A Dull Roar

First of all, I have to say that my library is never a quiet place because, well, I work there. I never hesitate to throw back my head and laugh out loud if moved to do so and luckily for me, my librarian does too.  Secondly, we have at least 150-200 kids in here every morning before the bell rings.  They are waiting at the door for us as early as 7:30 and they trickle in when we open at 8:00 and completely engulf us by 8:45.  Some are checking out books, others are frantically finishing work, most are printing and the rest are here to check in with friends and TALK VERY LOUDLY until the bell rings.  We have classes in and out and moving through here continuously creating movement and flow of the noise.  We also have kids in here during their lunch period.  We used to let them eat in here but because they are kids and therefore slobs, that stopped by the end of the first marking period.  We can still get quite the crowd in here and the cacophony created is amazing.  The noise just surrounds you, it envelops you, it swarms over and under and through you and you get lost in a mindless buzz invading your brain.  And then, every now and then, it goes quiet.  You can hear the scratch of a pen over paper or the printer slowly grinding up for the next page. Or even better, snatches of whispered conversations from the back.  “….I told her I would….”, “He better not cuz…..”.   

A lot of the noise I hear is swearing.  Teenage swearing which is overdone and therefore ineffective for the most part.  I guess as an adult we learn to use it for emphasis or in my case, with beer.   The potty-est mouths of all come from our table of boys playing grown up Pokémon.  Magic? Magik?  However it is spelled, it brings out the longshoremen in these kids.  I actually get to tell people to watch their mouths.   If that isn’t irony, I am not sure what is.

Where can I get one of these?!

Oh, the technology!  Everyone is beeping and buzzing and tweeting and ringing.  They are listening to music so loudly I can hear it when they pass.  Forget Spanish, these kids need to learn ASL because none of them are going to be able to hear after age 40.

When caught in the tornado of noise and movement, conversations get started and end abruptly.  Sometimes we remember to pick the thread back up and continue with it, sometimes we forget.  Today’s involved a mom who came in and asked that we stop checking books out to her son, he is reading too much.  I got interrupted at that point and left thinking what a mean mom she was but apparently he is reading rather than doing any of his homework, so I am glad I picked that conversation thread back up before I started openly condemning her.  We also have coffee in our break room and teachers stream back and forth throughout the day and deposit words of stress or wisdom or “Wait til you hear this!” This definitely adds to the noise and fragmented conversations throughout the day.

This is a different environment from the very quiet library I worked in before and it took me some time to get used to the buzz, the business, the constant movement.  I told a mom today that it probably took me two weeks to stop getting annoyed at being interrupted constantly to realize that those interruptions were really the bulk of my job.    Now those interruptions have names and I know what classes they are taking, what they are reading, if they are having a good day or a bad day.   I get to encourage and admonish from a place called concerned adult rather than mom, and it is fun.  They tell me about their weekends and their classes and their lives and I love it.  One of my interruption's mom grew up in Buffalo!  We now bond over Weber's mustard and Bison chip dip.  I end up taking some of their heartache on, I just can’t help it.  These are good kids and they remind me that being a teenager is hard work in addition to being self-centered and self-absorbed.  And loud.  Really, really loud.

I think that the days of quiet libraries are definitely coming to an end. Hushing librarians and quiet study turning into urban legends.  I sometimes wish it wasn't always so loud, but given the choice over shushed and sterile or dynamic and vibrant, well, bring on da noise! 

Here's a Story...

You know what is a mixed bag?  Step-parenting: all the responsibilities of a parent and none of the control.  I have been doing this gig now for thirteen years and I am still struggling. There are times when I am awesome: cookies for her class, rides to wherever she needs to go, forgotten items run up to school to save the day.  There are also times when, quite frankly, I suck:  not ready for the level of parenting her age requires, being so frustrated by her lack of planning I am angry at her all week or just not wanting to drive her somewhere she needs to go.

 I met Maizy when she was just about to turn three.  She was small, vivacious, and verbose and liked having her Dad to herself.  She will turn sixteen, God help us, this weekend and I find myself thinking of the first birthday I shared with her.  On that third birthday, Bill and I took her to Chuck E. Cheese to celebrate.  I had no idea what I was in for as far as lights, noise, cracked out kids and primary colors.  Maizy and I bonded as we watched a girl pee right next to the ball pit, shake her leg and go back in.  We were united in horror.  We were also united in sobbing as we left: Maizy because she didn’t want to go and me because it was the most horrible place I had ever been to, I never wanted to go again and this meant I hated kids and never wanted to be a parent but loved this man who had a kid and wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  Bill wisely put us both to bed when we got home and I was pregnant six months later and the whole thing was a moot point. 

Maizy has spent most of her growing up spending one week at her mom’s and the next week at our house.  When people ask how that works, I tell them that it is hard work to share a child.  Think about it, you have two people who had a relationship and had a child, but the relationship did not work for various reasons and now they are confronted with those reasons again and again as they work to raise a child.  Good times.  It is hard work for the kid who is coming back and it is hard work for the kids are there the whole time to adjust.  It is hard work for the parent who is missing her and it is hard work for the parent who is trying to do everything for her the week she is there.  When she was little, she used to come back and touch everything she had left behind as if to say “I’m back”.  Now that she is older, she takes everything with her each week back and forth.  I have tried to talk her into keeping boring things like socks at each house, but even those get shuttled back and forth.  She wrote a story for English once on how she liked having two houses to be at and how she liked the different dynamics of each. However, she has recently told us that she finds it easier to lie when writing anything autobiographical.   Hard work, indeed.

Hard shoes and hair to fill

I wish I had friends who were also stepparents – we could commiserate and help each other through the sticky spots and understand truly what the other was going through.  I don’t though. I know very few real life stepparents.  I still think Carol Brady and Joseph when I think stepparents and that is intimidating.  Carol Brady?  She took on all those boys and never batted an eye, just smiled and drank coffee with Alice in the kitchen.  Joseph?  He raises the human form of God willingly and obediently.  And I make cookies for bake sales.  I remember when Maizy first played soccer and Bill was coaching and I introduced myself to the other moms as her stepmom; they almost recoiled.  Feeling slighted, I thought, just wait.  Law of averages, half of you will be divorced in five years and dealing with your own stepparent situations.  Ha!  I am not always a nice person.

I want Maizy to know I think she is an amazing young woman.  She is independent and smart and so funny.  Like laugh out loud funny.  I want her to know that I think her situation stinks even when I am being indifferent to it.  I want her to know that saying things she doesn’t want to hear is not yelling.  I want her to know she is a part of our family even when she is at her mom’s.  I want to tell her to be as nice to her sister as she is to her brother because when she is not it makes me want to be mean to her.  I want her to know and appreciate how much her Dad has done for her and because of her.  Basically, I want her to know exactly what is in my head and heart and agree with it and think I am fantastic.  However, that will probably not happen until she has a child of her own so until then, if she just knows that I love her and mean well, even if I am “yelling” all the time, that will have to do.

Happy, Happy, Happy

You know, it is not often in life that you get exactly what you want.  Especially after you have kids and your life and your wants and needs come second.  However, yesterday, my 40th birthday was spent and celebrated and lived exactly they way I wanted.

It actually started before my birthday as my new co-workers brought me presents and cake and began my birthday celebration early.  In the two months we have worked together, I have shared a lot with these women, probably over shared, and every day that I work with them and laugh with them and live my life along side them, I see so clearly why all those job interviews before were a bust.  This perfect job was not ready for me yet. 

I woke up feeling no older or different that I had going to bed at age 39.  That was a good start, right?  I wanted to start my day with a hard kettlebell workout and I got it.  I alternately felt young, strong and invincible and then old, feeble and decrepit.  My legs and lungs burned and  I had to lay on the floor when I was done.  That was not stretching, that was complete exhaustion. 

Then there is my amazing husband who took my wishes for a comfortable, easy going birthday party to heart even though he would have much rather cooked a real meal for everyone and made it fancy.  He still spent a lot of the day chopping and preparing but the man is happier with a knife in his hand and vegetables cut to uniform size.  He created atmosphere on our back deck with a tarp and sparkling lights and while I did not appreciate him scaling the trellis of our deck from the second story, I surely appreciated the ambiance when he was done.  I am sad to say he did not join us in the dress code of comfy pants though.  The polite Canadian in him could not wear pajama pants in mixed company.

And the well-wishes!  Texts, emails, phone calls and Facebook prompting my friends to wish me a happy birthday helped make the day feel truly all about me: new friends, girl friends I have known since kindergarten, family all wishing me a happy birthday.  My parents sending a care package of Buffalo goodies for everyone to enjoy: Sahlen's hot dogs, Weber's mustard and Bison chip dip were consumed with gusto.  And then my party where my house and my deck overflowed with the friends who have become my family.  My friends who came to my house in their pajama pants and comfy pants because that is what I wanted.  Friends who really did not think twice when I opened the door clad in my reindeer pajama pants.  Friends who made and wore shirts openly mocking my love of Buffalo and comfy pants.  Friends who appreciate my thriftiness....


Make lemonade?  That is silliness.

As well as friends who know I have no filter...

read who starts the game

 

I have to say that when Bill lit all 40 candles on my cake and I stood there with them ABLAZE and heard twenty plus of the dearest voices I know singing Happy Birthday to me, well, I was overcome. It was all I could do not to ugly cry right there.  Only the thought of someone catching that on film stopped the waterworks before they started because it really would have been full on open-mouthed, no sound sobbing.  In that moment I knew that from now on, every prayer I say has to start with "Dear God, I am sorry for being a sucky whiner for the last ten years because truly you have blessed me in abundance."

Perhaps 40 is all about realizing what you have and being damn grateful for it.  I saw it and heard it and felt it all with intense clarity last night.  When asked how I felt about 40 last night, I could only answer "Exuberant."  Today I would add awed, confident, fulfilled, blessed, content and even excited.  And in the immortal words of Phil Robertson, I would also have to add "Happy, happy, happy."

Wistful Thinking

You know, the longer I am at this full time work thing, the more I see what a sweet deal I had being a stay-at-home-mom.  Of course I didn't appreciate this sweet deal when I was living it. No, I was worried about money or I was bored and a little listless.  I love my job and I see how much I need this interaction and intellectual stimulation every day, but there will always be things I miss about being a SAHM.

1.  Napping.  Oh how I miss a good weekday nap!  Got a bad night sleep?  No worries, a little post-lunch nap will be in order.  Rainy blah kind of day?  Curl up on the couch and sleep some of it away.  Sigh, napping.  Naps are wasted on the Pre-K, let me tell you. 

2.  Coffee/Lunch with Friends.  Those gatherings during the week with my friends where we could talk and catch up and see each other.  Email is a poor substitute for face time and texting is even worse because my fat thumbs constantly misspell things.  My weekends are gone before I get out to see anyone, or if I do, I feel like I am rushing through it.

3.  Shopping during the week.  I used to go to at least three stores to make sure I got the best deal on things.  There were no crowds and I could take my time or rush, depending on the day.  Now there are always crowds, I am stressed because people can't push their cart up the right side of the aisle and if I forget something back in produce, well, we are doing without because there is no way in hell I am swimming upstream to get it.

Not 100% sure, but I think this is our HEB on a Saturday afternoon.

4.  Being up at the kids' schools.  I miss volunteering at my kids' schools.  I miss coming up and chitchatting with the teachers and staff and helping.  I miss seeing my mom friends and hearing the latest and feeling like we are all connected up there.  Right now I feel like the only thing I do to help at school is make sure my kids put on deodorant before they leave. 

5.  Little errands.  You know running the non-essential errands like taking library books back, dropping off the donation stuff before it takes over the laundry room, getting the dogs' nails trimmed.  Right now both dogs are tick-tick-ticking across the floor and it is driving me crazy but by the time I take them to get them trimmed, they might just grow long enough to curl around (like the guy in Guinness Book of World Records) and maybe they will thud rather than tick.  Actually if anyone out there can come to my house and trim their nails, I will make you bread.

6.  Making bread.  How obnoxious was I with my posts of freshly baked bread?  Working friends, how you did not come over and smack me in the face with said bread, I don't know, but thank you for your restraint.  I spent a lot of time baking bread and cookies and muffins and liked to drop extras off on friends' doors like a Baking Fairy. 

This new normal of mine is a frenzied, cluttered place and it makes me a little wistful remembering the calm of earlier days.  Sigh.  Oh well, back to the frenzy.  Besides, Thanksgiving and Winter Break aren't too far away, there will be time for napping then.  

 And I am totally serious about the dog nail/bread swap - let me know.


 





Letter to a Summer Bully

Oh Texas.  Twenty years in and you still disappoint me every September.  I have slowly learned to calibrate my expectations of you.  I know that it will be hot the first day of school as well as the thirtieth day of school.  I know not to rush you with my needs for cooler weather because I only end up making you angry and you act like a hurt child and keep summer going through October.  I know.  But Texas, I forgot that you can be so cruel.  This year you gave me a little tease of autumn on the first calendar day of autumn and I thought this is it!  Sweater weather!  Open windows!  Fall is upon us with all of its glory!  But no. It was just you, playing with strings of my heart, giving us just one cooler day and then BOOM.  Here we are in the high 90's again and all I got was a cold. 

Please Texas.  We had a very nice summer and I thank you for that.  It was not until the end of August that I found myself so weary of sweating and tank tops and heat that I contemplated moving and fantasizing about wearing comfy pants again.  This is usually a June occurrence, so again, thank you.  But please, I need fall.  I need open windows at night and I need the smell of crisp air in the morning.  I need temperatures that dip into the 50's and don't get above 78.  I need the trees that do change color to start changing.  You know you only let them shine a day or two before they dump all over the ground.  I need to see all those resplendent reds, orange and yellows and not just in front of HEB with its anemic pumpkins and sad, wilting mums.  I need to take a walk through leaves and hear the crunch of them beneath my feet and smell the sweet decay that rises up.  Please, I would like my electric bill to go down for a month before the gas bill rises to take its place.  And I would really like to hold a cup of coffee and enjoy the warmth of it spreading through my hands rather than the sweat pouring down my face.

Not to call you out Texas, but Buffalo does fall WAY better than you.  Yep.  I hate to be the one to tell you, but Buffalo, NY has this fall thing down.  Glorious you could call it.  Autumnal splendor some would say.  Cool nights, warmish days.  People up there are reveling in the majestic colors of the trees already.  They are drinking their cider and crunching through their leaves while wearing their cozy clothes and not sweating.  Fall fests up there are enjoyable - a celebration of summer's end and the pause before the onslaught of winter.  Fall fests here are just more kettle corn and hot, sweaty people wondering why they thought calling it Fall Fest would make it seem more like autumn.

Glorious, right?

Oh Texas.  I have tried so hard all these years to explain, please listen this time.  Autumn is just so special to me.  It holds my birthday month, it reminds me of years playing field hockey, or the year I spent making donuts at the cider mill.  Yes, I know my complexion was a mess but that $4/hour was a princely sum.  Fall is football games and crisp nights and huge harvest moons taking up the sky.  It is walks at night and mugs of tea and perhaps a light blanket as you sit on the couch.  It gives you time to prepare for winter.  Not that winter here is especially cold or harsh, but fall is a time to get your crops in, tighten up the house, bake to warm up the kitchen and a time to get your mind right. 

Please Texas.  Please give us some fall before you throw us into winter.  We need that pause between seasons of two extremes.  You are starting to act like a bully Texas, and I just won't put up with it anymore.  Well, I will but I will pout and whine to all who listen and eventually you are going to get a bad name for yourself.  They might stop flying your flag as high and stop making kids pledge their allegiance to you, Texas, in schools.  C'mon Texas.  Do it.  All the cool states are doing it.  What's a little cooler weather between friends?  Bring on the fall Texas and I will open my windows and doors and publicly declare you the best, ever.  I promise.

The F Word

I am looking it straight in the face.  It is out there, it is waiting for me without mercy.  I have watched so many friends fall victim to it this year; one by one they have crossed over, never to return.  Forty.  F-O-R-T-Y.  The ultimate "f" word.

The first person I remember turning Forty is my dad.  My mom rented a big light up sign that said "Happy Birthday Pete, U old fart".  I remember it vividly because our entire front yard was lit up, I was allowed to stay up until my dad got home to see it and because my proper spelling mother substituted "U" for "you".  Right there I learned that Forty was special: it was to be acknowledged loudly, proper spelling and grammar were to be thrown to the wind and you should immediately mock anyone turning Forty.  Valuable life lessons that were a million years away from applying to me, until now.

Me at the time of the "U Old Fart" sign

I have a friend who just turned Forty and being a go-getter, set goals to do something new each month of her 39th year.  She tried new things, went new places, even went back to work as one of her new things.  I admired her but knew better than to try and set something up like that myself.  I like to take the ostrich approach to change and bury my head in the sand until the last possible moment and then let the adrenaline and crisis coping skills take over.  I will admit that Forty is not one to be shunned and it kept showing up in my random thoughts throughout the year.  Ridiculous thoughts such as "did you see that baby....you'll never have a baby again....look how big your kids are..you'll never be seen as a young family again...if you went back to school now, you'd be twice as old as every one else in class....how can you have wrinkles and pimples at the same time....you should learn to knit."  Forty clearly has some issues.

Looking for inspiration, I typed "forty is" into the search engine and the first thing I got back was "Forty is the old age of youth".  Ouch.  I also got "forty is fabulous".  I don't like that one either.  I don't use fabulous to describe people (other than drag queens), places or things so I find it annoying.  "Forty is fearless."  Please.  I worried my way out of the womb and through the last 39 years, that will not be changing any time soon.  Then there was this book title that was something about women turning Forty and coming into their fullness.  Insert gag noise here.  Or Forty is the new twenty.  Is it?  Who says?  And why? 

Uninspired by the results of my internet search, I was forced to finally confront Forty and this is what I have found.  Forty is fit.  I am in much better shape now that I was turning 30.  No, it does not count that I was 5 months pregnant when I turned 30, I am still taking it as a win. Forty is family.  We are in the thick of the crazy years with one kid in high school, one in middle and one in elementary.  We are exhausted and stressed, but we have been blessed in abundance with these three.  Forty is factual.  I have been around, I know some things, I can share this knowledge, but I can still learn new things.  I know that the kid at the grocery store is carding me for my beer purchase because he is new and scared and not because he thinks I am underage.   Thirty year old me would have prided herself on her youthful appearance.  And finally, Forty is feisty because I am feisty and that is how my tens, twenties and thirties have been, so why not?  Forty will not be the old age of anything for me.  Do not go gently into turning Forty!

That said, I do ask that you do not put up a lit sign in my yard for my birthday as my son will quote from it like he quotes commercials and forty will get old very fast.  Or toilet paper my trees because my children will be so embarrassed when I take it down and bring it back in to use.  Forty will be acknowledged, it will be honored and it will be feted, but it really is just a number and we all know I was never very good at math.

For My Mom

Tomorrow is my mom's birthday, she will be turn something between 60 and 70.  As I tell my son, we never press a woman for her exact age or weight.

My mom was born to loving, devout, strict German Catholic parents.  She was one of twelve children, number four down the line.  The guy who wrote the birth order book would have his mind blown trying to say where each of the twelve fit in the rankings he created.  My mother had the misfortune of immediately following my super genius uncle and while she always got good grades, they were not as good as his.  Don't think too poorly of my grandparents, this was a time where children were sat in the corner with dunce hats on in school as well. 

given the awkwardness, I would put her age 12 here

My mom got good grades, graduated and went off to work a variety of crappy full time jobs because my grandfather did not believe women needed a higher education.  Ouch.  She met and married my dad and had my sisters quickly after and settled into being a policeman's wife.  My brother and I followed and after awhile she went back to work, working a variety of crappy jobs because by this time you needed a college degree to get good ones.  But my mother is nothing if not persistent and she found her niche in commercial real estate appraisal and did well.

The older and more hormonal my children get, the more I realize what an amazing mother my mom is.  The venomous looks my daughter gives me now makes me want to call my mom and apologize for my miserable teenage self.  She raised the four of us pretty much on her own as my dad worked a lot of nights and third shifts.  She carted us to various sports practices, plays, band and anything else we were in and she was at almost all of our games, our concerts and events.  We did well in school because she knew we could and it was important to her that we go to college.  I am an excellent speller because she made me look up words in the dictionary rather than telling me how to spell them.  Her inability to go to college really left an ugly wound in my mom's psyche and she raised her girls to think and know that they could do anything.  The world was as much theirs as it was their brother's.

My mom is an excellent baker and she made sure we all knew how to bake.  We did not have a lot of money and the good food (junk food) ran out quickly with four kids, but somehow there were always enough ingredients to put together to make a cake or cookies or something sweet.  My mom is also a good cook...when she follows the recipes and doesn't wing it or add things in she has lying around.  Ask me about the hot dogs, potatoes and peas....or, God help me, hamburger pie.

My mom is a do-er.  If something needs to be done, she is your woman.  Need a pancake breakfast organized?  Mary will do it.  Need a dozen cookies for a bake sale?  She will make you two dozen.  Need an arm or a leg?  She has two and she will gladly give you one.  Even pure exhaustion from caring for my dad going through chemo didn't stop her from taking care of others.  We spent two hours chasing down a wheelchair for a sick friend who needed it.  That is my mom.  Do and help and go until you just can't anymore.  I have had to tell her to stop being a Martha and to just be Mary: to take care of herself, to say no every now and then.

 She is an excellent Grammie and delights in her grandchildren.  She throws them Cheeto parties and lets them paint walls in the basement and make it a clubhouse.

She taught us all how to value family, how to be a part of our community, how to work hard and achieve our goals.  We are confident, mouthy and driven because of her.  We love our kids and expect good things from them because of her.  We are opinionated, purposeful and busy because of her.  I am so grateful for my mom, so proud to be her daughter. I know how much you value college Mom, but I learned more from you about the world than I ever did there.  Now on your birthday, go be Mary - not Martha.