Lots to be Thankful For ...

I'm not a huge fan of Thanksgiving.  I know, I know, downright un-American, right?  The thing is, it bugs me that our society feels compelled to focus on being grateful one day of the year and foster sort of a dog-eat-dog mentality the rest of the time.

Oh, and I hate turkey, stuffing, gravy, and so on.

But the world doesn't center around my culinary tastes, and I'm as bad about only taking the time to fully, deeply count my blessings on one day in November as anyone.

I challenge you to contemplate your own good fortune (and we all have lots, if you think about it), and also to write about it ... and I encourage you to either leave a link to your own "thankful" post or to leave a comment about what you're grateful for.  I'd love to read the many and varied directions thankfulness can go in ...

Also, I've done something like this on my blog before, and it's kind of funny to read it now ...

As for me, I am especially thankful for ...

1.  My daughters.
I know this is a contrived answer for a mother to give, but I can't help it.  My children are the funniest, kindest, most extraordinary people I know.

It's been a big week for both of them, too.

Addie made All-State Orchestra (you can hear her play on this post), raised her SAT score to a 1750, and had an idea--a random act of kindness--that turned out amazingly well.

Belle has apparently acquired representation in the world of child acting and modeling.  I'm still not sure that I'm ready to embrace this with open arms, but it seems to be what she wants, and I've raised my children to reach always for their dreams, so ....

2.  My mother.
While we still don't get along much of the time and much of what she does confuses the hell out of me, I really appreciate everything she has given up to let the girls and I live with her.

The girls and I spent the afternoon baking with my mother's best friend from high school, then we went back later (with my mom) to eat dinner with her.  We got, as usual, a bit loud ... my girls have gotten the message that our family values laughter to a tremendous degree.

My mother was joking with her friend (who lives alone) about how nice it is to have us visit, but she can have her quiet, peaceful life back when we leave.  Of course, my mother does not have this luxury, since she's kind of ... stuck with us, at least for a little bit longer.

She has given my girls so much love and support, and I will always be grateful to her.

3.  Henry.
Nobody wants to hear how amazing your boyfriend is and how happy you are.  It's boring and drama-less and just not fun to read about.  I am very happy.  Very, very happy.  Very, very lucky.  And very, very thankful.

4.  Dunkin' Donuts coffee.
That should really speak for itself.  If you don't live near a Dunkin' Donuts and love coffee, you're missing out.

5.  Recent life developments.
Details at some point, I'm sure, will be forthcoming.  For right now, I'm just thankful for the winding roads that life sometimes drops you down on ... even if you have no idea how things are going to end up, living the proverb "May you live in interesting times" is exhilarating.  I suppose ...

So that's what I am focusing on tonight in terms of gratefulness.

Where are y'all at?

Lessons Learned Today

Every once in awhile, I like to stop and think about everything I've learned over the course of a day ... and the manner of how it came about. It's thought-provoking and almost always either a real "pat yourself on the back" moment or a "How could I have handled this differently?"

So, my lessons learned for today ...

1. Rushing to charge your iPod on speakers twenty minutes before you leave for work is worse than just leaving it at home.
If you are my Facebook friend (and some of you are ... feel free to add me if you'd like, I suspect it's an entertaining feed at times), you might have noticed that my status yesterday involved lamenting how long the drive to work is without my iPod since I'd forgotten it.

I was determined not to make the same mistake again today, but of course I forgot to plug it into my computer, so I figured I'd do a quickie charge on the speakers in my bathroom while I got ready for work this morning.

I'll say this, I managed to have music for the ride to work. On the way home, though, the raw power of The Clash was silenced mid-casbah (which I was singing in full force). I was so in the mood for music, and losing it so abruptly was even worse than not having it at all.

2. There is a circle of life to middle school students.
Me in September: The eighth graders are the bane of my existence! They are so mean to each other, they are ridiculously disrespectful, and they won't stop talking loud enough for me to get any teaching done. Thank God for the seventh graders ... they are so sweet and willing to learn and kind to each other. Mornings are the bright spot of my day!

Me in May: Thank God for the eighth graders, who have become mature enough to handle class discussions that include virtually everybody. They're really starting to look out for each other and will rise to challenges that they wouldn't even have bothered attempting in September. Afternoons are the bright spot of my day! Why? Because the seventh graders are the bane of my existence! They are so mean to each other, they are ridiculously disrespectful, and they won't stop talking loud enough for me to get any teaching done.

3. Addie is far more resilient than I thought she was.
Addie had a dentist appointment this morning.

Now, she got her license in November but has been ... shall we say, reluctant ... to drive anywhere but from home to school and back again. I say all the time, "Isn't one of the payoffs of your kid getting a license (and a car) supposed to be that they can get a dozen eggs for you?" because this is very much not true of Addie.

She is a very timid driver, although she's come a long way. Well, she had quite a challenge put before her today when she was told that she would have to drive herself to the dentist and then to school. Now, her dentist is not exactly easy to get to, so I was kind of a wreck myself.

She made it, though, and with no problems (other than the news that she has to get her wisdom teeth removed ... blah :-()

4. Belle is incredibly bright ... and I think she has her father's brain.
Belle and I have a wonderful bonding experience every night when it's story time. She reads a book to me, and then I read a chapter or so of whatever "real" book we're reading together.

Our current venture are Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain (The Book of Three (The Chronicles of Prydain Book 1), The Black Cauldron (The Chronicles of Prydain), The Castle of Llyr - Book 3 in the Chronicle of Prydain, Taran Wanderer (The Chronicles of Prydain), and The High King (The Chronicles of Prydain)), a series absolutely beloved to me when I was a child.

Belle realized when we started reading the second one that each book has twenty chapters (only the child of an English teacher is forced to "pre-read" text structures ;-)). Tonight, as we began the first chapter of The Castle of Llyr, Belle said, "Mommy, I just noticed something."

She went on to inform me that we were no officially halfway through the book, which was cool of course, but she'd made the same statement while reading The Black Cauldron. No, she kept on talking, that child of mine.

"We're halfway through the third book, so that means we're halfway through the series, too!"

While I was still kind of gawping, she noted how cool it was that this triumphant event transpired on a Wednesday, which is halfway through the week.

That kid is a trip, I tell you.

5. I get my self-destructive streak from my mother.
My mother is making a quilt. Wow, you might be thinking, that's pretty cool. Not everyone can make a quilt.

My mother is a heck of a seamstress, actually--her specialty is needlepoint, but she can quilt, cross stitch, knit, and all the other things you can do if you're crafty (and she's also hemmed every pair of pants I've ever owned, I think ... it sort of stinks being not quite 5'2"). The house is replete with beautiful works--everything from framed cross stitched pictures to pillows to quilts--that she has made with her own hands, and my siblings and I were dressed in gorgeous handmade clothes when we were little.

How she managed to raise a daughter who got an F in junior high home ec because she sewed her finger to the cloth (more than once) is beyond me ;-)

But anyway, the best way for my mom to clear the house has always been to say, "I'm going to make some curtains", or "There's a dress I have to hem", or "I started taking a basket-weaving class." I mean, the end result is always gorgeous, but when my mom is in "CREATE" mode ... beware.

Yelling, screaming, swearing, crying, long tirades berating herself for even trying to undertake some project or another, and snapping--sometimes inexcusably--at anyone who happens to be in her way ... yup, I think a huge part of my internal make-up was molded by Mommy's craft projects.

When she started taking a quilting class with one of her co-workers a month ago, Addie and I exchanged a nervous glance (Addie has experienced enough of Mimi's sewing spells to know to keep a low profile).

I have no pride, so I'll tell you the truth. I tried to talk her out of it. Tried hard. "Why would you do that to yourself, Mom?" I asked. "You'll procrastinate until the last possible second, then you'll be a psycho-bitch the night before the last class because you'll be up all night sewing." She said the work would all be done at the class, that it was just for fun, and that she's mellowed in her old age.

But I suddenly realized that my mother's needle endeavors are pretty much akin to me living life hard at times to be able to find both the material and the passion to write. We're adrenaline junkies, both of us, that are able to pull off veritable miracles by waiting until the last possible second, by pushing the envelope as long and as far as we can.

And ultimately, I am proud to know that my mother has lived her life daring to eat the proverbial peach, to part her hair behind, to listen to the mermaids singing knowing that somewhere they are singing for her. She has raised daughters who will never be women who "come and go, speaking of Michelangelo".

She has raised daughters that make a positive difference in the world every day in their own way.

My mother and I had an extremely rocky relationship until I was an adult (and even then sometimes), but I'm so glad that I've gotten the chance to understand her, to appreciate her, and to see the gifts that she has passed on ... even the ones that don't seem so bright and sparkly on the surface.

So what about you? What lessons have you learned today?

Balance: 1/3 + 1/3 + 1/3 = Me

I had an epiphany at a teacher retreat I went to last weekend. It's easy to dismiss it as kind of "touchy feely" (the candle in the center of a circle doesn't help the argument), but it's been a great opportunity for me.

I feel like I've finally gotten to know myself, and it hit me like a ton of bricks. Simple. Mathematical, even. I've tried counseling before, both for attempting to get over a major trauma and in an ultimately fruitless effort to save my marriage. Counseling didn't help one iota ... but the teacher retreat just *wham* did it for me.

Suddenly, I realized who I am.

1/3 Mother
This is, of course, the most important part of my life. Addie and Belle are absolutely the joy of my existence, and I strive to always be the best mother I can be for them. I'd say that I do a pretty good job here, and my children get the very best of me.

1/3 Teacher
The part of me that is a teacher is also pretty impressive. I convey knowledge about reading, writing, and thinking to my students. I care about my students, and they know this. I strive to present lessons in interesting, memorable ways that students will remember and carry with them as they (hopefully) become lifelong learners. My goal is that no student will leave my class unarmed in terms of that "lifelong learner" thing, and I think I'm pretty successful there.

And then, of course, there is that final third, the piece of me that allows the other 2/3rds to be so fine and noble.

I have a self-destructive, impulsive, daredevil, utterly ridiculous streak a mile wide accompanied by a devil-may-care attitude that does not show up in my life as a mother or a teacher. I hate these things about myself, absolutely hate them, and for a long time I wanted to destroy this part of me.

But then, in the midst of the "circle of trust", I realized that I would not be the mother I am, would not be the teacher I am, if I was good and calm and so on and so forth in that third part of my life.

When it's just me, myself, and I, I court trouble. I totally do. I flirt with danger. I push the envelope. I'm not proud of it, nor am I happy about it. And I've actually gotten infinitely better over the years, believe it or not.

Oh yeah, one other thing ... that final third of me? That is the writer.

And I'm not sure how I feel about that ...

Can you Teach an Old Dog New Tricks?

I mean this with no disrespect to my mother, first and foremost. I mean, I'm just trying to get as much insight as possible into how feasible my mother's latest idea is ...

She wants a BlackBerry. Yup, my 60+ mother wants to get rid of her simplistic cell phone (which, incidentally, she has trouble operating) and get a BlackBerry. I spent an hour or so last night showing her how to use mine, and she had two bottom line thoughts:
1) The keyboard is much easier to type on
2) You can Google whenever you want!

Oh, and she was also really into the calendar which, to be fair, is pretty cool. I have mine synched to my work e-mail, so any meetings or appointments set up through Outlook at work are automatically added to my CrackCalendar.

My main concern is that this is a woman unable to make any sort of technological inferencing or troubleshooting on her laptop (you wouldn't believe some of the questions she comes up with ;))

Which, I suppose, leads me to my next point: Facebook. My mother is convinced that Facebook is evil, that shhould she get one, identity fraud of the highest level will be immediately perpetrated. I (very patiently) showed he what would happen if someone tried to even look at my Facebook if I hadn't added them first, namely that they'd see nothing but my picture and "Click here to send a Friend Request to Katie". I still don't think she got it ...

She does love to look at pictures on my Facebook, though (Addie's got 400 pics from her recent trip, for example), and she's also moderately creepy about checking out my friends' profiles. "What does Aunt Sarah's say? Has Mary or Adam updated recently?"

Geez Louise, Mom ... Get your own!

So what do you think? Should I encourage her to pursue these endeavors? (And please don't say she'll get better with practice--she won't ... She gives a lot of presentations, and either Addie or I still have to be PowerPoint tech support after well over ten years of this)

Coupon Clippings: The Annoying, Endearing Traits of Others

When I came downstairs to have my coffee this fine Sunday morning, my mother was sitting at the dining room table reading the Sunday paper. She reads it in parts, beginning with the Parade magazine, and as she finished gave me each part to read.

She then opened up the coupon section--which she had saved for last, naturally--and went at it with a look of sheer bliss on her face. This was obviously the highlight of the Sunday newspaper experience for my mother, and this is something I will never understand.

My mother has always been a compulsive coupon-clipper. I know there are many people with this pasttime, by the way ... it's just that most of them actually USE the coupons. Not my mother, though. Nope, she clips out coupons for everything from dish soap ("I know I only use Dawn, but this is forty cents off of Joy, which is cheaper anyway") to breakfast bagel bars ("These look disgusting--I wonder what they look like?").

When I cleaned her kitchen the other day, I found a drawer full of coupons dating back to 2003. None of the coupons were for things she would ever use. My mother's scope in terms of purchasing is small--she is very particular about name brands (except for mayonnaise ... for some reason, she will only buy Market Basket mayonnaise, eschewing Hellman's or Cain's relentlessly).

Although part of me rolls my eyes when I see my mother clipping coupons, most of me thinks it's just adorable (I can't think of a better word for it than that). What are some annoying, endearing traits you encounter with your loved ones?

Nature or Nurture?

Well, this has been quite a week. I am a creature of habit; when something upsets my routine, I tend to flounder.

Pythagorus left for Georgia Monday afternoon, leaving Belle in the care of my mother. My mom is on our cell phone plan, so we brought her new cell phone to her on Sunday afternoon. Sometime between then and Monday morning, her new phone stopped working. She flipped out and, as is her wont, became enraged about everything else (when I got home from work on Monday, for example, she went off on me about my dirty refrigerator--it was really pretty disgusting, I admit that, but it had been a long day and it was not the first thing I needed to hear about). I finally took my old cell phone down to the Verizon Wireless store, had her number switched over to it, and returned home. I showed her how to use it (well, I tried), and then she was fine. The repulsive refrigerator (and everything else) ceased to bother her as soon as the phone fiasco was fixed.

It's funny because I'm exactly the same way. I get a bee in my bonnet about something, and I'm pissed off at the world. As soon as that particular bee is eliminated, I'm fine. Ah, Mom ... is it nature or nurture? The world may never know.

Anyway, things settled down nicely after that. I cleaned the refrigerator as soon as I got home from work on Tuesday, my mom has been a tremendous help (she's been dropping Belle off at day care, which doesn't open until half an hour after I have to leave for work), and it's been a lot of fun to relax with my mom and the girls.

I had my own meltdown moment yesterday when I went to pick up Addie's friend Cassidy and bring them to play rehearsal. As I was backing up to turn around in Cassidy's driveway, my car got stuck in the infamous New Hampshire spring mud. It was horrible; the more I tried to move the car, the further mired it got. Cassidy got a shovel from her garage and we tried digging and pushing to no avail. Addie and Cassidy went to get the high school boy who lives across the street, and he came down and did what he could, but the car just seemed to move deeper and deeper. At about that point, Addie called my mom, who graciously agreed to come help out. Fortunately, before she could get there, Cassidy's parents arrived. Her father chained his tractor to my car and pulled it out, my mother got there and brought Addie and Cassidy to their rehearsal, and Belle and I went home with the mud drying onto the wheels making the car shake like crazy.

When my mother called for help in locating Cassidy's house, I just started crying. When Addie whined about being late for rehearsal, I was pretty short with her. And Belle ... oh, I couldn't even respond when she kept asking, "Why aren't we moving, Mommy? Why aren't you driving? Why is the mud flying? I want to go home. Why can't we go home? Why aren't we moving, Mommy?" in an incessant monologue because I was scared of what I would say.

It reminded me, of course, of my mother's fit over the broken cell phone making her so upset about everything else. My mother is a fabulous person, but this trait of hers is something I walked in fear of my entire childhood. It bothers me that I seem to have the same trait.

And, of course, it makes me wonder whether the same will be true for Addie and Belle.

Just Stuff it Under the Bed

It's funny sometimes to think about where the line between child and adult is.

I am thirty-two years old. I'm married with two children of my own. I have a successful career, and I pay my bills on time (mostly). However, the mere thought of my mother coming to stay with us for four days while Pythagorus is in the South on business has me cleaning my bedroom in details that haven't been reached for ... oh, I'm going to say years. For some reason, my mother being in this house brings out the child in me.

I guess the reason for that is obvious. She lived in this house for almost fifteen years. What is now "my" bedroom used to be hers. The fact that it wasn't exactly clean on a regular basis when it was her room will no doubt be lost in her memories. Oh my God, the wainscoting is dusty! (I have a black lab and white wainscoting ... it's always going to look dusty).

What gets me, I think, is that you always want better for your kids, and I think that's why my mother is so quick to pass judgment on my (lack of) housekeeping skills. In a recent conversation with my sister, we came to the mutual conclusion that Kay (my mother) is "special", for lack of a better way to put it. She has a good heart and would do anything for anyone, but she has eccentricities that impacted us adversely when we were children and have made her the subject of many eye rolls and inside jokes she will never understand as we've gotten older.

I love my mother dearly. After the girls and Pythagorus, she is the most important person in my life. She knows this as well as I do. In fact, she was the first person to whom I e-mailed the illustrious first edition of the brand new school newspaper. In much the same way, I am the first person she comes to with things both good and bad. My mother, the bane of my existence for the first twenty-three years of my life, is now pretty much my best friend. Life is strange.

Which is why I can't figure out why I'm reeling on Klonopin as I clean my bedroom in anticipation of her arrival. This should be a photograph from earlier years, and I find it intriguing that it's still the case all these years later.

Is there some point in time where that magic parent/child role reversal takes place? Although I guess it's true, once a mother, always a mother ...

Mom Joins the Right Milennium

My mother has struggled mightily to find her own way to move on since my stepdad's death in 2004. She's read every widowhood book in existence as well as all those self-help and "for those who live alone ..." and so on and so forth. Being her, however, none of this has really helped a lot. Or else it's all helped.

This woman is, in many ways, fiercely independent. She always has been, in a strange sort of way. The best example of this I can give is that, when my dad left and things got tight financially for a couple of years, she worked full-time as a school nurse during the week and then added in both weekend days as well as some evenings as an occupational health nurse. That's seven days a week of working, often sixteen hours in one day. She's a Hampton princess, but I've seen very few people match her work ethic. Despite her eccentricities, she is an amazing lady.

When she met then married my stepdad, my mother got to relax a bit. She was able to live a very happy life, and I can truly say that my parents (meaning my mom and stepdad) were madly in love throughout their marriage. I know how rare this is, and I'm fully aware of how much both of them cherished what they had.

My stepdad's diagnosis of lung cancer--a death sentence, as my mother knew right away--was a nightmare. Because of my mother's medical expertise, she did a lot of things that most would have had a visiting nurse or hospice or something take care of. I don't know how she was able to survive his eight-month convalescence when so much of it was on her shoulders, but she did, and she managed to keep her sanity and sense of humor intact for the most part (the fact that he was able to do the same is probably a major factor in that).

Anyway, after his death, she very understandably had some adjustment issues. These have continued for years now, as she's read books about coping with her situation and changed jobs and moved to a different town. She's internalized everything, but she's been reluctant to change many things from the way things were when my stepdad was alive and she was dizzily, gloriously happy all the time.

The most visible--and the most annoying, frankly--involved her computer/internet set-up. My mother saw absolutely no reason to give up the Gateway desktop my stepdad had bought in (I think) 1998. She felt that changing her dial-up internet was completely unnecessary. Using the computer and e-mail program that she had shared with him was, of course, some sort of connection that she was hanging onto. I can understand that, truly I can. All the same, it's gotten to be a bit frustrating when she has a problem or a program that needs to be downloaded or a picture file to open or whatever. She'd call Pythagorus, and he'd go over there and do his best to help her out. He's been mumbling about her technological issues for years.

Pythagorus mumbled quietly, though. I'm not as nice, and I started giving her a hard time about it when I was at her house and wanted to check my e-mail or look something up online or something. Addie, a technophile in her own right, added her voice to the choir, as did my sister Mary when she and Jon stayed at my mother's over Thanksgiving.

Evidently, we finally wore her down about the internet. She had Comcast install a new cable jack in her main living room and also bought a start-up kit for cable internet. Pythagorus was more than happy to set it up for her and he did so ... but when he went to plug it into the dinosaur Gateway, he found that it didn't have an ethernet port. Basically, he told my mother there were two options--getting a portable ethernet for the Gateway or getting a new computer.

She went with Option B.

So Pythagorus went to the computer store with her yesterday and helped her pick out a new computer. We all went down this afternoon to set it up (well, Pythagorus set it up and the rest of us just sort of hung out), and so my mother now has a state-of-the-art Thinkpad with high-speed internet.

I know this was hard for her because, in a way, it's having to let a little bit more of my stepdad go away. I think it must be damn near impossible to survive widowhood (or widowerhood) with your facilities intact. I miss my stepdad every single day, and I cannot imagine the exponential loss my mother must feel.

Even though I feel relief (because I'm sort of an internet junkie and the dial-up was frankly a royal pain in the ass), I think I'm sort of an asshole too, because this was obviously something hard for my mother to do. I mean, it took her almost five years to get here.

Why is there so much pain in life, and why do people handle it so differently?