For this post, I was drawing blanks. Each thought I had shot forth from my brain like I was out clay pigeon shooting, and having terrible aim. I yelled, “Pull!” and fired, and two things would sail quickly through the air away from me, and somewhat toward each other, arch, miss completely, and drop dead to the ground. The clay pigeons fell with a thud and a puff of dust. The bullets lay listless in the dirt. There was nothing left to salvage. Figuratively speaking, of course.

Not that I have ever been clay pigeon shooting. But I have watched it on tv. That’s right. That’s about as exciting as it gets around here. I like watching Dog Shows, too. Although, I have fired a gun and target shot at antique colored glass pharmaceutical bottles in the woods in Vermont. Oh to be 14 and that stupid again. I should have kept them, they were very pretty, and sold them on ebay. But there was no ebay back then, or the internet. It was the dark ages, between Lynyrd Skynard and the B-52s, at a vinyl speed of 38rpms.

So, because it’s a half day of school, for the rest of the week — more on that later – -a Certain Someone kept wandering over and asking if he could use the computer now to… (this is where I tune him out because it’s something long and involved and involves giant monsters, most likely, or funny cats, and he’s told me the particulars or something like them so many times I feel like my face is melting off when he starts again, especially when I am trying to focus on something else, like say, my own imagination and what I want to write from it because, really, this is all about me you know). So I asked him, “What should I blog about today?”

“Write a blog about how I was inspired by the nicknames you gave [Mr. Cynic] and me on Musings in Mayhem and how I’m making a video mini-series called ‘The Adventures of Mr. Cynic and Captain Comic’ to post on youtube,” responded Capt. Comic.

Only problem with this is he has not actually started filming because Mr. Cynic wants absolutely nothing to do with this. His friends might see. This is causing great consternation and Wars of Words that are particularly virulent around when I’m making dinner and everyone’s hungry and tired from a long day of school, toddlering, taekwando or bass lessons, etc. There is much door slamming and stair stomping and MOOOO-oooooming involved, too.

Someday, the boy will be a filmic genius, I’m sure, but his brother will not be starring in the films as the villian. That will have to remain true to life and in the house. My house. Probably in a couple of hours. Yep. I’m pretty certain of that.

So, on three days in a row of half-days: can I just say that this is not how I wanted or expected to spend the remainder of my ‘free time’ *cough, sputter* before I go in for surgery on Monday.

If it rains, I’m a goner for sure.

[Editor's note: Cathy's surgery is today. Please send her your hugs and healing thoughts!]

I am happy to have taken part in NaNoWriMo this year for the first time. It put me into a good lead on a companion book to my first novel, and now both need some serious editing. I lost my momentum between lots of doctor appointments for my whole family, getting quite ill myself and caring for sick kids, then my back went out as we leaned toward Thanksgiving, and I got hung up in word count rather than having fun enjoying writing well.

That last part was what killed the project for me. Not the whole project, I am happy to continue work on this particular piece, but I want to go about it in the way that is familiar to me. I am an editing nightmare to some, but I’ll tell you, that is what I really enjoy about writing as I write, the scribbles and rewording, the back-typing and rewording, the considering of the scene from an entirely different angle, etc. It’s what I enjoy about the middle of breadmaking, too: the kneading, the punching it into form.

I have just a few days left to try to make it to 50,000 words. I am at 19,201 and have my family home, no one at work, no one at school or at senior exercise programs until the thirtieth. I don’t think reaching 50,000 is my personal goal anymore. A children’s novel is typically about 30,000 and I don’t want to just write crap for filler for a contest that has lost meaning for me in it’s final goal. I’ve also lost my thread plotwise and feel like I’m wasting precious word count time doing what I actually love about writing and my process in it. That is indicative that it’s time for me to move on and refocus without the contest looming.

For now, for me, this year 19,201 is a fantastic stopping point. Now I can sink my teeth back into the edits of the first novel and then run right into edits on the second I started because of Nano.

Does this then make me a loser if I am not a Nano winner? Certainly not. I have 19,201 words written that I didn’t have before I started NaNoWriMo. That’s a big win in my book. I’ve never written 19,000 words toward one thing in three weeks time in my whole life, nevermind with a houseful of sickies and also school days off throughout the month.

I may not have hit 50,000, but I did a lot more than I would have if I hadn’t tried.

Just this past month, I had an epiphany about motherhood — something that helped me understand what fuels the “mommy wars” (mothers working outside the home versus SAHMs). I sort of straddle the two groups, as I work from home 30 hours a week. I have a babysitter here in my house three full days a week, so I’m not on duty during that time, but the kids often run into my workspace and I inevitably interact with them throughout the day. They know I’m here. When I was nursing, my babysitter would bring the baby to me for feeding. But I was fortunate to have that luxury. Without question, I get a significant break from having to prepare food and change diapers and be the one in charge of keeping everyone alive. Oh, and I get to focus on something aside from my kids: my work.

While my work has many stresses — impossible deadlines, panicked clients, difficult personalities, too much to do in too little time — it’s still my own domain. I have clients, not bosses. It’s up to me to prioritize and manage my workload. I’m really only accountable to myself. If my clients aren’t happy, then they won’t  be my clients for very long. (And I have the delicious flexbility of being able to run out for a couple of hours to get my hair done or go to a doctor’s appointment without dragging the little ones with me. That’s huge.)

I find that on my workdays, when I step into my office/library/workspace at 8:30 in the morning, a wave of relief washes over me. I don’t always love my work, and it isn’t my reason for living, but I do love being the master of my own domain, and not having to keep anyone else alive. I’ll be honest. On the days when I don’t work, I often look at the clock and think “My God, it’s only 3:00. What are we going to do until dinnertime?” On my work days, I never look at the clock and wish it read a few hours later than it does. This is why SAHMs are like: “You just don’t understand how hard this is.“ And the women who are earning paychecks are like: “I work my butt off all day for a difficult boss and THEN I get to come home to my second job — domestic life. You just don’t understand how hard this is.”

I get it. Working fulltime outside the house is extremely challenging. (I’ve never done it, so I can only imagine. It seems like an impossible proposition.) But staying at home with your young kids fulltime requires a very different kind of sacrifice, even if you love being there. I hate to say it, because I’m sure some won’t like me for it, but I think that the sacrifice is you.

I recently had several occasions to spend some time away from my little ones. A handful of long days out of the house, and then earlier this month, I went away with two of my teenagers for three full days to visit the oldest at college. The two little ones stayed at home with dad.

I began to notice something interesting. When I am not with my little guys, I am somehow more myself. I found that the way I parent my teenagers was actually different when we were away from the toddler and preschooler. I had the time to formulate a complete thought; I had the ability to focus and connect with the older kids. I connected with them as me, not as a harried mother. I began to recognize myself again. Oh, right! This is who I am. I felt more emotionally centered; less like I might burst into tears just because two unrelated things happened to go wrong at the same time. I had reserves. There is a French phrase that doesn’t translate very well but described the sensation exactly: I felt good in my skin.

I’m fascinated by this discovery. I am not saying that I don’t love spending time with my young boys, because I do. Yes, there are challenges, but there is a lot of fun, a lot of laughs, and a lot of cuddles. I have always adored the period of infancy. I will admit, however, that during the weeks when I’m short on babysitting or end up spending more time with the boys than usual, it’s not always so much fun. I am coming to understand that I need my three work days to do my thing. Even though my work can be stressful, it is at times satisfying. And, most importantly, it doesn’t involve keeping anyone alive.

There is something about the intensity of caring for very young children — about up to first grade — that is profoundly draining. They need you. It’s not enough just to be there. They want your attention; you need to feed them; you need to change them; you need to read them that Elmo book — the one you can’t stand — 834 times in two days. You need to pluck them off the bookshelves before they kill themselves in an avalanche.  You need to come up with yet another way to entertain them on a rainy day, when at least one of your kids is too little for the craft project but just big enough to wreck it for an older sibling. The sheer noise factor — shouting, crying, screaming, fighting, talking, jumping off the furniture, chasing the dog, electronic toys, “musical” instruments — is often enough to make you want to poke your eye out with a Brio train. They gift you with moments of independent play, and perhaps a decent nap schedule, but there is nothing that you can really count on.

As the kids get older, you can position yourself to take advantage of those gifted moments of opportunity to do something on your own list, but it isn’t until the kids are at least 3 that you can stall them for any length of time when you’re trying to get something done. There are days — and nights — that are utterly filled with pee and poop and vomit. During some stretches it seems like you haven’t had a solid, uninterrupted night of sleep in years. (Because you haven’t.) Your time is largely spent wiping noses, picking the same toys up off the floor over and over again, and finding ways to be cheerful and support your child’s emotional and intellectual development even though you’re dog tired and really just want to go take a nap. Every day seems to be a variation on the same theme, which at time feels more like Darth Vader’s theme from Star Wars than anything Raffi might perform.

Then, eventually, the kids start going to sleep at a reasonable, predictable hour — which you’ve been looking forward to for months years — but it turns out you’re still so brain dead by 8:00 p.m. that you can’t carry on a coherent conversation with your spouse or a relative who calls to chat. Forget about working on your novel or starting a new oil painting. Somehow your time is still not your own, even when you’re not technically on duty. And I assert that you cannot be yourself until your time is once again your own, for more than an hour or two at a time. (Although an hour or two is a great place to start.)

When does your time become your own again? Kids grow. They go to school. They become more independent. You no longer have to worry about keeping them alive from moment to moment. Gradually, you come back to life, sort of like a slo-mo version of Michael J. Fox in Back to the Future when his parents kiss on the dance floor and he reappears in the snapshot tucked into the neck of his guitar. One day, you are you again. Sure, now you’re driving kids all over town and trying to lure them to the dinner table for family time, but this lacks the intensity of parenting a 2-year-old.

There are lots of wonderful things that happen while you’re taking care of young children, but I don’t think that you can really see the gravity of what that experience is like until you come out the other side. I was actually OUT when I stepped back in. My third child was 10 years old when I had my fourth. Perhaps that’s why this realization has hit me so hard. That, and the fact that I’m 40 now and I feel a little more selfish about “me” time. I’ve spent my entire adult life being a mother. I love being a mother, but I’m ready to also just be me. From my current vantage point, the energy and focus required in caring for young children makes it impossible to also be myself. The two seem like incompatible objectives — a more all-encompassing twist on our discussion of A Divided Heart.

I imagine that there are many mothers out there who simply love every aspect of motherhood and flit through their days like Mary Poppins and would probably tell me that I should never have had so many kids, seeing as I’m not really up for the job. Maybe that’s true. Maybe those mothers already knew who they were before they had kids, so it’s not as difficult for them to stay in touch with that inner anchor.

In the short term, I’d like to brainstorm ways that mothers of young children can stay connected to themselves, their real selves, while their children are young. I firmly believe that maintaining the creative self is absolutely essential. (Of course I do. I’m writing a book about that.) Finding ways to spend a bit of time alone is also vitally important, although often difficult to accomplish.

Oh, and just for the record, I’m going away again this weekend. Three days. Flying away by myself. And I plan to practice being me while I’m away, as much as possible.

What do you think? Does any of this ring true to you, or do I just sound like a cranky mother in need of Prozac?

Life happens,
doctors happen,
and this past week, a lot of doctor appointments happened and other sundry bits of attending to sick self, sick kids, etc. So in the interest of pediatrics, Nanowrimo fell somewhat behind and has been having trouble catching back up. also, I really got walloped by news of Brother Blue passing away.

Nanowrimo is an excellent tool to get yourself writing if you call yourself a writer but don’t find yourself doing much of it. It’s an excellent jumpstart, you feel inspired, and even if you don’t, you push to meet that 1667 words per diem minimum. But once you fall behind, it becomes really hard to scramble. but I figured out a a few little secrets today:

1. I don’t have to write 1667 words per day.

2. But it works a heck of a lot better if I do. Otherwise I’m playing a deceitful game of catch-up – which is really very much like swimming against the riptide during hurricane season.

3. Nanowrimo becomes an obsession. Possibly a very unhealthy obsession. I sat in the pediatrics office for six hours on Wednesday thinking not so much of my kids and their various stages of this long, non-h1n1 flu we’ve had, but of how I could be writing instead of sitting in this waiting room, exam room, phlebotomy department, radiology department because when I took my daughter to the hospital the previous week, they didn’t run all the tests they now had to run during Nanowrimo. The boys were with me, too for their wellness appointments, etc, vaccines, etc. I was barely concerned, except when C was crying from getting stuck with a needle for bloodwork or having a big loud machine shoot light boxes all over her leg and hips, while mommy wore a big lead apron. Nano becomes unhealthy when your spouse and you are sitting right next to each other all night long on separate computers not saying a word to each other until he does, and you get annoyed that he’s interrupting your train of thought, but more importantly, your word count. It becomes an obsession when every time your toddler wanders over and whines and pulls to be on your lap, you act like it’s the end of the world because you can’t finish your train of thought or your word count. Same with the preteen mom-mom-momming in your ear and poking you in the arm or the teen mom-mom-momming you on the cellphone until you realize in a half-attention moment you allowed him to sleep over someone’s dad’s house and you don’t even know where he lives, because you were still typing when he was asking and you just wanted him off the phone.

4. But Nanowrimo is important, because you will write a novel in thirty days, whether you make the word count or not, and you will have another manuscript to edit and eventually shop with the other one, because you now can market it to agents as a series of sorts….and you will have two books at the end of this! And at the end of this, you’ll pay better attention to your spouse and your kids and yourself for that matter, and to the fact that maybe the sun is in fact shining outside and oh, yea, there’s an outside…..

5. I don’t have to write the parts in the order in which they come chronologically, but in the order in which they travel through my bleeding brain.

6. Ok that’s more than a few things, but I also figured out it is much better to write about what you know than have to research about something for a novel you’re trying to write in thirty days. Set it in a country you’ve been to, and forget about wildlife, unless of course, it has become a central theme in the book….

Why is it even when I have several projects I could be working on, narrowed to two that I am working on (read procrastinating) that I generally have at least part of my writer’s eye on The Next Big Thing?

This is also true in the home improvement arena, you should see what I’ve come up with for the addition now that we are paying a mortgage and have a yard of our own rather than renting a condo.

I mean I could also be focusing on getting those wonderfully folded piles from last week into dressers before starting this week’s loads. But I’m already a day late anyway, and have no earthly idea how it is that I wash the same five outfits per family member twice a week and there are still piles of folded and sorted laundry sitting from two weeks ago.

I’m planning next spring’s gardens while the plots are currently filled and continuing to fill with weeds. I really need to buy more sand to add to my clay soil which needs to be turned and covered, with compost, too, before I start plotting next year.

I am also dreaming baby names, when I know, logistics and physicality have set in stone that C is the last of my progeny. I am thinking of new baby names instead of being present with the three kids I have now.

I can use the baby names for characters, but that is the only technical resolve I have for this dilemma I have that the next thing is better than the present. It’s sparklier, it’s as tempting as a dessert sitting on the counter while I’m preparing dinner.

Something about the new, the imagined, the dreamed is much easier because I can keep my hands clean thinking about it while the dirty work of the present is a constant.

Maybe I just have trouble with finishing, with letting go, with saying finally, for the last time, that this version of the poem, the children’s novel, the article is good enough just the way it is.

I’m sure there is a psychological disorder with a big fancy name for this. It has conveniently slipped my mind.

I’m a Capricorn and I’m a parent. Capricorns are known for their penchant to give advice, and I have this penchant in spades. Being a parent, of course I give parenting advice all along, whether I really know what I’m talking about or not, but I’ve learned a few things over the years, including in the business of education pretty much since I left college. Kids are what I do. I even babysat from the time I was eleven years old. So if I know anything, it’s kids. Or to be more precise and professional about it, I know child development. As a parent of a child with Asperger’s Syndrome, I know child development intimately, and what it looks like when it is skewed. Small advice on that, trust your instincts, mom. If you think something isn’t quite right, tell your pediatrician and don’t let him or her give you the “oh, it’ll all even out eventually” speech. Get to the specialists, get the testing. If your kid is ok, it’ll show. If not, early intervention is the key to your child’s success.

But that is a topic for another day.

Today’s spouting of advice is to let you know, whatever you are experiencing as a parent will end eventually. This phase of development will end, whether it is the constant demand of a newborn that exhausts you all hours of the day and night, the toddler exploration that drives every tiny piece of muck from the floor into her mouth or the destruction of your home environment in ways you never imagined possible, the I wants and whines of a preschooler to a preteen or the back talk and eye rolls of your pre-teen to teen.

The nursing that seems to suck the life out of you will end. The nursing that gives the special closeness you never dreamed possible will end.

The constant curiosity and amazement with everything around him will end. The nice spitty sucked fingers in the outlet guaranteed to give a charge will end.

The exuberant jumping on or off the sofa will end. The intense focus on dinosaurs, legos, drawing will end. Well, maybe not, you may have an artist, builder, archeologist or Olympian long jumper on your hands, but what an incredible place to start.

The eye rolls and flip flop of hormonal emotions, the sneaking and secrecy, intense friendships and heart pulled deeply in any direction away from you will end. So will the late night or car ride talks when you have your teen alone. Those times when you’ll get a glimpse of this young man or woman and who they’ll be, how they are likely to handle the world on their own, and whether or not you will think, alright, they’ll be okay, or have to let go even if you think they won’t be okay. Then hope they’ll at least be alright, eventually.

In every phase of childhood and parenthood, you and your child will rise to meet each other, negotiate the constantly shifting sands of your landscape together to rise into an adult. A day will come when the constant aggravation of his climbing the stairs when the gate is undone, or opening the kitchen drawers or inserting paper or bologna or puzzle pieces into the VCR, DVD, Wii slot will become family lore to share and look back on wistfully or in hysteria. Remember the time Junior jumped off the garage roof and broke one wrist and sprained the other? Yea, that was hysterical! And then he’d ride his bike around the neighborhood no handed, cast and splint up in surrender! Remember the time the police brought Junior home because he was riding his bike around town center at midnight? Yea, what was he, twelve? Yea, yea! Remember the time Suzy smeared poop all over her bedroom wall by her crib? Hahaha!

The seemingly impossible to survive times are survived, and eventually reflected upon or laughed about. But don’t forget to mark and hold the good moments, too. The intimate moments bed snuggling with the newborn, their sweet, warm, musky smell, their translucent skin and peaceful sleep. Don’t forget to hold the full–out preschooler laughs over farts at the dinner table, the spaghetti covered face, the midnight bad dream slip into your bed by the nine year old. The sofa snuggle and popcorn on movie night. The way the sunlight hits her hair in the off-shore beach breeze, the scent of salt and sunscreen on his skin, snow angels and snowball fights. The moment your teen looks at you in one of those deep conversations that appear to be on the surface, and says, only with his eyes, yea, I get it, even when the rest of his body language says otherwise.

Don’t forget the milestones and everything in between, because all of it will come back to mind, rise to the surface and you’ll wonder when that phase ended, when the sands shifted and created these new dunes in her life. The old dunes were so familiar.

This too shall end and you can hold it dear, or let it slip away. Let the tough stuff wear away with time. Keep it all close to your heart, because it’s not just your child’s life that is growing and changing. It’s yours.

Cross posted from my personal blog

Today was “one of those days”, as the saying goes. I’ve most certainly had better. Just dealing with some unpleasant issues on the job…changes and challenges involved with our institutional shift.  Before I headed home, I summed up my day by changing my Facebook status to “Kelly has yet to win the lottery…”  My friend Wyanne must have been online right at that moment because she immediately commented, “You already won the lottery of life…”  Thank you, my dear friend. I needed that little reminder.

When I got home, Wyanne’s wonderful Universe backed up her comment.  The minute I walked in the door, Livvie was sitting on the couch and said, “Mama, where’s your new charm?” This morning I pulled my new anniversary charm out of its pretty little heart-shaped box and showed it to her before I placed the charm and my bracelet in my purse to get it soldered today.  It was that very box she was holding, and she asked me if she could have it.  “Look inside!” she said, “Sarah gave me a present!”  Inside were a few coins and a heart-shaped bead, so I told her how nice that was of Sarah and that, yes, certainly she could have the box.  She gave me a big Livvie hug like only little Livvie can do.

Then Sarah whispered at me from the stairs and asked me to come up stairs.  She grabbed my hand and walked me into the guest room (where we keep all the wrapping supplies) and, still whispering, said, “Shhh….I’m wrapping more presents for Livvie.”  On the floor were the shoe boxes from their new shoes Granddad bought them this weekend.  Inside one shoe box were a Barbie and a few pieces of paper she had colored; inside the other were a sweater and her ladybug backpack.  Yet still whispering, she asked me to help her wrap them. “But I need some tape and some scissors. Can you find me some?” I told her I’d run downstairs and get her some and she said, “Okay, but come right back and don’t tell Livvie.”  When I came back up with the tape and scissors, she started trying to wrap the boxes, then looked to me for help when she struggled.  “Mama, I want to put one of those sparkly bows on each one, but I can’t open the box [they are stored in]. Can you help me?”  I helped her open the box and she picked out two bows, one sparkly red and one sparkly green, and taped them to the presents.

She wanted to put the presents in a gift bag so we walked over to the closet to pick one out.  Now, this closet is the very closet in which I stored Bunny C.  I’ve told you about Bunny and Sister Bunny, so Bunny C is the third backup I found and stored away, only to be found by Sarah when I wasn’t looking.  She named this one Fluffy because, being brand new, obviously she was rather fluffy!  And at the moment, Fluffy was not in her special place in the special closet.

“Sarah, did you take Fluffy out again?”  I previously told her that Fluffy really wanted to live there until she really, really needed her, like when, *gasp*, Bunny and Sister Bunny both got lost or got so threadbare she couldn’t carry them around anymore.  “Yes, Mama,” still whispering.  “Well, do you know where she is?”  “Um, no, Mama, I really can’t remember right now [trying to distract me]…I think Livvie would like this bag,” she said as she picked out a big blue one with snowflakes. Then she put the presents in the bag and took them down to Livvie, who happily opened them up and, snuggling up to her sister, asked Sarah if she wanted to watch Hannah Montana with her.

Thank you, Lord, for bringing me another one of life’s little moments to keep me on the right path and remind me that I have, in fact, won the lottery of life.

To satisfy curiosity, he has environmental allergies and asthma, nothing exciting for the gossip mill, like ADHD or childhood depression and anxiety. I have often been asked why I don’t put S on meds for his Asperger’s, but frankly there are none except to cover symptomatic behaviors, of which his can be dealt with through a behavioral approach. Either that or I’m a glutton for suffering. And I’ve heard too many horror stories of wrong meds from the Asperger moms who’ve gone that route. Really, he’s a good guy, just needs some redirection and support — often. But back to K: generally, I’m against meds if another way can be found, but he needs them to breathe.  I’ll concede on that one.

So back to the story: in the lobby, I’m signing him in, making a co-payment, having all three kids with me because it was a half-day of school, and I was up for the adventure. For once, I was able to put C down for her to explore, K is responsible enough to watch her while my back is turned, but apparently he decided to read Compound instead.  I heard a vague sort of squeal, the sound C makes when S picks her up. I checked briefly, gave the usual speech, of arm under her butt, be safe, don’t be too rough, and I turned back to what I was doing. By the time I turned back around, a moment really, S had plopped her precariously on a chair edge and walked away. She was quite happily tipping off the edge and I flew, honestly, my feet didn’t touch the ground, to catch her before the thud and scream. Okay, survived that one. Phew! Another speech:  babies need to be placed all the way back in the chair and supervised carefully, S!

The rest of the waiting room went relatively uneventfully in my book, but probably seemed a cause for concern in others’. S  hummed and ran circles, twisting through any available floor space and intermittently asked random questions or recited whatever cartoon, movie, book was on his mind; K occasionally piped up with a stop it, you’re embarrassing me kind of statement; C was crawling, cruising around, and banging on bead rollercoasters, while I watched it all, letting the noise roll over me, because this is just another five minutes in my life, nothing to stress about. Thank goodness, it was only five minutes. Often, that waiting room can be equivalent to a ring in Dante’s Inferno.

I’ll skip the on the way to the exam room bit for expediency’s sake, because really, this is all just my normal – except, at the weigh-in and measure, K is now officially my height, soon to outgrow. In the exam room, S shot questions at the nurse who I tried to signal to ignore him while providing the answers to her questions that K was not fully providing and telling S that the nurse and K and I needed to talk, could he please just hum in his head for a change, and managing to keep a squirmy girl on my lap. Multitasking at its finest. As a teen, K was basically just saying no or grunting a non-committal response. He hates when I ask how he enjoys being a stereotype.

By the time Dr B arrived, S had rearranged all furniture in the room (so he could look out the window, and he likes to spin and wheel around on the doctor’s stool); C had explored the whole floor and drawers of the exam room with delight; K had sat on the exam table, and helped her, also opening drawers and pushing buttons, because he’s a very tactile, hmmm, what’s in here/what does this do?  kind of guy, and C pooped. At the moment Dr B walked in, S was playing dead, lying on the floor, K was sitting in the corner admonishing S for being on the floor, and I was changing C’s diaper on the exam table.  Having left the diaper bag in the van, I was using the newborn one I found in a drawer.  But you can see why I left it in the van, huh?  I don’t need to keep track of another thing with these three in tow. The look on Dr. B’s face was priceless. I responded cheerily, “Never a dull moment!”

Finally we settled back into appropriate seats, so to speak, as S still had one pulled up to the window and was watching traffic while pretending to be a 50-foot tall monster. Dr. B acknowledged S’s spinning of his stool down, so that he dropped like a rock practically to the floor, and there was a whole discussion about little people and if one was a doctor, wouldn’t they want to have the stool at a higher rather than lower setting thanks to K’s penchant for debate.

So we made it through the appointment. Near the end, S had enough of the room, and Dr. B’s son has painted beautiful nature murals, including lots of under sea creatures in the inner halls. S went out to check that out, and came back stiffly hopping and announcing he was paralyzed by the Portuguese man-of-war sting. I just laughed with Dr B and proclaimed, “Jon and Kate plus Eight have nothing on me!” as C squirmed to get down and the boys chased each other out of the exam room.

Dr. B, always one for a good debate, shot back with “How would you feel about fourteen?”  This launched us into an animated discussion about the irresponsibility of the Octo-mom’s infertility specialist and medical malpractice, to say very little of her mental capacity or financial capacity and why the heck the infertility doctor thought any part of the situation was alright to do what he did, never mind the fact that John and Jane Doe have to pay ten grand to go to the corner clinic to try for one. But the kids were shooting down the hall, K turned into a zombie to scare the bejeez out of S and chase him through the place, C was starting to whine vociferously, and I had to leave this very impassioned discussion, as did Dr B, who needed to rush to his next patient. Amazing what can transpire in an under 30-second doorway conversation.

What am I getting at here? Beats me, except that with Mother’s Day now behind us this year, I think we all deserve to pat ourselves on the back for the things we oversee and endure on a day to day basis. Some of it is fun, some of it is full of love, some of it is excruciating, some of it is a comedy of errors, some of it is barely hanging on by our fingernails, but most likely, at any given moment it’s all of the above.

For me, it turned my otherwise small penchant for analysis of why I’m not writing as much as I set out to into a life’s purpose in a public forum. I spent more energy on thinking about not writing than I spent on writing my manuscript. In the meantime, and it took 21 days of this, to realize that I was actually keeping the same pace I had been keeping on the manuscript since I re-opened it last spring: exactly the same pace. The six weeks around the holidays were taken up with the holidays and everyone in the house being very ill in long phases, including me. Otherwise, I have written a small burst of between three to six pages on one day per week, while Baby C naps in the morning, since the beginning. Those naps are rare these days.

There are reasons for this, not excuses. I am incredibly sleep deprived, and can barely function on normal household stuff, let alone have a clear thought for continuity in a novel. I am now on the older baby chase besides her usual kicking keyboard cuteness. She motors everywhere and I follow. We don’t have baby gates up or cabinet locks on, etc. I am all for letting her learn her world. The rest of the world doesn’t have baby gates, why should I here, except it would make my life easier in getting basics done. I am vigilant, and how will she learn to cope on her own, if she doesn’t understand how to get around safely. She needs to learn the stairs, so we teach her, when she wants. She wants to now, so there I am, following the climber up, and keeping her from repelling to her doom. I hold her hand while she scoots down on her butt. We do this over and over, and she laughs and learns a little more each time. The dog and cat enjoy it, too. We’re having a blast.

In the meantime, the little nagging voice in the back of my head tells me I’m making excuses to go fly kites, tend the baby, and bake cookies to avoid the writing. Once, it was a huge voice in the front of my head that told me who the hell do I think I am to write? Who wants to hear what I have to say? The voice shrinks and fades into the background, because, yes I am almost done with this novel. Now it’s just the voice that still wants a voice as I gain my own. During Feb-Fin, I let it out and let it inhale deeply in order to spout through my all my public analysis of not writing. Well, it’s time to show that voice the back door. I won’t give it anymore fanfare.

I will escort it back to where it belongs, as the distant echo in the back of my head. I will get on with writing, my little bit as I can. I will tend the baby, bake cookies, and fly kites. I will enjoy my kids, my husband and dare I say, the housework. I will do so without the dread that the time I am doing something else, or better yet, nothing at all, is time not writing. If my ideas percolate away from the keyboard, so be it. They will form better in the single two to three hours I really have to hobble all those ideas together.

As for the writing itself, I have blogged before that I can’t set a schedule for it. That’s just an axe at the throat of my writing. I can set a maybe schedule, but have to be realistic that if I “set aside” three mornings a week, really only one will serve for the possibility. John Updike may have written six days a week, but that’s just not how my muse works. Mine sprints and recoups. She’s always been like that to an extent. She’s never been a marathoner. Since motherhood, it’s her modus operandi. Regardless of my whining online about not writing, I really have been pretty good about recognizing this pace and letting the writing happen in its own time, and Baby C’s.

“Mom?”
“Yes, my love?”
“How come I’m the only one in the house without glasses?”
“Be glad you can see well without them. They’re a pain.”
“But I waaaaant glasses!”
“Be careful what you wish for, Buddy.”
“Aw, c’mon, mom, I want glasses, too-oo-oo!”

S seeing himself with glasses for the first time

So, in October we had his annual physical and he professed to not be able to see past the third line. The nurse and I found this very odd, since the year prior, when asked to read down the chart as far as he could, he continued past where the nurse and I no longer could see even with our glasses, and read the copyright line, too. That’s the kind of thing that happens with Asperger’s Syndrome. Aspies are likely to take you very literally. So when the nurse said read as far as you can down to the bottom, well, he did, down to the last character. He read the whole darn poster, not just the chart. That was the itty-bittiest print. I couldn’t read it even when I walked right up to it. But that may be an over-forty story for another day.

Anyway, after what I went through with his older brother at the same age, because he couldn’t see the big E on the chart (yet another story for another day, or week, if you have time for the unabridged version), I said, time to go to the eye doctor. I can’t take S to any old eye doctor, I have to get the referral for a specialist who is accustomed to dealing with the autism spectrum. Luckily, this was one of his brother’s regular specialists, so they had met before when S had been dragged along to K’s appointments. It’s a big help to have had prior experience with each other. So, a few months down the line we had his appointment with Dr. L last week.

How's this?

I warned Dr. L that everything S says may not be exactly the 100% truth. That was as much for S as it was for Dr. L. I have to put things in terms of 100% truth for S so that I don’t get school stories of Godzilla or zombie invasions when I ask how his day was. And sure enough, S’s interpretations of the letter lines were interesting, to say the least. Very creative: Big H P became C uh, uh, uh, Z. T V P E Z became 4 3 2 Q uh, uh O. Numbers continued to be thrown in even after Dr. L repeatedly assured my son that only letters were in the charts. Both the ophthalmologist and I found his responses very entertaining, but didn’t let on. In the end, after eye measurements, etc, he is a little nearsighted. It’s pretty common at age ten for kids to suddenly need glasses, especially if a parent has them.

So we headed over to the glasses store the next day, when his eyes were no longer dilated, which with any kid is another form of parental entertainment that is amped up with S. One pair of horn rims he kept returning to gave him a bit of a James Dean look. I liked those the best. Then he found the metal frame wall, like his brother has, and that was it. We selected a slightly more rounded frame from K’s, but they are the same color blue and are very close. Even though older brother mental torture, and otherwise, goes on in our family, S still worships him and wants to be just like him.

Thinking about it

Later the same evening, he announced that he faked it. He was just pretending and making up answers to the chart. He looked afraid that he’d be wearing glasses that screwed up his eyes because of his embellishments on the eye test. I said, “That’s okay, S. Dr. L and I knew you were making up some of it. That’s why he dilated your eyes, and took measurements with that big mask looking machine.”

The look of shock at being found out was enough to make the most hardened criminal laugh, but in my experience with him, it’s very important not to. No matter how cute he is. Suddenly, after years of the opposite when he didn’t need them, he announced, “But I don’t waaaaant glasses!”

I know this one is going into my writer vault to be used someday.

I reluctantly share my writing PC with my children for homework and personal projects. The eldest, K prefers burning CDs to his MP3 while checking his email while making surreptitious maneuvers around parental controls to view videos and play internet games his brother should definitely not be looking over the shoulder to see. However, in general, though he may break my rules, I’ve made him good and paranoid of internet predators, so he’s not up to anything that will get him into any trouble other than with me. He also happens to be working on a couple of novels, albeit a lot bloodier than mine and full of fantasy genre: lone wolf types fighting their way through a world of evil. The second born prodigy, er I mean progeny (right, ma) is obsessed with Windows Movie Maker and typing up titles and credits to his films. He sneaks watching videos on youtube, too, but he’s easier to catch.

I also share my office with my mother-in-law, retired, who really likes computer games. We sit here much of the day together, especially when the boys are in school. Sometimes I am distracted in conversation with her, because I’m trying to write, sometimes, the conversation is just what’s needed. There are many writing rituals I used to do that I’ve given up with her presence: the sing-song reading aloud, the general weird noises and seat dancing, music playing, etc. Just weird writer things, like saying LA-LA-LA-LA-LA while I’m not really sure if the part I’m trying to write makes any sense, but I’m writing it anyway, for now. There’s also the time I tried bouncing a writing dilemma off of her and she was looking at me very strangely. Did I mention she is a retired accountant? She disproves my old theory that all avid readers are writers at heart.

It’s a decent sized room, but there’s a lot of furniture crammed in here, including a full-sized guest bed. Oh and I didn’t mention what I usually mention: the fact that while I’m trying to write, I have squirming, nursing or sleeping baby on my lap.

Today, my husband asked to move in, too. We broke out the tape measure, and technically, we can make it work, but aren’t doing well on agreeing about how. He wants to share the desk. I am going to go wicked eighties for a sec here, but I’m like, totally no way! It’s bad enough with the kids and me. His paper problem is much worse than mine. And mine is admittedly bad. I suggested he bring in the hunk of kitchen counter that’s still in the garage from when we removed it from the kitchen 18 months ago. With some maneuvering of a giant file cabinet and my desk, it’ll be tight, but it’ll work.

It’s really the least I can do. Of course I’ll be more inconvenienced than I am already. I already feel boxed into a corner. But the guy has been a real trooper. He took care of me and my kids from marriage number one, when I was a pain in the butt bedrest preggo for a very long time. He also provides for an increasingly large household through not just a day job, but side jobs. Until we make room for him in here, he wanders the house for an open corner of kitchen counter with stool, the dining room table after dinner and dishes are done. Sometimes I can hear the hum and click of his laptop at two in the morning, when he has to get up and do it all over again in about four hours. The very least I can do is squeeze him in next to me in here. Hey, maybe we’ll even end up spending more time together.

So, room of one’s own? I doubt it’ll be possible until, ah, shucks, I don’t have the foggiest idea! My youngest won’t graduate high school til I’m 60. Even though I do not want to live through another pregnancy like hers, I can’t help having that ‘what if’ in the back of my mind. After all, my late father-in-law still doesn’t have a grandson to carry on the name.

Saturday morning as I was driving around the block three times near Garnet and Gold in Tallahassee trying to find a place to park so I could pick up a new t-shirt for the FSU Homecoming game that night, I got a call from my best friend, Becky. Becky and I have been friends since 9th grade English with Mr. McDonald. We sat behind Wally Rakestraw and both had a crush him (on which Becky’s brother Robert commented at Becky’s wedding rehearsal: “Wally Rakestraw!!?? Damn you girls for always going for the jocks!”). Becky and I went through high school and college together, became sorority sisters in college, and are still best friends 20 years out of college. When she called that morning, she said, “Well maybe I shouldn’t tell you this right now since you are driving.” With a comment like that, now you know I really had to know, so she told me.

At 9 pm the night before, one of our sorority sisters in Tampa had a knock on her front door. It was a State Trooper. Her daughter, her 17-year-old daughter on her first trip away from home without her parents, had just been killed in a car accident. She was on her way to Tallahassee with three friends for the very same game that prompted my t-shirt search; the other three girls survived the crash but were in ICU. I pulled into a random parking lot and just stopped. What do you do in that moment? What can you possibly say? No words seem to fit. All I wanted to do was hang up the phone and call my own children at home, just to hear their voices. I cannot imagine the devastation our friend’s family must be feeling. My heart and prayers go out to them.

Which brings me back to the importance of today…. That moment crystallized for me that someday truly is today, and that you never know what that someday, this today, that tomorrow is going to bring you. And for that reason, I realized that every moment, big or small, must be cherished. Today was one of those moments. It was the day that all the kindergarten parents were invited to come to school and have a Thanksgiving lunch with their children. Before Saturday morning, I hadn’t really thought about going. Work is very hectic right now, and I have to travel to Orlando tomorrow and Friday for a meeting. But I went. And as I walked down the hall to the cafeteria, Olivia spotted me and yelled “Hey, there’s my Mama!” to all her friends. When I got in there, I saw that Sarah was still in line and hadn’t spotted me yet, so I told Liv to find us a seat and got in line. I saw Sarah walk out of the serving area with her little tray in her little hands, looking so smart and so grown up, and my eyes filled up with tears. When she saw me, she almost dropped her tray and yelled, “Hey, Mama!” So we sat down. And we ate. We ate terrible elementary school cafeteria turkey and dressing, box mashed potatoes and pre-packaged fruit cocktail. But it was one of those little moments to cherish. It was the day that someday did become today. It was the start of a lot of somedays that will become todays. When will your somedays become today?