Old friends, growing boys

Today a dear friend called me as I was dropping Wildman off at school.  Quickly into the phone, as she has hundreds of times before, she blurted hiking to the Hermit Cave this afternoon and as I have done hundreds of times to different outings before I quickly blurted out YES.

S is someone who I picked up at the park.  When I moved to my house and had Wildman I had very little time to meet other Mom’s.  I had to go back to work when he was 6 weeks old due to my husbands unemployment and I had little time to meet other Mom’s and do typical “Mom” things. When I had Little Boy A in the summer of 2005 I finally felt like I joined the ranks of the Mom’s in my community.  Soon after Little Boy A was born I started frequenting a park where I have met most of the Mom’s in my neighborhood.  Actually I know over a 1/3 of Wildman’s kindergarten class from playgroups and time at the park during the summer/fall of 2005.  My friend S and I quickly fell into a familiar relationship.  We were forgiving of each others quirky pasts and discovered we had a friendship beyond our boys. When I returned to work after my maternity leave was over many of the stay at home Mom’s had little time for me.  Their weekends were filled with time for their husbands and extended family.  S went out of her way to schedule playdates on the weekends with me.  She held my hand as I tried to adjust to two kids in daycare and full time work.  When I finally gave up my dayjob she had a playdate-brunch for me the first Monday I did not go to my day job.  When our kids were younger we spent alot of time hanging out.  Time moved on and she started working in the day.  I was her sons first babysitter.  I still can feel the triumph of getting both of my boys and her son to nap ALL at the same time.  I used to email my husband, TRIPLE BOY SLEEPING HOO RAYY.  Eventually she worked more and more and so did I.  This year both Wildman and S are in the same class.  They are having similar challenges adjusting to school and it has brought S and I back in touch with each other in an almost daily way again.   It has been good to have her to bounce off feelings about the teacher and weathering the adjustment to being the Mom’s of school aged kids.

Today we were walking through the woods with boys who have had a long week of sitting in school. She mentioned a hike we did when Little Boy A was small.  I was trying to hike with a baby in a carrier and she was chasing after 2 – 2 years old boys running in different directions.  It was comical and I was revisiting that memory all day.  When she mentioned the same incident on the hike today I laughed.  It is amazing to me how much time is passing and how our boys are all growing.  It was nice to be with her and fall into familiar comfortable non judgmental ways.  It felt good.  The perfect balm for my soul.

Transit Strike

SEPTA, which is my cities transit provider is on strike.  The strike is creating headaches for so many and I hope this is resolved soon.  Traffic is nuts and the rail lines that still run are packed to capacity.

This strike is also creating headaches in my home.  My husband usually takes SEPTA to work on days that I also have to work.  I then meet him at work at 5:30 with the kids and the car.  He then drops me off at work and takes the kids home for dinner and bed.  Our new insanity is for him to motorcycle to work in the freezing cold.  He leaves work at 4pm to arrive home hopefully before 5 so that I can get the 5:03 train downtown.  If I am lucky I get to work at 6.  The train lines are slow because of the quadrupling of commuters taking these few trains that run.

Last night the train got stuck in the tunnel for a while so I decided to get off a stop before mine and walk.  It was a cool crisp night and the city lights were sparkling.  I walked down blocks I used to frequent but with the addition of the kids to my life I don’t have a ton of time to stroll around downtown. I was marveling at the changes that have taken place to certain blocks and I enjoyed the ghostlike memories of places and events.  It was so nice to just be me doing something that I love to do which is walking and people watching.  It is why I love the urban experience.  Maybe this transit strike is not so bad afterall.

Dreamland

Although I am a bartender, I know quite a few people who are sober.  It is good for me to know sober folks.  It reminds me that not everyone gets mired in the chaos of their disease and dies.  Many people fight the disease and become inspirational healthy individuals.

So last night was the first time I slept like a regular person in almost a week.  It was glorious to slip between the sheets in the dark like you are supposed to.  I found myself having insane dreams about being at the bar.  The most prominent one was of an acquaintance who I have known for many years.  She has never been a good friend just someone I know through my other sober friends.  She has been sober for a very long time.  I kept dreaming that I was bartending in my PJ’s and she was at the bar as I came on shift.  She started drinking and getting more and more abusive as she drank her face changed and she became uglier and uglier.

This morning as my husband came down he declared that he had horrible dreams about another sober friend relapsing and using speed. We have not seen this friend in a few years.  Weird.  Do we dream the same dream because our heads are close together?  I wonder what dreaming of recovering addicts relapsing means.

Well, I am off to work another night so I am on laundry and nap duties this morning.  Keep safe everyone.

Election Day

I feel so guilty.  I didn’t vote.  I forgot till about 5 minutes ago and we are in after hiking all afternoon.  I am just going to blame it all on that cheatin Jon Gosselin.

Anyway you should not follow my lead.  Go and vote.  Change the world.

Time change

This fall time change is creating havoc in my house.  Lovely children who have been sleeping till 7am are now awake and happy at 5:30 am.  I thought the very early mornings were over when the nap went away.  Now they don’t sleep enough and by 6pm want to go to bed because they got up so early and the vicious cycle continues.  This time change also means that I get to go to work in the dark.  Last night I went to work in what felt like the middle of the night.   I hate fall and I hate winter.  The only good thing about the winter is the days getting longer.  Enough bitching.

I went to a small Catholic elementary school.  I think my class had 62 kids. It was a place where you knew all the kids in class and they knew you.  It was as nurturing as a Long Island Catholic school could be in the 70’s and early 80’s.  With the arrival of Facebook I have reconnected with many of these people. Some I have had to unfriend because of opposing views and insulting comments.  I have found some have similar issues to mine.  One friend and I quote song lyrics like rock and roll crazed middle schoolers.  I think on average I have connected more with the people I went to elementary school with than high school friends.  Out of the blue, a friend emailed me to say she is going to be in my town on business and she wanted to stop by my bar.  This really was disconcerting.  I live hours and light years away from where I grew up.  I never just run into anyone I grew up with.  I remember this girl as having a shock of curly hair with a sweetie pie heart-shaped face.  To me, she looks exactly the same just a little older.  She is forever in 5th grade in my mind.  Should be an interesting reunion.

Here it is NABLOPOMO…..

Well folks, I am ashamed at my lack of posts so I am going to dedicate myself to posting daily for nablopomo.  I write the best blog posts in my head while walking or driving that disappear as soon as I sit in front of the computer. These days I am shamefully following the Jon Gosselin train wreck on Radar online instead of posting.  (Now all 4 of you have my permission to poke me).  That kind of junk internet consumption, that is about as bad for you as deep fried pork rinds has got to stop.  Oh but the drama of the insane middle PA dude who now thinks he is famous has me sucked in.  He is my perfect fall guy.  What the laundry didn’t get done.  Oh that is all that cheatin’ Jon Gosselin’s fault.

Anyway.  See you all tomorrow.  C’mon Phillies you gotta win tonight mama does not want to work for nothing!!

Time flies…

Time flies when you work two jobs, with school, half day preschool, and the occasional sitter as your only childcare,  and you have had more 20 hour days than you can remember.  I am relieved to say I got fired from my day job.   I wanted an extra day at the bar OR a part time day job and luckily I got both.  It was more than I could handle.  The day job wanted me “on call” and I could not drop everything and run to them when they had an issue. I needed 24 hour notice to make it work and they needed someone within a few hours.  They also needed someone with more networking experience than I had.  The woman who was my direct report was distant and very hard to communicate with.  I didn’t need that kind of politics in my life.  With the extra day at the bar and the occasional fill in shift we will be more than fine. I will be able to use my time when Little Boy A is in preschool to nap or even (gasp) blog.  I will have a few hours a week to have some head space to ponder what I REALLY want to do when I grow up and to catch up on needed Doctor appointments and the like. I feel like the sun just came back out.

I thought when Wildman when to school I would have more “time”.  Not really.  He has one or two half days a month and days off for whatever whenever.  He goes to bed extremely early and I find I have to have dinner ready before I get him at school.  We arrive home at about 4pm (he gets out of school at 3:30 and we take our time walking home) and he sits down to 45 minutes to 1 hour of homework.  Yes, homework in kindergarten (insert eye rolling here).  He is struggling with this a bit and some of his delays are back with a vengeance.  I sit with him and some days when it is too much he actually is leaning on me by the end of the homework.  His focus has been ok and I have been helping to teach him more organization around the schoolwork.  After the schoolwork we get out for about 45 min to an hour.  He needs this. He runs, bikes, scooters, and is on the go the whole time.  It is like a caged animal released. Then it is time for dinner, shower, and in bed by 7:15pm.  It is weird if I put him to bed at 7:15pm he sleeps till 7 am,  any later he is up at 6 am and has huge behavior issues the next day. I have been concerned that his issues are not being addressed fully at school and just tonight, emailed the very approachable principal.

The adjustment to kindergarten did not end with Wildman.  Little Boy A was a mess for about a month.  He misses his “best friend brother”.   Slowly but surely we have made new routines that involved playdates and special things we do together.  The tears have dried up and we have many cool things we do.  One of my favorites involves picking up trash. We leave to walk to the school to pick up Wildman about 20 minutes early.  One of the first days we walked over to get Wildman, Little Boy A exclaimed that people were polluting the woods by his house and it angered him.  The road we walk along to get Wildman at school is the edge of this beautiful park. Trash was thrown or blew into the woods.  The trash offended Little Boy A so much he talked about it constantly for days.  He decided that he needed to clean up the woods to keep it nice for everyone to have a healthy and good life. So, everyday you will see us walking along the road (except for Fridays) cleaning up the woods.  I am so proud of him for thinking so much at 4 years old.  I am supportive in his quest to clean up our little part of the world and I proudly help him. We chuck a grocery bag full of trash into the dumpster at the school before reuniting the best friend brothers.  Life passes just too fast…

Nablopomo is coming and I really want to blog daily again!

Happy 6th Birthday Wildman!

September 20th is my Wildman’s birthday.  WOW time is flying.

Dear Wildman,

You have become such a person this year.  You are so big, 55lbs and 4 feet tall and have a personality to match.  You are very outgoing and engage all you meet with your stories.

You are very tall and people think you are older than 6.  You are so physical. You never fall when climbing, can ride your bike and scooter as well as the 10 year olds on the block, can swim up to 8 laps of a pool, and jump off the high dive all day.  You love adventure and new challenges.  This week you started Kindergarten.  When your friend S was scared you took him by the hand and led him into class.  You sat with him on the mat and made sure you introduced him to the teacher.  You have empathy and caring beyond your years but then again you have always been this way. Before you started school you had to give up napping which has been a family tradition for quite a while.  It has been hard to give up your nap and you ask for it regularly. I keep telling you that it is ok to let it go and grow up.  You just miss staying up later and going swimming a few times a week in the evening. Now you go to bed very early but you have adjusted.

You have had a lot of intervention this year. The therapies have helped in many ways and I am hoping we can keep you pharmaceutical free for your ADHD as long as possible.  Parenting you is a lesson in extremes.  You can be the most difficult child in the world to parent and not five minutes later you are the biggest love in the whole world. Those lows and highs can be very hard but I try to ride the waves as smoothly as possible.   You are very in the I LOVE MY MOM stage and I am eating it up.  I love when you call me “Princess Mommy” and “beautiful”.  You especially like when I put makeup on and you tell me that I have beautiful eyelashes and tattoos.  That always makes me crack up.

You love your brother but you two fight some.  You really have to stop trying to get his goat.  Every time you steal his toy or hit him he screams and you wind up on a time out.  Even though you know there is a consequence you can’t help messing with him.  You always treat Little Boy A like he is a baby and regularly give something up so he can have his way.  I need to tell you that when you do this it makes parenting him harder but I don’t stop you because you have to work these things out with him.

You were getting out of bed and not going to bed as you should for a while.  We started a sticker chart and you have been extremely motivated to fill the chart.  The prize is a date day with me.  You want to go to the top of city hall and then to a seafood restaurant for mussels and flounder. That to me sounds like the perfect date day and I look forward to chatting and just hanging out for the afternoon.   I get a kick on how sophisticated your food choices are for a 6-year-old.

I love you Wildman with all my heart.  You are a happy, caring, sweet little boy and watching you grow is a privilege.  Do well in Kindergarten and have an amazing year.

Love,

Your Mom

Why I absolutely LOVE my new Job!

1.  It is all the fun and good of past IT jobs without the drama of big office politics.

2.  It is very part time and I make my own hours.

3.  I actually don’t have to serve drinks of any sort may it be juice, beer, soy milk, or whiskey. I also don’t have to ask anyone, “What can I get you?”

4.  I have to use my brain.

5.  No one talks to me like I am a Mom or hangs off my pant leg.

6.  They pay me more than double what I wanted for a part time job.

7.  I can work part of the time from home.

8.  They invited me to the holiday luncheon already.

9.  I walk away from work feeling like a grown up instead of someone’s Mom or a old scenester.

10.  I now work 2 jobs and I am working 40 hours a week.  I am still able to take my kids to the park in the afternoon or swimming.  Little Boy A and I even get time to go to museums, parks, or have play dates and he only has to go to preschool part time. I get to have my cake and I  eat it too.  The only thing suffering is my poor poor filthy house and my sleep. Maybe I can hire a house cleaner eventually

10.  Although I can wear jeans, I wear makeup and get dressed a little. It feels good.

11.  Next summer I will be able to work from the outside pool since they have wireless internet.

12.  Both my jobs are less than 2 blocks from each other and are less than a 15 minute commute from home.

Grab Bag

Something for everyone folks.

1.  Ed from Florida (Slugisha) was one of the first people to interview my band. He now has a blog where he pulls demo tapes from his vaults and re-reviews them. He still has all the correspondence between he and I, as well as other goodies.  Our first demo is posted for download (so embarrassing) and our first album is posted for download too. Check it out! Our friends bands Dr. Bob’s Nightmare and The Stuntmen have their own posts  What a blast from the past. The three bands were good friends and we played together often and even did a “Philly Punk Rock Tour”.  I was so young, idealistic, and in love.  It has been a while since something like this happened.

2.  I got a job folks.  I am now the 40 hour a month IT person at a small personal injury  law firm.  So cool.  It is a “work here when you can” and “telecommute if you can” job.  For now I will keep the three nights at the bar too but will reevaluate next spring.  I never had an interview where the person slammed down my resume after two questions and said, “Look You had a great phone interview, you look like a decent person,  why don’t you go and meet everyone else, you have the job.”  They hired me because I was looking for part-time work, most of the other applicants were out of work and just wanted something very short term till they got a full-time job. The hourly rate is outrageously good it is actually double what I wanted when I started looking for a part-time gig.  Go me.

3.  School cannot start soon enough.  For some reason kindergarten does not start till September 16th.  It is maddening.  I have my extremely energetic duo all day alone.  I wind up having to entertain them and feed them three meals BEFORE I got to work and stand on my feet all night and take care of childlike drunks.  My husband gets to come home and shower the duo and put them to bed.  My sleep deficit is bigger than the federal deficit this month.  Today my husband looked at me about 11am and said I am taking the duo swimming and gift card shopping at Toys-r-us.  It was punkymama spa day; vacuuming, folding laundry, and a 2.5 hour nap before I went to work.  There is something wrong when this is pure bliss.