The earth went around the sun ten times: Coen

 I went in for pre-op testing in January of 2003, the day before my ear surgery. 

"Any chance you're pregnant?" The nurse asked me.

"Absolutely not." I said. I was using birth control. I had returned from the Peace Corps only eight months prior.  Tad had just moved back to Milwaukee.  We were in love and just finally in the same country again.  Both of us making roughly $12 an hour.  Things were in flux.

That night, Tad and I watched a movie, trying to calm my nerves before my operation.  Then the phone rang.  I picked up. It was my ear surgeon.

"Alie." He said. "I am sorry but I can't do surgery on you tomorrow."

"What?!! Why?" I said in alarm.

"You're pregnant."

I fell to my knees.

After I got of the phone, Tad joined me on the floor, next to the phone.  I looked up at him.

"I'm pregnant."

The rest, as they say, is history.

Well, we called my parents for council and they came over and talked us through our panic, our alarm, our shock.  And they left telling us they would support whatever we chose to do.  I am not ready for this. I kept saying in my head.  But I looked at Tad who was remarkably calm and assured.
 

"We would have done this eventually." he said with a wry smile.

I called my parents back.

"Congratulations." I said. "You're going to be grandparents." 

And ten years later, I have this boy.  He is sensitive and wise and hilarious.  He can sing perfectly on pitch and hit a home run in one swing and draw the most amazing pictures that come from his own mind. 

He spontaneously grabs my arm and kisses it, looking up at me with his warm, hazel eyes, saying "love."  He changed my whole life around in the one, tiny, unexpected spark of his existence and I am so glad he did.

Coen.  Happy birthday.  This kid was meant to be, and I believe he'll make his mark on this world.

Joan Baez, music, and longing...

Three years ago I wrote this blog post about Joan Baez. 

Last night Tad and I were looking for a documentary to watch and he suggested the Joan Baez documentary that inspired the above blog post.  I told him no.  "I feel a terrible longing when I watch that one and I don't feel like feeling like that." I said.
Tad looked at me.  And wisely said, "Well if it's that strong, then you should do something about it."

Damn it.   I know he's right.

So here's the thing.  If you don't feel like reading the above link... I thought I'd be a singer and an activist in much larger fashion than I am currently.  But what I am, larger than life, is a mom.  And I have absolutely no regrets about that.  And my career has taken me down a path that is amazing and exciting and suddenly I'm a sexuality educator for young (and not so young) people with disabilities.  And I am honored and thrilled to be doing that.  But I'm still not making music.  Since I wrote that blog post and declared I needed to go to an open mic night, I have performed exactly once.  At a farmer's market.  So what gives?

If playing music makes me happier than almost anything, why am I not doing it? 

What is it that makes YOU feel wildly alive and full of joy?  Do you do it as often as you would like?

What keeps us from doing things that make us blissful?

I have an incredible job out in the world at IndependenceFirst.   I have an incredible job at home raising Coen and Lucy.  I'm very happy...it's just that something's missing.   
Music.  
I still get out my guitar twice a month or so and play by myself or for my family.
But I feel like a I lack a community of people who want to gather and make music together...though I know I could create it if I tried or find it if I looked....

So how to find those people and get them together....

I know I need to do this. Tad's right.  If I can't watch Joan Baez without aching for a regular experience making music with others...then I need to do something about it.

Now, I just have to do it so I don't re-read this in three years and realize I didn't.

Rummage sale rant

First of all, there's this sign.  I mean, come on!  No kids allowed at a dinner party? Fine.  A wedding?  Sometimes I'm okay with that...  No more than two kids at a time in the convenience store?  I was probably part of the reason that rule was made.  But at a rummage sale? What gives?! 

So we went to this rummage sale on Saturday. And it is, make no mistake, a GOOD rummage. It's the Greendale annual (maybe even bi-annual) rummage sale held at the high school. There's tons of stuff and it's good stuff. 

But aside from the fact that people without childcare, and people who just might want their kids to try stuff on or at least be part of the choosing process can't even come in until after 10 kind of was strange to me.  And to my kids--see their faces?

Second of all, they close from 11-12 a.m.  I mean, what are they doing in there from 11-12?  Are they cleaning up? Straightening the piles of clothing? It's a RUMMAGE sale!  What do you need to do in there for an hour?  It's a big pile of used clothes! Come on!

So anyway, Tad and I got there to meet Tad's parents with the kids.  We arrived at like 11:30.  There were six people in line.  We went for a walk and came back at quarter to and there were like forty people in line!  Tad and I started making jokes about door buster sales, but no one really smiled at us. Can't say I blame them.  But we were thinking...why get in line for a rummage sale? Everything's all piled up on rows and rows of tables. It's not like you're going to get a better deal than someone else. What's the rush? I mean, you wait in line for half an hour just to go to the same section of table at which number 43 in line can go right next to you.

Thirdly, at Noon, it becomes a 1/2 price sale. Except for the items with red stars.  Those items do not go down to 1/2 price, no sir.  Because these people who have red-starred their clothes believe they are truly worth the full price (AT A RUMMAGE SALE!!!!) and if they don't sell for full price, they want their stuff back. 

Come on!

And don't worry!  I'm not ripping on Greendale. It's the same thing at the other neighborhood and community rummages.  I just feel like if you're rummaging your stuff, why try to make a bunch of money? It's stuff. Stuff you don't want any more. Because you're selling it!  I just think it should all go to half price at noon.  Your daughter's Christmas dress that she wore once is going to go to a good home...probably to my daughter who will wear it, like, fifty-nine times.  Just let us have it for 1/2 off. 

We did well, nonetheless.  I refused to buy any full--price items just on principle. Oh except for the book Coen chose since it was his only buy at the sale. Of course, later we found some child had cut multiple pictures out of it.  FULL PRICE! Hmph.

And the best part of the day was that we left, $45 later with lots of books and Lucy's fall/winter wardrobe.  And got lunch with their Nana and Grandpa.  At a restaurant. That allows kids. Open to close.

Lineage

It's funny how you'll find yourself doing something just like your mom.  You know? And you're just struck by it.  What?! I sound like my mom. How did this happen?

My mom and I had a bet when I was a kid.  I didn't like it when she said "Because I said so" in response to "WHY?!"
"I'll NEVER say that to my kids." I said to her.
"Oh. Yes you will."
"I won't!"
So we bet a dinner on it, I believe. 

Fast forward to me as a mom.  In fact, just the other night Coen was asking me if he could have tea in bed.
"NO!" I said.
"Please?????"
"Absolutely not!  We don't eat or drink upstairs and it's late and it's a school night. No."
"Daddy let me once. Please?"
"NO."
"Why."
"Oh, Coen! Because I said so!"

And that's not the first time I said it.  Nope.  I think I still owe my mom that dinner.

But there's other stuff too.  The way I wake my kids up in the morning is exactly how my mom woke me up. I turn their lights on. I sit on the edge of the bed and rub their foreheads and say "good morning..it's time to wake up." That is exactly how my mom did it. And I didn't do it consciously either.  I just realized one morning that it was the same.

I notice it with my own kids too, already.  Lucy makes the exact same faces as I do.  The other night when I was shaking my butt at myself in the mirror and making a face, (Yeah, I do that. Don't judge me.)  Tad walked in and shook his head. "That is exactly what I found Lucy in here doing like two hours ago."

Coen requests time alone, or time for introspection, same as his daddy.

Here's another example of some commonalities among parent and child.  Happy Friday.

My dad and his sand man.

Me and mine.

I may have been a deranged squirrel in my past life

I'm weird about a lot of things. I mean, aren't we all? Don't we all have quirks that a lot of people find completely strange and annoying but maybe one or two people like our moms or our partners or our best friends just think are the cutest thing ever?

Here's one of mine:

I save things.

Not in the nice way, like I have mounds of my kids' artwork in large Tupperware containers. No. I'm pretty brutal sorting that stuff out.
Tad will be like "Oh, we have to save this one!"
And I'll say "No WAY! She made that with stickers! That's not original at all!" And chuck it in the recycling. 
Or he'll hold up one of Coen's and say, "We have to save this one. Look at this monster he drew!"
And I'm like "Absolutely not.  He traced that!" And out it goes. 

No. I have this weird thing about saving other things...like food, household energy... And saving uses of things.

Like when Tad changes the sheets on the beds, like he did last night and I feel it is not soon enough to change them.  To me it's like wasting a use of both the washer and dryer! The sheets don't NEED to be changed yet!  Now we're using our appliances and we are just ONE use away from TOTAL BREAKDOWN!  The sheet washing thing has become such a joke in our house simply because of my insane reactions to seeing the "dirty" sheets tumbling down the stairs and marching up to rant and rave about how it's too soon. Now every time Tad changes the sheets, the kids yell jubilantly, "Mommy!!! Daddy's changing the sheets again!!!"

Also, I get insanely mad when someone opens the electronic minivan doors if it isn't necessary.  Seriously. That. is. weird.  I mean, I will go to such lengths as opening the back hatch and crawling through to the front to avoid opening the electronic doors, like I'm afraid of wasting one of the opens.  Like there's a limited number and I don't want to run out. I'm the same with the garage door.  I get SO mad when Tad closes the garage door and I'll be leaving soon.  YOU WASTED A CLOSE! I want to scream down the alleyway.  But I'm pretty sure I have a grasp on how that might look so I refrain. 

I have a cupboard in my house that is filled to the bursting point with back up boxes of cereal, crackers, granola bars, etc...  I'm not one of those emergency preparedness people either. I mean, if the world turns into a Margaret Atwood novel, I will be one of the first to die, I assure you.  But I just have this thing about having back ups.  But then on top of it, I get annoyed when someone in my family opens the back up box of Mini Wheats when we already have three perfectly good boxes of cereal ALREADY OPEN.  It sends me to the boiling point.  What is that about?

For example. This morning, I was in the shower and I could hear cupboards opening.  It entered my mind that Tad was probably looking for things for the kids for breakfast and I already knew what I wanted them to have.  I rushed through the rest of my shower so I could get out, to make sure he gave them the zucchini bread and not the oatmeal bars. (The zucchini bread was home baked so it has a shorter shelf life than the oatmeal bars which are store bought, so OBVIOUSLY, we should eat the home baked stuff first) So deeply I held this belief that I  practically ran, dripping, from the shower, hair still soaking wet. I saw the oatmeal bars on the counter and quickly swapped them out with zucchini bread. 

Later in the morning, when we were all getting in our cars, ready to go to work and school, Tad called out to me, "Alie. I promised them oatmeal bars and thought I packed them but they aren't here. Can you go get two?"
"I packed zucchini bread instead!"
"They don't want zucchini bread, Alie. They want oatmeal bars. I promised."
I tried to suppress my weird rage as I stomped back to the house to get the oatmeal bars, stopping only to say, "Are you guys sure you don't' want zucchini bread?"  Solemn head shakes were my answer.
"What a waste!" I muttered as I returned.
"It's not a waste. I'll eat all the zucchini bread myself." Tad said.

As they pulled away I thought, what the heck is my problem? I mean, who gets this mad about saving things? I decided I must have been some sort of backward squirrel in real life. Like maybe I was a squirrel in the Great Depression and I hoarded newspaper clippings instead of nuts and all the other squirrels told their children to stay away from me.  Probably.

Own it.

Children can smell fear.

You know they can.

When I've volunteered to take a group of children at my kids' school on some kind of going out, I have been terrified and they know.  They do! And they tear you from limb to limb.

Just kidding. These guys are harmless.

Mostly.

But my point is, they know when you're unsure.  It goes WAY better for me when I'm strong and confident and stand my ground with a group of kids than when I am terrified of them.

When my kids ask me a question and I am in any way not quite sure if I stand behind my "no" they will climb me like Mount Everest until they get a yes. 

But when I stand by my answer... When the NO is a resounding NO.  When I take a breath and think about how I may not know everything and I may not even always know what's best...it is ME raising these kids and when I say no I mean it.

And they're like. "Okay mommy."

When Tad and I were on our date night in Florida and we rented bikes to ride across the beach, Tad's chain fell off.  We pulled over and I was like "Don't worry. I got this." And I put the chain back on for him.  Tad was impressed.
"I didn't knew you knew how to do that!" He said.
I didn't.
I had NEVER put a chain back on a bike before.  I just pretended like I knew what I was doing and it turned out, I DID!!!

Even when I was in grade school. I remember my friend saying that she loved Belinda Carlisle and I didn't really like her or know her music but I wanted my friend to like me so I was all "Oh, I really like her too!" And then when she asked me my favorite song, I couldn't remember and said "Ummm...that Heaven one?" And she could read me. She knew I didn't love Belinda Carlisle. And then she said that she didn't like Journey. I totally did but, afraid of her not accepting me, I said "Oh, yeah, me neither...." She knew.  But another time in grade school when we all though we were growing out of toys, I proudly announced that I loved to make snow caves for all my Smurfs. I owned it. Yeah, I played with toy Smurfs in the snow.  And the next weekend two kids in my neighborhood came over to do it with me.

It seems like if you just own it, people are way cooler with it.

So whatever it is for you, something you're nervous about doing or don't think you can do.  Parenting issues.  Something you like that no one else likes....  Just own it.

Confidence. It sort of overrides all kinds of other qualities and things about a person...

Even when you're about to go Governess for the Von Trapp Family.

Everything and nothing

Fall is setting in.  This means a big schedule change in our household and in households everywhere.  It means going to bed and waking up earlier. It means less time with my family. It means ramping up for new programs at work, the school year starting, lunches to pack.  It means being tired at night. 

And right now though my body is drooping by 8:00 at night, my brain is going a million miles an hour.

I want to do so many things.

I want to finish this novel I'm trying to write
I want to start working again on my sewing projects
I want to play my guitar and write a new song
I want to sign up for another hula hoop class
I want to make some travel plans for the upcoming years
I want to BE CREATIVE
I WANT TO BE ALIVE!!

But by the time my kids are finally sleeping and everything is finally organized, what do I do? I watch the end of the Brewer Game while I look at Facebook and then turn on Conan O'Brien.  It's hard to be ALIVE all the time.  Sometimes I just want to be alive, breathing, zoning out. 

And then I'm just mad at myself for wasting the night away.  But is it really wasted time?  I tell myself, Well Alie, Gosh! You're a mom, a mom with a full time job besides and it's just a busy time of year.  This is LIFE! 

Which of course brings me to the age old question...what IS life? 
I mean, I think about the animal kingdom.  They just go through day by day, doing the same things.  Eating, sleeping, raising their babies and sending them on their way.  Trying to survive as long as they can.  I guess that's part of what humans do! 
And humans like me with full time jobs and full time kids and house with a mortgage and bills to pay...sometimes want to watch Conan, read the next chapter of their book and fall asleep.
But I only have roughly 50-60 more years on this planet and in addition to surviving as long as I can, I want to write a book, perform on stage, raise my kids, do good work, travel the world some more....  

It's a funny balance, isn't it?  Some living mixed in with some LIVING.  And I'm just trying to mix it right.