A Mother's Musings and Mumblings

So I was driving down the highway crossing the state (again) last night when I saw a billboard. Now it was late and I have been going more-or-less non-stop for over a week so I can’t claim that either my reading comprehension or my humor are at their best but there, on the side of the road, was a huge sign from a ministry encouraging me to dial 1-800-GOD-SLAW.

I realize that you can’t put an apostrophe in a phone number and have little doubt that the number was supposed to be “God’s Law” but at that hour of night, in that state of mind, it was funny.

So here’s the question for anyone driving by this post:

What would God Slaw be made out of? Clearly not cabbage as that is “Cole Slaw” and I know of no god named Cole. So what would it be made from?

And if the question is offensive to you (not my intent) then here’s your question: What other number could they have come up with that didn’t lend itself to humor by mis-reading?

(and with that, she disappeared back into a puff of smoke with a smile on her face and a promise to return on her lips)

HSW nearly has her room packed up and Thing 2 is starting to sort out where to put her things in the new house. WF and I are working on coming up with a date for mediation of a new custody agreement. Iggy and his BFF are working on finding jobs in the area we’re moving to. My contract is signed and the lease soon will be. The entire family is getting uprooted to follow me off to the next stage in my career. All of which begs the question:

When do I quit feeling like a pretender?

By most accounts, I’m at mid-life and yet I don’t think this is a mid-life crisis. There is no crisis. Just the realization that I still feel very much like a scared little girl who is about twice as big as she remembers once being and has a lot more people relying on her. When did this happen? When did I grow up enough to earn all this responsibility?

And then the scary question:

What if I can’t handle it?

What if all of this is a big mistake? What if everyone packs and moves and re-settles only to find out that I’m not really all that I’m supposed to be? What if I really am just a scared little girl? <hyperventilation>

And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why I keep Xanax on my person at all times. </hyperventilation>

…I miss my mind the most.

We’ve heard it. We’ve laughed. Not only because it’s funny but because of a “there but for the grace of god go I” kind of reaction. At least for those of us who have really seen people who have, in a clinical sense, lost their mind.

My grandmother was quite demented before her demise. Both of them, actually, but the one I’m referencing here is my father’s mother. She raised more babies than most of us ever dream of having (we’re talking double digits, here) and even outlived a few. One of those was her youngest, a girl that shared my name. I remember going to see my grandmother in her latter years. At that point her vision was poor and she asked who I was. Without thinking, I gave her my name and she spent the next hour or more having a lovely conversation with her dead daughter. I just sat there, holding her hand, and fighting tears. For her, it was a good conversation. For me, it was torture.

My mother’s mother was different. She was never quite that far gone (or at least, not to the level that my denial can’t handle) but she did manage to lose more control of her thoughts than she had ever intended to. And when she did, she got paranoid. No. That’s not quite right. She got more paranoid. She was born at the turn of the century and like many who lived through the depression, two world wars, two more wars/”conflicts”, a country’s loss of trust in its government and the death of half of her children – she had a robust distrust of damn near everyone and everything that only got worse with age.

But even at her worst, she would just sit in her chair and rage on about some plot or another. My own Momster, on the other hand, is going full-blown, bat-shit, 911-dialing crazy. Which is what has me thinking about all of this.

My poor, long-suffering sister is stuck there while I’m half a country away. Then again, if I were a half a block away I still wouldn’t help her but I’d be closer to helping Lea out a bit. As it is, she’s kinda stuck. Not as stuck as our brother. He lives in the nuthouse and is the target of the paranoia. You see, if you ask Momster, he is trying to kill her. Yup. She’s not sure how, although she’s fairly certain he’s put something in her food, but she knows he’s trying to kill her.

Luckily for all of us, he’s oblivious enough to reality to put up with her. If he didn’t, she’s end up in a nursing home. As it is, I’m not sure that isn’t what’s best for her. She spent the weekend with Lea and by all reports, she’s not only losing her mind, she’s losing her balance. And she’s not a small woman. Lea is. You do the math.

But you didn’t come here to hear my family neurologic history. At least, I didn’t think my neurologist had the link to my blog. (If you do, then “Welcome!” and please don’t chart any of this.) But all of this has me thinking about any number of things not the least of which is how I feel about my Momster and why and what all of this family history means in terms of my own impending dementia.

You got me. “Impending” was an overstatement. My grandmothers didn’t start to loosen their grip on reality until well past 80 and Momster is 83 now so I’m not planning on losing my marbles anytime soon. Well. Anymore than I already have.

I mentioned before that I received an offer letter for a new position. To commemorate the event, I took this picture of my acceptance letter being returned:

I just felt the need to share that with all y’all. Now on to the rest of the fun and games.

The new job starts on April 23rd – so just about two weeks from now. In that time I have to complete revisions on my dissertation, finish my last week at my current job, attempt to negotiate custody of the witchlets, fail, prepare for court, pack, move and begin to think about getting this house on the market. Oh, and all the other things that go on day to day like following up on essay-gate, dealing with the school project from Hel and taking a class.

Somewhere in the middle of all of that, I also have to complete the reams of paperwork required to start any new job these days. I’ve been receiving some of these forms in the (e)mail and most of them are mindless exercises in recall. But two questions (to date) have me stumped.

The first question is about marital status. Everyone knows I’m married so why is this question a problem? Because there is the matter of this little-known fact that the government doesn’t know I’m married. Iggy and I had a lovely wedding but just failed to file the paperwork. I could go into the reasons for that, none of which have anything to do with our commitment to each other, but that’s not the point. The point is now I have to commit to a “status” where “domestic partner” is not an option. Which is funny given that my new employer offers benefits for “domestic partners” but doesn’t offer that as an option on the paperwork. Sounds like a write-in to me. So this was the easy one.

The second question, which claims to be confidential, asks how you classify yourself according to the following options: 1) Disabled 2) Veteren 3) Disabled Veteren or 4) None of the Above. If you answer “Disabled” it asks about the nature of the “disability” – again with checkboxes that include “chronic illness” as an option.

Well. I have a chronic illness. I won’t deny that. I can’t deny that. And while I’ve never considered myself “disabled” I also can’t deny that in the last dozen years, I’ve been on short-term disability a total of four times. Twice for PTSD, once for my neuro issues and once for Thing 2′s entry into the world. Ok, even I don’t even count that last one. So how do I answer this silly, little question on this silly, little form?

Issues of self-image aside, there are some serious questions here: If I “own” my “disability” then what happens? If I don’t, and I run into trouble again in a few years is that a problem? I know I’m not the only one who has ever struggled with this and I don’t claim to be unique, which is in-and-of-itself a problem. Why would you ask a question like that on a paper form without telling someone who would have access to that information and how it is used? And if you do ask a question like that, what do you realistically think the odds are of getting all honest answers?

This one is going to require more thought.

I know, I know. I was too busy to so much as post any details about the final defense of my dissertation. And I won’t likely post a whole lot either. But there was one particularly amusing event that day that I need to share with you now nearly two weeks in retrospect.

My defense was successful (for those of you who didn’t hear the massive sigh of relief) – I passed with revisions. Following that there was more vodka consumed by my person than there had been in the last year. As in, the entire last year taken all together. On the way home I was babbling to my designated driver, Iggy, about the role of school in my life.

You see, I haven’t been out of school all that much. Sure, I’ve graduated before but it never seems to stick and I always find myself back in school. If you count residency as school (you’re in training, but you’re getting paid, so I suppose you could debate that) then I was still in school when HSW was born. I entered the job market shortly after but started my Master’s program when HSW was only 2 and I was still working. So that’s 2 years of my life out of school. I graduated when Thing 2 was born and took a few years off before starting to take classes again when she was 4. So that’s 2+4 = SIX years of my life NOT spent in school.

Six years. That’s it. Even factoring in the first two years of my life (I started pre-school at 2) that’s still only 8 years – less than 20% of my whole life.

Thus, as we walked in the back door I was commenting that I’m not sure I’m going to know what to do with myself if I’m not in school because it’s been such a rare occurrence in my life. Imagine my amusement (remember the vodka) when I saw the package sitting on the front step.

The package.

From Amazon.

With a textbook.

For a class.

That I’m enrolled in.

That starts tomorrow.

Just laugh and let it go. I’m planning on doing just that.

I mentioned the other day getting yelled at by WF about a certain school project of Thing 2′s and the saga continues. The damn thing isn’t due for another week and change and work is still ongoing. If this weren’t such a big part of the fifth-grade experience at her school, I’d bow out completely but as it is, I’m stuck in the middle of a peeing race.

Every year as part of the integrated curriculum, each fifth-grader chooses a structure for which they will do the following:

1. Write a report about the history of the structure and how it is and has been used,
2. Calculate the dimensions for a scale model of the structure, and
3. Create a scale model for display.

When HSW did this project, she selected the Millau Viaduct. For those of you who don’t know that structure, it is a bridge that has a slight curve to it. In other words we found ourselves calculating the radius of a circle for which the arc of the correct angle would be the length of the bridge she was building and then using string cut to the length of the radius (and most of our yard) cut the correctly scaled arc into balsa wood.

I’m not complaining. It was fun. But HSW has always been the easy one. Thing 2 wasn’t going to be satisfied with something as simple as a bridge. Nope. Her first choice was the Hagia Sophia. It took me only 40 seconds with Google to decide to veto that one and her teacher still beat me to it! Then she came up with a back-up plan – the Pantheon. At least that’s what WF told me when I asked because she was at his house the week the decision needed to be made. That didn’t sound so bad. That could be done. And given that the report was first and the deadline was months away, that’s about all the thought I gave the subject.

Somehow it never occurred to me to ask the child directly about her choice or to discuss her plan for construction of the model. Because somehow it never occurred to me that WF, a man who has travelled the world and has a terminal degree, would say “Pantheon” when the structure he meant to say was Colosseum. And by the time this little tidbit came to light, the decision was made and the report was done. We were stuck.

Never fear, WF was planning to work on the model with her. He called me to tell me that when there were still five weeks left before due date. Of course, he called to tell me that as part of a phone call in the middle of a busy day at the office because he wanted my opinion on what material would be best for an 11 year old to construct a scale model from. My reply, in fairly predictable form, was: “I don’t know. Clay?” Because “clay” really is the answer to most questions in my world. At least when school projects are involved.

WF didn’t like my answer. He suggested balsa wood. I pointed out that the arches might be less problematic the more pliable the material so he told me to “think about it” (the stock WF phrase for “I know I’m right and if you think about it you’ll realize that, too”). I still hadn’t found time to think about it the next day when he called back to say he needed to know if balsa wood would be ok because if it was, he needed to order it now. I told him I hadn’t had time yet and would get back to him soon as I wanted to check the dimensions and do a little calculating. The next communication was an email letting me know he’d ordered the balsa and that he would be completing the project with Thing 2.

Great. I’m off the hook!

A week goes by, then the email began: Did Iggy have the right woodworking tools or did WF need to purchase them? What kind of glue should he use on balsa? Would Iggy be able to do the woodworking parts if he put it together with her? Can I ask Iggy if a router or a drill press was the right tool for the arches?

Thing 2 came to my house the following week completely frazzled about her project. She had done the calculations and knew what scale she wanted to use but WF wasn’t sure that scale would work with the wood he’d ordered. And they hadn’t started doing anything with the model yet because he told her there was still a month left even though she was concerned because the other kids had already started.

We looked at the calendar and that’s when it hit me. WF had exactly one week left. After that, I had Thing 2 for the three weeks leading up to due date (with the exception of a couple of random days). Worse, WF had asked if Iggy and I could “help her get started” on the model but had sent over none of the materials. And for those of you who don’t know, Iggy is the only one of the three adults here even remotely qualified to do this project in the first place! WF and I are science geeks, Iggy’s the artist.

Iggy and I exchanged looks. There was no way this was going to end well.

Thing 2 and I talked and she decided that she wanted the project done and would accept help from just about anyone to get to that point. She likes Iggy, don’t get me wrong, but she wanted to get this moving. Iggy and I talked and he said he’d really like to help her but to do so he needed to be free to use whatever materials he felt best. I agreed with both of them and then tried (again) to get off the hook.

Except that the material Iggy felt best was not the balsa wood that WF bought. And to be fair, who really thinks an 11 year old can construct an elliptical structure out of wood given the constraint of scale? Seriously? Iggy chose clay. And Iggy took it upon himself to purchase the clay and all the materials needed to work with the clay in order to create the structure. He didn’t ask for a penny from me or WF, he’s taken on the project.

Which has angered WF beyond any measure of the reasonable. I mean, what about the money he spent on balsa? Who is going to pay him back for that? When was I planning to tell him that we’d changed materials? And why had I agreed to balsa if I didn’t think it was a good idea?

Now, for those of you who care the project is coming along nicely. There’s a little over a week left and it’s pulling together. But I’m staying out of it because working on this would put me squarely in the middle of a peeing race between the two men in my life and I don’t like getting peed on.

I’m baaaaack! And this time I’ll try to stick around but can’t make any promises given what there is to do in the next several weeks. But one thing that appears to be crossed off the “To Do” list is finding a place to live.

No, the second attempt wasn’t a whole lot easier than the first. Everywhere we looked one of us loved and another hated. I went so far as to call Cub back and give him the addresses of a few places so that we’d have a fall-back plan. Of course nothing I gave him was still available so I started to panic. While Iggy drove, I frantically searched the newest listings and came up with a place I had zero faith in. It was built in the 50′s and Iggy hates older homes and it was far enough out that I wasn’t sure I’d like it just based on location. But we had to have a place to live so I gave the address to Cub and told him we’d see that one first figuring that after that, we’d be happy to settle for whatever came next.

On the way there, we talked about where we’d each choose based on what we’d see so far. There was no agreement. None. Then we drove up to this:

Ok, so the outside looks good for a house built in the 50′s and the landscaping is new. But how bad is the inside? We held our collective breath as the door swung open and we saw that the interior had been completely gutted and redone. The kitchen was all new with granite counters, the floors were bamboo, the closet space was fabulous and the house itself sits on nearly an acre so there was something to look at out the windows besides traffic! In short, we all loved it. Iggy and I put in an application which was accepted the next day.

I’m not saying this place is perfect. Not by any means. It’s smaller than what we have now, has no garage, is a fair drive in for my commute and is a bit too close to railroad tracks to be perfect. But one thing that I think we all have learned from this exercise: Nothing is perfect. And this place is good enough to keep us all happy for a year at least.

Now on to packing!

Someday, I’ll look back on the last 36 hours and laugh.

I hope.

In the meantime, you can look back on it and laugh now. If you have time to slog through a long post.

Yesterday, we drove to the area we’re moving to in order to attempt to look for a place to live. We went yesterday because we had an appointment with a realtor this morning and wanted to be there bright and early in spite of the 2.5 hour drive. Besides, there was a nice by-owner rental that we wanted to see.  We didn’t get on the road very early as I’m not feeling well (damn antibiotics need to kick in soon). On the way there, I was emailing back and forth with the realtor and he expressed concern that I wasn’t dead-set on the area he thought I should be. I explained that we didn’t have a lot of time and I was more interested in finding a place that worked for us (right size, right schools, good access) rather than being in this-or-that particular neighborhood. He proceeded to tell me that he would have to find someone else to help us if we wanted to look outside that ONE area. That sounded reasonable to me, if a bit last minute. The new guy emailed me right away and he and I started to discuss particular properties.

Our first stop there was to pick up HSW who had been at a tournament with WF. I gave them a location to meet us – a Starbucks just off the highway. Then came the text telling me they couldn’t find that area. So I told them to meet me at a very public transit station. You know, the kind with big signs pointing the way to it? Yeah. You know what comes next – the text that they couldn’t find that. But they had stopped for coffee – could I just meet them there?

Wait for it.

They were at the Starbucks I told them to go to in the first place. The one we just drove past on the way to the station.

Oh, it gets better. Or worse. Depending on your tolerance for Schadenfreude.

I go into Starbucks to use the bathroom and, upon emerging into a very public Starbucks, am faced with a pissed-off WF who is yelling at me about a school project of Thing 2′s. Yeah, the whole place was looking at us. I walked out, he followed, and now the whole parking lot is looking at us while the witchlets are slinking toward the car. I told him this wasn’t the time or the place so he stormed off.

And so the tone was set.

Undaunted, we set off to see the house we were hoping would be our rental home. It’s on a dead-end street, big, wooded lot, things are looking up. Until we pull into the driveway and see the car there. The plates read: “CAT LVR” – typically not a good sign for me because while I love cats, my immune system has a violent hatred of them. HSW offers hopefully that it might not be that bad so we get out of the car and head in. There’s a cat on the front lawn, one runs out as we go in, there were three in the master bedroom and two more in the backyard. Which means there was one I didn’t see because she admitted to having a total of 8 but she does cat rescue so it’s hard to keep track.

Next stop: CVS. And Benedryl. Even so, I was still itching this morning. Which brings us back to asking: When will these damn antibiotics kick in?

So somewhere in the itching, sneezing, watery eyes routine the new realtor via email has notified me of two things:

1. Realtor #1 isn’t working with us any longer. Just him.
2. This new Cub has to arrange the visits with the current tenants and so we won’t be able to see anything with him until the afternoon.

In other words, the meeting we had in the morning, the reason we had for spending the night in the area at all, was off. We’d be meeting in the afternoon.  None of this made for a happy Witch. But I can handle it – we figure out our day so we could drive through some other areas and have a Plan B ready if none of the places we looked at worked out.

It was a good plan if you ignored the fact that it involved three people with ADD/ADHD and one exhausted, hormonal teen spending the day driving around in a small car. In metro traffic. With one of us still itching and sneezing. So we got to the meeting place an hour early just so we could get out of the car. We’re still making the best of this. Right?

Cub calls right about that time and leads into the conversation by asking how long we’ll be in the area. Not a good start. Turns out all the properties he was going to show us are on an electronic entry system. That just crashed. And he needs to reschedule for another day. Iggy took three steps back at that point to avoid the blast radius. It wasn’t enough. I told Cub we were not doing this on another day and he needed to find a way to make this work. It took him 20 minutes but he called back to say that he’d managed to contact the owner of one of the properties and he’d meet us there in half an hour. He said he’d tried but been unable to get in touch with any of the other tenants or listing agents.

We get to the house before Cub and as we’re standing in the driveway we see a car pull up. It sits on the street for a few minutes while the driver uses a cell phone and then drives on by. Two minutes later it drives by in the other direction. Lather. Rince. Repeat. Three times. That’s right, he drove past the house with us standing in the driveway a total of six times before he figured out what house he was looking for. Can you feel the confidence? Can you?

The owner was in the house. The vacant house. Which is important when you recall (7 or 8 pages ago) that we had to do this in the afternoon because he had to clear things with the current tenants. The house was awful but the lot/neighborhood was good (sensing a theme here) so we chatted for a bit in the driveway. He told us that he’d tried to get in touch with folks but hadn’t been able to. So we left. Don’t call us, we’ll call you. Not.

We pull around the corner where a quick search gives me the numbers for listing agents for two of the other properties. One answers right away and tells me the place in unoccupied and she can meet us there in 20 minutes. While driving, I get the other listing agent on the phone to find out the place we really, really wanted was not only also vacant but now rented. Two hours ago. While we were waiting for our “realtor” to clear a visit with the “tenants.”

Half an hour later we’re looking at an older house that has seen (much) better days: the basement has more moisture than I’d like, the floors have seen better days and generally the carpet just needs to be allowed to die with dignity. The witchlets love it. As in seriously planning out what to put where. I think it has enough potential to be a place to live for a year (the area is beautiful and the yard was to live for!) so I’m feeling better about the day. Until I see Iggy’s face. He hates it. HATES. And given that this is our first place together I can’t really do that to him.

So we came home. At this point we all need to give it a rest for a day (and let y’all change your britches from laughing so hard at me) and we’ll go back to try it again. My goal is to not be homeless at the end of the month.

“This has never happened to me before.“

Ladies, how many of you have heard this one before? Yeah. I figured. Well I got to hear it this week under some interesting circumstances.

You remember me telling y’all about my lovely wisteria covered porch? Well, when wisteria meets wooden structure, wisteria wins. I think that’s a universal law but somehow I missed that factoid in all my education. Faced with the prospect of falling through the floor of the porch or rebuilding the porch, I chose rebuilding. It seemed like the option less likely to cause me personal injury.

Now when I say “rebuilding” I don’t me me personally. See also: Personal injury. I could ask Iggy to do it but despite the entertainment potential it still brings us back to personal injury. Or as Iggy says: “That’s a hardware problem.”

I have a rental husband that I call at times like this. Ozzy is actually a handyman but I think of him as the rental husband – for an hourly fee he’ll do everything on the “Honey do” list. Including rebuilding the porch at great risk of personal injury from the man-eating wisteria.

It took nearly a day to get the porch torn down – a project that involved jacking the roof up and propping it up on large wooded supports. Another day to rebuild the porch and then it was time to put the whole thing back together.

Iggy, being, uh, well, between jobs was home with me when Ozzy came in and asked if he could “borrow” us for a little bit. The plan was for Iggy and I to each hold a post between the new floor of the porch and the roof while Ozzy and his helper jacked the roof up just high enough to pull out the temporary supports. After checking to make sure that our life insurance policies were paid, Iggy and I took our places on the porch under the soon-to-be unsupported roof.

Ozzy’s helper came over to adjust the massive wood in my hand and make sure it was level. Once we had it straight up, Ozzy started working on the jack. At first it wouldn’t budge, he just couldn’t get it up. But then, slowly, it started to rise. Just enough so that his helper could tug on the wood holding the roof up.

I couldn’t take my eyes off the top of the post waiting for the roof to fall on it. There is a groove that I had to get the wood into and I wasn’t sure if I had the angle just right. Besides, what if the post wasn’t hard enough and the roof fell on me?

Ozzy’s helper pulled out one support beam……….

then the second………

and nothing happened. The roof didn’t budge.

Ozzy looked at me and said “I’ve never had this happen to me before.” Which was the point where my inner 15 y/o boy died laughing.

So there I stood, laughing my ass off holding on to a support post that was supporting nothing while my porch roof hovered overhead. Eventually Iggy went into the house and crawled out of Thing 2′s bedroom window onto the roof and jumped up and down. When that didn’t do it, Ozzy joined him.

Eventually the roof started to drop a little – enough that Ozzy’s helper could use the nail gun to nail the posts to the roof. By that point my inner 15 y/o boy was just thinking that the nail gun would come in handy during a Zombie Apocalypse.

At least now I don’t have to worry about the teen years when Thing 2 sneaks out her bedroom window because I know it can hold her.

Prejudice

HSW got her essay back on Friday. I was thinking that for a well-written paper that knowingly flew in the face of her teacher’s beliefs she should expect a B- or so, factoring in that her current average in the class is a 99 and the lowest grade she’s ever gotten is a 93. Well, I was wrong. She received a 78 for her paper – a solid C in terms of letter grades. Granted, this doesn’t drop her overall average out of the “A” range but I’m still steamed.

She had a couple of silly punctuation errors but nothing grammatically wrong and she missed the 3 page requirement by a little over half a page. I’m not seeing how those errors are worth 22 points. The teacher made two comments on the paper (other than the editing of punctuation): On the first page there was a note scrawled in red ink telling her that if she had something to say she needed to say it and not dance around it, on the last page was a note in green ink and much better handwriting telling her that she missed the point of the assignment which was to discuss the HEBREW view of pride and not her own. The note went on to say that she (the teacher) wasn’t telling her (HSW) what to believe but rather that she had missed the point of the assignment.

And here is where I come in.

They are studying the bible as literature. Thus, all HSW had to go on was her assigned readings from the bible to determine how the Hebrews viewed “pride”. She made her conclusions, and supported them, based on the readings she had been assigned for class. She did not draw her conclusions based on an upbringing in a Judeo-Christian home. Her teacher graded the assignment, in my opinion, based on her own filter of strong Judeo-Christian beliefs. Were she able to see the text as written, rather than as she was taught it, she would have a very different view of the essay she was grading. Just the fact that HSW had only a few passages on which to base her conclusions whereas the teacher has (presumably) years of study of the entire text on which to base her views. It would be like a Ph.D. in English Literature who wrote a dissertation on Hamlet grading a high school essay and being upset that the students missed the point of the piece.

In short, it’s nothing shy of discrimination based on the religious upbringing of my child. Which means that the school is going to be dealing with one very miffed and articulate witch come Tuesday morning.

Why Tuesday? Well, that’s where the “Pride” part of the post comes in. HSW is nearly half-way across the country right now at a competition. The bad news is she just finished. The good news is the reason why she finished so late is that she managed to grab herself a silver medal – her second such medal at national level competition. I’m very proud of my little warrior. Proud enough to let her get home and get rested before she gets to accompany me into battle with her school.