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.
Yeah! Happy Happy nothing to prove. Friend from Seattle who grew up in Montana–Hey! I grew up in Montana. No expectations. Drink wine 🙂 Put ornaments on the Christmas tree 🙂 Eat dinner:)
Last year I was such a good mommy helping My Kid sell her Girl Scout Cookies to the neighbors and the folks at the diner and showing others who didn’t even want the cookies how to avoid the calories by sending them to the military troops overseas (so My Kid could get her Girl Scout Cookies for The Troops badge). This year I have done nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Squat. Nothing.
Therefore my kid has sold nothing. Zero. Zip. Nada. Squat. Nothing.
Sooooo. The sale ends this weekend…. Yikes!!!!!
I am scrambling to find out the price of a box of cookies. I am that out of the loop!
Bad timing. The sale started in December not long before Christmas break. Need I say more…
My sister came from LA for a visit.
We went to Hawaii for a conference and My Kid missed the first week of school.
Our return was delayed and we took the red-eye from Seattle arriving back in Brooklyn at 6:30 am Monday morning. The Husband stopped at home just long enough to take a shower before going in to the office.
My Kid got to school on time so she could touch base with her teachers and classmates on the last day before the @#$%^! No Child Left Behind 3rd Grade English Language Assessment Two-day-long Standardized Test!
The Husband was too busy and too new at his job to let anyone know his household contained a cookie pusher and take orders at the office like I wanted. Last year he took orders from his team but by the time the cookies arrived the company had been sold and the staff had scattered and we were left with a lot of extra cookies. I don’t want to do that again.
And now the sale ends in 4 days! I don’t want My Kid to sell NOTHING!
Just trying to sell enough to get the participation patch…and maybe the cookies for the troops patch…
As for the Girl Scout incentive prizes; pajamas, beach towel or USB Band and iPod Nano (for selling 1000 or more boxes of cookies) Fageddaboutit!
Plan tomorrow mornings food shopping trip–gonna brave the crowds…
Is this room cold or has the blood from my fingers gone to my stomach to digest the cheese and crackers I’ve just eaten. What if the heat’s gone completely out? Oh how my mind wanders to holiday disaster scenarios.
I stayed at My Kid’s school past drop-off this morning, long enough to listen to the sing-along. I am easily distracted from my to do list. But, it was worth it.
Then I went into the Manhattan to search unsuccessfully for some accessories for a gift already in the pipeline. What a waste of time. I didn’t find what I wanted. What a waste of time. I need to clean. I need to shop for other things. I need to shop for food. So much for tasty treats for My Kids teachers. Hey cut myself some slack, I organized the class gift. But, I visualized giving them the dried fruit that they noticed in My Kids lunch…but I didn’t make it to Sahadi’s this week. Oh, well, as class parent I did put effort into organizing the class gift. Oops I didn’t send any Christmas cards. Too late now. The Husband and My Kid are part Japanese, New Years Cards as a concept buys me some more time… The candy canes finally made it onto the tree last night but the snowflakes and My Kid’s twelve tiny brass angels are still in the box. Did I water the tree yet today?
I’m working on a clown festival application with a deadline of December 31. Why did I wait so long? What happened? It was just Thanksgiving and now tomorrow is Christmas Eve.
My sister’s coming to visit–with her cat…kitty litter… Does she still drink Diet Coke? I don’t have any. I’m such a bad hostess.
Times up! Gotta go pick up my kid so her vacation can begin.
I just got out of the shower, my second today. I didn’t get to the gym, but I allowed myself a nice hot mid-day shower because I am trying to get a handle on all this free-floating holiday stress. As a class parent I am way too anxious about the amount of money we have collected for teacher holiday gifts. I feel completely guilty because I have not been getting my maybe-she-has-a-cold-maybe-she’s-sick-maybe-she’s-just-tired kid to school on time. We’ve been 15 minutes or more late most days this week AND AS CLASS PARENT I AM SUPPOSED TO BE THE PERSON PEOPLE SEE AT DROP-OFF so they can give me cash for the teachers annual snowflake/snowman/polarbear/penguin secular holiday winter gift. I feel so much anxiety about this that it becomes obvious to me: This tiny task is a stand in for the anxiety I have about the larger economy in general and The Husband’s job in particular; various extended family members in various states of not-quite-OK; me producing a beautiful Christmas spectacular in my living room seven days from now including purchasing every speck of food and drink and toilet paper in advance because the stores are closed on Christmas Day (well maybe not TP the Korean deli will be open); clown work I am not promoting adequately; writing I am not doing; friends I am not seeing; Christmas cards I have completely blown off; how much energy–if any–will I have to devote to coaxing my spouse and offspring to a proper Christmas Eve Mass; when will I ever make it to the laundromat; the safety of Obama and his family; and as always–cleaning the apartment.
So I took a hot shower…
And as I was in the shower, I was remembering when My Kid was a walking baby and at the breastfeeding support group we were going around the circle sharing the ways we relive stress and I said I dragged the baby bouncer into the bathroom, sprinkled some Cherrios on her tray and took a long hot shower. I was very proud that I had a suggestion AT ALL! But, some buzz-kill PC mommy had to remind everyone that we should conserve water. I was chagrinned, embarrassed, guilty. Only in hindsight could I justify my position: “Hey I live in a walk-up, without a dishwasher and I have to cart my laundry (with my baby in a carrier on my back) several blocks in order to do it in a coin-operated public place. We had cars in Seattle but we don’t in Brooklyn. I think my global footprint is small enough to allow me take a hot shower to relieve stress when I am alone with a toddler and even though it seems like mid-day it could be ten hours before The Husband comes home from work!”
Wow!
That was a long time ago. Apparently I didn’t kill my kid. She is a beautiful confident 3rd Grader.
I just wish someone had been there to say “This too shall pass.” I am aware of how fast children grow. Yet…In the grand scheme of things– what future successful private practice medical resident can think beyond laying down to sleep within the next 30-minutes after being awake and working for 36-hours straight? Mommies are not much different.
Last year My Kid joined her elementary school’s robotics team. They spent the year trying to solve alternative energy challenges using Lego’s.
As a child, I too learned about renewable sources of alternative energy –off the back of a truck:
This week, My Kid came home with a letter from her First LEGO League coach about their mission for 2008
The Project:
1.)Research how climate affects your own community. Identify a climate problem in your area, analyze climate data about the problem, and discover what your community is doing about it. Find another community somewhere in the world with the same issue and identify any solutions they are working on. Discuss the various ways climate impacts your community and your lives. Look at climate data available for your area as it relates to your climate problem. Consider talking with experts who work with or in climate everyday, like climatologists, farmers, foresters, and community leaders. Then find another community in a different geographical area that is experiencing a similar problem.
2.)Create an innovative solution based on the information you gathered that could be used on a local or even global level to solve this climate problem or improve on an existing solution. Consider all the potential solutions to your climate problem and how great an impact you can have. Talk with experts to see what solutions are already being developed or used. Build your climate connections by creating an innovative solution to your chosen climate problem that could be applied in both communities and could be adopted by even more communities who face a similar issue.
3.) Once you have researched and developed your solution, get out there and share it! Take what you’ve learned to build awareness of the problem and promote your solution. Show your research and solution and use this project to see just how great an impact you can have on your community and your world!
That’s a lot to ask of elementary school students. And yet it is the same thing they asked of us when I was in grade school. Our teachers, and TV, told us that the adults who built the factories with smokestacks that filled the air with acid rain causing pollution, and poured the sludge into the rivers that killed the fish, and the birds that ate the fish, were ignorant. They didn’t know that would happen.
So Woodsy Owl told us kids that the clean up was our job!
This year My Kid’s multidisciplinary curriculum is based around the theme of community, both local and global. The children are taught the same thing they learned watching High School Musical; “We’re all in this together”. In the spring there will be a large art project utilizing recycled materials. The students will learn how to police the glass, paper & plastic sorting skills and light bulb choices of their parents. They will sell us canvas shopping bags covered with pictures drawn in Sharpie marker of crying trees and slogans reminding us to reduce, reuse and recycle!
“Next year I am going to save the world.” My Kid said in happy anticipation, at the school festival last spring, believing this to be what one does in the third grade.
As children, we were told that the world was ours to save.
Years later my kid is being told the SAME THING because WE FAILED!
My generation was raised in the 1970’s during the Energy Crisis, in cold houses with adults fretting about the length of our showers and the high price of oil. “Could gasoline ever really go over $1 a gallon?” was one summer’s unending conversation. Yet, many of us grew up to buy SUV’s to chauffer our own kids from mall to soccer field to McMansion in suburban housing developments without any sidewalks, miles from the nearest store.
Renewable energy missionaries were out in force when I was a kid in the ’70’s:
I rode my bike to their revival meetings. I wanted to be an actress, but there wasn’t much live theater where I lived. Desperate for role models. I fell for The New Western Energy Show hook, line and sinker. It was like meeting the real life version of my Sunshine Family dolls, made by Mattel, Inc. (NYSE: MAT)
I even had the Sunshine Family Van. I considered it one of my best Christmas presents ever! It was converted truck, with a wooden shack on top, from which the dolls apparently sold handmade pottery and leather goods at craft fairs. So you see this all seemed to me, at the time, to be an acceptable, viable, creative, even mainstream, future way of life.
But, by the time I was graduating from high school and college in the ’80’s, communal living hippie-types had turned into selfish Yuppies, and those who hadn’t were scorned. I polished my resume and wore suits in order to project a professional image. Wall Street said “Greed is good”.
Now, hipsters are getting crafty with recycled textiles, making clothes and bags to sell at flea markets and festivals, magazines and newspapers offer frugal living tips, and billboards advertise energy saving appliances.
