I Had a Little Breakthrough

More of an "a-ha moment", actually. (The psychological phenomenon, JP; not the band). I was sitting out in the garden journalling this morning and I realized something huge.

It was occuring to me how odd it is that all the tasks that held a kind of glamour when I had time to do them have suddenly turned into chores. Even blogging, the first thing I used to joyously rush to do in the morning, has taken on a sense of obligation.

Here I've been, framing my challenge in terms of time (specifically, not having enough thereof) when the issue has been joy. When the time went away - or reconfigured or limited or whatever - so did the joy of doing.

I went from not having any chores, because I didn't perceive them as such, to chore upon chore piling up because no one likes to do chores. No one likes to come home from a day of work and have to clean the house or have to make dinner. No one likes to spend a Saturday morning running errands and buying groceries. (And I love grocery shopping -or at least I did before I had to do it on Saturday morning).

This is what I have to resolve. Not how to manage my time but how to restore a love of doing in all the things in which I used to find so much joy and satisfaction. It is a lovely thing that my job brings me so much satisfaction. But I find satisfaction in clean rooms, tidy gardens and beautifully prepared food, too. I have been setting it up, in my mind, as an either/or proposition but I don't believe it is true that you can have only one deep satisfaction at a time. Not true at all.

I think I'm going to go arrange some roses.

It's Not Easy Being Teen

The Child had a complete meltdown yesterday. Her homeroom teacher had called me for a conference. You see, after getting the best report card of her middle school experience last trimester, she has now fallen back into some of her worst academic habits and at the moment is flunking half her courses. And yes, it's the same damn bugbear it's always been, missing assignments.

In the past she would do the work and not turn it in. This time around I think she's not actually done most of the work.

We have a little liturgy each afternoon:


Leader: Did you get your homework done?

Response: Yes, Muuuom. (Roll eyes)

Was I actually having her show me that the work was finished? Of course not. She's in the 8th grade. I can't be treating her like a baby. Right? Wrong, obviously. So anyeff, when she brought home this horrible progress report full of 0s (which indicate missing assignments), I asked what was up and she didn't really say so I gave her a lecture. And every day I'd broach the subject:

Leader: "Did you get the materials you need to finish those assignments?"

Response: "Yes, Muu-om". (Roll eyes).

Or I'd ask for an update on what she's been working on and she'd go into full drama queen mode: "I'm working on it! Geez, Mom! I don't need this pressure! I know what I need to do, alright?" Which, depending on my mood and how quickly she got to downright insolence, would either make me turn and walk away with a shrug or give her both barrels.

Teenagers are just awesome.

Cut to yesterday and the call from her teacher and she starts to freak. "He's concerned about my grades, he already told me that, you don't have to have a meeting..."

"Well, yeah, I do have to have a meeting because your teacher called me in for one". And then she started crying. Not drama queen crying, real honest to goodness, something-is-sitting-so-wrong-in-her-heart crying.

Her tears and sobs continued through the length of our conversation but the upshot was that she's so so so nervous about high school, specifically getting into First Choice. Or even more specifically, that she'll not get into First Choice. And, you see, the letters are going out today so we'll know by next Tuesday or Wednesday at the latest. The anticipation is eating her up. Which I totally get because I'm thinking about it a lot, too...

I'm not one of those people who reads all the "how to talk to your kids so they'll listen" sort of books. I don't do well with self-help texts. Times like yesterday afternoon always leave me wishing I were better prepared for this parenting stuff.

I told her I truly understood. I told her I wished I could say it was going to be fine and she was a shoo-in. But I couldn't. I said that the worst thing that could happen is she doesn't get in, in which case we'll regroup and figure out the next steps. I suggested that if she doesn't get in, it may be a blessing in disguise. Then I told her that the truth is, she's going to have lots more experiences like this: waiting to hear about college, waiting to hear if she got the job, waiting for mortgage papers to come through, waiting to see if the pregnancy test is positive...sometimes we have to wait and it's really hard because sometimes, after doing everything we can, the outcome is being determined by other forces and we have no control over it.

BUT, I sweetly told her, the thing one cannot do in such times is put everything else on hold. She can't not do her homework because she's worried about high school. She still has to graduate eighth grade and that is something she can control.

Then I held her. And then I gave her a valentine.

Say a little prayer for her today, if you would. (Or send her some good vibes or do a naked pagan fire dance...whatever your method). Poor little scutter. She's growing up and sometimes that is just really, really hard work.

Today's video is one of my favorite songs by this artist and is dedicated to The Child and all the waiting that comes with life; here's hoping she can learn to mine riches out of the in-between moments. And since the quality of this video is lacking a smidge, today you get a twofer, another song of inspiration.



Carly Simon "Anticipation"





Carly Simon "Let the River Run"

(PS: The sync seems to be off in the second video, which is weird because the version I downloaded was fine. Sorry about that).

Extra Credit

Yesterday afternoon was, I confess, an exercise in the-best-laid-plans phenomenon. I knew it would be a little nutty and was prepared for it. But then, well, this is how I summed it up, in an email to Jon:

I am about ready to take my child by her neck and wring it. She was late coming out of study hall, to the point that I had to go looking all over school for her (because she did her study hall in her classroom, not in study hall proper) and by the time we actually got to the car it was too damn late to try and get across town for choir so we came home and I called her in absent to choir and then she realized she left her math book at school, which means she'll have a missing assignment report which means she'll lose tv privileges for a week so she spent 15 minutes crying about it instead of doing the other work she has and we have to leave in 40 fracking minutes for her volleyball game. And J is coming to pick up Trudy which means that The Child will feel compelled to get up and dance around when she arrives. Oh, and did I mention she needs a pomegranate for school tomorrow?

Hello? Who needs a cocktail?

This apparently made Jon laugh. That's what I'm here for.

So this bloody pomegranate thing. The 7th grade has been reading myths and folklore, in a run up to the big book of the trimester, The Hobbit. After reading the myth of Persephone the teacher said that anyone who brought a pomegrantate to class would get extra credit. Query: do teachers not realize that assignments like this are not assignments for the children, but for the parents? Tell them to find a picture of a pomegranate on the Internet or to make a papier mache pomegranate (that could be kinda cool). Have them write a cinquain poem about bloody pomegranates but giving a kid one day to bring an out-of-season fruit to school is not the way to engender the good will of people who you need to chaperone your field trips.

Right. So I check at the co-op. They don't have any. We go to the game. We have to wait for the first group to finish up so I go to the Safeway right by the community center. No pomegranates. Why would there be? We see pomegranates in the winter, usually around Christmas time.

On the way home The Child suggests we check some other stores. "It's nearly 8pm, I'm hungry and you still have homework," I said, rather unsympathetically. "Let's hope you're doing good work in lit already. Besides," I add, "this isn't even pomegranate season".

"I know," she answered blithely, "that's why it's extra credit". (Silently I sneer, "Mr. R., I got your extra credit right here".)

There's a funky produce stand on our way home and The Child sees that the lights are still on. We stop. They have pomegranates for $1.89 each. I have $2. She buys the bloody thing and I instruct her to put it immediately in her backpack the second we get home because I know that if she manages to leave it behind I will not be pleased.

Btw, one of her team-mates had her math book with her so The Child was able to photocopy her assignment and get it done. No missing assignment AND she had a pomegranate to turn in. Huzzah, huzzah. But shouldn't I be the one who gets the extra credit?

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There is something that mitigates any residual frustration I may feel from yesterday, which is, of course, the premiere of "Battlestar Galactica" in just a little less than 8 hours. I have a plan.