Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 49

Unmoored

Photo by Herkie, via Flickr

A little after one in the morning, I woke from a dream in which I had just given birth to eight babies. In the manner of dreams, of course, I had no physical symptoms of recent birth, but all the same I sat there in a state of deep stress as I tried to figure out how I was going to nourish all these children. I just picked the first one who was awake and nursed her, then picked another one, and by the time I was finished with him, I knew very well I could not take care of all these babies.

There was a lot more to that dream, but that’s the relevant part. Because unlike most vivid, weird dreams, I woke up knowing exactly what my subconscious was trying to tell me: I’m spread too thin.

Being a jack-of-all-writing-trades usually works in my favor. If I’m feeling blocked or uninspired on the fiction front, I always have a column or a feature article to keep me busy, and of course there is always music. I never feel as energized after writing time as I do when I leave the piano having accomplished something.

Most of the time, I am focused and efficient. But ever since we got home from Disney, I have felt thoroughly drained of creative energy. No matter what area I contemplate, there seems to be nothing left to offer.

And here’s the thing: I know it’s not true. The short story I’m locked in mortal combat with is potentially the best thing I’ve ever written. The novel I worked on for a month (to the tune of 26,181 words, yippee-ki-ay) has a general shape; I know where it’s going and it’s fun and potentially even moving. And I have two flute projects underway that have interested parties waiting for me to finish them.

I just don’t know where to focus my energy, because nothing is calling to me.

Well, that’s not actually entirely true. The musical muse has been asking for attention for quite a while, but I kept having to put her off because of NaNo. Along with everything else. Self-publish pre-existing music? Finish that short story? Do some promotion for my books? Where do I even begin?

I know what has to happen. I have to choose one area to focus my energies and set other things aside for a while. But I don’t like leaving things half-done. I like being able to cross things off the list. To see, on my work log, words like “submitted” and “finish” and “send.”

I suppose it’s appropriate to find myself in this unsettled, uncertain place during Advent. Advent is about seeking and recognizing all that is unfinished in ourselves and in the world. Searching our souls to see where we fall short, and trying to reshape our attitudes and our hearts so we’re ready to receive the gift God sent so long ago and continues to send every day of our lives. Receive it and reflect it back outward.

“Be patient with all that is unfinished in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, liked locked rooms and like books written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then, gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.”

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Unencumbered. Sort of.

I stopped carrying a purse when I was a freshman in college. I had a backpack and my flute case, and whatever I needed would fit within them.

I stopped wearing a watch shortly after I started having hand problems my sophomore year of college. I realized that my stress level was much, much higher when I obsessed about time, and I really only needed a timepiece to get me up in the morning and make sure I didn’t miss class while I was holed up in practice rooms. Every classroom had a clock, and there was Memorial Union’s clock and the clock on the alumni center. There were clocks on the phones at work and a clock hanging on the wall at Target. And in the end, I developed a very, very good time sense.

I still don’t carry a purse. And most of the time, I still don’t wear a watch. Ordinarily, I carry a wristlet-wallet thingy that helps compact the necessities. But not while we were at Disney.

See, Disney has this little doohickey called a Magic Band now:

It came as part of the package we bought, so I don’t know how much they cost to buy alone. Probably a lot. Underneath the Mickey symbol is a waterproof radio transmitter that is encoded with, well, everything. It’s your hotel room key, your park admission, your meal reservation, and your fast passes. You can use it to charge things to your room account, so you don’t even need to carry a credit card if you don’t want to (although we were pretty darned careful about that feature). And any time a photographer took pictures of us at one of the parks, they would scan our Magic Band and all those pictures ended up on the web where we could look at them later.

The Magic Bands updated pretty much instantaneously whenever Christian added or deleted a FastPass from his smart phone app. The last day, Alex and I were doing a switch pass for Expedition Everest at Animal Kingdom, and the worker called him by name. It was not until that moment that I realized it probably also had our contact information programmed into it, so that if a child got lost, they could find us quickly.

The reason I’m going through all this is that the Magic Bands allowed me an experience I pretty much never have anymore. We had plenty of stuff to carry for the kids: blankets, jackets, hats, etc. (We took the stroller with us to carry most of it.) But as for me, with my Magic Band on my wrist and my phone in my pocket, I had everything I needed. I didn’t even have to keep track of a wallet.

It was really weird. In a good way. I felt so unencumbered. Much like I felt when I visited Disneyland like this:

Most of the time, I have to do a mental checklist any time I’m going anywhere to make sure I don’t forget something. iPad? Portable DVD player? Wallet? Keys? Sunglasses? Paperwork for whatever child I’m at an appointment for? Books? Backpacks? For one week, I got to feel at least an approximation of the freedom from logistical worries that I left behind when I became a responsible adult. It was really, really nice. It’s not sustainable in the long-term—I couldn’t work this way, take kids to practices and doctor appointments this way—but it was a really lovely break from reality.

A break that seems even more attractive today, when the post-vacation-and-short-week-with-sick-kids-and-lots-of-family-in-town craze gives way to the usual logistics that define my everyday.

Speaking of which…time to get the day underway.

Scenes And Observations Inspired By A Trip To Disney

While waiting for our dinner to arrive Tuesday evening (the Plaza restaurant, Magic Kingdom–brisket burger, as in, brisket on top of a burger patty), Julianna is writing in her homework journal: I saw Elsa and Anna. Christian is helping her spell and, as usual, pronounces it aaaaaaana. Nicholas shouts, “It’s not aaaaaaaana, it’s ahhhhhhhhna!”

“Oh, sorry.”

“BUT YOU TOLD HER TO WRITE IT WRONG!”

“No, I didn’t.”

“YOU TOLD HER TO WRITE AAAAAAANA, NOT AHHHHHHHNA!”

Parental giggles ensue.

*

Michael and Nicholas, wielding plastic cutlasses purchased at the Pirates of the Caribbean, are fencing by the Liberty Tree while they wait for Daddy to join us with funnel cakes. Michael, flexing his speech muscles, says, “I, am, Cap, tain, Huht! Hook! We, are, both, Cap-tain Huht!” We have many giggles about this, but it’s the next morning, back in the hotel room at Port Orleans Riverside, that the real hilarity ensues. Julianna and Michael have taken up swords against each other, and Michael, who knows that it’s a funny line, says again: “I, am, Cap-ain, Huht!”

Julianna, without missing a beat, shoots back, “We are Pirates who doh doo eee!” (We are the Pirate Who Don’t Do Anything!)

*

Busses are weird. We have universal regulations that force children to sit in masochistic five-point harnesses for seventeen hour car trips, and yet on a bus, they aren’t required to have any restraint whatsoever. School bus, monorail, shuttle busses. I find this dichotomy very puzzling.

The first morning, the bus we approached had all its seats filled. I asked, “Is there room for us?”

The driver chuckled. “For you and sixty-five more.”

I kind of thought he was joking. Until that night. And the night after. And the next, and the next. I actually stood on the rotating platform where the articulated bus turns. With my two children clinging to my legs to stay upright.

*

Speaking of Disney busses: the nighttime shuttles leaving the Disney parks encourage a strange, fleeting intimacy between complete strangers. Probably because we are sitting on each other’s laps and staring at each other’s waistlines at close range.

Julianna was in Heaven. She had captive audiences for twenty minutes. Well, she was in full-on Ambassador For Down Syndrome mode.

Someone asked me, “How old is she?”

“Seven,” I answered, and suddenly the bus driver—who was one of a kind, the only guy we had like this the whole week, cracking jokes and interacting with the passengers—shouted, “How many kids do you have?????”

“Four!” I said. “She’s seven.”

“Oh, thank God!” he shouted. “You were about to give your driver a heart attack! You do not want your bus driver to have a heart attack, that would be a very bad thing!” As the can of sardines bus full of people roared with laughter, I couldn’t help thinking of the online families I know who do have seven kids.

 *

This was a small crowd for the days we were there last week. Very small.

On the topic of “good times to go to Disney World”: If anyone ever tells you fill-in-the-blank is a great time to go to Disney, because it won’t be crowded? Read my lips: They. Are. Lying.

The week before Thanksgiving week is supposed to be one of the best times to go. But I’m telling you, I did not find our two days at Magic Kingdom noticeably different from the day we spent there on December 27, 2009—one of the busiest days of the entire year, the day they closed the park because they reached crowd capacity.

See how far we are from the castle? See those black things blocking the view? They’re heads. And there was a solid wall of them taking up the entire space between us and the castle. This is what a “slow” week looks like at Disney World.

Christian thinks I’m crazy. However, I distinctly remember that five years ago, we only had trouble navigating the park in the evening around the castle. All other times and places were fine. Plus, that day five years ago there were “magic hours.” We had the place virtually to ourselves for three hours before the crowds showed up.

This week, we came with the crowds and we stayed with the crowds. I had words with three different Disney employees because I was trying to meet up with my husband and there was nowhere to wait that wasn’t a “keep-the-crowds-moving-at-parade-time” walkway. I chewed on those altercations all week, trying to decide if I was at fault or if they were. I finally came to the conclusion that it’s nobody’s fault, it just is. I was stuck and they were stuck and we were stuck at odds.

Anyway, don’t go to Magic Kingdom expecting it to be easy navigating, that’s all. No matter when you go. We also went to Hollywood Studios and Animal Kingdom, and for the most part those two parks were a lot less crowded. But Magic Kingdom (and Disneyland in CA) are still the standard by which the Disney trips are measured.

*

If your entire vision of Disney had been shaped by magic Kingdom and Disneyland, and someone uttered the words “Downtown Disney,” what would you envision Downtown Disney to be? If you’re like me, you’d think this:

Photo by jimmywayne, via Flickr

Au contraire. Downtown Disney looks like this:

Photo by Peter E. Lee, via Flickr

It’s insane. Don’t get me wrong: In many ways, it’s a very good insane. But it’s still insane.

Enough for today. Still to come: reflections on kids, and on feeling like a kid again.

Observations From A Road Trip To Disney World

This is what has been occupying my attention for the past several weeks:

Planning, packing, cleaning feverishly in anticipation of, and then, of course, leaving.

But let’s face it. The only people who really want to read a post about Disney World are people who are, themselves, planning a trip to Disney.

So I thought instead of rhapsodizing about our trip, I would share some of the offside observations I had while on the road.

1. Until last week, I had never driven farther southeast than Nashville. I’ve flown to Florida, but I had never actually experienced the south. I hear a lot about southern hospitality (and I experienced some of that, most notably in Paducah, Kentucky, where we sailed into Saturday night Mass cough-cough-seven minutes late-cough-cough and the people were super sweet about offering us seats and tolerating our antsy kids).

2. As best I can tell, Kentucky, Tennessee and Georgia do not recycle. Or at least, they don’t believe in putting recycle containers in public, where travelers could find them.

3. I must preface this by saying that I live in a university town and I have always thought it quite diverse. We have a huge population of international students, a diverse group of naturalized citizens from many continents, and sizable African American and Hispanic populations. But when we stopped for dinner on Saturday, I felt like the minority. And that was a good thing for a white girl to experience.

4. Finally, some signage that made us double (or triple) take:

(because the best way to prevent more traffic fatalities is to put up distracting road signs….)

Uh…yup. Not in Kansas anymore.

Oh…kay, then.

Then there’s this:

What does that even mean????

And for the last, you’ll have to click through, because when it flashed by, I was so shocked, I couldn’t even get the camera up in time to capture it. Wow. Just…wow.

Sleep In Heavenly Peace…sort of

Christian came to bed last night, laughing after his nightly check of the kids. (He frequently comes to bed laughing after his nightly check, actually.) “Why can’t our kids sleep normal?” he said. “Alex is pretzeled in his covers and you can’t get them out from under him, Julianna sleeps on top of the covers, Nicholas sleeps sideways and has random body parts sticking out, and Michael refuses to have his arms inside.”

We got a laugh out of it, but I have to add that two of them also fell out  of bed overnight. We’ll chalk it up to being over-tired.

For your entertainment, here’s a collection of “sleep” moments I’ve shared over the past few years. Enjoy!

Checking My OCD Tendencies

Photo by Lee J Haywood, via Flickr

In junior high, I started wearing soft contact lenses. We had this system of sterilizing the contacts every night. You would put them in the case, put the case in a little electric box, close the lid and push a button, and it would boil the contacts for about an hour.

I was really paranoid about my contacts. Afraid that I would lose one. Every night, I screwed the cap on tight and then opened each side back up to check to make sure I’d really put those almost-invisible pieces of flimsy plastic inside. Then I’d close them up again, only to panic because what if, in opening the case, I had accidentally jostled them out without realizing it?

I would repeat this process three, four, even five times, in sheer, abject—and completely irrational–terror. Every single night.

You might think I’m exaggerating, because it sounds ridiculous, but I’m not. This was my normal world.

Being a pretty smart girl, I knew this was not okay. At some point, I started taking my paranoia in hand and refusing to allow myself to check a third or fourth time. But I often lay awake shaking with anxiety. It was not a great tradeoff, but that was what it took.

I suppose I have to admit that I’ve been wrestling with some form of anxiety (OCD?) for most of my life. I always hate to say something like that, because I’ve never been diagnosed with any such thing, and it seems presumptuous to act as if my struggles compare to those of other people who really have these conditions.

On the other hand, how many people go through life with a vague, terrifying—terrifying because it’s undefined–sense that they’re fighting something they shouldn’t have to fight? Afraid to admit it, lest they be labeled or told they need help?

Anxiety impacts the most banal facets of existence. The ability to get to sleep…or get back to sleep. The fear of having offended someone by saying the wrong thing. That one can impact sleep for days. I would rather pass off most responsibilities around the house to my husband, because then I don’t have to worry about whether I forgot something important. Planning for trips. Oh, man, that’s a doozy. You pack a suitcase, and then you can’t see what’s in it anymore. Did I really pack (fill in the blank), or did I only plan to do it?

I used to think I could engage in mental wrestling matches with my irrational fears, but I soon discovered that they fed off the conflict. I finally learned that the only coping mechanism is to think it through once and then ignore the mental screaming, the same way I ignore the whining of a kid who’s hoping said whining will make me change my mind about turning off the iPad/Wii/TV. Nothing I can do will make that whining stop. I just have to pretend it isn’t there. And eventually, the whiner gets bored and goes off to bother someone else.

Ignore it, and throw myself upon the grace of the Holy Spirit.

I think about that old contact sterilizer almost every night these days, as I take out my gas permeable lenses and put them away. The case I’m using at the moment is green on the right side and white on the left. I can see the hard blue lens through the left cap, but the compulsion to double check the right contact remains very strong. In fact, I usually do. But only once. Then I put it out of my mind, because by the grace of God I’ve learned to do so.

I can’t pretend to be an expert on how to handle irrational fear and anxiety. I would like to think that the spiritual stretches I have been dragged kicking and screaming toward would be helpful for others, but the fact is I only have my own experience to measure. I only know that it is a good soul stretcher for me.

Others who have been down this road: what coping strategies have helped you?

Updates On the Kids In 7 Quick Takes

#1: Alex

Unusually for Alex, he’s been bringing homework home this week. They have these four-page readers on different subjects related to the state of Missouri. This week’s was on the river system. Alex worked a while and then tapped his pencil on the map on the page, asking, “How do we have room for cities when there are so many rivers?”

#2: Julianna

We had Julianna’s parent-teacher conference last night. Her report “card” says: Julianna is a ray of light in our room. Each day she arrives with a smile and is always kind and respectful of all her classmates. At her school they break the kids into small groups by reading level and blend classes and even grade levels together that way instead of doing reading work simply by classroom. Not so long ago she was in the lowest of 6 groups; now she’s in Group 4.

However, math is still a bugaboo. I sensed frustration from her math teacher–but I assured the team that as much as she struggles, she’s doing the work (with intensive help, of course). By this time last year we were doing endless worksheets in which she was trying to fill in the missing number in a sequence. (__, 16, 17…) I wanted to cry every time the homework came home. This year we’re doing addition problems–the same problems her classmates are.

#3: Julianna encore

But the gem of the parent-teacher conference was this closing statement from her teacher: “One thing I love about Julianna is her passion for food! I’ve never seen a child get so excited about food!” Neither have we, sir. Neither have we. ;)

#4: Nicholas

Nicholas is finally almost healthy. But he’s still dragging. That’s what an ear infection, strep throat, and a third unidentified virus will do to you. Two days ago after school we had the worst battle of wills ever. It didn’t feel quite like the worst, because with my new outlook on how-to-handle-my-strong-willed-child, I was able to step back from the emotions. After the third major skirmish, he disappeared into his room and fell silent. In other words…asleep. And I realized anew that when battle lines are drawn, my first line of defense needs to be a nap.

#5: Nicholas encore

Nicholas has gone through three courses of antibiotics since the beginning of October. He’s allergic to penicillin, but we tried Cephalex for the strep. Cephalex has a small overlap sensitivity with penicillin, but we gave it a try. On day 6 he had a red spot on his chest, but it went away overnight, so we soldiered on. Yesterday he got his last dose. Within in an hour he was scratching his leg incessantly, but I didn’t put it together until he got undressed for baths. Holy cow. That kid had something like a dozen and a half hard red blotches on his body. No more Cephalex for you, kiddo. I’ve been telling him, “You are not allowed to get sick!” because he can’t take the antibiotics with the $5 copay, he has to take the ones with the $81 copay (I’m looking at you, Omnicef).

#5: Nicholas-and-Michael

Earlier this week, on the last of the many days that Nicholas was home sick from school, Nicholas kept screaming at Michael, “Don’t copy me!” “Stop following me!” Everything Nicholas did, Michael had to do. If Nicholas was sitting at the table writing, Michael had to sit at the table and write. If Nicholas played frog across the kitchen floor, Michael had to play frog across the kitchen floor. Finally I took Nicholas aside and gave him the same lesson Alex once got. “Michael thinks you are the coolest thing in the whole world,” I said. “He wants to be just like you. So he’s going to do everything you do.”

Nicholas got a little smile across his face and then, being the strong-willed tester that he is…set out to prove the hypothesis.

It was proved.

#6: Michael

The cutest thing Michael likes to do to copy his big brothers is carry their backpacks. Well, Nicholas’ backpack. Alex’s weighs about twenty pounds, for some reason I can’t quite fathom. Besides, it’s just a canvas bag. Nicholas has Spiderman on his. He puts it on his front and walks around with it sticking out like a Santa Claus belly. Absolutely adorable.

#7: Michael encore I’m realizing lately how differently I treat Michael than I treated the other kids at his age. He’s on the verge of three, but because his speech is so delayed, he still seems like a young toddler with freaky-advanced physical skills. (He can make the 3 with his thumb and pinky held together, and he can fasten and unfasten part of his 5-point harness. He walks down stairs every other foot without holding on to anything. He climbs those playground things that are meant for kids 5 and up. Stuff like that.)

It’s time for some of the adorable Michael-isms to go away, and I’m sure they will as he starts in his speech-language intensive classroom in December. Michael-isms like “helmet” for “hood” and “hut-hut-hut!” for “hug.” Well, I’ve gone on far too long. Have a great weekend!

NaNo Is Not For People With Kids

Photo by paloetic, via Flickr

I don’t know whose bright idea it was to pick November for National Novel Writing Month. I think I can safely say it was not someone with children at home.

When I was first exploring the whole writing scene and I encountered this crazy idea of writing a novel in 30 days, I read all the advice posts with bemusement. The advice boils down like this:

Don’t cook, don’t clean, don’t socialize.
Write junk, even if it consists of “I don’t know what to write,” until you figure out what to say.
Whatever you do, don’t stop and correct or tweak anything you wrote earlier.
Tell your family you are off limits for thirty days.

And that last one, right there? That’s how I know this sucker is meant for people without kids.

Consider the following:

Five brand-spanking new syringes–one each for the antibiotics prescribed.

My two middle children have racked up five, count ‘em, five, antibiotic prescriptions in the past six weeks, to accompany the four, yes four, doctor visits.
Between the two of them, those same two children have had five sick days in November.
Between the two of them, I have been up one to three times every night acting as nurse every single night for three or four weeks.
Quarter end and parent teacher conferences fall during November for, as best I can tell, everyone in the known universe.
Quarter end and parent teacher conferences include days off school. And they don’t overlap from one school to the next, at least in my case.
And who among my readership thinks it is even remotely possible that any child is capable of, much less willing to, consider Mommy “off limits” for thirty days?
This. Just this.

What happens to my computer when I pause for a bathroom break.

And oh yes–hello: Thanksgiving!

I tried NaNoWriMo once before, sort of as a test run. I think I got to fifteen thousand and had to admit defeat. I think I was delusional, actually, because I had a nursing baby that year.

I decided to give it a whirl again this year, because I was feeling intimidated by starting a new novel, despite having so many ideas for it that my head is ready to explode. This seemed like a good way to knuckle down and just get started, because that is, after all, the hardest part. (Except for the editing. And the re-editing. And the re-visioning. And the querying. And…well, anyway.)

I knew going in that I wasn’t going to “win” (which means hitting 50K), but I did expect more success than I have experienced thus far. It’s not bad, but the type-A German in me tenses up as my bar graph falls farther and farther below that line on the NaNoWriMo page.

The tough thing about starting a new project is that ideas aren’t enough. If the ideas are all involved in some disorganized Bacchanalia in your head, it’s slow, careful work to sort out the threads and put each element in its place. In the past few days of October I created a decent outline (also against the NaNo rules, I read recently, but to that I say, “Whatever!”), but even so, all the subplots and the enriching details are hard to grab hold of and organize. I don’t know the characters yet. I’m just discovering their voices. It’s a catch-22: I can’t really write their stories until I know their voices, but I can’t discover their voices until I’ve written their stories for a while.

As you might imagine, first drafting is a very uncomfortable process for me: not so much I-think-I-can-I-think-I-can as I will-if-it-kills-me-I will-if-it-kills-me.

But at some point in the process, I reach the continental divide, and things start to click.

I’m not there yet. But I can see glimmers.

Someday, perhaps my kids will stop requiring four doctor visits, six sick days, two weeks of middle-of-the-night nursing care and round-the-clock Supreme Court decisions over the blanket on the couch, and I’ll actually be able to do this thing for real. Until then, NaNo is more what we call “guidelines” than actual rules.

Agony and Ecstasy

Alex was nervous. Really nervous. But he was trying really hard not to show it.

It was his third time acting as altar server—and his first wedding. We called up our neighbor two doors over, who’s been serving for six years, and asked him to serve with Alex. Forty-five minutes before Go Time, Alex was dressed and ready and afraid his “experienced” buddy wouldn’t show, even though I’d called to confirm only a few minutes before.

“When is N. going to get here, Mommy?” he asked. (As an aside: I am only now beginning to truly appreciate the fact that all my children still call me Mommy and not Mom.)

“Well,” I said, and just then N. came walking through the baptistery and into the church. In short order, he too was suited up and helping Alex put things in place while Christian and I were timing the prelude and warming up. Mid-phrase, I glanced up to see the boys coming down the sanctuary steps beside us, N. looking debonair and dignified, and Alex at a dead run, his nerves showing in the ungainly gait as well as the speed.

It was the cutest thing ever, although I’m quite sure if my fourth grader saw this post, he would give me the Look-iest Look ever aimed at a mother by a child. And I thought: Why, oh why can’t we skip that awkward-new stage and go straight to the ease of experience? It’s so nerve-racking. Starting a new job. Learning to drive. That whole romance thing. Ugh. So awkward, finding your place in the world. I don’t think I found mine until I was mid-thirties, and still I find myself feeling awkward and out of place in new situations.

But then, I suppose if you skipped over all the awkward stuff, you’d miss the highs too: the exquisite agony of a crush, your first kiss (or anyway, your first good one; let’s be honest—your actual first kiss was probably on the “awkward” list, wasn’t it?), making the state band, the misty humidity of a night football game, with the air glowing and the voices coming over the speakers using words you’ll never remember, but which leave an indelible impression anyway.

So much my boy has to look forward to in the coming years. And in some small way, I get to experience it all again, through his eyes. Only this time I’m not chained to the rollercoaster as it bottoms out. I can pick and choose.

Seven Quick Takes

-1-

First out of the box this week: I am collecting “hilarious/awesome/tear-jerking things kids say about faith/God/religion.” Please, pretty please, share your kids’ in the comment box?

-2-

Updates to last week’s medical drama: a) Julianna is well, but still tires easily. b) I went to the massage therapist, who found that what I have is not plantar fasciitis but two of the “mimic” conditions. The problems lie deep within my calves and after one session yesterday I can already feel an enormous difference. Hopefully in another week–or less–I can start back to impact exercise. c) Nicholas came down with strep throat. A first in our house.

-3-

Photo by Mike_fleming, via Flickr

At 5:55 on the morning after his fever presented, I was working on the computer when I heard him whimpering as he went into the bathroom. I went up to him, and he wrapped himself around me. “When do we go downstairs and open our presents?”

“Uh….” I said. “It’s not Christmas, honey.”

“It’s not?”

“I think you were dreaming,” I said, and went on to remind him of all the exciting things still to be lived before we get to Christmas. He was crushed. To be honest, his forehead was so hot, I worried for a moment he might be hallucinating. Still, we got a chuckle out of that one.

-4-

This week was Michael’s special ed evaluation. He was tested at 34 months, so in order to qualify, he had to have a speech-language-communication “age” of 22.6 months. His “age” was 21 months. They decided to put him in a preschool classroom that was created basically, though not in name, for kids with apraxia. He’ll go four days a week for 2 1/2 hours beginning on the first of December. We’re meeting his new teachers later today.

I shared all this with my family by email and got at least two responses that were attempting to buoy my spirits for the depressing news, and I thought, No, no, you’ve got it all wrong. FOUR MORNINGS A WEEK with no kids in the house???????? I’m going to get so much done!

Ew. That makes me sound like a bad mom.

-5-

I have been doing National Novel Writing Month for the past seven days. I have mixed feelings about NaNo. This is not how I write, especially a new project. A book starts to flow when I know the characters, but I don’t get to know the characters until I’ve written them for quite a while. It’s kind of a catch-22. I don’t expect to “win” for a number of reasons, but I am trying to work for the moment as if I do expect to win, and I’m feeling the pressure. It’s high anxiety. Which is ridiculous.

-6-

And then I had a conversation yesterday with a friend who also writes church music. It was a wakeup call for me. I love writing essays and stories, and it energizes me–but I’m telling you, every time I sit down at the piano and write music, I get up feeling twenty pounds lighter. It’s like my whole body and soul comes alive. Once before, I did a major priority shift in order to make time for writing fiction. I think it is time for another one to allow me time to write more music.

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Finishing up with a grrr for extremely, extremely exciting things I’m not allowed to talk about. Sigh. I know. As I would say to my children, “Your life is soooo difficult.”

(No, I am not pregnant!)