On My Own Again

I have not been home alone for more than one night at a time in over 8 years.  I can only think of once or twice that I was alone for a night, and then Bell and Jack were usually just down by the water camping under the big oak.

When Jack and I were first married, he worked away from home during the week and was only home on the weekends.  I had the week to myself to indulge in whatever I wished, whether it was reading or eating foods he didn't like or watching his not so favorite shows.  Then Bell came along.  Since then, even if  Jack is gone, I have had Bell . . . For eight years.  Until now.

The super dedicated teachers I work with put together a grant and arranged a vertical alignment team for this year ( for you non teachery friends, that means that 7th through 12 grade strategizes what is taught so that each year builds on the next with no gaps but also no unnecessary repetitions ).  We spent the entire week in meetings with an AP rep and on our own, hammering out what each grade would do and how we would do it.  It isn't finished, but we got much accomplished.  Of course, this also means that the last week of summer break was, in fact, a work week for me.  It was also a work week for Jack, so Bella was farmed out for the week and neither will be home for a few more days.

Now, keep in mind that my dearest works away, far away, during the week.  The kiddo was gone.  This meant that after meetings each day,  I  was left to my own devices. Those devices were pretty tame.  There was girls' wine and canvas night, but other than that, there were suppers of sliced tomatoes or simply a glass of wine.  There was reading books until midnight.  There was a TV that didn't get turned on a single time.  There were workouts at times of day of my choosing, rather than working them around everyone else's schedule.  My kitchen table stayed cluttered with the detritus of each day.  It took multiple mornings of coffee to have enough dishes to justify a sink of soapy water.

I will say that I did do laundry and did pick and water the garden.   Yesterday, I did some deep cleaning and I have a bit moe to do today, but mostly this week has been about quiet.  I had forgotten that I used to read for hours on end.  I did not know that even now, with a good book, I can still read for six hours straight.  It has shot my sleep cycle all to pieces.  I haven't gone to bed before 11 and to sleep before 1 a single night.  Unfortunately, I have managed to sleep as late as 6:45 only once, the rest of the week being wide eyed by 5:15.  That is almost criminal.  Sleep is a precious commodity and I so wanted to just sleep in these last few days.  I wish my broken sleep button would be mended.  No kid also means that my in-laws got really spoiled.  Since there was no one to tend to at my house, they got much more of my time than they normally do.  I enjoy my time with them, but I simply can't be up there as much as they want when someone at home needs guidance with homework or a meal cooked or a bedtime story.

I was dreading this week, both for the vertical alignment and for being without both Bell and Jack for that long.  I thought I might get lonely.  I did miss them, but we talked or facetimed every night, and I knew it was a finite amount of time. I did  worry about them, Bell particularly, but once again, she was in good  hands for the week, and it was only a week.  I had thought I might get some projects done while they were gone, but that didn't happen either.   I might have gotten lonely if I had been home all day, every day, instead of working, but I had just enough to keep me busy.   Instead of being lonely and needing to fill that down time with a busy project, I just basked in not having responsibilities for the week.  That is not to say I behaved irresponsibly. It just means that I was allowed to simply be.  Just be.  That was all.

I am thinking that perhaps every school year should start with a few days of quiet for me.  When school starts, as it will Monday, I am suddenly pulled in too many directions, meeting the needs of too many people, juggling too many personalities, losing myself a tad in the shuffle.    Turns out this week was a bit of a gift that I didn't know I even needed.

Still a Wilson

Vacation is over and I am a bit sad.  I wasn't ready to come back to the earth of the real world and felt like I needed just a bit more time in the sun with the clan.

Day 1: We got out the door just too late.  That is all there is to it.  We got off slow and drove slow and  took a poor choice of roads and by the time we got out to our cousin's place, it was 5.  We got some visiting in and had dinner, but Bell got her feelings hurt and melted down spectacularly ending in us hauling her away to the cabin for some unhappy consequences and an early bedtime.

Day 2: fabulous boat ride. Good visiting with some of the cousins.  Each part of the family took one night to cook for everyone else and it was our night, so mom and I spent the afternoon making Mexican for everyone.  I didn't get a lot of visiting with everyone else but mom and I really enjoyed cooking together - it isn't something we do much anymore now that we live farther away. Jack and Bell got to spend some time on the water playing and fishing.  I know she got to tube and loved it, but I think she loved my cousin's jetski even more.  I went back to the cabin with a migraine and spent the night throwing up.  Jack tweaked his back again and so he spent the night in pain too.  We are too old for this.

Day3: woke up the remnants of my migraine still present.  This was a drizzly day.  Bell got some more water time in the cold drizzle before the rain drove us indoors.  We hadn't really spent any time with my grandparents yet, so we drove over there for the afternoon and evening.  Between the lingering my head ache and Jack's back and leg, the day was not stellar.

Day 4: go home day.  I had worn a bikini every day and still hadn't been in the water.  It was cool and drizzly, but I was going to get wet.  Another great boat ride over to Serenity Point with a little souvenir shopping and playing in the water.  This is the place where I jumped off the roof nine years ago.  I don't think Bell believes I did that.  This year I just jumped off a trampoline into the water.  I know.  I am almost 39 and may need to grow up.  When we got back to my cousin's house and dock, Bell and had a brief chance to tube before she got too cold - it was short, but I am glad I got to do that with her.  Hope someone snagged a pic of us.  I hung in there and tubed with the boy cousins.  Those fourteen year olds are tougher than I am.  Good thing I was not on the edge or it would have been a short ride. I really didn't think I would be able to get up to ski. Nine years was a long time ago for this body, but get up I did.  We had already chewed up the cove tubing so I missed the window for that easy, glassy water I love but it was still so good.  I had a moment of fear that I had forgotten how to cross wakes and ski out to the side, but it was right there for the taking.  I didn't ski long, but I was a Wilson again, a kid again laughing with my cousins for that bit of time.

We toyed with staying another night, but we had already packed and were checked out.  Bell seemed ready to go home - if the sun had been out, she might have wanted to stay, but it was so cool and rainy we decided to go ahead and pack it in.  The ride home began with a flat tire in the first thirty minutes, but it happened right in front of a convenience store with a huge parking lot.   Some men would have been frustrated, but Jack was calm and unruffled.  He wasn't mad about us taking off so late or the flat.  I know his numb leg bothered him a good bit on the six hours drive, but he handled it all with grace.

Really my only regrets were not spending any time with him.  Between my head and his back and a kid sleeping five feet away, romance just wasn't going to happen.  He complained that he only got to ogle me in a bikini briefly.  My other regret was not getting to visit more with some of the cousins.  I barely talked to Mo - we just never synced up.  I was in the kitchen or with my kid.  I also hate it that we didn't get there when one of the other branches of cousins were there.

Highlights were really getting to visit with Ramsee and a pretty good visit with Chelsea.  I loved getting to see what amazing parents these cousins are.  I loved watching Bell hang with cousins she didn't even know she had four days ago.  It was just so good to be part of this family again, even if it was only for a few days.

5.4.3.2.1.Blast Off.

We are on countdown.  Vacation begins today.   This is a big deal.. We have been gone overnight one time in the last year and a half.  For one night.  We really are tied down - between animals, vegetables, and ailing in-laws, we just never manage to go far or long.  This week will be the exception.

When I was a little older than Bell, maybe 10, my great aunt and uncle began an annual tradition of renting a cabin at Grand Lake of the Cherokees for them and their three grandchildren.  Their granddaughters were my only girl cousins and I made the missing stair step between the the girls who were a bit younger than me and their brother who was a bit older than me; Aunt Pauline made me one of the Grand Lake gang, ensuring that I became close with these cousins I often saw only that one week a year while Uncle Bob dutifully drug us  around the lake until we all learned to ski, half drowning our sunburned selves.  Don't fall over in amazement, but I even learned to slolem.  How, I do not know since it was without glasses or contacts. Once we were grown, it became an every other year event and then since Bell was about two, it was abandoned as Bob and Pauline's health failed and they left us forever.  Last fall, their daughter organized the revival of Wilsons at Grand a Lake, quite a feat since she lives in Colorado, and now that week is here.

This year will be the first time we have gone and stayed at the lake since I was just a few weeks pregnant with Bell.  Then, I had no idea I was pregnant as I skied and jumped off a roof into the lake and drank Mike's hard lemonade.  Crazy me. I am past caring if I ski or not, and I would never be brave enough to jump off a roof now, but I am so excited to see my cousins.  The last few times we have seen them have mostly been funerals - not the best of circumstances.  I am ready to sit with Chelsea and Mo in the sun and laugh with them.  I hope to hear the generation older than me tell family stories.  Hopefully, my grandparents will be out one night - my grandpa is just about the last keeper of Wilson lore.  I am excited for Bell to meet cousins she doesn't even know she has.  I know there is one just a bit and one just a bit younger . . . The next generation connecting and finding roots.

We haven't had an auspicious beginning.  Jack was supposed to work until Sunday, but because of a confusion, got sent home early Friday so the next pay day won't be pretty.  We thought about heading up early to see some of the family who were there only for the weekend and leaving today, but we weren't organized enough for an early departure and there was work that his dad needed done.  Saturday just at dusk, the hydrant outside just broke off and we suddenly had a major water leak.  The pipe was so corroded (remember, we live in Jack's grandparents' house), he wasn't sure he could fix it.  I prayed.  He dug and sawed pipes and managed to get it fixed. If we had left early and that had happened while we were gone . . . Sunday was making sure the line held, dealing with the garden and  the forerunners of an army bug onslaught, packing. All that pre-trip stuff.

So.  Departure.  Pumpkins need a last drink.  The car needs packed.  The kid needs to get moving.  When we come home, summer will be over for us.  I will have more AP stuff and school will start.  But that is when we come home.  For now, it will be a road trip with Broadway show tunes, fun in the sun, cousins galore, too much food, forgetting about my fitness pal, family time, vacation time.

My Daughter Is a Hoarder

My daughter is a hoarder.  That should be read in the tone of a confession, perhaps the title of one of those weird reality/expose type TV shows.    I deal with this blight in various ways.  For months, I ignore the symptoms, letting items pile higher in an ever building future avalanche on her desk.  I pretend not to notice things oozing from drawers.  The floor is clean, her clothes are in drawers and I can find her - that is enough.  Until it isn't anymore.

About twice a year, sometimes more, we tackle the problem of her room head on and it is always trying for me and heartbreaking for her, inciting wailing and gnashing of teeth.  This week was the week of her room.  It had to be this week - it was our last chance without Jack who does not  particularly enjoy the drama.  Tomorrow we will leave for most of the week for a wee bit of vacation.  When we come home, we will be home just a few days and then Bell and Jack will be gone for a week while I do some AP work at school and then voila! School starts. (To be read in a unhappy tone, not excited).

Last spring, we worked on getting rid of toys she had outgrown.  There are still plenty in there, but they stay neatly tucked away in cupboards that never even get opened so I can ignore those for a while longer.  Instead, the focus was only three fold: stuffed animals, desk contents, books.

Yes, I made her get rid of books.  There are still counting books on this kid's shelf, this kid who reads chapters of Magic Tree House and Boxcar Children long into the night when she can get away with it.  I took every book on her shelf and dumped them into a sprawling pile on her bed.  She had to make three piles: keepsake, give away, keep in the shelf.  We then winnowed down the keepsake stack some more.  It doesn't count as a keepsake just because some woman who met Jack once gave her a book that she has now had for two years and still hasn't read (and is, furthermore, drivel). Comics- repeat. We managed to clear off a third of her shelf.  There are still some books she has outgrown, but I can live with a third.  She was promised that now we can look at getting some new, more age appropriate books.

The stuffed animals were simpler.  I counted the animals and told her she had to pick 20 to keep.  Once again, this cleared out a third, not counting the build a bears who do mingle with the masses of common stuffed creatures in the drawer.  I think she cheated because that drawer is still too full.  I know.  "20?" you ask.  It is still too many, but these things have to be dealt with in baby steps.  We will do it again or while she is gone, I may sneak a few out to the barn.  If she doesn't notice their disappearance by winter, they can quietly go away.


The Desk.  This is the part I hate the most.  She thinks every scrap of paper she ever doodled on is a masterpiece of great import, every pencil nub missing an eraser still great in potential, every sticker from the doctor's office her favorite.  Once again, we dumped every drawer on her bed.  Three piles: trash, keep, mom's keepsake box. She sorted papers and beaded bracelets and art projects, I ruthlessly sorted through every art supply.  I tested every marker and pen, chose the best crayons (no one child needs 4 boxes), cruelly discarded paintbrushes whose bristles were frazzled out.

Breaks had to be taken and snacks procurred.  While everything was disassembled, it seemed a good time to rearrange the furniture a bit, give her a bit more room.  She worried that she wouldn't ever figure out how how to organize the laundry basket of desk contents that were keep able.  That was my job.  Once sorting was done, I put everything away in drawers.  We even had one drawer empty! Not surprising now that there are two kitchen sized trash bags of desk junk gone.

There was a lot of moaning and groaning throughout the five hour ordeal, but when she finally was admitted into her vacuumed room, with the clean sheeted bed and the tidy desk with the reading lamp that could now be seen, she gasped.  I showed her which desk drawer held which treasures - the rock collection, the journal drawer, the art supplies, the play makeup, all the things she feared I had secretly thrown away when she wasn't looking.  She apologized for the moaning and assured me that this was sooooo much better.  "Mama, I can work at my desk again!"  "Mama, I thought I had lost that journal!"  "Mama, it looks so BIG in here!"

A lot of the mess came from the last week of school when she brought home all the contents of her nightmarish desk from her classroom.  We normally would have dealt with it all then, but the day after school was out, she came down with a horrid a virus and by the time she rejoined the land of the living a week later, I was neck deep in the garden.  I bear responsibility in this mess too.  More importantly, I understand.  I was a hoarder too, every bit as bad as her.  My mother used to come help me clean my room like this once or twice a year becuase it would just get out of hand, as Suess says and my mother repeated, "This mess is too big and too deep and too tall."  I remember cleaning my room at her age and being distraught that my makeup bag of prize locust shells had crumbled into brown dust.  Disgusting, I know. When I was about ten, I went through a radical shift and became such a neat freak that it drove me nuts to have anything out of alignment, much less truly disorderly.  

Maybe it will happen some day to Bella.  Until then, there will be motherly interventions scheduled throughout the year.

Bless Me. Bless you.

Our church often stays on the same subject for several weeks at a time.  For several Sundays this summer, Reggie preached about doing good, not just believing.  I have really been thinking about that.  What fruit am I bearing?  Is it evident to others?  Is my life a blessing to those around me, or I am merely there, or even worse, do I become a stumbling block for someone?

The whole AP conference last week and the week leading up to it was such a mixed bag of frustration and blessing.  The week before AP, we discovered that Katrina ( my fellow English teacher and supposed roommate) had no room.  This greatly upset me because that meant I was rooming with a stranger.  I may come across to my kids as confident and in control, but really having a conversation with someone  I don't know terrifies me.  The first day at Elgin, I almost threw up in the bathroom - not over the job, but over having to walk into a teachers' meeting without knowing anyone.  I couldn't imagine having to sleep in the same room as a stranger.  Anyway, we got the room sorted out.  Sort of.  And then Hyatt accidentally canceled my room and I had none at all.  Driving in the city also terrifies me.  There is no way I could have stayed somewhere else and driven myself to UT everyday.  Once again, it got straightened out.  These were things I really prayed about.  I prayed that God either put me in a room with Katrina or give me the strength to handle the situation.  He fixed it.

I believe he fixed it because he knew I needed the encouragement that rooming with Katrina would bless me with.  We are supposed to lift up those around us and her life does just that.  Her faith is so strong.  Her commitment doesn't mean that her life is easy or without challenge, but it means that she is given the strength and ability to meet those challenges with grace instead of those difficulties just disappearing.  There are things that she is waiting for answers on, but she waits in The Lord, waits for his direction and his guidance.  Sometimes that means waiting a long time.  I was encouraged by so many of the things she said, though she may have thought they were just casual conversations.

Our other Elgin AP goer was one I didn't know quite as well.  Ruth isn't an English teacher and her kids are grown, so we just don't have as much in common, but once again, I see a woman who blesses.  She gives of her heart, of her time, of her resources so greatly.  She handles issues calmly, with grace and wisdom and kindness evident in her speech and demeanor.  I loved getting to hear about all the children that have become part of their family through the years.  Once again, these stories echoed that our Faith does not mean problems are erased, but that we will be able to deal with the problems as they arise.  He never promises ease.

I could go on and on.  So many of the women I have have become friends with encourage me on a daily basis as I see their walk evident in the way they love their husbands and children, as they deal with the outside world, as they choose life when they speak, even in the simple and not so simple kindnesses they do for each other.  I have always been blessed by the lives of the women in our church, watching their steadfastness as they serve their families and the church body.  This is doing.  This is fruit.

The past few months have shown me certain things I need to be dilligent in putting off and removing from my life, things that will distract and open doors that I don't want open if I am to be any good for my family and those around me. I have been given help in these things, but I am also quite sure that I will be tempted to pick them up again.  I also know I must do a better job teaching Bell about this life we choose.  I need to be dilligent in these matters if I am to bless you as so many in my life bless me.

Summer Camp or the APSI

When we are kids, we go away to summer camp - perhaps it is scout, nerd, or church camp, but we go and come back with our heads and hearts stretched to the bursting point with new knowledge and dreams.

And then some of us get old, become teachers, and go away to this camp like beast called Advanced Placement Summer Institute.  I say it is camp like because we have roommates - if you are lucky, it is someone you choose, but many end up sleeping five feet away from a total stranger.  It is camp like in that meals are served from a buffet line with a mess hall type atmosphere.  Mostly, however, it is camp like in that we are supposed to come home inspired and with the skills to transform our students  into these amazing thinking machines who will pass the AP exam in ten months.  It is a beast because at the end of each day, you need a stiff drink before you can think about processing all you learned and heard that day.

Last year, I came home frustrated, thinking I got little from my class, believing too much time had been spent on anecdotes rather than the meat of AP.  After day one this year, I realized I had misjudged last years's instructor. Yes, there was little to no strategy, but he gave me a general idea of what to teach and several pre-made units on major literature.  In the long run, that was what I needed.  I can muddle through a lot of stuff as long as I know what it is I am supposed to be muddling through.  This year, in sharp contrast, I walked away with no pre-made units on literature, instead bringing home several units of strategy for teaching each section of the AP lang and comp exam. This lady was fabulous, and these are such good, basic building blocks for beginning my kids on these essays and then working them into upper-half papers.

I came home inspired that I could get more kids to  really get it, to really dig in and write deeply and meaningfully.  I also came home  feeling guilty.  Some of this stuff was common sense or was in books I possess.  Why did I not teach it?  I just didn't know which strategies out of which books to teach - it was my first year and there was just so much I didn't know, but if I had known then what I know now . . .  How many more kids would have passed the exam?

Overall, I am pleased.  I feared that I would have no one pass.  I began the year with twenty eight kids and ended the year with twenty one.  Eleven tested and five scored high enough to get college credit at most major universities. I had one perfect score, but she was one of those amazing kids whom I simply guided a little, rather than really taught.  There were a handful of others who should have taken the test, but didn't because of a conflict with the test date or lack of money.  I think all but two kids walked away substantially more prepared to tackle a real college class.

I will say this.  I think I did give them the first tastes many had of the same gift Sarah Webb and Ann Frankland gave to me: the right and power to form one's own opinion and to have a dream and work toward that bliss.  It is so hard for kids to learn to have opinions instead of relying on me to say " this character was wrong because . . ."  It is harder to start taking ownership for what they really want as opposed to what they think they are supposed to want.  If I had to choose between them having learned about thinking and writing or passing the test, I am glad I went with thinking.  They are young and still have a stretch of road to cover before they are ready to jump into life on their own, but they aren't too young to start thinking about what they want and counting the costs of those dreams.

Farm Girl Skills

I mostly grew up in town, albeit so on the edge of town that there was nothing but pastures behind our house.  There were a few brief years we had a 365 acre farm way, way out in the country, there was every summer and holiday on my grandparents' farm, and my dad was an Ag teacher.   As much as I would love to convince you that I have always been a farm girl, there were, in reality, afternoons spent playing cops and robbers with the kids down the street and riding my bicycle to the local pool in the summer.  I think, though, that I have always been a farm girl at heart.  My best memories were always in the country.

The past few weeks, my mother-in law has remarked more than once that I am a farm girl or that she was glad I was country girl.  I suppose that is partly because I do things she approves of like canning and gardening and trekking down to the water for wild blackberries or rummaging in the wild plum patch next to her house.  Rubilee, who is always spotless, approves of my willingness to get dirty.

The past few weeks, I have been getting better at farm girl skills.  The last time Jack Dear was gone to work, I had an irrigation line coupling that kept coming loose, causing me to wake up to a very wet patch in the peach trees and very dry blackberries down the hill.  In a moment of infinite patience, Jack walked me through the process of taking apart an old coupling on a spare line and putting it on this one.  There were plugs to be stripped out and put in, rings to put on in the right order . . . Sorry, no technical  terms allowed.    Then a few days later, I got to learn how to operate the battery charger on Harold's cantankerous mower and work the lawn sweeper (also via phone).  The battery charger should have been straight forward, but there are electrical issues with the mower and cutoff switches that added to my non-mechanically inclined frustrations.

Saturday, I decided that it was again time to mow, but this time, I was ready to manage the charger and everything.  I walked up to the big house and after a chat with Rubilee, went out to the barn.  As soon as I opened the door, the stench of something long dead hit me.  I first uspected a rat. If only it had been.  Remember my Facebook rant about the orange tom cat who kept visiting us in the night, causing trouble? He is no more.  I will spare you the gory details.  It suffices to point out that it is July and at least a few days had passed since his demise.  I will also point out that although at 2 AM three nights running, I did wish a coyote would eat this cat, I was in no way responsible for his end. A shovel was procured, a rather large (but as it turns out, not quite large enough) hole dug, and cat scraped up and buried.  I ended up having to put cement blocks over the dirt to keep the dogs from digging - not sure how deep that hole should have been, but a few feet was not enough.  The cement barn floor got to be hosed down and bleached, all while Rubilee fretted that I had to do it.  Her only comment was "I am so glad Jack married a country girl.  Some other girl would have been upset, but you just got the hole dug."

After much charging and fighting with the mower and using the push mower while the big mower thought about working, the yard did get mowed and swept.  There were hiccups of course. Jack thought I could probably manage to mow over the irrigation line without pulling it up.  I did . . But only for five passes around the yard.  Then I snagged the line and spent the next twenty minutes untangling it from the mower's undersides.  Good thing I now know which parts to pick up at the farm store and how to splice my line back together with those couplings, right?  At one point the mower quit and had to be charged again, of course as far from the house as possible but still just in reach of all Jack's extension cords put together   (Minus the taped together one that I am afraid of).

It is Monday.  I woke up at five.  A responsible me would have gotten in her workout early.  The real me has sat with her coffee for 2 hours and window shopped for new luggage and seeds for next year's garden.  Today I will see if the weed eater and I are on speaking terms.  I will dig through the jungle of tomatoes - no canning today, but I want to replenish our stock of dried tomatoes for salads, pizza, bread, and pasta.  It is also the week of deep, before the insanity-of-back-to-school, no-husband-around, vacation-is-next-week house cleaning.

That is a thing that requires no farm girl skills, but on the whole, I must say that I like being able to deal with things.  It was very satisfying to walk into that farm store and get my part on my own and then sit on my overturned bucket putting my line back together.  I felt accomplished.