Christmas Day

 

Photo by Wesley Tingey on Unsplash

Guys! It's been hard this year. I am not sure what is going on. I am not sure if it is the uncharacteristically warm weather, or the fact that I didn't do the proper Christmas lead-up rituals (I never did get around to watching the musical Scrooge movie, It's a Wonderful Life, any Meg Ryan rom-coms, or even a Little House on the Prairie Christmas episode. It just didn't happen for me this year. 

    Alec is playing along, wink wink grin, about Santa, but I know he knows and now I have no more little children. And it's okay. It's just life, but melancholy is seeping into my bones today. I miss my mother immensely. When this feeling would hit in the past, I would go to her house Christmas night, a brother or two would come over and we would play games and get a little tipsy. That home has been gone for 13 years now and I am just making the best of it. My own grown girls have other people to see and Christmases to hold, and it should be that way. But here I sit with three big boys. 

    Honestly, I think the problem is we went to visit the kids dad and grandparents today. For years, this was typical Christmas day travel, a drive, a meal, present opening, a walk, a drive home. I had another adult with me. Having not been with Karl since 2021, that romantic link is gone, but there was still an underlying friendship and comfort which is just slipping away now. Everything is different. Last December, the kids' grandpa had a stroke, and though he was home for Christmas, he was very weak and things were much-changed. Over this past year, we have been driving out to see them at their house or meeting them halfway at an arcade for a couple hours. Initially there was talk of when he would feel strong enough to come to Springfield, and it seemed as if he was getting better. But now, I think, this isn't going to happen. I think so many lasts have already occurred for the kids relationship with their grandparents and they do not know it. So I was the cheerful ex-daughter-in-law, happily going along, walking with the kids outside, because the grandparents seemed too tired. His grandpa did manage to pull himself up the few steps to the deck and sit with us a bit. He did not walk to the car to wave us goodbye as usual. 

    Karl is weaker each time I see him. He is five years younger than me, but his body is weak and he moves as if he were 15 years older. He has tremors from his medicine and he is need of good dental care. It is painful to see. He did get me some thoughtful presents from the market in his small town, the only shopping he really has. I really need to work on teaching Liam to drive. At some point, Karl's parents will be gone and the boys will need to go visit their dad. I don't know if I can be that link forever. I don't know. It's hard.

    And it hit me today, each visit could be a last. Of course, that is always a possibility, but now it is becoming a likelihood. This could be the last Christmas meal Maria cooks for us. This could be the last cash-filled envelope they hand the kids. They have already stopped purchasing the little toys and thoughtful gifts. The kids no longer play on the floor of the sunroom with a new toy; their grandparents no longer put up a Christmas tree. I may never sit on the sun-drenched deck while the boys run among the trees, placating their father who is desperately trying to maintain a relationship with them.

    It just feels a little sad. 

    However! All is not lost. The new episodes of Stranger Things are coming out tonight and Gabe and Alec and I have plans! And next week, Tierney and Jake and her kids are coming over to watch the final episode and I am so looking forward to that. I need to plan more game nights, too. There was a streak when they just weren,t working out, and I stopped planning them. But I need to start again. It's worth the effort. 

Merry Christmas! Maybe I will watch the shows this weekend, and refill my spirit:o)

How I feel:

How I want to feel:

A Week Off-Long Awaited

   

Photo by David Stamm on Unsplash

  We have been informed that next year, we will only have the typical Wed/Thursday/Friday break for Thanksgiving, but for this year, we have the whole week. And it is delightful. The weather is quite Novembery today-damp, grey, cool, but not cold. This is Southern Missouri, you know. I awoke quite early, around four, and delivered food for a few hours. After that, I came home and was suddenly very tired. I think the food delivery all weekend finally caught up with me. And now, I am slowly working on straightening the library for Thanksgiving. It's pretty straight, floor swept, but with three boys in the house nothing lasts for too long. I have been sitting near the faux fireplace heater when I am too cool and then away when I am too warm. It's never just right, is it?

    My thoughts have been peaceful-a discovery of self. Or a rediscovery. At times when I am too stressed, I feel fragile, flippery (is that a word?-I feel it), outside the world and odd. When I am relaxed, I feel fine. I know I need to build relationships, but I am okay as it is. Sometimes, driving around, delivering food alone, I come to all the conclusions, and I understand it all, but it slips away before I can share. I think it all boils down to not learning healthy boundaries, not being safe talking about feelings growing up, and not being taught how to deal appropriately with strong feelings. 

    As a parent, I wanted to do so much better, but I know I didn't talk about feelings enough either. I sort of thought maybe if we all just kept our chin up, it would all work out. 

    Eh, well. It's a process, I suppose. I think the real strength is not in unbridled optimism, but in the knowledge that even if it doesn't work out like we planned-we will get through it. 

    Anyway, there's much more to the journey, but it doesn't all need to be shared. Sometimes I wish I had learned so many lessons so many years ago, and perhaps that is what a good therapist can help someone do, but you know me. I'd rather take the long way and buy something fun with my money. 

    Work is fine. It isn't easy, but it is fine. Sometimes it is boring, but let's be honest. Everything is boring sometimes. Sometimes I thought about teaching math and new classes coming in and out all day and I wondered if I was up for that the rest of my life. I knew I wasn't feeling it for cross-cat. At least in my room, I get to make my schedule, teach a wide variety, and do things my way. As it is, I am slowly adding more. I know I could do much better and much more, but my brain will lock everything out, refuse to do something new until, somehow, it loosens, and clarity and understanding wash over me, and I can see and add something new. I simply cannot force myself to learn/change until that chemical wash floods my brain. I really can't describe it. Does anyone else feel this?

    I really long for a warm, cozy, fisherman sweater, tweedy, menswear-inspired wardrobe this fall. I am not buying clothes this fall, but it is what I want. 

    My backyard fence needs repaired. I am waiting someone to volunteer-name their price. It is hard always asking for help. No, not hard. Just discouraging when noone wants to help. 

    I am eager to travel somewhere. But, bills first. I haven't really been entertaining the idea of travel, because I want to pay down my debts. Then I can focus on the fun. For now, so much else exists to derive pleasure from. The rushing warmth of morning coffee. The joy of a payment hitting my account. A meal the kids enjoy. A good YouTube video, and snuggling into bed at night. All of these bring their own magic to an ordinary day.

    I do want to shop. I want to find the perfect item which holds the essence of the feeling of .... something...I crave. Some lifestyle, some dream. Something magical that puts the pieces together and ties a bow on the top. 

    I really must visit a cozy New England lighthouse on a stormy, blustery day soon. I think that is a reasonable thing to expect. Cozy candles in lighted windows, and white curtained paned windows promising warmth and companionship. This is what I need. 

November-oh month of joy!

       Okay, the title may be a little over the top. I do always love a good November day, however. I probably depart from Anne on this...I am not sure Anne would love a November day. But to me, the wet, the grey, the fallen leaves, all represent something-something beautiful. I think nostalgia is wrapped up in a November day. It's been a challenging couple of weeks. Two weeks ago, I got such a bad cold, and then last week-while still somewhat sick, I hurt my back. Not sure how I hurt it-stretching, restraint, moving classroom furniture, or maybe a combination of the three, but it has hurt for a week now. It is now getting better-I was able to Uber after work today for the first time in days. I still have to brace myself when moving from sitting to standing-taking on my weight to stand is painful, but otherwise, I think I am on the mend. 

      I do have one major looming problem-I have no regular coffee grounds in the house for tomorrow. Which means I will have to out with my car before I have a cup of coffee, in order to get a cup of coffee. I know-scary, right?

    Entertainment-wise, I have been enjoying season 2 of Maxton Hall. I mean it has its element of unbelievable, but it is still nice to watch.

     This is the first Christmas in a while that I feel very behind on shopping. I have just been so broke this year. It's not the most pleasant way to live, always juggling this and that, but what can I do? I have been unable to keep up with the housework much over the past couple of weeks and I am really hoping I am well enough this weekend to straighten and clean the place up.  

    My job is weird. I never see anyone. I see the same few teachers in the hall, but I don't have a lot of time to chat. There is always so much to do. I don't go to meetings with the other sped teachers-I don't even know all their names. But whatever. People usually get on my nerves anyway. 

    I thought I had more to say, apparently not.

     

A Second and Happier Post

 

                                    Photo by Luke McKeown on Unsplash

It was spring of 1993. My husband and I drove to Hampton Beach in New Hampshire. The weather was warmly cool and ocean breezy. I walked out on an outcropping of rocks stretching into the sea. I was wearing a new outfit. To my 19-year-old self it felt so perfectly Atlantic oceany. White denim shorts-not too short, a v-neck thick white cardigan, and a raw silk tank in a perfect deep sea foam. My shoes were white keds-with the little blue tag on the back-my first pair of shoes with branding on them (well, I think I might have had a pair of Nikes in 5th grade). 

The waves crashed up and ocean spray rained upon me. It was perfect. 

A couple months later my mom would visit with my brother, stepfather, and stepsister, and we would taste the fresh fried scallops from the vendor. Deliciously hot. 

There was a rumor that people who drove alone on Pali Highway in Oahu might look in the rear view mirror and find they were not actually alone. I always found the night breezes through the palm trees rather eerie. I don't think I ever drove Pali Highway Eastward alone. Driving home from my Trigonometry course at Leeward Community College at night had its own moments of eerieness, however. I only went to college one semester in Hawaii, but it was a successful venture. My composition instructor asked to use my research paper as her example for the next semester, my world religions web page turned out good (thanks to my husband's coding-though we couldn't get the java to work right), and Trigonometry kept me busy many an afternoon, sitting on the swing working and erasing, working and erasing while the kids played nearby. 

But nights  in the dark had a quality. When Brian worked swings and mids our first year there, going to sleep, even on base was so scary. I guess part of it was my young age and belief in supernatural things. The young are so believing. I grew accustomed to it. The wild loneliness-not wild like the mountains, but different. The isolation was real, but different. Even near the airport (we lived on an airbase next to the Honolulu airport), you could feel the vastness of the ocean all around. We were just a dot in the great large dark water. 

When I would get Tierney and Caleb to sleep and Brian was there, I would slip out for a walk around the "big block." The moon was brighter and whiter there. The stars were lovely. The scent of plumeria was intoxicating. I would hurry home, sneaking up on Brian, who had a tendency to chat it up with other women online. Looking back he was so wrong, but I also could have loved more. I always had my guard up. But we could talk until the the small hours of the morning, which is something I could never do with anyone else. I do miss that. 

When Tierney, Caleb, and Taryn were young in Missouri, and they spent several weeks with their dad in the summer, I fancied myself a budding astronomer. I would get up early (because that's how I roll-always), and have a sweet mango for breakfast. I'd walk up to Missouri State some days and learn General Chemistry 2. Not a premed gal-I only got a B, it's so hard for me to get motivated, but still longing for the stars. I would come home and make a lean cuisine, Enchilada Suiza (?) I think was my favorite, topped with a handful of romaine and hot sauce. For dinner, a slab of salmon, dripping rich with sizzling fatty skin and a handful of blueberries. Then when the sun would go down, I would grab my binoculars and head out to the yard, to see the stars would show me. I had such hope for my life. 

I think if my life had themes or rather...what is that word that I am searching for? Motif? It would be morning coffee, stacks of books, fiction when I was younger, but more nonfiction later-because the internet ruined my concentration. Stargazing, but never really getting good enough to know the constellations. Always hopeful-grasping at the idea or essence of something I could never quite reach. 

Today's  my mother's birthday. I miss her, and I know she misses me, too.

I really just want to be wealthy, living in a big metropolitan city, soaking in the lights, the sounds, the life. Is that too much to ask?

I'm Fine, but Time to Whine

                                                           Photo by Sajad Nori on Unsplash

I haven't been writing much. What is there to say?

The whole of my life can be summed up by loneliness and a strong desire to be alone...except when I don't want to be alone. 

It's funny how the same things affect me year after year. What changes is how I view what is happening. Who is/is not to blame. 

As I have said before, I learned in my forties that I am often the problem. So much of my life, I was caught up in this idea that it was everyone else and I was being mistreated-I was the victim. That is not to say I am just a bad person who deserves a bad life. I just realize, I am who I am. I feel like I learned so many really important lessons late. Maybe too late. Because as I have also said, knowing may be half the battle-but...it's just half the battle. It isn't the tools, the guts, the energy to go out and fix. 

I am lonely.

I am still heartbroken over not teaching math. I know I wasn't teacher of the year. I know the kids didn't like me much. I know I had a lot of room for growth. But I was finally challenged and wanting to grow. I wanted to be successful. I miss teaching slope, and equations, and graphing so much. If I could change any decision in the past year, it would have been to just say no when the principal asked if I was willing to switch to family and consumer science. My second choice would be to just stick with family and consumer science. It would have been fine. 

I just knew I would become more of the outsider than I was. I would be pushed out of the 8th grade teacher group, that I was already just a fringe member of, and on top of that, I would be in the same hall and I would have to see them being all friendly without me. It would be a lot for my rejection sensitive soul to bear. So at first, moving back to sped made sense. I liked the sped staff. I would move downstairs and could pretend I wasn't being pushed away (or rather, just forgotten). But...then I just felt this despair and anger towards the principal because she KNEW I wanted to teach math and she just didn't want me to. She wanted my math skills teaching sped math and I HAVE ALWAYS disliked teaching sped math. Always. So here I am. 

Don't get me wrong, I like my job. I like the kids; I like being in charge of my schedule. I like not having to do some of the more stupid stuff teachers have to do. I am not a huge fan of being kicked and punched and having to restrain kids. I don't like having to try and come up with lessons ranging from Kindergarten to fifth grade. I don't like not knowing what I am supposed to do with the students with multiple disabilities who are nonverbal and hardly move. They don't really teach this stuff in college. 

I hate writing IEPs. They are so mindnumbingly dull.

My paras are great, but one is moving away after first semester, another is pregnant, and wants to stay home with the baby, and the other just wants to leave because her daughter is going to high school next year. And they are all conservative. I stay out of their political discussions, but sometimes I think they know. 

November has settled in and the darkening afternoons are depressing me. I know when Christmas kicks in, it will be a little better. I am just so danged lonely. 

I keep thinking how can I fix it? How can I fix the loneliness. Go to church? I just struggle with consistent beliefs. Especially now that the Christian Right has turned into Nazilike zombies, I am just over it. I thought Jesus was supposed to change your heart--these people are hateful. 

I could go to book club at the library. I asked a couple people about joining one last year, but I wasn't wanted. Well. I probably would have been too shy to go. They have dinner clubs for women in town. I could maybe do that. 

I hardly get out of my room at work-I can barely take a conference, but once or twice a week. I guess I could force one, but I would need to leave my room because there would be kids in there, and I feel such a sense of responsibility. It's hard to leave. I rarely talk to people at work, though they seem kind enough.

But that's the thing. Why bother? People seem eager to get to know me and then it just fades away. Time and time again. It has to be me. I am too boring. Too self-centered. Too selfish. Too paranoid. Too protective of my self. Obviously the fear is I have borderline personality disorder, but if I do, I think it is on the mild side. I think of my friend Christy in high school, who more clearly had BPD. She would swallow pills after a fight with her boyfriend and tried to run another exboyfriend off the road. I am not there. I am a little more self aware than that. But I do shut down and lock people out and some part of them wants to them to know and feel a little bit of pain for not loving me. I suppose people can pick up on that. 

I always did say the wrong thing. Or it was wrong when I said it, maybe. Anyway, it's fine. It is just the dark early evenings getting to me. Tomorrow will be better. 

There was so much more to say. Perhaps a second, happier post is in order. 

Ch-ch-ch-ch-Changes...They are Afoot

 And I am sad. I guess a grieving process is normal. I woke up without malice, completely accepting of the whole crappy year I have had, and then that is when the Universe offered another door. That tends to be how it works, I suppose. I am not thrilled about working until 4:30 next year. I probably won't be able to tutor. I haven't had much luck in getting online jobs-which sucks, because I LOVE working online. When I volunteered to change jobs, I overlooked those little things. Oh well. What's done is done. I would rather make decisions quickly because I AGONIZE over them otherwise, and I still second-guess myself. So why not just make a quick rational decision and deal with the emotional fallout later, because it will happen regardless.

A new school. New people. A new job. I am a bit nervous. I want to start NOW so I am not too overwhelmed when the kids show up. I am sad that I didn't make a bigger impact at Hickory. I may just be a back-of-the-room, behind the scenes kind of person. I kind of hate that. That isn't who I want to be, but alas social anxiety.

I am still praying for an online job for evenings and weekends, and I will also do tutoring, but if not, I'll figure something out. 

Looking forward. I will be happy when everything is official and I can get into my room and work.

The loneliness is pressing in tonight. It will be okay. 

Summer Pain in the Membrane

 I am sad. I am sad. I am sad. What am I, everybody? Right. Sad.

God. I am struggling. My pool is green. The late July storm, the uneven yard, the boys have been so rough on the pool. It has a slow leak, just like the GD front drivers side tire on my car (and I bought all new tires in March!).

How, how, how am I going to do this job? How am I going to show up and face all these people I don't trust and who don't have faith in me every day and maintain a good attitude? How am I going to be an assistant to the new hire who got my job? The principal flat out told me she wanted a deep male voice managing the 8th grade math class and then hired a woman. So it was always me. I was the failure. How am I going to be nice when I am humiliated, devastated, and so publicly a complete failure? I mean, obviously, I have to be nice, I have to work, but for the first time I had a job that wasn't mindnumbingly dull and I failed at it. I just feel so sad. My j button isn't working and I have to pound it 2 or 3 times to get it to work. So I am throwing myself into planning how to decorate my tiny classroom, because what else do I have, and I can't focus on one thing. I decided on the cozy collection from Schoolgirl Style, but I bought the print at home version and the browns keep using up all the yellow ink. I keep ending up with pink rather than neutral copies. I have already gone through 2 color ink cartridges. Then I ended up buying woodland type stuff on temu for the class. WTH? It won't even match. I just keep shopping away my pain and I am so broke, my credit score is low, low, low, and I still have to pay to have the 1/4 of a big old tree that fell on the fence and into the neighbor's yard cut. I HAVE NO MONEY. 

And on top of it all, I forgot. I can't remember what I was going to say. The on top of it all suggests something big, haha. 

Oh man. I want to go camping and travel. But I am afraid of both the man AND the bear. I don't wanna be eaten by a grizzly in the Rockies, nor do I want some sadistic guy messing up my camping trip. I ache to be married again, but experience suggests it's not a good idea. Plus I really have zero sex drive at this point. Menopause is good for something I guess. I don't know why people complain so much. It's kind of freeing. I am not officially in it yet, but far enough along. I guess if I had someone I liked enough the sex drive might come back. Who knows? Who even cares? Dorothy Boyd was so right in Jerry Maguire. A bath, a good book. Well, she was complaining, I think, but I am not. But still, I want to camp. There should be an escort service where you can just hire a well-vetted man to travel and camp with your family and do the heavy lifting. Build the fire and sit around it. We don't have to talk=most things people say are so obvious anyway. That'd be nice. Eh well, I probably can't afford the gas and my car has 191k miles already.

The hard part for me is hiding my feelings. People will ask are you excited? I don't like to lie. It's inappropriate to tell the truth. And honestly. It will be fine. It will all be fine. Fine. Fine. Fine. Fine. At least the Sped staff are good people. Almost every sped teacher I have met has been down to earth and pretty decent as far as humanity goes. Can't say that for everyone.