doing nearly everything with hundreds (at least!) of other people.

Here in OKC, not so much.  And $10 includes skates and all the ice time you can handle (we could handle just over 2 hours as a family, including 30 minutes of forced rest during the resurfacing period).  Plus, $1 off for each A on the kids’ report cards!  So we paid $30 for the family.  This time of year, $25 will get you a skate rental and one session of skating at Rock Center (a session is 45 minutes, I think), for one person.  This is why New Yorkers don’t go there.

I haven’t skated in two years, I think.  Not exactly like riding a bicycle, but it did come back to me, a bit.  The kids had some challenges, my daughter (at 11, on the brink of full-on puberty) stormed off the ice at a certain moment, in frustration (Her hamstrings were cramping?  Her thighs were cold?  I know not.), but then recovered on her own and returned, rather triumphantly for a few final laps.  My boyo developed a crazy-legs style that requires his feet to be in constant motion.  He fell far less frequently than it seemed he would!  And there were no tear-producing spills, so that made the afternoon all the nicer.  Cheeks became rosy and confidence grew.  There was some laughing, and some singing to Miley Cyrus and Taylor Swift, and some hand-holding (the fun kind).

Family fun time.  Not forced togetherness, learning curves for all, and some fresh air.  For a few minutes, as I briefly whizzed across the ice and watched my husband and kiddos do the same, I felt a bit of bliss.  Grateful to my husband for suggesting it, after all!

My son wants to have his next birthday party at the rink.  Will that be a good idea, I wonder?

Too many choices.

Did you know that there are 163 “looks” for my blog available to me on WordPress, nearly all of them free?  None of them are really right for me.  They are all so clean and calm and organized.  Or too cheerful, somehow.  And the “Green Girl,” which would normally be right up my alley, is too green to read well on the page, plus I don’t like the font selections.  This one is called “Elegant Grunge” which appeals to me as a title but not so much in its countenance.

So already, just creating this blog has reinforced my notion that it will take too much time for me to commit fully to it.  And this, my friends, is the  crux of the issue:  I commit fully.  I am all in.  (Nearly) all the time.  And if I’m not all in, but I want to be, I feel badly about it.  I wish I could do more, some of the time.

I am proud of myself when I let something go without guilt.  I did it over the weekend and the results were excellent all the way around.  Other people stepped up and did their part, so I didn’t have to.   As President of Something, I don’t always have people to offload tasks to (this is called “del-e-ga-ting” or so I am told, and it requires delegatees), but when I do, it feels great.

I do not have time for this.

Welcome, dear reader, to my blog.

After having several dreams about it, I am letting my (sub)conscience be my guide, throwing caution to the wind, and tossing my adorable white hat in the air.

The title of this blog is a double-entendre, which is appropriate because I am a French professor.  I literally do not have time for a blog.  Really, what am I thinking?  I have a job, a husband, two kids, a car, a big old messy house, and I am President of Something, in addition to the occasional public school, church, or community volunteer activity.

I also spend a lot of time thinking, “I do not have time for this bullsh*t.”  In many contexts.  I mean, who does?  I am a smart, educated, transplanted East Coast Liberal and I have a low tolerance for crap.  Which I may or may not be venting about in this blog.