Getting it together seems to be juuuuust beyond the tips of my fingers lately. Spinning around, I realize it’s the 9th of October already, and I’m stunned. How are the days flying by with little to no regard for everything I have to do? I’m dizzy.
The schools here are rather intrusive into family life and time, and I’m going round and round with them on what constitutes their right to my children’s time, and what I hold firmly as mine. On the east coast there is a substantive and noticeable difference in the intensity level, and I can’t help but see it with my west-coast eyes. To me it seems like a self-perpetuating cycle where people equate business and scheduling with being important and successful. I do not. Protecting my children’s right to still be children, to have unstructured play time, and time to just stare at the clouds and contemplate wherever their minds roam is a priority to me. And I’ll fight you on it. *lacing up my boxing gloves*
I’ve got a bunch of grad-school crap I’m trying to take care of too, but I’m so stressed, I’m not writing about it. Testing, program consolidation, grant writing, possible interviews in programs are consolidated, the inability to get answers yet… etc.
Jeffrey has been tapped to play the baritone tube (euphonium) for band. Much to Jeffrey’s dismay, the band director does not have the skills or music for the bagpipes, thus Bean has taken over the bagpipes as his instrument of choice. Be jealous of practice time at my house. Be very very jealous. You cannot even imagine…
The heater kicked on for the first time yesterday. That’s a full month later, at least, than it would have in Washington state- and we’re still a good ten degrees warmer than they are still.
General Conference (the grand poobah of Mormon meetings, held twice a year) was a bit rough for me this last weekend. Sometimes I wish we could abandon the rhetoric, and be a little more personal. I wish we could acknowledge that The Ideal actually constitutes less than half the members of our church, and that The Family comes in many shapes, sizes and variations. I wish we could hear more of talks like we got Sunday morning, and less of what we got Saturday afternoon. That’s all I’ll say about that.
I took the holiday yesterday and went into the District and hit up the International Spy Museum. It was totally irresponsible and I should have been studying or working, but I really didn’t care. It’s a cool museum with lots of Cold War and WWII relics and gadgets, and it’s weird to see things I remember now in a museum.
Still not sure about the haircut. It may take a while for this to feel like me.
I got suckered into watching The Walking Dead. I hate hate hate scary movies, gore, violence, and icky movies and TV- and I had purposely avoided this monstrosity of all the above. I’m forced to admit, while covering my eyes and peeking over the edge of the blanket is necessary sometimes, the story actually got to me. I just don’t watch the icky parts.
I have a new nephew, born yesterday in California. Auntie Heather is due next month, another friend had a baby on my birthday last week, and another is due in a few days. It’s baby season. Not for me! But for a lot of folks I love. So yay!
Dandelion Mama 
Not to discount your experience with how your children are spending their time, but I wonder if you are noticing an uptick in activities because of their ages/grade levels?? Like you, I’ve never been a parent who felt the need to keep my child busy, going going going all the time. Mainly that’s because I’m a bit of an introvert, but it was also because I really felt like they needed to learn that they wouldn’t be “entertained” all the time. I didn’t sign them up for a sport every season, we didn’t go to every church activity, if we had a free Saturday we went to the library to get a fresh supply of books and we were done! Typically they had one big activity per school year and that was that.
This year has been a huge change for us. Both of my girls all of the sudden have their own lives and social events and whatnot and some days (like today and this upcoming weekend) everything in my life revolves around getting them to where they need to be and back home again.
On paper, they still only have one big activity (yearbook for my 8th grader, drama club for my 7th grader) but they are just so much busier now. It’s crazy! And that doesn’t even count church stuff! (Which they are skipping this weekend because of previous Saturday commitments.)
I really thought I had until high school (one more year! Eek!) before things would become this scheduled. I weep for the free time I had, and for the free time that is rapidly disappearing.
I believe that we cheat ourselves out of so many opportunities to lift up people who are burdened, by this aversion we have to praising anything other than the ideal family circumstance. It’s one of the unspoken rules in our culture, and it does a great deal of damage. I could make this comment a lot longer, but I won’t. I’ll just say that when I think of people struggling to provide the necessary protection of family to their children in this harsh world, the heroic ones are people like you, Tracy, and others who find the most creative (and effective) ways to work around great obstacles.
I thought of you that Saturday, and my other friends who are not the “ideal” and I had to think (very bad of me, I know) it seems a lot of our leaders are very elderly and somehow still stuck in a 50’s sort of mind-set. I am so tired of cleaning up the giant piles of dung the elephant in the room leaves.