Who has time to blog?

Graduation preparation is in full swing at my house. It is crazy. Why do schools feel they have to cram so much into graduating from high school? Shouldn't some of this nonsense have been done during the last four years? Kid has a high GPA? Check. Give her something at the end of each year that says "well done". Why do we have to go to a three hour ceremony to be rewarded? That little gem was thrown in at the last minute. No one is thrilled with that.

Tonight we have an IB celebration. This is put on by our IB organization, and since I'm on the board, and since I'm a parent of a senior guess who got roped into helping put the whole thing together? I have been working on this little baby for the last three months. The end is in sight, but we are not finished. Madison, who is also on the board, was part of the celebration committee and she still has three projects to finish before we go live tonight. She is the queen of last minute. It drives me crazy.

Thursday we have an awards ceremony that I'm told is three hours long. When I suggested that we have our awards in conjunction with our celebration the IB coordinator wanted to know why I hadn't thought of that sooner. He loved the idea, but shelved it for next year since we were cutting it too close and he didn't think the principal would go for it. Sigh.

Monday is graduation and who knows how long that lasts. Before that happens we have had IB testing, college transcript paperwork, graduation practice, senior olympics, and a whole slew of events and items I've already forgotten. I can't keep it all in my head because in the middle of all of this Darcy threw in a Sweet Sixteen Birthday Party for herself. When I protested she went to her father who thought it was a grand idea. He and Darcy planned the entire thing and pulled it off without a hitch. She had a beach party with 18 kids and cake. All Madison and I had to do was show up and we did that an hour after the thing started because we couldn't find parking it being a holiday weekend at the beach.

Madison and I have shopped for the celebration, for clothes to wear to said celebration, and for Darcy's upcoming birthday which occurs the day after graduation. Starting the day after that I have Madison's graduation party to finalize. I have gradually been planning that with the help of my good friend SueG who would like us to plan a little harder, but I just can't squeeze it into my days. I really think when this graduation stuff is over I will need a few days to sleep. But I won't have that luxury because the day after her party we fly out to North Carolina for college orientation. Whew! Call me SuperMom because I deserve some sort of title, and I prefer that over CrazyNutJob.

I have also put together a picture video of Madison through the years, scanning photos because she was born before the digital age. I thought it would be fun for those not attending her graduation party to see a few of the pics I found. In the meantime, I shall return at some point to this blog site.

Birth 1996

Infant 1997

 

Toddler 1998 & 1999

Big Sister 2000 to present

You gotta keep on keeping on

I walk around a lot of times feeling despair. I've tried to pinpoint this feeling. When did it start? Why is it here today? I think it became a part of me when I realized there was such a thing as death. After I had children the feeling increased. I worried about them constantly, and if I could have I would have put us in a bubble and lived there forever. But the despair wasn't great enough for me to stay in one place, thank goodness, and so I kept chugging along. Until the next bout came and settled over me like a warm cloak in the summer.

My mother's death, my turning fifty, my SIL's cancer, and the thought of my kids growing up and leaving has brought on a despair that I can't seem to shake. It is a cycle that tumbles around in my brain like laundry in a dryer, and so I wear black to match the dark circle under my eyes from not sleeping because I worry.

Recently someone I knew, who long ago was part of our family, discovered she had cancer. She fought and she won. I saw her a year or so ago and she looked great. The cancer returned at the end of last year, and as each day went on she gradually began losing her fight until she went into hospice and the pictures on facebook were of a person wasting away. I walked around with my cloud much darker. I felt for her two daughters and her husband. I felt for her sister. I felt for my SIL who had bonded with her over their shared fight. I felt for myself because if this could happen to her at the age of 46 well....

I have tried therapy. I have tried the various recommendations from said therapists. Depression runs in my family so I keep a close eye on my feelings. I know that right now I'm in a vulnerable position. Feelings are flowing through me at a rate greater than I can handle sometimes. I look for signs that things are okay. I'm a big believer in signs. The other night I went to bed with a heavy heart thinking about my friend in hospice and what her family was going through sitting by her bedside. I tossed and turned most of the night and slept little. When my alarm went off the next morning it came on with this song by First Aid Kit. It was just what I needed. It lifted my cloud just a tad higher.

Cindy died on Mother's Day. I didn't know it until right before I went to bed and I logged into Facebook for another reason. Bam! There it was. She was gone. I didn't sleep. The next day I walked around in a fog working hard at staying the course, putting one foot in front of the other. The thought of my mother would creep into my head and the tears would flow. Recently I feel as if for the first time ever, really, I'm missing my mom and finally grieving. These two things together really made for a darkness I wasn't sure I could come out of. Then I went to the library and happened to pick up a book that looked interesting.

The book, Lost and Found by Brooke Davis was hilarious. The first two pages had me laughing out loud. I loved it. The kid in the book was fascinating and wondrous. When I met the next two characters, two older people at the latter end of the mountain, I related. Suddenly I realized that the book was about death and living and so closely related to what I was going through. I laughed and laughed. I laughed so hard at the gym riding the bike that people stared at me. I went home and spent the rest of the day reading the book laughing and laughing. Until suddenly I was laughing so hard I was crying. And then I was sobbing. It was a release. It was my sign.

At the end of the book the author discusses her reasoning for writing the book. She lost her mother suddenly in a tragic accident. She has been fascinated with death and grieving for years now and has made a career of studying it. I related to everything she said. And suddenly I felt so much lighter. Death happens. It will happen to all of us, but living is happening right now. I have so much joy in my life that I'm going to miss out on if I keep that cloud hanging over my head. It hasn't been easy and it won't be to lighten that darkness, but I have to do it. I have to start standing up tall so that I can see out at the things that I have been missing while hiding in my funk. I have to believe in the goodness. I have to be okay with grieving for the loss of my mother and my friend and the others who are sure to follow.

Recently while reading the posts on facebook about my friend's death I spotted an invite I had been sent. It was to a baby shower for a friend of mine who lost her first pregnancy several years ago. She is expecting a girl. And it was such joyous news that I cried again. Because I had been thinking of her on Mother's Day and here she was expecting a child. And here was death and here was life. And here was me pushing onward with my signs, and my feelings, and my family, and my life. Because you gotta keep on keeping on.

Daughter successful? Check.

After getting some blood work done, I went into a Starbucks for some quiet time, tea, and a little sugar before I had to meet with someone to look over a venue. I was sitting in the corner with my back to the door going over my lists of things I need to do in the next four weeks. I was in a Starbucks that I very rarely frequent as it is a good distance from my house so I wasn't expecting to run into anyone I know. As I sat there sipping and clicking, I heard two women talking and I realized that I recognized one of the voices.

It was a woman whose daughter was Maddy's bestie from age three to 8th grade. I hadn't seen the mother since the girls graduated middle school. I turned around and waved. She screamed. jumped up and met in the middle of our two tables. She was with another mother whose daughter is between my girls in age and so we all exchanged pleasantries and hugs.

And then we began doing what all SAHM do. We talked about the children. She started off by congratulating Madison on her choice of colleges. She told the other mother. The other mother began asking me questions. I congratulated Maddy's friend's mother on her daughter and politely inquired about the other mother's daughter. It went back and forth like this with each one of us adding accomplishments and accolades on our kids' performances and schools, and suddenly I just wanted to start laughing and shout.

"Is this all we have ladies?"

It was like we had to outdo one another so that we could justify something to ourselves and each other. Kid in college? Check. Mother did that well. Honors college acceptance? Check. Scholarships? Check. Wow. That mother was on top of things. Beautiful dress for prom? Check. On and on it went until I just wanted to get away. I wanted to pat them on the back, tell them great job, and go back to my corner and my tea.

That is the problem with giving up a career and choosing to stay at home raising children full time. We have nothing else. Our whole lives have been devoted to these little rugrats who are now legal adults. What we have in the way of accomplishments is all in our children and what they have accomplished. We take pride in that, but we also feel it is a reflection on us. Because what else do we have to show for the last eighteen years?

It is our issue for sure, but society has a lot to do with our feelings. Staying at home and raising children doesn't get the positive attention it got back in the days of our mothers. While today's working woman cheers us on it is usually done secretly while staring down their noses at us. I don't fault those type of women anymore than I do the SAHMs who turn around and do the same. We all made our choices. Except that we SAHMs will be left with what? Our jobs will walk out the door to start their own lives, preferably with a great job making lots of money and how ironic is that? We mothers will be left standing at the door waiting for them to need us.

And then we will go out into the world for a cup of tea, run into people we know, and tell them all about the wonderful life our children are leading. Thanks to us. Check.

An infestation that would make a good horror flick

On our walk around the neighborhood one night Madison pointed out the telephone pole in our neighbor's house that sits on the corner of our street. The neighbor's have moved to Atlanta and the house is empty. The pole sits between his house and his next door neighbor's house right next to his neighbor's palm tree. The pole was covered with grasshoppers.

Immediately I was grossed out. I'm not a creepy, crawly bug person what-so-ever. This was like something out of horror flick. I handed my phone to Madison and instructed she be the one to get close enough for a photo because hey, this is a blog entry.

As we stood examining the pole, Madison discovered that the palm tree next to the pole was covered with thousands of the grasshoppers chowing down. There was not one branch or leaf that didn't have a grasshopper on it. Then we noticed (and you can see from the above picture) that the hoppers were on this neighbor's house! They were on the corner of the house and as we walked around to the front of his house we noticed them on the wall outside his front door.

Another neighbor noticed us looking and he came over to inquire as to what we were doing. He is a commercial lawn service owner and even he was stumped. He shook them off of the wire that was attached to the pole, but he had no solution to the problem. I reminded him that he was closer to the house than I was and that his wife was facebook friends with the neighbor and maybe she should give a shout out to them. Because frankly, if I was looking at buying a house that house right there would not be one I would even enter!

A couple of days after that Kelly discovered the same problem on the palm tree outside of her rental house. What had once been a nice palm tree was now half gone by grasshoppers. I turned to the Internet to solve the problem. I investigated first infestation of grasshoppers and learned that this is a growing problem in rural America. These little buggers are everywhere feasting on gardens and trees and bushes. Once they become adults they are very hard to get rid of as pesticides don't seem to touch them. Here are the solutions for infestation of grasshoppers:

1. Kill them with a shoe.
2. Keep chickens
3. Sprinkle all purpose flour over the tree in the dawn so that it sticks to the dew. The flour will gum up the grasshoppers mouth and cause them to not be able to eat.

We decided Kelly should go with solution #3 although I did like the idea of solution #2. She vetoed that solution because she currently has a litter of feral kittens living under her house and she didn't think the chickens would survive. 

I relayed this to my commercial lawn service neighbor the next morning when I was walking Elliot and I discovered that the grasshoppers were no longer on the house. I asked him if he had sprayed them. He told me had used his flip flop. I thought he was joking. He said no that he had found a grasshopper in his garage and realized I was right about him being closer to the infestation than anyone else so he went up to the house, removed his flip flop and smashed one.  I told him that was one of the more effective ways to get rid of them. We discussed the various ways and then he told me that he didn't recommend #1 as it was a nasty job. He said that smashing them resulted in a squirting of nasty, green goo. I told him to get some chickens for his yard.

Kelly tried the flour method and texted me that it didn't seem to be fazing the grasshoppers any. I texted perhaps she should also try the chickens despite the cat family living under her house. I reminded her that if she had chickens hunting the grasshoppers the cat family would have an opportunity to hunt the chickens and Kelly wouldn't have to worry about the insects or keeping the nursing mother fed.

Kelly: Ah, the circle of life.

As of now the grasshoppers are still at the top of the food chain. We are looking into the chicken situation. I know someone...

Something had to give

Last week I worked as a proctor for our high school's International Baccalaureate exams. This is the first year we have had these exams and Madison's class is the first class to take them. If the students pass these exams they will earn an IB diploma in addition to their high school diploma. In most of the colleges here in the United States that earns them a year or more of college credit depending on the school. The program is rigorous with final papers that have to be written in each subject, and requirements in a program called CAS which is developing something creatively, serving the community, and participating in some action activity.

Madison has thrived in the program. We put her into the program because the kid loves learning and we felt it was the best place in our odd county school system. We are hopeful she will earn the diploma, but Madison still wants to take some of the courses she will test out of again in college. Just in case. The IB students finished school last month and will spend all of this month testing for the diploma. Because I am on the board of our IB parent organization I was trained to proctor these exams and was one of the volunteers to take the first week.

The rules of proctoring are crazy. If you are the person in the room where the testing is going on, you sit in a corner watching over the test takers. If one raises his hand, you walk to him and take care of whatever he needs which mostly amounts to getting him a tissue or water or escorting him to the bathroom. Sitting in that room you may have nothing with you. No cell phone, no book, no papers. Nothing. If you are the person who sits outside the bathrooms, you are responsible for signing students in and out for bathroom breaks and then you must go in after each person and check the bathrooms to make sure the student didn't leave anything hidden in the bathroom. If you sit here, you are allowed to have items to keep you occupied.

Parents may proctor exams their students are in, but Madison wasn't too keen to have me looking over her shoulder so I immediately scheduled myself for the bathroom monitoring. Also, I was the person in charge of making the volunteer schedule so.... After the students go into the exam room I had to go into the bathrooms and check for contraband which in IB terms meant secret study notes. I checked behind wall hangings. I lifted up the back of toilet bowls and checked under the lids. I rolled and unrolled the toilet paper to make sure notes weren't written on them. I checked under the sinks, the urinals, and the toilets. I made sure nothing was shoved up into the paper towel dispenser or thrown into the trashcan. Pretty much I was a  FBI agent protecting a witness from death. Or at least that is the way I approached my job after the first day because I was pretty much sick of those bathrooms by that time.

On Friday Madison didn't have a test so I was the proctor in the exam room. I had to sit on a chair with nothing and not speak. It was like being sent to the corner by your parents as a punishment for doing something naughty. While I didn't get to speak as a bathroom monitor other than to give times I did have a book to read or a crossword puzzle to complete or my phone for silent texting. Here I had nothing. For four hours! It was torture. I figured the entire week was the longest I had been quiet since my birth.

When I left there on Friday I was exhausted. I went home where my husband was taking an online seminar that he had been taking all week. He too had been confined to a chair only listening to someone drone on and on all day, but at least he could get up and move around and talk. I smiled at him and proceeded to get dinner ready. I made a quiche and a nice fruit salad and yelled for everyone to come and get it. As I was lifting the glass bowl of salad to move it onto the large cutting board that sits in the middle of my counter I tapped it against the board and the thing exploded. It exploded with a huge BANG and millions of pieces of acrylic went everyone in my kitchen making crackling and popping noises like Rice Krispies.

Tom and Madison came in when I yelled. Madison held back the dog and Tom entered the kitchen to help me. He stood and looked around the room at the mess. He looked at the millions of pieces of cutting board all over the counter. Then he grinned.

Tom: "I figured after a week of no talking eventually something was going to explode!"

I keep him around for his humor.

My little mermaid

Somehow my little mermaid Madison went from this....

to this...Senior Prom 2015

I suppose I should still be grateful that she still likes dressing like a mermaid.

Defensive Driving

Tom signed the girls up for the teen defensive driving course put on by the Sheriff's office. It is a free class designed, not to teach kids how to drive, but to teach them defensive skills they need to know to drive. The first day was a four hour in-the-classroom class with scary movies and lectures about drinking and driving, texting and driving, etc. Both girls came home whining about the length and the boredom of the class.

The next day was an all day Saturday class outside on the Sheriff's make-shift, but soon to be state of the art, practice course that is used by the deputies. It is located on of the last pieces of undeveloped areas in our county and consisted of three different courses spread out over several acres. Each student used his own car and was assigned a deputy for the day. Darcy and Maddy shared their car and their deputy. He was a bulky, bald headed, man with bulging muscles and a deep voice. All of the deputies were dressed in Sheriff's shirts and each one wore their utility belt with handgun, ammunition, radio, handcuffs, pepper spray, etc. I secretly wondered how much that thing weighed and would I lose weight if I wore it daily around the house. Needless to say, I thought it all intimidating.

They did quite a lot. They had to wear specially designed goggles that simulated being intoxicated and they had to walk the line as if they had been pulled over. They had to learn how to drive the vehicle to avoid tipping it over. They learned the correct way to hold your hands (which isn't at ten and two for you old timers) on the steering wheel and how to correct the vehicle if you go off the road.

They spent tons of time running the course back and forth threw orange cones at speeds I only drive on the highway. At the end of the course the parents got to ride with the kids as they went with their deputy through the course. I videotaped both girls from the back seat, but seriously the speed and the in and out of the cones almost made me throw up. The video doesn't show the speed, but it was at least 40 miles an hour through this narrow course of cones. I have to say I was impressed with what they learned.

At the end of the day both girls were tired, but they agreed it was a class well worth taking. Both feel better having gone through it, and well, both Tom and I feel better too.

Braces off and...hello glasses

For me, everything that happens with my children seems to move in slow motion. Things that occurred years ago seem like months.  About two months ago the orthodontist wrote in Darcy's chart that it was time to take off the braces and to make appointments accordingly. I never believe when an orthodontist says that because I was only suppose to be in braces for a year and a half and it was twenty. (Things happened twice as long when I was a kid) So when I made the appointments I made them on my time and around activities and it turned out to be longer than the time designated by the doctor. Oh well. Darcy whined and named multiple people who could drive her to get her braces off, but I vetoed all of that. I wanted to be the one to take her.

"But Mom, I've had these things on for FIVE years!" Which I didn't believe until I went back to look at the picture I took of her the day she got her braces. (The braces that she had so desperately wanted until they stuck the appliance on the roof of her mouth.) Okay, maybe it has been awhile longer than I thought.

But then time flew by like it always does and this Tuesday we headed to the braces removal appointment. I asked her what she would do if he changed his mind. She told me she would go into the bathroom and cry quietly. I asked her if she wanted me to pull a Frankie Heck from The Middle, and she said, "Please don't."

I made her take the required before photo and inside we went. Because the orthodontist had gotten smarter since Madison had her braces taken off Darcy had been measured and fitted for retainers at a previous visit. This appointment was only a little over an hour and out she came. Only she wasn't smiling. I had fallen asleep in the waiting room so I was a bit discombobulated when she woke me and I demanded to see her naked teeth. Of course, she had the retainers on and threw my fuzzy haze and questioning I discovered that the upper retainer still had the dreaded device to prevent her tongue from pushing against her teeth. Seriously? That darn thrusting tongue!

The device, however, was not as large and poky as the device that had mashed her tongue for five years so despite some whining she has done well with it. Braces off! Woot! Woot! The euphoria lasted for two days.

On Friday she had her yearly eye exam. It was an exam made at her request as the electronic board at school and sitting in the back row in theaters were a bit blurry. The doctor we use to go to had left so we ended up with another doctor who spoke minimally and was only concerned about checking her for cataracts and glaucoma. His tech did the vision test and he wrote up the prescription. "You are good to go. All you need are glasses."

We ended up with the bottom color because the top color matched her hair too perfectly. I reminded her of how she had once upon a time wanted glasses and was so disappointed that she didn't need them after an eye exam that I had to buy her fake glasses from Claire's. She just glared at me.

We pick up the glasses in a week or so.

Her last day

Today was Madison's last day of high school. She still has a month of exams left, but those are done off school property so today was her last day at the school with her teachers. I didn't really think much of it. In my mind she still has another month. She still has late night studying and testing and getting together with her classmates to help put together their IB celebration dinner. She still has a month to go.

But then this morning I realized she didn't. This was the last time I would wake her at 5:30 am and nag her to get up and then drive her to school. I suppose if I had had more time to process all of that I would have been a soggy mess. As it was it was our typical morning with Madison. "Hurry up, Maddy." "Madison! Get up!" "I can't be late for school Maddy!" "Madison, do you have your lunch?" Darcy and I were ready and waiting outside for her this morning as the time clicked away. She was running around looking for a safety pin to hold up her make-shift costume. I made her take a picture anyway of her last day.

Apparently there is a tradition in the other two IB schools that the last day of school is known as Break Out Day and all of the IB students wear jail uniforms. This class at our school is the first graduating class of our IB program. They were the first, the newbies that paved the way in our section of the county. While we have followed much of the other two schools we have also branched out and started our own things. Madison and her classmates have always done things their way if they could and they didn't care for Break Out Day. Instead they have formed a different tradition. They are having The Last Supper and dressing appropriately and bringing food. 

So Darcy and I waited again while Madison ran back inside for the phone she had forgotten. We made it to school just before the bell sounded. Many of the IB seniors, dressed in their Apostle garb, were outside hugging and hooting. One guy helped Madison unload her belongings and carried in the cake for her. I watched as they all walked into the school and I drove slowly off. And before I knew it I was crying. 

How did she go from this...

to this...so quickly?