Good Times on the Road

October 26, 2009

Here is my view from earlier today as I drove from Connecticut to West
Point NY. I taught at Stitches East all weekend and am in the second
half of bookending my working trip with a pleasurable ride through the
awesome autumnal splendor of the northeast. This view is of the Hudson
river just before crossing it to head to my dear pal's house. This
area is so astonishingly beautiful that it is actually hard to take
in. I just can't stop looking and looking at the colors and mountains
and rivers and how they are so perfectly arranged. This image is from
my humble phone, but I'll be posting some from my real camera when I
get home.

Not the Weekend I Had Planned: A Story of Serendipity

October 19, 2009

This past weekend, I was going to be visiting my sister in Tennessee. We were going to spend Saturday at Great Smoky Mountains National Forest. I would be able to see my three darling nephews that I haven't seen in over a year. For various reasons, I didn't go. It was a hard decision for me and thankfully it turned out okay, with many nice moments in trade. I'm still sorry I didn't see my sis, but she was very gracious not to be mad at me for changing my plans at the last minute. I'll try to focus on the serendipity of the weekend, so I will note that our not going to TN gave my sister's family a chance to stay on their vacation to Florida another day. I think they had a super-fun time. I'm happy for them.

The weather here at home was dismal-cold and rainy-Maryland's worst. So, one of the primary reasons I stayed home from TN was canceled: The Alonzo Stagg Hike. In spite of that, here is what did happen:

Thursday:
  • Breakfast at Eggspectation with pals from out of town. That was a delightful last minute treat for sure.
  • Knitting lesson with my pal Sheely as planned. I'm always sad when I have to miss our time together
  • Seeing Melissa in person, my friend from my online book group and a true member of the blogosphere with an excellent book blog here. She said the coolest thing, since we've known each other for 2 years on the Nook. She said that we aren't really meeting each other for the first time, we're seeing each other for the first time. It's true. By the way, she was absolutely lovely to be seen.
  • Dinner with a whole bunch of pals who were gathering to go to the So You Think You Can Dance concert. My erstwhile plans gave me the chance to give up my ticket in favor of Jann's sister coming out to spend time with her and see the show, so that was worth it. Definitely serendipitous. It was fun to see them together. It was also really nice that they all included me in their plans. That meant a lot. I was never really "in" the group that watched the show, I just really, really like everybody that was, so I sort of invited myself to go along last year and whadaya know, they invited me this year. I especially loved seeing many friends from faraway that I don't see often anymore. The timing was just perfect that Melissa could join in as well. Aren't we cute?
  • After dinner I came home to knit and doze before taxiing Sara and Evan between a friend's house and here. It wasn't a school night so they stayed up late and played. That was fun for them. I'm sure they counted that as serendipitous because otherwise we would have been on the road somewhere around Roanoke, VA.
Friday:
  • It started out as a lovely, quiet day of sleeping in and lazing around in the warm house while the cold rain poured outside. We drank hot cocoa and stayed in jammies far past what polite society would dictate. Poor Sam did have to go to Cross Country practice, but he toughed it out. At this point in time, the hike, a 50 mile overnight endurance (read that crazy) hike on the C&O canal, was still on, so Sara, Evan and I went to Dick's Sporting Goods for long-johns and nice, thick socks. Evan's scout troop was planning on camping, so we got ready for that, too. Then the talk started that everything might be canceled, so we spent a couple of hours in limbo, checking email and making phone calls until the decision was finally made. Evan is the secretary for his quorum, and he figured out that he made something like 32 calls that day trying to communicate with everyone.
  • So, that left the evening free for the kids and I headed over to Corinne's to play games. I had a good night of games-Cami and I won Blurt, and even though I did not ever get to be the Great Dalmuti, I had the best beginning roll of my LIFE in Farkle. I think I rolled like 2100 or something. It was awesome! I definitely count it as serendipitous that I could be there for all that laughter and fun. The endorphins will last me for weeks!
Saturday:
  • Yet one more moment with Jenni and Cami before they headed back west-Pastries from Bonaparte bread at Savage Mill-I feel so blessed to live just one mile from this oasis of European bakery goodness, and twice blessed that I could share another moment with these good women.
  • Took the kids to see Where the Wild Things Are. Let's see, what to say about this movie? I love the book and the illustrations and in the end, the movie does what the book does-it shows that you can go home again and get a fresh start. It also shows that being a kid is hard sometimes. I liked that about it a lot. It was visually beautiful but sort of sad, which the book never was to me. I guess my hesitation at saying that I just plain loved it comes from not being quite sure about the characterizations of the "Wild Things." They reminded me of what one would think of as the iconic members of a support group in New York City. Either that or the cast of a Woody Allen movie, and at one point when it seemed especially support-groupish I actually got a little sleepy and almost nodded off. I'm just not sure about that one aspect of Spike Jonze's vision. I'm trying not to think too deeply about it and lose the magic. Other than that, my kids loved it and even in their oddity, the Wild Things said some fun things that Evan and I are still quoting to each other. The actor who played Max was beautiful and perfect. And again, it left me with the cozy warm feelings that the book does-that love and family are better than any island of Magical Creatures any day. So, overall it was a success for us.
  • The other reason we didn't go to TN-the Eagle Court of Honor for Sam's good friend Joey. They did their project together and it was important for Sam and all of us to be there to support this good family. It was a lovely evening, full of the sweetness of accomplishment and the strength of family. I'm glad we were there.
Sunday:
  • Because we were home, we got to slow-cook ribs and celebrate my dad's birthday with a scrumptious dinner that also included mashed potatoes, fried apples and for dessert, my mom's homemade cheesecake-the real kind, made by hand and baked in the oven. So good. We haven't had many dinners together as a family lately and this one was fun.
  • And so the weekend ended. It was busy and full of just as many good things as if I had gone to TN. It is great to think that many situations we have to make decisions about are win-win. That's what I always try to tell my kids. This weekend proved it.

Two Posts in the Wee Hours

October 16, 2009

I dozed off earlier this evening, then I had to wake up and drive Ev's friend home and pick up Sara. So, my sleep cycle reset and now I'm all wakey-wakey at 1 am. The weather's horrid so I'm not going running in the morning and since I was supposed to be gone this weekend, and the kids are off school, I have nothing on my calendar, so I can sleep in a bit once I finally get there.

I'm excited because for the first time in months, I'm caught up on my blog reading. I even made a few comments tonight. I stopped commenting on blogs and then almost stopped reading altogether because my brain was has just been full this past summer and on up till now. My parents' move and my work as Young Women President combined to leave little room for much beyond that and my family. So, for the past couple of hours, it was great fun to catch up on all my online and in-person friends' many goings on. I'm definitely not feeling guilty about missing all the posts, but I remembered tonight that I really do like being part of the blogosphere and discovering new books and great sites and fun songs and reading about what everyone is up to. I have been blessed to make some real, true friends through the magical internet, plus it is the primary way I keep up with certain faraway friends, and it was good to see how they are all doing. I so appreciate the comments that I receive and the way they help me feel a closer connection to people, and I'm glad that I've got the motivation back to want to share a little more in that way.

It also occurs to me that I have the time and inclination right in this moment to get back into the larger world because Wednesday night marked the real end of my Young Women leadership. A real sea change for me. We had been planning an annual culminating activity called Young Women in Excellence, and the transition to the new leadership happened so recently that the new president asked me to help bring this activity to completion. I did, and I'm glad I got to be part of it because it was really beautiful. We had the girls plan the whole thing. We mostly made suggestions and then helped put up the decorations, but the girls made all the major decisions. We were able to get at least some participation from the majority of the 35 or so actively attending girls. That was a primary goal. I think the thing I liked the most about last night was that the girls and their individual wonderfulness were at the heart of the evening. We were there to cheer them on and we did. It was fun, it was spiritual, it was full of music and even some laughter and always a few tears. In our church, we say that the Spirit was there if we feel that an event or talk or activity had a special feeling of peace and abundance about it. This night did. There was love in the very air.
The first two are photos of the decorations that my Sara took as one of the official photographers for the evening. That last one is of Ev and Sara at the end of the evening and I just like it. :o)

So, it was a nice way to wrap up my time in the position, with lots of partnership and help from the amazing women I worked with. It is a very strange thing to still be in the process of figuring out a job when you have to hand it off to someone else. I feel like most of the questions that the new president has asked over the course of the transition have required me to answer, "Uh, I was just getting started on that." or "Uh, I don't know, I hadn't even thought about that yet." Sometimes all I could come up with was the "Uh..." Not so good for one's feeling of competency. Last night gave me sense of completion and closure. I think I must have needed that because I finally feel like I can really move on to the next thing feeling nothing but glad for the time I had with the girls. Let the permanent record show that I loved them with all my heart.

8 Ways to Be a Lifetime Learner as a Parent

I loved this from one of my favorite blogs, Simple Mom. I'm still thinking about this a lot, and these are things that I can consciously incorporate into life, even with teenagers. I know it pertains mostly to we as adults keeping ourselves sharp while we parent, I feel like I can use the same principles to make sure the kids get in these same kinds of habits. We've done a few successful things lately, such as keeping a math game at the table that we can play for a few minutes anytime, and I'm going to institute a system of having the kids prepare lessons for our weekly Family Home Evening from old magazines that I need to get rid of but want to make sure I've squeezed all the good out of them. Anyway, there is always something good over at Simple Mom and this one was no exception.

8 Ways to Be a Lifetime Learner as a Parent

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The Post Where I Write About Family

October 12, 2009

This has become the Me Blog. So much so that you may have forgotten that I don't actually live alone. I have 5 children. I'm one of 8 children. Sometimes those statements still amaze me, but yet they're true. And really, they capsulize some of the most important information about me that there is. I've been a mom now for 22.5 years or so, since May of 1987. I've also been a daughter of course since the moment I was born, and a younger sister at the same time. Two years later, I became an older sister. In fact, tomorrow marks the day in 1968 when I became an older sister.

I come from a loving, imperfect, moderately crazy family. No really, we have all sorts of clinically diagnosed crazy running through the bloodlines. We had problems with drugs and teenagers and grades and depression and money and everything else. Yet, in spite of all that, we are still standing, and standing together. We have our moments, for sure, but when I picture my family, those moments end up in the distant background. I really have a wonderful family. If we focus for a moment only on quantitative ways of measuring success, among my siblings I'm the clear under-achiever. I don't mean that as self-flagellation, I mean that to show the quality of the group as a whole (The joke is that I'm one of 2 without a college degree, but since the other one I think might be an actual millionaire at this point, I'm still the official underachiever of record). There are 8 of us and, in spite of growing up with parents who learned as they went and made all the mistakes in the book, among that group of 8 people there are about 10 university and graduate degrees, 8 hardworking marriages, many good jobs, 8 mortgages paid, etc., and that doesn't even include the in-laws. Frankly, we're an awesome bunch. That's actually not the best part though.

The thing I'm thinking about is that there are 8 new families that came from my parents. Families that, in the tradition that my parents laid down, just keep working at it. And yes, in the family tradition, we continue to be loving, imperfect and moderately crazy. But, because my parents did their best and didn't give up, right now as we speak, there is a generation of 24 fairly new humans on the earth that are being raised by people who also won't give up. These precious 24 are being read to and taken for walks in strollers and driven to soccer practice and helped with schoolwork and sent to college and loved by their parents in a hundred different ways every day. I believe that is how the world and even the universe is designed to work. My family of origin gives me hope. We are evidence that normal, well-intentioned, imperfect parenting is okay. It's sufficient and successful if there is a foundation of love and values and caring that underscores the day to day efforts. The methods and the daily specifics are not as important as the constant effort and the intention behind it. A leader in my church named Dallin H. Oaks once taught me that a parent only fails when they give up. I really like that.

I now have the unique opportunity to have my mom right next door and think about being part of a family in some new ways. I'm happy to report that we get along fine and that we are getting into a very nice routine of being together and being apart. She and my dad are completely independent and so when we spend time together, it's because we choose to. Yesterday my daughter craved my mom's homemade chocolate pudding so Sara called before bed and asked for some. My mom was already in her jammies and getting settled down, but she promised it would be ready after school today. And it was. So this afternoon, Sara and I sat at my mom's table and ate yummy warm pudding. I see that as a moment for all of us to treasure. It all worked out for my mom. Some of the days when I was growing up, my mom was sick and napping when I got home from school. There were occasional times when I as the oldest sister was feeding babies and taking care of siblings in between homework and play practice. I did not always get asked about how my day went or get a nice snack. And I didn't hate her for it. I knew she loved me because of a million other things she did. Now, she has the opportunity to share her love in ways that bring balance to the crazy days when she was fighting chronic illness and had 7 children under the age of 15 living in her house and it was simply not possible for her to do for her children everything that she wanted to do. And so the world turns round.

Sometimes when I consider the lives of the many other women that I admire and have admired all through the years, even at my advanced age and supposed superior understanding (HA HA), I'm still tempted to get into the box of feeling like I have to compare myself. I'm well past the days of constantly trying to keep kids active and learning. I'm at the other end when A.) the suggestion to go to the Zoo or a museum or even the library would most likely elicit protests about wanting to sleep in or having too much homework, and B.) sometimes an outing just sounds like way too much because we've all been running through our days doing good things and we just want to stay home and catch up on TV shows. So we make popcorn and eat ice cream in the family room and lay on the couches and watch our shows. Not a lot of learning about the world or imagination going on, but we are all together. Its tempting to feel like I'm not doing enough. But then I look through my photo albums at the evidence of days that all too easily get tucked into deep, long-term memory and realize that the balance is already there.

While I'm thinking about all this, my oldest son calls from college just to say hi. He's excited about snow on the mountains and the coming thrills of the ski season. He loves life and is curious about the world. He makes me smile as he walks me through campus on his phone saying hi to friend after friend along the way. Can I really ask for anything more?

This afternoon, one of the weekly emails from my second son in Chile is a spontaneous letter just to me. It is only a few lines, but he tells me that he loves me and appreciates me. He is glad we are a family and that I'm his mom. Honestly, does it really matter in the big picture that he gave up on piano lessons when he was 9?

And just tonight my fiercely independent daughter asks me to braid her hair so it will be crinkly in the morning. She's been doing that lately, every so often. When she was a little girl, I couldn't get within 10 feet of her hair with a brush and a twinkle in my eye. It made me sad because she is my only daughter. I never got to play with her hair or dress her in cute things because she forcefully claimed her separate identity pretty much the moment she was born. In contrast, tonight we sit for 10 minutes together in the quieting house and I get to run my fingers through her beautiful hair and feel her warm back leaning companionably against my legs. It's a moment that has come about 10 years later than I thought it would, but it is somehow even more meaningful now, because she is coming to me.

I've rambled on here in a very different direction than what I first intended, but it feels good. I guess in the end, it was still about me, but this is the Me Blog so it's okay. I've gotten beyond the nagging doubts that I'm turning my kids into couch potatoes and am remembering that I like being a mom. I just canceled a trip I had planned with the kids because of things they want to do, things they should do, things that make them happy. I was worried that I'd made a mistake, that I should have put my foot down and said, "NO, We're going to be together and it will be fun, dang it! You will LOVE Smokey Mountains National Forest, do you hear me!" But that actually doesn't sound like much fun to me. They are becoming their own people now, and I get to be close by. I'm going to choose to be glad to be in their orbit and share in their amazingness.

For me, those days of childhood magic and innocence and everyone being excited about putting up Halloween decorations are over, but they existed and they mattered. For my mom, the days of struggling are over, and her life is now enriched by always being the beloved grandma. Tomorrow, I'll put up the decorations by myself and know that even if they don't say anything, they'll be glad I did it. And someday, they'll do it with their kids. Because I didn't give up.


Mind Over Matter

October 10, 2009

All week my body threatened sickness. For 2 days I lived the life of a slug and watched TV in my bed all day because I was just that tired. On Thursday, the slug analogy was starting to feel a little too authentic so I decided to rebel and be the boss of my body. Thus for two days now I've been acting like I'm not sick or anything like it, at least when I have to. So, I've been doing ordinary things like making dinner, keeping up the house, and working on work projects like photos, etc.. It has worked pretty well. Well enough at least that for long stretches of time I forgot to note how tired I was or how all the other symptoms were making me feel.
It worked so well that today, in the ultimate act of rebellion, I made my body run 13.1 miles for the third organized time in my life. Right now I'm so tired that if I were to stop typing, I'd fall asleep on the keyboard immediately, but I have to say that it was great. It was just great in every way. It actually felt good to thumb my nose at whatever has me in its grip--a flare-up of anemia, a bout of depression, mono, the plague (Web MD's suggestion based on my symptoms)--whatever it is-and say "Sorry, I am the boss of my body, not you." Not to say that tomorrow I won't feel the fatigue and malaise, and not to say that every problem can be fixed by just deciding to act differently, but today I was in charge and it felt good. I was helped tremendously by the support and presence of the group of friends that trained together and helped each other get through the wanting-to-quit times. Even today, one pal stayed with me though she could have probably run faster and we finished the race together. This marks the second time that a race has allowed me the privilege to spend time with a friend overcoming all the challenges that the race offers. Both races will always remain precious memories. Today will also be special not so much because of the distance, but because of the mastery of self--an elusive goal that remains the great quest of my life. In so many other arenas, I am a great starter and not so great of a finisher. I'm great at being flexible but not so great at being disciplined. In contrast, when it comes to this race on this day, I'll always be able to say that I had the discipline to finish and finish strong.

Trying Not to Get Sick

October 6, 2009

I'm taking a sick day today. Well, except for the work I have to do-two photoshoots to work on and a contract knitting piece to get finished and into the mail-fortunately none of those is terribly physical. I did choose not to go to piano lessons, and there is nothing firm on the calendar for this afternoon or evening, so hopefully I can rest my way clear of whatever my swollen lymph nodes and inability to stay awake for longer than two hours at a stretch are trying to fight off. The hot lymph nodes are my body's usual way of indicating elevated immune system activity, so I'm not too worried. No fever, no sore throat, so I'm not thinking about flu yet. I'm just super-tired and feel like staying in bed. All day. So I'm pretty much going to. I really don't want to drop out of the race on Saturday (Baltimore Half-Marathon), so I'm also trying to keep eating and drinking (chocolate will keep my calories up, right?), and hopefully by tomorrow or Thursday I'll be past this and feel okay. Uff. I guess I'll be able to finally watch all the episodes of Ken Burns' National Parks series.

Hot Chocolate Morning

October 1, 2009

Thursdays are not running days, and frankly, I look forward to them with all my lazy heart. Running is a huge part of my life, but it is sort of like washing my hair: necessary but not necessarily fun. There are many mornings when I look for any excuse to stay home, and many days I actually find that excuse. Today, however, needing no excuse because it is not a running day, here I set, still in my robe and socks, poking about on the computer and making the first hot chocolate of the season. All with no guilt! Isn't that awesome? I collect hot chocolate, so today it is Cadbury's Drinking Chocolate, from the British section of my local supermarket, and in honor of all things British, especially my pal Dawn, who I'm thinking of today. I have no idea if actual British people even like Cadbury's or if it is considered a tourist export for us poor Anglophiles. Regardless, I like it. It is a nice round-tasting hot chocolate and it doesn't get bitter if you add more mix to your milk. There is just enough of a perfect Autumn chill in the air today to make the creamy warmth taste just right, all while sending a chocolately glow to my chilly fingers and toes and making me feel cozy and cheerful.

May you have a Hot Chocolate Morning soon and enjoy the change of the seasons!

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