Well, That's Embarrassing

You're about to get a peek into how my brain works, so just allow me to apologize in advance for any permanent damage done to your own psyche. It's a stream-of-conscience thing, so if it doesn't connect thematically for you, don't worry about it.

1) The other day, I realized that I am the same age as a guy I dated when I was 25. Oh my gosh, I can't even. I have girlfriends in their 20s (some with kids the same age as my younger) and it strikes me as ridiculous every time I realize I'm literally old enough to be their mother. So *dating* someone two decades younger? "Be'er not."

2) One of the things this guy would say to me when he was frustrated was, "You're so immature!" To which I'd say, "I'm twenty years younger than you! What'd you expect?!"

3) In my early days working for Terra West Property Management, they rented out space at a restaurant/bar for us to have snacks and karaoke. For some reason, I thought it'd be really cool to sing "Hanky Panky" by Madonna. It'd be a very inappropriate song for all-ages karaoke, but it was just an adult thing, and this is one of the few female recordings with which I, an contralto, can actually sing. Anyway, I had sung it over and over during my commute (I guess I had the "I'm Breathless" CD? I don't remember that at all.) I was super excited, and on the drive over, this same guy was nervous about my enthusiasm. "Am I going to be embarrassed?"

4) He wasn't. I was awesome. And I should have broken up with him then and there because what a condescending killjoy. But I digress.

5) I've embarrassed pretty much everyone with whom I've been in a relationship. 

6) My ex-husband was constantly telling me I was talking too loud. My high energy about many things irritated him. And let's not get started on my 20th year high school reunion where I memorized a five-minute dance scene from Hairspray and recreated it while literally no one else danced. He wouldn't even look directly at me. Also, in this instance, my friend's husband said to my ex, "That's your wife up there. I'm glad it's not my wife." 

7) If I'd been married to James and he'd been there, he would have stood up on a table and hollered approvingly the whole time.

8) James has never been embarrassed by me.

9) That is incredibly freeing, and it's crazy how amazing it is to be able to be myself without worrying that someone is going to be ashamed to be affiliated with me.

This is where I should end this but, alas, something happened last night that changes things slightly.

We'd taken a late-night (not really, but it's getting dark so early now, it felt late) trip to HEB. I'd planned to go alone, but as I was walking out the door, Mal decided he needed to go, and so did his dad. After a crazy trip around the store gathering supplies for the week, we were finally done with check-out and Buddy Bucks and had made it back to the car. We were putting things in the trunk when James helpfully pulled my purse out of the cart. I yelled, "Stop! Thief!" and he glanced around to see if anyone were around to hear or take me seriously. I gasped, telling him that he'd ruined his perfect run.

But I still think it's pretty good.

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I watched this video about 500 times in the 4 weeks leading up to the reunion. It's really hard to view it and not just be incredibly happy and optimistic. 

Catching Up

It's been a hot minute since I blogged, I suppose. Heck, James wrote an entry about a week ago and I never saw it until just now.

Anyhoo, I was kind of waiting for a dramatic statement and the moment came and went, so it seemed like time to check in.

James lost his job the week before Mal's birthday. He had quite a lot of PTO, so I was thinking it'd be really cool if he got another job before that time elapsed, and we came out square, or even ahead. But we didn't. This time of year is a bugger for finding tech jobs. We're fully prepared to have to wait until after the new year. We'll be fine, we just have to dip into stuff that's supposed to be for our future... but I'm grateful that it's there to fall back on!

Incidentally, this round of job-hunting has been ridiculous. Tech jobs are a bear to acquire. There's typically a phone screen, then some technical test(s), then Skyping with people, and THEN an in-person interview, which might also have more tech stuff. Or variations on that model.

James has been applying mostly for remote jobs, but did have one live interview in Austin, about two blocks from where we used to live off-campus. It was a 3-hour interview, and he drove allll the way into town, and the guys who were supposed to interview him had apparently skived off early for ACL Fest. Another guy did interview him, but he was convinced that the "nice to have" portion of the job description (which James has never done and told them this before he ever went in) was actually mandatory. Then another guy in San Francisco did a video interview, but because it was two hours earlier than it was supposed to be (since he was supposed to finish up after the other couple of interviews), he hadn't actually looked over James's resume, and asked fluff questions that he wouldn't have had to ask if he'd been prepared.

Other than that, four different interviewers have canceled/postponed lengthy phone screens the day of, sometimes within half an hour of when they were supposed to start. In fact, one company who had scheduled James for a three-hour call first thing on a Monday contacted him early in the morning and said they'd decided not to hire until after the new year. Don't tell me that they didn't have that information before the weekend and just impulse-changed it at 7:45 on Monday. No. They could have told him earlier and saved him hours of preparation on Sunday night.

Also, there's the Mal factor. I've been getting him out of the house well before the calls are supposed to start, so James can have some mental prep space. And we get involved in something, then James messages me to say, "They're postponing until next week." Ugh.

That's a potential issue: We'd LOVE for James to work from home. One of the companies he's in process with right now (I think he's completed three of seven (!!!) steps, and had a second phone call postponed yesterday) says their guys only work 40 hours a week. If you are in tech or know anyone in tech, you know this is unheard of. It would be so cool for him both to be here AND to be able to turn it off after 8 hours per weekday!

However, Mal doesn't totally get the "I'm working" boundary yet. He gets it if James's blackout curtain is closed (yeah; the office doesn't have a door). But if James gets involved in something unexpectedly and doesn't shut himself in, Mal can't read body language and will go in there and start chatting, or playing guitar, or asking the name of an obscure Star Wars character.

So it falls to me to manage that.

Usually, if I'm involved in starting dinner or paying bills online or whatever, and Mal disappears into the back of the house, I don't have to stop what I'm doing to follow up. If James is working at home, I'll have to. It'll just take some getting used to.

With Mal and me getting out so much, we ARE eating out more often than usual, at a time when we are otherwise cutting back on spending. But I'm trying to be frugal about it, anyway.

Today, for instance, we went to Toys R Us first thing, with Mal understanding we weren't buying anything ("But I'm going to play with everything!" Great!). He played there about 45 minutes, then we left, and we did pick up a box of Cars fruit gummies for $2. Then we went to Chuck E. Cheese where we spent about 45 minutes and zero dollars. I had 33 credits left over on an old card, and Mal played enough to get a little rainbow lollipop and a few gummy Ring Pops. He was happy, and didn't mind leaving.

He DID want pizza, but now that he's 3, we'd have to pay for him to eat the buffet, and he doesn't eat $6.49 worth of pizza. However, I looked it up, and Cici's lets kids eat free until they're 4, so we drove over there and, even with my getting a soda, only spent about $8.60 for both of us to eat lunch.

We stopped at Target on the way home, for some lunch meat and household stuff I don't count as a "day o' fun" expense, plus Mal got to see more toys, so it was a bonus visit.

All told, we killed four hours at about $2.50 per hour, and came home really full. Not too bad.

Toys? Who needs toys. This Swiffer is my best friend!

So, that's what's going on around here. No cool stories about how we beat the system and made money doing it. But cool stories about, you know, it getting cool! Loving the weather and looking forward to Thanksgiving. And putting up the new tree for the first time. And Christmas. And a new job adventure for James.

Gratitude for my Family

It's that time of year again.

You know, that part where you get maudlin and actually remember to tell people that you care about them.

Oh, wait, am I the only person who does this?

Is this the first year that I've *ever* done this?

(It isn't. But it's still pretty rare. I tend to remain pretty self-involved).

I'm incredibly lucky when it comes to my family. I don't talk or write it enough. Especially when it comes to the people I never see.

Mal's the most obvious person here. He gets all the attention. I think that suits both him and D just fine.

They're both great kids. I'm incredibly lucky on both counts.

And then I also have a wonderful wife, who deserves more credit than I can ever give for what good adults both those kids are growing into.

I take a little bit of credit for good taste where she's concerned.

But, really, there's a much broader net involved here.

I spent most of my formative years with two people who were wonderful to me and gave me access to two big, wonderful families. I didn't have any idea how lucky I was in the genetic lottery until long after I'd grown up and gotten a chance to see just how bad most families suck.

My parents split up somewhere about the same time that I hit puberty. I wish they'd done it years earlier (after they'd had Khrys, of course), because they just were not happy together.

I mostly blame my dad for that one: I'm pretty sure Mom would have gone along and been happy if he could have. I guilted her into talking to and trying to forgive him as he was dying, and he told her that he felt like he'd never had a chance to be happy.

That sucks for him, and I wish he'd had a happier life.

It makes me appreciate mine all the more.

My parents both remarried. The step-families I acquired weren't the same as the ones I grew up in, but they're mostly good people.

Well, there are some really bad apples in the barrel. But I still stayed pretty lucky.

Then fast-forward a few years, and Laura was kind enough to join her family with mine.

I know she has a lot of family I haven't met yet.  I know she also has some bad apples in her barrel.

But the ones I have met are wonderful additions to my life.

You know who you are. Thank you, more than I can ever say, for sharing your wonderful daughter/sister/aunt/cousin/former-roommate/photography subject/partner-in-crime/pyramid brick/dance partner with me.

I kind of like her. Just a little bit.

Happy Birthday!

To have kids or not is a very personal reality, whether it's a decision or a life circumstance. I don't believe that either having or not having children is harder, better, morally superior, more fun, leads to a fuller life, etc. So that's not what this post is about. It's about the single biggest point which my having a child has driven home to me.

Donald Miller writes in "Blue Like Jazz" about how his life at one point was basically like a play in which he was the lead role. Any time anyone else came onto his "stage" with a request or need or just wanting to be present, Miller felt like his great story was being infringed upon. I think, if we're honest, that's how many of us live, whether we are aware of it or not. We simply *are* the stars of our own show, and often other people *do* get in the way of where we were going in a "scene."

Sixteen years ago today (almost half a day ago, at this point), I started upon a journey that would be a constant attempt to remind me that it's not all about me. Sure, I'd seen this in other relationships in my life. But since I have never lived with anyone else for all of sixteen years, I've never had to face the fact over and over again that I tend to make every single thing about me, on some level.

Kid sleeps through the night? Is quiet and well-behaved at restaurants? Is at ease with strangers? Is smart? Is talented? Is empathetic? Well, yeah, I'm proud of my child, in that case. But some of that pride spills over onto me. I'm a pretty good parent. I'm disciplined. I am fairly clever myself. I model good things.

And no matter how often I realize this and try to recalibrate, it still usually slips back as a default.

It works on the negative, too.

Kid has severe anxiety? Is super introverted? Has no apparent need for close relationships? Doesn't pick up on social signals? Can be accidentally (really really) rude when triggered? That's probably on me, too. What if I hadn't broken up the family of origin? What if I hadn't blanched so much at signs of neediness? What if I had better modeled self-control?

Anecdotally, I know that all parents struggle with blaming challenging things in their children on themselves. I have a friend whose child is about D's age and also has anxiety, and though their family is intact, she questions whether her being so depressed when pregnant caused this.

But there is also actual evidence that, aside from drinking and smoking, what parents do doesn't really affect their children, who mostly just remember whether the parents were kind or not.

(Incidentally, that link includes a statistic that people with children ARE actually measurably less happy than childless couples, if my friends who don't have kids ever want to stick that in someone's pipe and let them smoke it when they're serving garbage.)

The biggest crime around making my child's triumphs or struggles about me is that it renders me less capable of seeing them as their own fully-fledged human and either purely celebrating or altruistically helping them, as the situation demands.

And so I readjust. Often. Sometimes daily. Sometimes multiple times daily.

There were so many things I couldn't have foreseen when I first became a parent and was overwhelmed with the minutiae of having an infant: What do they want? Another diaper?! Why aren't they eating? Is that jaundice? Why aren't they sleeping? Why are they sleeping so much? What am I supposed to do about hiccups?!

The most uncomfortable challenge my elder child has presented to me has been a years-long look at my beliefs about God and the nature of the world. It started with simpler questions, which, over the years, simple answers no longer satisfied. As the questions, to which I responded with sincerity, but often using pat doctrinal scripts, intensified and I realized the answers were unsatisfactory, I had to really take a look at my own faith. Was is mature faith and I just needed to wait for this kid to catch up with me? Or were there depths I was missing?

Honestly, one of the tensions I face daily is the fact that I'm an open book and D covets privacy. So while I can't say anything too specific or share too much, I just want to note on this, the sixteenth anniversary of a life-altering birth, that I am grateful to be making this often-surprising life journey with my young adult and all-around amazing person. Happy birthday, D.

The Magic of Music at Morrison Elementary

The other day, an old friend tagged a bunch of us "Morrison kids" in a Facebook post, and it got me to thinking about how special my elementary school was. I was kind of tempted to think it was just a product of its time (late 70s to early 80s), but having talked to several people, including my husband (who is my contemporary and with whom I went to high school, but we attended grade school in different towns), I realize maybe it was just a truly spectacular pocket of the educational universe that we had the privilege of walking through.

There were many things that made the school pretty different. For one, the classes were in an "open classroom" format, meaning that there were two "pods" in the building: One contained 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and a 1st/2nd split; all separated only by rolling bookshelves and cabinets, which were probably taller than the youngest kids, but not the older ones. The other space had 4th-6th grades. Kindergarten was its own giant room off to the side, with so many interesting stations and areas. Anyway, some years, I remember all four teachers in the 1st-3rd area had their desks together in the center of the space, and some years, they chose to put them against the far walls.

Except for my 5th grade teacher, I had educators who seemed not only to love teaching, but to love me specifically, and I feel like they probably made other kids feel that way, too. But it wasn't just the teachers. My friend Theresa Baker and I adored the janitor so much, we'd often purposefully tighten the lids on our Thermoses just so we could ask whoever had lunchroom duty if we could go get him to open them. Looking back, of course the teachers and the janitor were on to our little game. I hope he enjoyed the visits. He was extremely kind to us.

Then there were the field days, the fall festivals (oh, the cake walks!), science fairs, spelling bees, and the fun Santa's Workshop "store" where we kids could shop for our family members' Christmas presents without tipping Mom and Dad off to what they were getting.

But the one thing I remember as having made my elementary years the most enjoyable on a consistent basis were our music classes. First, please let me introduce you to one of the most fun adult women I had ever met up to that point (I'm sure when you only have to deal with kids for an hour at a time, you have the luxury of being a lot more fun than "regular" teachers!):

There. In the middle, between my sister and me (yeah; I know. It was 1986 and I was in my awkward phase. Whatever.). That's Becky Pickle. Her laugh... I can't even describe it. I just hope she enjoyed life as much as it seemed like she did.

Music class was, I believe, twice a week, and held in the big, wide-open multi-purpose room (that last time I drove by was being used as storage, sadly) where we could do things like play cage ball if the weather were too bad for recess. We didn't learn to play instruments, per se. I think we did do rhythm sticks and recorders, but things like orchestra and band were introduced in 5th grade and were separate animals. Also, she introduced us to notes and time signatures and all of those things, but it wasn't primarily a music theory class. Really, we did a bit of everything. Mostly, we sang. A lot.

We put on programs.

For Valentine's Day.

For Christmas.

For something having to do with the founding of America, maybe?

We learned such a rich variety of music, too. We sang a bunch of folk music. American, sure; but also Japanese ("Sakura"), Cuban ("Peanut Vendor"), Jewish (The Hanukkah Song), as well as some Caribbean stuff that I remember specifically.

Some of the songs were beautiful and I remember to this day. Also, I can see now that some were basically just variations on other scales set to words so we could be introduced to them and recognize them. And some were exercises in rhythm. We also learned to square dance. And we learned tinikling.

Even more importantly, I think, Ms. Pickle let us to choose things to sing, setting aside time in class for various students who wanted to to perform. I never listened to country music, but had Sylvia's "Nobody" memorized, having listened to my friend practice it over and over. I remember when a couple of girls sang the MASH theme song. I felt very in on something mature and maybe even wrong that we were listening to our classmates singing about suicide.

I think Ms. Pickle made music fun and accessible to everyone. We didn't have to try out to be in the programs; we were all automatically in. And we practiced a lot, but ultimately, it was just a great time.

If I could wish one thing for the education of everybody's kids, it would be that enrichment programs could stay around. These are some of my best memories from elementary school, and I feel so fortunate that I got to be one of Ms. Pickle's students.

More singing.

We did a lot of programs.

I'm fairly certain that this "Caribbean" night might be considered culturally insensitive today. But I remember feeling very festive. 

Mal's Three-Year-Old Brain

This morning, Mal and I had a long drive all the way through Austin to meet my sister and nephew at Altitude Jump Park. We were listening to Weird Al's "Mandatory Fun" album, which has been Mal's recent favorite, and of which I approve, especially after six months of the single "Music Together" CD that's been his go-to.

As an aside, his favorite song is "Sports Song," which has a bridge that repeats, "We're great and you suck" over and over again. When he was belting this at the grocery store yesterday, I can only imagine the admiration other people had for my parenting prowess.

Today, though, at the beginning of the requisite polka, Mal asked, "Mom, do you hear the accordion?" I did. A few minutes later, "Do you hear the trumpet?" That one impressed me because it was muted. Then when we went back to "Sports Song," he asked, "Do you hear the xylophone?" It's specifically a glockenspiel, but that's a xylophone, so it counts. Then he asked, "And now you hear the drums?"

I was really amazed. James has an app on his phone that has different instruments, a sample (sometimes pretty bad) of the sound, and then the name (which is pronounced by an autobot voice, so often mispronounced, or just wrong -- i.e. a djembe is called a bongo). Regardless of the quality of every portion of the app, Mal loves it. He scrolls through it and goes back and forward to his favorites. He actually has used it a lot less recently than he did six months ago or so, but apparently it's stuck.

Two days ago, this video popped up in my Facebook memories. It is from last year, and shows Mal running up and down the hall at our hotel in Waco on our way home from the State Fair of Texas (which we're missing this year; sigh). What struck me, aside from the fact that he just has always had a crap ton of energy, is that he was basically non-verbal. He says, "Daddy," and something else that might be "fast" or might be something he made up. He does the sign for "cry" and makes a vocalized motor noise to indicate the elevator. But he just wasn't talking yet. He had just turned two. The "average" vocabulary at that age is 50-75 words, and adding more daily. He just didn't have that. We weren't worried, though, because he knew a bunch of signs, and we knew he could understand us.

Cut to exactly a year later, and I couldn't count how many words he knows. He talks all the time. He knows all of the words. Take-away from this: Don't waste too much concern on milestones if you don't have other reasons to worry.

"All aboooooooard!"

Mal has very strong opinions about how things should be. If I rearrange the colored chairs at the table in his room after I've vacuumed, he says, "You made a 'stake!" and puts them back the way they were before, which, of course, was completely arbitrary in the first place. He has a set of "rainbow" drawers in his toy cubby, and when James purposefully rearranges them, Mal tells me, "Daddy just made a 'stake!" and fixes it.

One of his funniest (to me) insistences is that I am not to wipe his nose when he's crying. If he's particularly snotty, I'll ask, "Do you want me to wipe your nose?" He'll say, "No! I want to cry!" I tell him that he can still cry, but it doesn't matter. There have been a couple of times that what has come out of his nostril is so gross, I insist and swipe it. He says, "You took away my cry! I wanted to cry!" For some reason, those things are connected.

Mal really seems to like lists. I posted a video to Facebook tonight of him going through is Star Wars workbooks, naming every character on front. He does the same thing with the Cars 2 set Nana and Pappy got him for his birthday. He also does it with a set of print-outs of Paw Patrol characters we have. He also likes to "count" things, although, even though he can count out loud, it's sometimes difficult for him to keep track of what he did and didn't count. If he skips over something, he'll usually come back, but then he'll recount whatever is after that that he did already count. I show great restraint in not explaining that he made a "'stake."

Cute times. I love this age so much! He's still an energetic handful, but, gosh, he's funny.

Things People Say #1: "She's Really Let Herself Go"

There are a lot of things that people say that make no sense to me. Either they're vapid to the point of being meaningless or they're rude and unhelpful, or they seem duplicitous, or some other thing that just sticks in my craw. I'm going to do several posts about these, and this is the first. If you have any thoughts, or any phrases that similarly bother you, please leave a comment and let me know.

The first one I want to take a look at is "letting yourself go." In the title, I used the feminine pronoun because, honestly, this is the one I hear levied the most. It typically refers to a female who perhaps used to be more conventionally "attractive" than she is now, whether it's because of hair color and style or weight or clothings choices. And when this woman is seen after a few years, whether it's an actor who's been quietly living for decades or an old church friend someone sees at the grocery store, some people will either say out loud (or in website comments) or think to themselves, "Man! She's really let herself go!"

Besides my basic belief that no one should feel comfortable judging the appearance of another person negatively at any rate, this line of thought bothers me because it makes a false assumption: That the lady in question used to care enough about herself to "take care" of herself, and now, through whatever life changes that have happened, she has apparently become lackadaisical about it and has just gotten uglier and let everyone down.

That is utter bullcrap, friends.

If you've followed me for long, or if you've known me for many years, you probably realize that my weight has fluctuated a lot during my life, mostly resting on the "higher than I'd prefer" end of the scale, but with three very dramatic weight loss events during my 20s and early 30s. If you met me when I was 26 and then didn't see me again until now, you might be tempted to think, "Geez. After she had kids, she really let herself go!"

But you'd totally miss the point.

I let go of stuff, but not of my self-care, self-esteem, or respect for my husband and family.

See, to maintain a weight that is below the level deemed by the medical community to be "overweight," food and exercise has to be the main focus of my life. I have to plan what to eat, buy those things, eat different food than my family does, track every single thing I put in my mouth, refuse random bites of food my toddler wants to share with me, spend lots of time fantasizing about the next time I "can" eat, puzzle how to consume the most amount of food with the fewest total calories, etc. I also have to take at least 90 minutes every other day to do strenuous exercise outside of the normal rhythm of my life.

For 20+ years, I worked out every other day, save about 3 months when I lived in a travel trailer in my mid-20s. I either did a combination of the Jane Fonda 1980s and Dolph Lungren 1990s workouts, or I went to the gym. Save Zumba, I never enjoyed a minute of it. I thought it was cool when I could run 5 miles (at 195 pounds, by the way), but I HATED running. I was proud of how many sit-ups I could do with no one holding my legs, but I never enjoyed the actual sit-up part. I dreaded working out, even when I did it at home while watching television.

I did both of these regimens because society, and in a couple of cases, people near and dear to me, told me that being big is gross, unlovable, and shameful. My natural base weight wasn't good enough. It had to be lower. And I took the message so seriously that no matter what I weighed, I never felt great about it. I never looked at the scale and went, "That's it, then. I made it!"

But even if I had, there's this myth in weight loss. It's called "maintenance." It's the idea that you have to work really hard to lose weight, but once you get it off, you transition to an easier phase where you just have to maintain that weight.

Actually, maintaining your lower weight is much more difficult than losing it. You can eat fewer calories, and you have to work out harder, especially if your work-out uses your own weight, ironically making the work-out easier once you don't weigh as much.

It requires a huge amount of energy: physical, emotional, and mental.

And for this chick, it just stopped being worth it.

I want to play with my kid instead of insisting on an early bedtime so I can get my work-out done. I want to eat when we go out for ice cream. I don't want to have to pull out my phone every time I eat a grape lest I forget to log it.

We eat mostly vegetarian meals, whole grains, and the like; and I get quite a bit of naturally-occurring exercise keeping up with my preschooler. It's not sustained target heart rate for fat-burning, but my body does what I want it to do and is quite reliable

If someone sees me and thinks less of me because I am not sad enough about not having worn a size 12 in 5 years, then they have it backwards. My life is fuller and happier and better now. I let go, yes, but not of my self-care or self-view. I let go of some vanity, and of requiring an approving eye to make me feel worthy of love. I let go of spending time doing something I found drudgery because I decided you don't make someone you love do stuff that sucks the life out of them.

I'll admit: a big part of this freedom to me has been living with someone who loves me unconditionally. Not being afraid that I'm going to lose the affection of the person most important to me in the world goes a long way toward giving me permission to be myself and feel comfortable about it.

So maybe your reacting negatively to your high school sweetheart's letting her hair go grey or stopping wearing heels says more about you and your need for an attitude adjustment than with her mental or physical well-being.

Maybe "letting go" isn't about not caring, but about caring for more important things. Maybe it's maturity and priorities and contentment. Maybe, instead of judgement, congratulations are in order.