Community

My next-youngest sister, let's call her Carlotta, is the type of person I imagine might someday be described as a pillar of her community. She's not currently in the role; she's a first time mother of a one year old, living in a new city, and just starting back to work at a new job, after a year at home with her baby.

But she got this new job because she did things like attend an annual Wetland Forum for New York State, and then when she was invited to present, she said yes.

I work alone, out of my home, and I rarely-to-never speak to anyone in my field. I read quite a bit, though.

Some of this is happenstance, and some of it is probably not the slightest bit surprising to our mother.

* * *

I've started a Wednesday morning playgroup, as a sort of prelude to my eventual nursery school. This week I had 5 kids. As we get a routine established, I hope to add more kids to the group (I can take a total of 8), and perhaps expand it to another day in the week.

Instead of advertising on Craigslist (which is where I started with childcare, and was quite successful), I joined a couple of yahoo groups. One is a bigger group for my whole city, and the other is a smaller one specifically for my neighborhood. I also discovered that my neighborhood has it's own Facebook page, so I joined up there too. It turns out I'm primarily attracting neighborhood kids, and getting to know people who live nearby. Nice for the nursery school -the professional piece- but also nice on a personal level.

* * *

My husband and I started dating in February of his senior year in college. He was an art major, in a tiny, Midwestern college town. I was a transfer student from New York State (which might as well have been New York City, for all the difference it made in Kansas). By the time May rolled around, we were engaged, and he was displaying work in pretty much all of the local shows. I accompanied him on his rounds.

He stopped to make small talk with the husband/wife team-teachers, who split both a full-time job and an old elementary school that they had reclaimed and renovated into a home and studio space.

When he dropped in at the local gallery to drop off a series of paintings, he spent some time chatting with the local artist who rented space in the back.

Our small-town watering hole was always a reliable place to find Ernie, if he wasn't standing on the sidewalk outside his house, painting. One way or another, my husband found him when he needed to, and they talked.

I waited by his side, in the same general manner that I waited by my sister's side, over many years. Except that with my sister, I was mostly bored, and wondering: what in the devil are they still talking about!? I was so enamored with my husband and our brand new, bright, shiny love that everything he did was wonderful. I saw this type of small talk in a new light, all of a sudden. This is his PLACE, I thought. He BELONGS here. This seemed marvelous to me, for the first time ever.

* * *

I have a great, big, wonderful family. Probably bigger, and louder, and more enmeshed than a girl who lives mostly in her imagination and between the pages of books, really requires. So I never needed community. I don't have a tribe. Never found my people. Never sought.

My parents live a few hours away. All five of my sisters live less than an hour from them. Two of them have kids the same age as my kids; a third has a baby on the way. They get together for dinner on a random Tuesday. Meet for a cup of coffee or a beer. Jog around the park together. Take advantage of free babysitting.

I had no idea how much it would break my heart to miss out on all of this, by just a few hours.

But my husband has a great job; a job he loves. And tenure. We own a house, and we really, really love our house.

So I'm going to try something I've never had to do before. I'm going to be intentional about building community. After all, this is our PLACE now. I've never belonged anywhere before. But maybe, just maybe, I could.

NaNoPoMo Yo!

What the hell, I guess I'll do this post-a-day for a month thing. But I'm warning you now: I totally cheat! :)

Can't say I didn't warn ya!

The Third Maybe (or With Money Already Done, I Might as Well Talk About Sex)

I was on the birth control pill that went with breastfeeding. And then I mentioned to my OB-GYN that my period had come 4 times in 8 weeks. She looked concerned. She prescribed something else. I was on the something else for a month or so, and then I weaned.

And then.

Oh. Good. Lord. The something else!

I am not an emotionally volatile gal. My moods are typically quite stable. I don't suffer from PMS (except for sugar. I do want to eat ALL THE SUGAR one week out of every month). My husband is the moody one of the two of us. Over the past decade plus of marriage, we've both become accustomed to to this reality. And then.

Suddenly. The something else pill!

I hear that I threatened divorce over the whereabouts of a pair of shoes.

We don't even say divorce.

Nor do we put our shoes away, reliably.

I don't actually remember how things went down. My sister, months later, between giggles, called it a rage blackout. It's really only funny after the fact.

I did wake up the morning after, cramps rushing violently through my body like a tidal wave. Flow so heavy it required multiple backup systems.

I looked at -felt- what was happening to my body. I reflected on what had happened to my mood, just yesterday. The similarities. I said, to my husband: This might sound crazy, but ... do you think yesterday might have been PMS?

He held both hands up, surrender-style, before he even answered: I wasn't going to say it. I THOUGHT it. But I wasn't going to SAY it!

I called my doctor. Told her I was done nursing and would like a new pill. She said the pill I already had was perfect for both nursing and non-nursing. She hung up the phone before I formulated a reply that might convey the crazy.

In hindsight, I suppose shouting I'M CRAZIER'N A SHITHOUSE RAT ON THIS PILL might have done the job. But I'm not that quick a thinker, all the time. Sometimes I am. But not all the time. And not this time. We hung up the phone, and I threw my pills in the garbage.

And so. That's the story of how I ended up a 36 year-old-mother-of-two-with-no-form-of-birth-control.

And a six-pack of Jamaican Red Stripe combined with poor calendar math skills is how I ended up, late one night, reading my husband's mind when he telepathically asked me: your period just ended, right? and I telepathically answered: yah, seems that way, doesn't it? (Math is neither of our strong suits.)

But then, the next morning, minus the Jamaican Red Stripe, upon counting days using both my fingers and the calendar, it seems we were both a bit off with the numbers. And so it was a two week waiting game.

I don't know what surprised me more. My first reaction, where I was thrilled to be potentially-pregnant. I felt unbelievably powerful. All my current problems had solutions. I was prepared to march right into my planned future without missing a beat. Quite frankly, I miss that potentially-pregnant woman. She was 'bout to get shit done. Or the week-later-panic that hit. How badly I wanted to hide under the covers. How much scarier my financial future suddenly became. The desperate desire for sugar that suddenly took over.

Oh, no, sorry. That was just PMS rearing it's ugly head once again.

No third baby. Not now.

Just a third maybe.

And a big old question mark in the middle of my heart.

So, I'm Going to Talk About Money

I wake up too early, with a start. Realize all of a sudden that it's a day later than I thought it was. Still Monday, but the date is a number ahead of the number in my head. Meaning, an automatic withdrawal for a monthly bill is happening today, not tomorrow. No time to teach a private yoga class and then rush that check to the credit union before closing time tomorrow. I've been counting on that check to cover the withdrawal.

Now I'll be counting change.

I turn it into a homeschool lesson. Pour the change jar onto a blanket on my lap and the kids help me separate coins. We talk about the worth of each coin, the difference in sizes, copper versus silver. My husband brought to our marriage a series of red plastic coin containers. We fill them up to the line at the top, and the coins slide right into the paper sleeves in the perfect amounts, all ready to go.

We have more than we need. Means we can put some gas in the tank this week. Not a full tank, but a half tank will do.

My emotions, during the course of this exercise: Worry and anger over what I keep seeing as our lack. A simple pride that I can turn it into a lesson and allow my kids to help. A certain sense of detachment, of knowing it will be okay, and that I needn't be overly attached to the details. Just count the pennies, Katy, and collect them in the sleeves. Just do the thing before you to be done. (That's all there ever is to do. How many times must I learn and relearn this?)

* * *

Sitting on the bench at the beach with two stay-at-home-moms of my recent acquaintance. The short-haired brunette is watching her two children climb on the slide. The long haired brunette is watching her only son dig in the sand and fill a dump truck. I suppose I'm the medium-haired brunette in this vignette. And my eyes are darting across the playground and back to the sand, because I have three kids to keep an eye on. No, I don't have three kids of my own, but I babysit to pay the grocery bill, so I spend less time sitting and talking, more time moving quickly to and fro, counting three heads, three heads, three heads. Everyone's accounted for.

* * *

I often think about how I wish I didn't have to do childcare. I'm so over the ten hour days. Then my husband comes home and I toss the children in his general direction, hop in the shower, and rush out the door to teach an hour or two of fitness classes every evening. My coffee intake is strategically planned to the hour of each day. I eat in the car, sometimes, to be sure I have enough energy to make it through the evenings. I miss bedtimes for work. This is precisely the full-time-work-life I never, ever wanted.

But I spend all day with my little ones. And they are so happy. They love this life, full of friends who arrive first thing in the morning, stay all day, go with us wherever we go. I resent it sometimes, but they think it's simply wonderful.

* * *

Suddenly I hear the long-haired brunette finish the tail of sentence I'm sure I must be misunderstanding . .. since I'm trying to keep the grocery bill to $50 or $60 a week. 

I take my eyes off all three children, and plunk my backside right back onto that bench. I lean in, and ask: Did you say $50 or $60 a week? For groceries? She nods. How do you do that? I ask, We spend $250 a week for groceries and gas. Both heads whip in my direction: short and long-haired brunettes, faces aghast. I mean, I hasten to add, $100 of that is gas, so... but then I spurt out the rest: If I make $300 a week, we easily spend that. 

They look at me like I'm crazy.

I mumble something about organic meat. They nod knowingly. The long-haired brunette assures me she could get my grocery bill down to $70 a week. I wonder in my head if she could possibly be serious.

* * *

Later, I ask my sister, who assures me that she spends about the same amount as I do. So does our other sister, she confides, and I feel better about it.

I think it over, and realize I would not trade my too-busy, babysitter-by-day, yoga-instructor-by-night, life for the simpler pleasures of factory farmed meat.

Funny, how I can feel scarcity in the face of such obvious abundance.

The Hardest Job

Well, my in-home nursery school won't be opening until next fall. Which is both a disappointment, and a huge weight off my shoulders. I suppose it's unrealistic to expect that I can conceive of opening a school in my house and then get it off the ground in under 6 months. :) But then again, what fun is realism all the time, right?

Speaking of realism, I've stumbled on a few too many articles recently about how parenting is the hardest gig going. And each time I can't help think (like we used to say in high school): for real? I'm tired of that trope. Am I the only one who disagrees? I've never worked in a coal mine, but even so, I'll take parenting any day of the week. And actually, I find childcare harder than parenting. It's all the same expectations, at least for the hours you're doing it, but you don't love the kids the way you love your own, which makes the work that much harder to do. Motherhood has never kept me up all hours of the night with knots in my stomach, the way teaching special education in a classroom of kids called "emotionally disturbed" did. Give me a gaggle of kids of my own over another day of that year of hell!

But maybe my particular cross to bear isn't parenthood so much as paid employment. Now, that conundrum has never come easy for me. Always underpaid, underemployed, overworked, overwhelmed or overeducated! I only ever hit the sweet spot once with employment, and for the life of me, I don't know how to find my way back to that balance.

I know what to do with my kids. When it's hard, it's also pretty clearly my own fault. I always know what the problem is, and how to solve it. Get out of the house more, and get them running around. Quit bickering with my husband in earshot of the kids. Don't use a snappy tone of voice if I don't want to hear a snappy tone of voice used at me.

All of that seems simple in comparison to: how do I earn a living? And especially: how do I earn a decent living doing something that interests me, while homeschooling my kids? I find answering that question infinitely harder than motherhood itself.

There was never a magic moment where becoming a parent changed me. If I changed, it was like slipping on a new skin that fit so comfortably I never noticed the difference. But losing my job, deciding to homeschool, and trying to create a new career, is breaking me down, and rebuilding me. Someday -I hope- I will look back on these days and be able to say: of course it was hard. You built something from scratch that hadn't been there before. And now it's so amazing/rewarding/much easier than it used to be!

I can imagine some mothers might say that very thing about their difficult babies, who grow up to be far less challenging children.

I only hope I can someday say it about my career!

End of Summer Bitching and Wishing

I've been waking each night at 1 or 2am. I lie in bed, and try not to think about money. I pray, please, please, please and then I change it to thank you for providing what we need, in case The Secret is right and you have to assume you'll get whatever you're praying for. Don't want to repel the grocery money, for goodness sakes.

(I've never even read The Secret, but you can never be too careful. And all the Gods I've ever studied seem to be so picky about rules. I'd never make it as a God; I tend permissive, and assume everyone's doing the best they can. I don't like a lot of rules because I'm no good at paying attention to the details.)

I push thoughts of money from my mind, roll over, fluff the pillows, huff and puff in frustration. I stay in bed, hoping for the sweet relief of sleep. But if it doesn't come, then I walk down the stairs in the dark, stubbing my toes, kicking things over by accident, and come to read on the couch.

I never thought I'd be an entrepreneur. I thought I'd be a teacher, in a union. I once thought about all the advice I'd ever read in women's magazines about asking for a raise (document your successes, put together a presentation, focus on what you've done for the company's bottom line and how it has benefited from having you as an employee), and I thought: Thank God I'll never have to do THAT!

I wish we could live on my husband's income alone. If only we didn't need to eat.

I wish I had one million dollars stashed away somewhere, and I could live off the interest for the rest of my life.

I wish I gave a shit about money, and found it even the slightest bit interesting, so that thinking about it was not an exercise in the torture of tedium. I spent a long, sleepless night once in the home of a former acquaintance, reading all his self-help books about getting rich. They always asked: do you want, more than anything, to be wealthy beyond your wildest dreams? I knew, then (like I know now), that I would never be wealthy beyond my wildest dreams. My answer, at the start of every book, was: nah.

I just want to be able to buy the groceries, daydream a lot, and spend the days in the company of my kids.

Childcare costs have dropped precipitously in the past year. I charge the top of the market rate, but now everyone else is charging exactly half that. It's a ten hour day, no lunch, no breaks, and even with two kids -my legal max, in addition to my own two- I'd clear less than minimum wage per hour. I won't do that. And so I'm short on clients, and short on grocery money.

Today's the last day of summer and, as if on cue, the summer money is running right out. And the stupid groceries keep needing to be bought!

My husband goes back to work tomorrow. I've somehow got to figure this out on my own.

And I've already rolled it around and around in my head until it makes me furious to think about it.

I know I ought to count my blessings, but today is not the day for that.

Today is the last day of summer. All I've got today is bitching and wishing.

By The Numbers

Millions Billions Trillions Quadrillions Gazbillions: of fleas! have infested! our basement! Ugh. And that's all there really is to say about that. UGH. OMG. UGH.

1: husband is home for the summer. And managing the fleas. It's probably, almost, even WORTH the gazbillions of fleas, to have him here. I love summer break! (But I would still love it sans fleas! Even more! Just in case you're listening in, Universe. Geesh.)

2: kids are so goddamn much fun; I can't even tell you. I'm just a big, exploding heart, every day. Sometimes I wonder how I could spend the vast amount of time I do with these kids and still be so stinkin' enamored with them! Anyone else would be working my last nerve at -->

22+: hours of every day spent together. But I just keep loving them more!

18-24: months -my girl- is hilarious and amazing. I can't believe she ever won't be this perfect. I'm cool with her being less exhausting, though, and less likely to risk her life on the regular, during everyday situations. That part will be just fine.

4: yrs -my boy- was always my favorite age to teach. I used to say to my husband: It's all downhill after 4, man. The pinnacle of human awesomeness peaks at age 4. Sorry 'bout your luck, readers. I'm going to assume you're all well past your prime.

3rd: summer in a row we're going to the beach for a long, summer weekend. We have a tradition! We go on vacation! I feel like a real and proper grown-up. Also, I just eff love the beach!

Mad stuff (technically a number, by my qualifications): is getting organized this summer. That's all I'll say. Okay, fine, twist my arm: basement, attic, teaching supplies, kitchen, dining room turned classroom, baby clothes, photographs, books, toys, files and paperwork...okay, I have to stop and breathe deeply for a moment. Perhaps into a paper bag. No, I'll be fine. Just better to keep moving forward than to stop and survey the ridiculous landscape of possibility and it's attending responsibilities. And speaking of responsibility, I can't believe I'm -->

36!: In 4 years I'll be -->

40!: I have no idea what age means, at all. Which might even be for the best. Especially since I'm starting new in so many ways, and so that puts us back at -->

0:And speaking of 0, do you think -->

LOVE: could be the opposite of 0? I feel like maybe that's true, in some magical mathematical principle.