updating my dear readers

Sure Is Monday


Been stressing all weekend about the new blogging gig at Care2.

“You should never stress about work,” Rob said when I finally voiced my concern that I wouldn’t be able to find a topic for my first post.

“But I can’t work and not be perfect,” I said.

Herein lies my problem, I was raised with a work ethic and the expectation that if I am being paid to work, I need to be damn perfect in the execution of my job – whatever that might be. I have carried this load of crap since the first paying job I had when I was 12 and I was forced to mow our anal retentive neighbor’s lawn two summers in a row. My father, who couldn’t have loathed his job more, believed that there was no half-assing in employment.

I think this must be specific to my particular generation because I haven’t encountered it in those who aren’t technically considered my peer group to the same extent that we seem to be afflicted with it. Maybe it was our parents or something in the food chain or a freakish configuration of planetary bodies, I don’t know, but we are miserable perfectionists. Miserable because we can’t seem to help ourselves despite knowing what a waste of our time it is.

“The hardest thing I ever did was giving up perfectionism,” Rob assured me, but he is the same “reformed” perfectionist who is busily working himself into a knot renovating our home into someone’s dream home because we have no plans to return here after the overseas assignment he is maneuvering towards comes to its ultimate fruition.

Of course I worried to no end. I stumbled across the perfect article in my old home town newspaper this morning which provided the inspiration and link I needed to write my first post – currently awaiting approval. Working for money again has also supplied me with fodder for 50 Something Moms, so blogging is good all around. It was a silly thing to knot up about as it is about as easy for me to not find ideas for writing as it would be to blank my mind and not think. Writing ideas nearly assault me in their quest to be word on screen. Trying to keep pace is more of an issue than anything else.

Oh really, you say. Then why the blog black out over the last week here?

I’ve been writing. That’s why. Blogging is awesome and I don’t think I could ever give it up, but it is a time suck and the sucking usually comes from my off-line writing. I can’t spare it if I want to meet my deadline for rewriting the beginning chapters of the memoir. And while I am on the topic, writing about the dead husband and other related stuff is rather involving. A time suck on the magnitude of black hole.

Things will get back to daily here once NaNoWriMo begins because I am committed to daily doses of fiction, but after that I can’t say. I am literally a hand’s worth of fingers away from post #1000. That’s a lot of blog. Rob thinks I should do something to commemorate the post. I did make note of #500 when it happened, but I haven’t been much for blogversaries and such. You see 1000 posts and I see all the days I could’ve written something in the past 3 and 1/2 years and didn’t. Damned work ethic again.

Today I am exhausted and still have writing and housewifely stuff to do before putting in time on the Dance Mom beat this evening. I haven’t felt this since I stopped teaching – this Monday thing – this weekend lag. Interesting.

The Stuff of Memories


I apologize for the tardiness of this post. I know that many of you catch me first thing in the morning or not at all.  Although I have been assured that punctuality and daily posts aren’t necessary, I am a writer and this blog is part of my discipline and I have been slacking.

Slacking has been the theme of August.  Rob pointed it out to me the other day and he’s right.  I haven’t pushed myself overly hard where any of my writing is concerned.  In part because it’s hard to lose myself in a project when Dee is around.  She can be wonderful one day – not needing me much at all – and then turn around and be at my elbow every 5 minutes the next. Not knowing makes it hard to plan and execute, and our lack of schedule once swimming and camps ended just added to the jumbled feel of the day to day.

I have a plan for the school year.  Funny, this is my third year away from the classroom and I still think in terms of the school calendar, making it the basis for my planning and personal schedule. 

The annual summer purge has been unsettling but on a lower level than in the past.  Summer, for some reason, always finds us foraging through the boxes of our past and imposing change on the immediate landscape.  By the end of September – if the weather holds – the exterior of the house and the yard in general will be dramatically different than when Dee and I first moved here.  The interior – upstairs mostly – will be nearly overhauled.  It has its emotional impact.

Dee has been on the edge of tears several times over the last week as we have been going through her toys.  Rob and I didn’t have the stomach for purging her possessions when she and I moved up here.  I probably divested myself of things I needed in order to accommodate what amounted to junk in an effort to keep the trauma level to a dull roar for her.  Consequently, I have been engaged in a near constant war of attrition with Dee for over two years now.  At seven she is finally old enough to understand that much of what she was holding onto was not really all that important and that I have never tried to force her to give away anything with true meaning attached to it.

Except for the chair.

The chair is a brown Lazy Boy recliner my mother bought for Will when he went into the nursing home so he could watch television in his own room. But as he was unable to sit – the dorsal nerves in his lower back were quite damaged by then – and he was nearly blind, the gesture was just that.  The chair ended up being co-opted by his mother though Dee doesn’t remember that and which explains our differing opinions on the importance of the thing.

She sees it as something tangible of her Dad’s that she rocked, sat and used as a jungle gym after I brought it back from the nursing home when Will went into hospice.  I see it as something he didn’t use and that made it easier for his mother to perch night after night in his room, feeling sorry for herself and feeding him the sugar that eventually rotted the enamel off his teeth.

The chair, however, has once again survived a round of purging.  It will not survive a major move.  There is no way we are paying to ship that thing to the UK or even Texas if that ends up being the case.

It surprises me still that the most insignificant things drip with the past.  It’s like slime, clinging and oozing all over. Even when I don’t feel as though it is obviously affecting me, it does.

Rob received an email inquiry from his former boss today asking for an update on his project status.  This is a good sign. It means there is still need and Rob is still the man they want.  But, it means things are going to happen and happen quickly.  By March in all likelihood.  It colors things.

I have been half-heartedly applying for jobs.  I am torn between sorta wanting to work and knowing that work will hamper my writing, be a juggling act where Dee is concerned, and won’t really be fair to any employer because I know I won’t be around in nine or ten months.  The definition of “part-time”  seems more like practically full-time as well.

“What would you do if something happened to me?” Rob asked after a discussion about part-time work.

He’s already observed, aloud, that I have fairly willingly abandoned many management issues because he is around to  do them.

“I would assess my financial picture and take steps accordingly,” I said.  I did not add that I have spent time thinking about this very thing because that is a given.*

The truth is that I would stay put as long as possible, tie up any loose ends and stabilize as much as possible before looking for teaching jobs in Iowa – which is where I would move back to.  I would teach, write and mother until Dee was off to university and then I would search for new opportunities which would not include remarriage.  Though Rob thinks I should consider that because in his opinion I “do better” in a loving relationship – and he’s right – I doubt I would have the stomach for a possible third widowhood.  It’s like being burned down to the bone and I am sure I could do it one more time, if it turns out to be me again, but anything more would be too much – even for an Amazon like me.

Wow, I got off track.  Forgive my digression.

So, purging in preparation for the hamlet-wide garage sale on Saturday and preparing for the school year that begins on Monday.  Dance class registration was yesterday and yoga registration is tonight.  I have a few classes at the university to sign up for and my quarterly calendar to pencil.  And a disgusting bathroom to finish up before Dee’s hair cut this afternoon, so I need to end this.

#fridayflash will be an attempt to continue last week’s story. If you have a moment or two, stop by.

 

*Cheery discussions like these are not new to me. I have always been a “what if” contingency planner. Side-effect of teaching, where the good/successful teacher is the one who spends time imagining what could go wrong with every lesson plan or class and cuts off routes to chaos in advance. Worst case scenario daydreaming is just part of who I am.  I can’t remember not being a worrier.

And It’s Friday


I have been feeling a tad charred around my creative edges for a few weeks. I realized that I write everyday and have done so for over two years now. It may not seem like much to anyone right now, but I don’t think I have ever worked this hard at anything in my life. And so, I decided to step back, think and plan. What comes next? That is the question foremost in my mind and on more fronts than just the writing.

As Suzy would say, it’s time for a bit of 10-10-10. I’ve pondered asking her for a bit of an assist, but she has had her hands full this summer as her husband was quite ill for a time. I don’t like to presume on friendships anyway, but I am less likely to ask for help when someone is dealing with things more important than simply career and life goals. More on my plans next week.

So I settled into the mommy life this last week with swim lessons and dog sitting for Edee. The latter of which brought an epiphany. I am not cut from pet owner cloth regardless of how sweet the pet might be.

 I began purging for the hamlet-wide garage sale at the end of the month and found, to my dismay, we still own far too many things we don’t use. This does not bode well for us when Rob’s transfer number eventually comes up in the coming year. We have to be able to travel lighter for the foreseeable future and we are fat.

I jumped another widow hurdle with what would have been the tenth anniversary of my marriage to Will. It was made more difficult by the sense of obligation and my lack of enthusiasm for such obligations and by the fact that I feel inferior because of it. Dee has been especially chatty about her father these days and the older girls have planned a commemorative picnic for next week to honor Shelley’s passing, and I am left feeling terrible because I am okay with not doing these things: talking about the past, creating shrines, “celebrating” anniversaries. My mom is planning a birthday party for Dad at the end of the month. August is a month of birthdays in my family. More family members had August birthdays than any other month and there was always a get-together. 

Anyway Rob and I talked about it and agreed that the past simply is and that it’s unproductive to feel obligated to it unless we derive some sort of comfort from it. I find grief exhausting enough when it is roused from its slumber by random circumstance without purposely poking at it like a child with a stick.

I also had sibling issues and updates. When I told Rob about them his comment was,

“I should have vetted your family more thoroughly.”

But that is a two way street.

I wrote a few 50 Something pieces although I am still unsure about my involvement there and the mom0sphere in general. They are both good pieces. The one on health care is my favorite.

And finally, I need to acknowledge the Lovely Blog award I received from Silverstar. I am rarely honored  with such things. I am not edgy like my friend Lora who gets the coolest awards and I am not charming enough to inspire cuddly awards, nor am I brave enough to ask and receive. I toil away in anonymity with just my few dear, gentle readers for company.

Thank you, Silverstarlovelyblog15.