Author: kathie

My Kid made a little “Perry the Platypus” out of LEGOS, like a mascot–only, not. The other kids on the team knew it was there.

1:08 am just me and the hamster

I am awake now, 1:08 am, just me and Butterscotch the hamster.  Everyone else is asleep and we are wide awake moving about in our little hamster cages.  Mine is the front room of our apartment, the room where everything happens, the livingroom/kitchen/diningroom/playroom/media/office/den/foyer room that seems to be shrinking as My Kid gets bigger.  Moving from the sink to the table to the garbage can clearing dinner and washing the dishes (by hand!) after everyone else has gone to sleep, I feel like a hamster on a wheel.  It is an apt metaphor for housekeeping.

(The first draft of this post had 11:08 pm in the title, but now it is 1:08 am and I am still awake and, after a laptop digression, I am still attempting to clean and the hamster is still busy in his cage.)

Here I am piddling around with my blog again (avoiding necessary housework) and listening to real writers chat on NPR when my New Years Resolution was supposed to be for me to spend my time with a different kind of, more involved kind of, turn the radio off and think in silence kind of writing. I’m looking at my clown resume. I’m not very good.  I used to be a different kind of thin, innocent, energy filled ingenue kind of performer.  Someday I will be a wacky old lady don’t care what I say kind of performer.  Right now I am struggling to perform from the societal position of invisible matron of a certain age and I don’t feel very interesting.  Long long marathon slog.  And oh look, it’s 2:04 already.  I have 26 minutes left before I have to leave home to go pick up My Kid from school

Anxiety evaporated

I sat down to write at the computer and wrestle with the anxiety I feel in the face of a new project.  The anxiety has nothing to do with the creative process and everything to do with the schedule tweaking and changes.  Dinner, homework, school pick-up and drop-off all must be considered and coordinated in addition to any affect on my own scheduled commitments.  It bothered me enough that I woke up worried about it in the middle of the night.

But, now, completely apart from my worries, the times of the workshops have been changed and the schedule changes I was working on with other people no longer have to happen.  I feel relief.  Unless the schedule changes have already been made.  Then I will feel bad.

This is the worst part of freelance creative work while juggling parenthood.  And I don’t even “work”.  This is the reason women who can stop working.  I have read that one can continue to work at the former level with one child but with two or more it all goes out the window.  Most of the “stay-at-home” moms I see on the playground after school have two or three kinds.  There aren’t enough sick days in the average job to cover for the strep throats and vomiting flus of four people.

When one of my friends (who didn’t get a new job after her husband’s last cross country transfer) spoke of feeling guilty, sorry for her child who had gotten sick first, because she waited until all 3 kids had it before she made an appointment with the pediatrician because she had “already taken too much time off work” and she wanted to save at least a day or two to use for Christmas vacation.

As my daughter gets older, I realize how short a time we have the needy little kids in our homes.  My Kid is 9.  In as much time as we’ve had her with us she will want to be on her own.  (She will probably still be in school and she probably won’t be able to afford to leave us, but she will want to).

Anyway, one of the biggest incentives for doing this project was the fact that I could do it while my daughter was in school without disrupting her day.  When I found out other conflicts were involved I became less enthusiastic.  Now that the rest of my schedule does not have to change around like so many blocks in a toy tower, I can relax and enjoy the ride.

Check Lists

Listening to NPR as I wash dishes.   A Harvard doctor explains how using a checklist can prevent errors and save lives in hospitals.  I’m thinking about FLYLADY and my  mother’s to-do lists and the clipboard we used to check the instruments in the engine room every hour when I worked as a deckhand and checking props and pre-set costumes before every show…

New Year, New Calendar

I’m going over my new calendar and thinking about commitments.   My Kid will finally be taking a dance class again and is registered for indoor soccer.  I am considering some workshops and new projects for myself.

But, I have the same old New Years resolutions of wanting to do more exercising, more cooking, more cleaning, more volunteering, and more writing…

It is the season of my annual online search for MFA programs to which I do not apply.

The Post 9/11 Decade

It’s New Years Eve.  So much has been said about this decade that for lack of a better name is being called the post 9/11 decade. Remember Seattle’s public Millennium Celebrations that got cancelled because of a terrorist plot.  Remember the sight gag on late night TV, Seattle’s New Year’s Celebration as a few guys in an empty room sitting on folding chairs. In the year 2000 my beautiful daughter was born, one of those auspicious millennium dragon babies.  We bought a house in Seattle.  And then the tech boom ended.  And then we moved to New York.  And then 9/11 happened the week after we discovered the sphere fountain in the World Trade Center Plaza was a good place to take our toddler.  Lafayette Avenue Presbyterian Church Playgroup.  And then we went to Nebraska to introduce my baby to her great-grandparents.  And then there was the Anthrax scare so I didn’t send Christmas Cards from New York to let everyone know we we had moved.  And then my baby could talk. Music for Aardvarks.  And then my little girl went to preschool at the Dillon Center.   STREB  kid action with Fabio.  Shi Chi Go San.  And then my little girl went to pre-K in Manhattan.  And then my little girl went to Kindergarten in Brooklyn.   And then I spent two months on the jury for a murder trial.  And then my little girl was in 1st grade.  And then my little girl was in 2nd Grade. Shi Chi Go San.  First Holy Communion.  FIRST Lego League.  Brownie Girl Scouts.  And then my little girl was in 3rd grade. The Husband changed jobs four times in one year.  The New Economy.   AYSO Soccer.  And now my little girl is in 4th grade.  Barack Obama is the President of the United States.  And now it is turning into 2010.   We have a new hamster. Whoooosh!