Waiting.

I feel like my life is on hold right now; I'm not living it so much as waiting for it to begin. There's been a lot of stages in my life that I've felt that--waiting to finish school and be an adult, waiting to get married... Now that I have small kids, it's hard to have a social life. It's hard to choose between nursing my son and having some fun. It's even harder when you're living on one not so large income.

I want to move. I want a home we can more reasonably afford now that our financial situation has changed so drastically since we bought this one. I want to fulfill my lifelong dream of living 30 minutes from the beach. Then reality sets in; my husband works half an hour from where we currently live, and the odds of him finding a job remotely close to where I want to live are very small. Further, he's very happy where he is, so how can I put my happiness ahead of his as well as his livelihood? Add in a terrible market, after we bought our house as it was just starting to slide down, and we'd lose a good deal of money on the sale of our home. This all just makes my dreams sound dumb.

Saying that brings me to tears.

Being mom.

My husband is so good to me. Our lives have changed, obviously, with the arrival of a new child, and he has done all he can to make it easy on me. I previously was responsible for bringing our older son to daycare, so he could get to work early. Since E was born, he has taken on the job, getting him to work much later and with more traffic plus having to get a toddler dressed, fed, teeth brushed, etc.

Since A becomes more and more Daddy's boy every day, he has taken to waking up when M starts the shower. I have tried to give M an uninterrupted shower at least by inviting A to cuddle with me. It melted my heart this morning when I was woken up by, "Mommy, I want to cuddle."

E grabbed my attention with a baby grunt and rewarded me with a giant smile.

But for all these wonderful and amazing things that go with being Mommy, am I anything more than Mommy...and housewife?

What can I bring to a conversation, other than, "Guess what I watched on netflix today?" or "Honey, I'd like to buy this for the boys," or, "I mallwalked for four hours today and didn't buy a thing!"

I'd love to go out, meet friends, have drinks, but I'm not bringing any loot into this house. How can I justify having that kind of fun when we're struggling to pay the bills? How does one meet friends, and hope to talk about something more than kids, when all her friends are far away/working and she can't figure out how to meet them without paying to join some group? And then there's the babysitter... I don't want to impose on the grandparents, but affording a $10/hour babysitter just to see a $10/ticket movie is really tough.

My problem is always that I want to have it both ways. I want to be home to raise my children, I want to have a social life, I want to have some alone time with my husband, I want to have nice things, I want to have a good time.

What's the right balance?

Follow through.

I just watched Julie and Julia. I'm pretty sure I STARTED this blog after having read the book, and realizing that I too don't really have a great follow through. Clearly, that didn't hold, I got busy, and well, I'm now only a few months away from 32.

So far, my thirties have been pretty...typical. I have been a mom for my entire thirties, and have added another little one to the mix (he'll be 7 weeks old on Tuesday!)

In my thirties, I worked hard too. My career has been on cruise control really, as I focused more on parenthood and caring for a family and house. I am now on an extended maternity leave, which is absolutely fantastic for me (getting rid of the work related frustrations makes me a totally different person) and surely for my son, but finances are going to be really tight. Right now, we're trying to figure out what the older boy's situation for school and daycare will be next year while I pull no income. We also are trying to figure out how to save money yet still maintain our standard of living. Unfortunately, this pulls M out of the house more. Luckily, he has been sought after as a tutor, which has brought a LOT of unexpected money into the house.

Oop, time to get a crying child!

On Life

I would love to say that I am happy, but really, I'm just not. I'm exceptionally dissatisfied. I am dissatisfied at work, which means I bring a lot of my unhappiness home. How much impact this has on the other aspects of my life, I'm not sure. I am dissatisfied with my marriage, but maybe that's because of my expectations. I wish we went out AT ALL, but we don't. A night out means either we go out to dinner (with the boy, to one of the many chain restaurants, AGAIN), or we go over to a friend's house. I am dissatisfied with my friendships, because I feel like I really don't have any. I have friends, but never see them.

I feel like we/I just don't do ANYTHING. We play with Alex, put him to bed, then sit and watch tv. Then we go to bed, maybe read a little, then start all over.

No wonder my life is so wrapped up in my frigging work.

I keep telling myself, "Maybe in my 50s," but this is really no way to live.

Stolen Prompt

Mama's Losin' It has a great prompt.

1.) Write from the point of view of a glass at the edge of the table.

Brrrr, I'm cold. She was just holding me in her warm hand, which balanced the cool lemonade I'm holding. She put me down on this table, and forgot to use a coaster. I guess I'll be sitting in my own pee in a minute. Woot. I like coasters. Not only do they stop me from sitting in my own pee, but they also are nice and soft and squishy, unlike this hard table. My butt hurts!

WHOA. I'm really high up here. I'm a little afraid of heights, and well, I'm just not into this.

"Is Motherhood Messing with Your Hair?"

Suave's campaign has been out there for awhile. And no, Suave, it's not motherhood that's messing with my hair, it's just that my hair will always suck.

I knew motherhood would mean giving up a lot. I never expected, however, how much that would mean.

Sacrifice. It's a lot of sacrifice--of the obvious things like pedicures and eyebrow waxes, but it's been a lot of sacrifice of my time, my sanity, my confidence, that I just never expected.

Resonation

I have never "gotten" this son, although I have always thought it to be a very beautiful one.
This morning, I just started singing these verses in the shower, and it seems to have a real resonance in my life right now.

Oh, mirror in the sky
What is love
Can the child within my heart rise above
Can I sail thru the changing ocean tides
Can I handle the seasons of my life

Well, Ive been afraid of changing
cause Ive built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
Im getting older too

This I Know is True

Oprah's magazine this month focused on this question. Apparently, someone asked this to her long ago, catching her off guard. Now she asks the question of others, and featured some of the responses in the magazine.

What do I know is true?

I am a mom.
I am a teacher, although I may not be the greatest at it.
I have a messy house that will never be clean enough.
I have a great husband, on whom I can rely for anything.
I have the love and support of my parents.
I have two friends on whom I can always rely.
I get frustrated very easily and can lose interest/focus because of it.
I am a struggling work in progress.

Oprah's Magazine

Mysteriously, O Magazine started showing up in my mailbox. We all know that Oprah is all about how beautiful we are on the inside as well on the outside, and this month's copy was no different.

There was an article/quiz in there from Dr. Oz in which the taker was to assess not her degree of beauty, but how she felt about herself as well as what she wants to be.

One of the tasks was to circle 5 things I thought were most true about myself from a list. I had a really hard time with that, but struggled even more with the next task, which was to circle 5 things on the list I'd like to be, with the results implying that if there's anything on the list that you aren't now but would like to be, it's possible to work on them.

It made me realize how crappy things really are with me, rather than giving me the hope that I can improve things the author intended.

No Sleep

Fucking mouse. Yep, I broke the seal, and used my favorite word of all time for the first time on a blog.

We've been hearing this scratching noise in what we thought was the attic the past few days. Well, M heard it first, but it kept ME up all night last night. Every time I started to drift off and heard it again, I got the creepy crawlies BAD.

I kept calling the cats over to kill it, and at one point was awoken by Catcher jumping into a plastic bag in M's closet. So they're definitely aware, but don't seem to be doing anything about it.

Freaking house. Freaking mice.

It sounded like it was in M's closet wall, trying to scratch out. Into our bedroom. Ew.

While we're on the topic of mouse stories, I've got a gross one.

When I went on maternity leave, I took all the stuff from my classroom. With nowhere to store it, most of it ended up in boxes in the basement.
When I returned to work, I moved some of the boxes into my new classroom. A few weeks into the year, I started going through one of the boxes looking for something to discover what I thought was a cat toy. It wasn't. Fucker had pissed and shat in my box, and ALL MY STUFF HAD TO GO IN THE TRASH. And it smelled bad too.

I like the nightlife, baby...

..she says, "Let's go!"

I am DESPERATE to go out dancing. Such that I even planned my own birthday party as an excuse. That fell by the wayside, and now I'm falling asleep to visions of how much of a loser would I be if I go out to nightclub and go dancing BY MYSELF. Yes, it's THAT bad.

Stolen Prompt

This came up in my Google Reader, and I figured now was as good a time as any to write about something more focused.

Recall a time when you did something to get noticed. Write about it.

Well, if I'm being honest, I can recall lots of times when I've tried to get noticed. You'd think I was Jan Brady or something. But I can recall in my desire to be drum major, I would often do things to make myself noticed. I can remember one trip in high school in which my competition for the drum major position was showing the guy in charge of the selection all the photos in her wallet; her parents, brother, etc. I remember rolling my eyes and thinking that it was lame. I've always been the type who doesn't really keep photos in her wallet (if remembering to carry a wallet at all), but I do remember that I really wished that I had some at that time, despite thinking it was so dumb and obvious. I also remember in my first year of the UDMB, Katie, Karen, and I used to run around like weirdos.... I'm not sure why, but it was most definitely to get noticed.

Looking back, I feel like I've always had a sense that someone important was watching. Like I remember in high school at a nighttime thing on a band trip, we went to this thing where there was dancing, and feeling like someone who could make me famous was watching my *oh*so*cool*dancing*.

I guess it's kind of drilled into our heads, since so many models and actors are just "discovered" on the street somewhere, but that kind of thing just doesn't happen in Nowheresville, NJ.

See, I've had this for a long time--this desire to be something great when I'm really just typical.

I am not a good person.

I try, I really do, to be a good person. I just am more often than not unsuccessful at this goal. I don't want my legacy to my son/children to be that they remember their mom being a butthead. Or worse.

It saddens me to think of Rachel Scott (who I mentioned in an earlier blog), who in 17 short years was a far better person than I have been in 30.

I get in funks like these often, where I dwell on how much I suck. They aren't happy times for me, but they're possibly even worse for Hubs, who gets so upset when I get into a gray time... and it's never just a day, but more likely to be for a week. When I get like this, I often sit and ponder how I have no REASON to be so hard on myself--my life is great, my family loves me, etc, etc.

Rachel's Challenge

I just got back from an assembly here at school. It's by a group called Rachel's Challenge. Rachel was the first student killed in the Columbine School Shooting, and she had a message of kindness and helping others. It was a really powerful assembly, and I hope lots of the students in attendance take the message to heart.

One piece of the challenge is to write down life goals. I've written here some goals for my 30s, which I do hope to achieve. As far as life goals, though, those are a bit tougher. As I've said before, I don't think I want to be a teacher forever, but I don't really know what else I would do. That is, other than stay at home mom. I want to retire at 55, but the current economic state indicates that might not happen for me. I want to have three children, who are close in age, but my husband does not.

I realize that goal setting is not about the buts, but at the same time, I try to be practical. I could certainly set a goal to be a world famous singer, but I have an awful singing voice (I guess there's always the William Hung method). I guess this is part of why life has been so dissatisfactory for me, but I can't just go ahead and get myself pregnant twice in the next five years.

If anyone has advice on how to reach my goals in a practical way, I am all ears.

CRAZY dream

I had a really hard time waking up this morning because of a super crazy dream I had. I was becoming a priest. Yup. A priest.

I was at my church from childhood, waiting to walk down the aisle and become a priest. I was in these white robes and everything. They told me to stay in this room at the back of the church while Mass went on. Toward the end, a priest came to me and asked if I was done with the marriage thing. Then he asked if I was done with the Jew thing. I had no idea what the guy was saying, so just nodded my head. They went away. Then I said, "Hey wait a second, did you mean that I can't be married?" and they said of course not; The Church frowns on divorce. Um, kay.

Then, I was waiting at the back of the church and started panicking. I DID NOT want to walk down the aisle. I saw my mom and son and told her that I couldn't do this (simply because I didn't want to walk down the aisle, btw).

I'm such a wacko.

The Spoiled Under 30 Crowd

I got this in my email and thought it fitting to share here. We did, unlike the email suggests, have a microwave in my house. My parents got it in 1983 (the year I went to kindergarten, btw), and didn't replace it until after I had graduated from college. Call me an old fogey if you will (Hell, my mother sent me a birthday card saying that 30 means teenagers everywhere considers you old)...

The Spoiled under 30 Crowd:

When I was a kid, adults used to bore me to tears with their tedious diatribes about how hard things were when they were growing up; what with walking 25 miles to school every morning ... uphill BOTH ways …yadda, yadda, yadda.

And I remember promising myself that when I grew up, there was no way I was going to lay a bunch of garbage like that on kids about how hard I had it and how easy they've got it!

But now that I'm over the ripe old age of thirty, I can't help but look around and notice the youth of today. You've got it so easy! I mean, compared to my childhood, you live in a Utopia! And I hate to say it but you kids today you don't know how good you've got it!

1) When I was a kid we didn't have The Internet.
If we wanted to know something, we had to go to the library and look it up ourselves, in the card catalog!

2) There was no email!!
We had to actually write somebody a letter ... with a pen! Then you had to walk all the way across the street and put it in the mailbox and it would take like a week to get there!

3) There were no MP3's or Napsters!
If you wanted to steal music, you had to hitchhike all the way to the record store and shoplift it yourself! Or you had to wait around all day to tape it off the radio and the DJ would usually talk over the beginning and mess it all up!

4) We didn't have any fancy Call Waiting!
If you were on the phone and somebody else called they got a busy signal, that's it!

5) And we didn't have fancy Caller ID Boxes either!
When the phone rang, you had no idea who it was! It could be your school, your mom, your boss, your bookie, your drug dealer, a collections agent, you just didn't know!!! You had to pick it up and take your chances mister!

6) We didn't have any fancy Sony Playstation video games with high-resolution 3­D graphics!
We had the Atari 2600! With games like “Space Invaders” and “Asteroids” and the graphics were horrible! Your guy was a little square! You actually had to use your imagination! And there were no multiple levels or screens, it was just one screen forever! And you could never win. The game just kept getting harder and harder and faster and faster until you died! Just like LIFE!

7) When you went to the movie theater there no such thing as stadium seating!
All the seats were the same height! If a tall guy or some old broad with big hair or a hat sat in front of you and you couldn't see, you were just plain out of luck!

8) Sure, we had cable television, but back then that was only like 15 channels and there was no onscreen menu!
You had to use a little book called a TV Guide to find out what was on!

And there was no Cartoon Network either!
You could only get cartoons on Saturday Morning. Do you hear what I'm saying!?! We had to wait ALL WEEK for cartoons!

9) And we didn't have microwaves…
If we wanted to heat something up, we had to use the stove or go build a fire...imagine that! If we wanted popcorn, we had to use that stupid Jiffy Pop thing or a pan with HOT oil and Real popcorn kernels and shake it all over the stove forever.

10) When we were on the phone with our friends and our parents walked-in…we were stuck to the wall with a cord, a 7-foot cord that ran to the phone - not to the phone base, the actual phone. We barely had enough length to sit on the floor and still be able to twirl the phone cord in our fingers. If you suddenly had to go to the bathroom - guess what we had to do.....hang up and talk to them later.

That's exactly what I'm talking about! You kids today have got it too easy. You're spoiled. You guys wouldn't have lasted five minutes back in 1980!

Regards,
“The Over 30 Crowd”

Yet another blog

I think I have a problem. This is my fifth blog under this google account alone. I have two blogs for school (one for each of my classes), but that doesn't count because it's what my students need to know, not the inner workings of my screwy brain. I also have a blog on a community site I use.

Anyway, this blog is my musings and goals for my FOURTH decade of life.

As I neared the big day, I told someone that my birthday was coming, that it was a big one, and that I wasn't happy about it. She rolled her eyes at me and said, "Oh, like YOU'RE old." Well, no, but 30 is a big deal. It's the end of not being responsible, it's definite adulthood with no holds barred. It's work, it's mortgage, it's being chef and cleaning lady, and it's being Mommy. These will be my "Mom's Taxi" years. My alcohol consumption has already taken a drastic nosedive. Since returning to work after maternity leave, it's not uncommon for me to be asleep on the couch at 9.

I feel like I didn't really have the fun I was supposed to in my 20s. I had lots of fun, don't get me wrong, but I also feel that I was so focused on doing well in my career that I didn't stop and smell the roses as much as I should have.

I've made a bucket list for my 30s. By September 21, 2018, I will have:

• learned how to SCUBA dive
• learned how to surf
• sung karaoke
• visited 15 new American states
• had at least one more child (hopefully two)
• laughed, learned, and been a fool

I'm torn about adding that I will change careers by then. Some days, I am certain that I am in the RIGHT profession, but on others, I'm very unsure about that. So I guess this isn't a goal, but something I'll keep in the back of my mind.