Friends and Dragons

I was at my daughters’ school the other day, visiting middle child’s classroom for Am Ed Week. As I was leaving, I passed the windows that look out on to the playground. There I saw oldest child at recess. She was wandering around the area where the playground equipment was, and I saw her approach and walk away from a group of her friends. She did this a few times, then wandered up and down the path from the playground to the blacktop.

Having three daughters, and knowing how cruel girls can be, I started having all kinds of apprehensions about her and all that lay ahead. Making friends, losing friends, mean girls, fitting in, and on and on.

That night I told her that I got to watch her on the playground and asked her about her walking around alone, and what her friends were up to.

She explained quite rationally that she and her friends were playing “dragon” and she was in charge of carrying the dragon eggs away from her friends, and that her friends were taking care of the dragon nest while she did that, which is why she was walking back and forth.

So I guess, at least for now, I really don’t have to worry about her or her imagination.

Self Absorbed

Driving down the street the other day, for some reason, I had a realization that I am self-absorbed. I even looked up the definition (preoccupied with one's thoughts, interests, etc) to confirm that I was correct. And I felt really bad about it. I am very preoccupied with everything to do with me. MY family, MY work, MY concerns, problem, happiness, joys, sadness. How anything that occurs affects ME. And as someone who prior to this realization thought I was definitely NOT self-absorbed, this came as a bit of a shock. We are all this way to a certain extent, but after some self-examination, I think I am alot like this. I wasn't always this way - I was very much a person who did for everyone else, to the point of neglecting myself. So I think that when I realized that that wasn't the best way to be, I took it to the other extreme of making it all about me.

So the question I have now asked myself is how do I change this and find the happy medium - and isn't this a dilemma that many women find themselves in?

My goal is to work on the answers.

Old Flame

While wasting time on Facebook the other day, I started looking through high school classes to see who I might know or remember. I looked through the names of the class that had been seniors when I was a freshman, never expecting to see the name of my major crush. Having not seen nor heard anything about this guy since high school, my interest was piqued. This was your typical 14 year old crush – every waking moment thinking about the guy, re-routing my way to classes to walk past him, writing my name with his, TLA, etc. etc. And, as is also typical, the guy didn’t even know I existed. Fast forward many years, and here I sit at a computer, seeing his name on a Facebook list. Thanks to google, I was able to find out where he is living now (somewhere in the Midwest, which was surprising) and where he works. Which led me to a staff photo. Which led me to burst out laughing. Here he was, the guy who I obsessed over and shed countless tears over… now a very un-cute, balding, corporate sales dude. Pretty much the antithesis of the man I married.

A few days later, a good friend of mine told me that she saw one of my exes on a dating website. Again (lovin’ this computer stuff), I took a few minutes to check it out. This time, this was a guy I actually dated in high school. We had a little bit of an on again off again thing way back then, and have actually remained friends to this day. He is now divorced with children; his children even go to school with mine. I thought a little bit about other old flames, and where they are in life now. I think about how lucky I am that I wound up with the husband I have, and how I can’t imagine myself with any of the people that I had crushes on or dated in the past. Mostly, with three daughters, I try and figure out how to handle their heartbreaks and crushes when they are fourteen and going through the same things I went through. How to make them understand that young love can be a painful thing, but that it’s not the end of the world when it ends. That someday, hopefully, they’ll look back and thank their lucky stars that the didn’t wind up with their high school crush.

Not Hoping For Threes

I was told twice today that things happen in threes. This is one thing I don't want to happen in threes. I've gone to my second wake in one month, experienced the death of someone whom, while I wasn't currently close to, had an effect on my life mostly at a young age. My previous post was about Mr. Martin, who died a short time ago. This time it was my Aunt Mary, who was my father's sister. As my relationship with my father was iffy at best, there hadn't been much contact with Aunt Mary. The last time I saw her was last year, (oddly at almost exactly the same time of year), at my father's wake. It was the first time I had seen her in probably 30 years. And now, this was the last time I saw her, today, at her wake. I was sad, and was sad seeing my Uncle John looking so much older just one year later, and that it was again at the death of a family member. Aunt Mary's death came quickly and unexpectedly, though she was 79. She and Uncle John were married 61 years and she had a wonderful life. In my mind I have memories of photographs from when they were all young, my mom & dad still married and before all the bad things happened, my Uncle John & Aunt Mary, and us kids, quite little, all of us playing in the sand and smiling. Photos of all of us on the beaches of New Hampshire and Maine, where we would vacation together. I always wondered how two siblings could be so very incredibly different, as my dad and she were. She had this really cool, indescribable voice, that I can still hear in my head if I focus. It was how I recognized her at my father's wake - I heard her before I saw her. Her obituary read of a woman I knew only partly, and it saddened me that the circumstances of our lives had taken each of us away from the other.

Hey Lisa Baby!

I grew up next door to a family of six. The father of that family was a hard working man's man - he worked in construction and expected dinner on the table when he got home. He was able to fix, build and grow just about anything - he built the house he lived in. Their life was at most times, the opposite of mine growing up. What I really remember about him is his ability to whistle. He could, and did whistle all the time. It was always a happy sound to me. If I'd be wandering around their yard (which on occasion I would do), he always seemed to be working on something in his garage. He'd look up and say "hey Lisa baby!".

Mr. Martin passed away today. I don't know how old he was, I'd guess in his eighties. He had suffered a few strokes, and hadn't been doing well for quite some time. In the past week or so, my mom (who still lives next door) said that he was ready to go, that it was his time. And so it was. And even though I haven't seen him in a long time, I can still perfectly remember him in his garage, working, and looking up and saying with a smile "hey Lisa baby".

Purging the Crankies

I guess I picked a particularly miserable time to actually sit and write about our vacation. I needed to vent about the sucky times. But there were a few bright spots:
1. I wasn't at work
2. Husband wasn't at work.
3. Our entire family of five was together at the same time (okay, sometimes that wasn't a bright spot)
4. Since we didn't want to grill in the rain, we got to go out to eat a whole lot.
5. On Tuesday we drove north and got to go sailing with my parents, and it only sprinkled a little, and then they took us all out to dinner.
6. Husband & M, not minding the rain in the morning, got to go canoeing together.
7. Thursday, the other sort of un-rainy day, we spent in Burlington. We went to the ECHO Aquarium and the Vermont Teddy Bear Factory, which the kids loved, and it didn't rain on the ferry back to NY, so we got to get out of the car for the trip back.
So as husband says, he wants the optimistic me back. With this writing, I hope to be back on track and not a cranky b*tch.

All I Wanted Was a Nice Vacation!

Spent the last few minutes trying to come up with a top ten list of why the week long vacation my family & I just returned from was pretty much the worst vacation ever. Gave up. This is our one vacation a year,(and I don't count visiting the in-laws as vacation), that husband and I look forward to, and it was crap. Really truly crap. Upon entering the cabin that we rented, we were assaulted by a musty smell similar to a basement that hasn't been aired out in months. The kitchen was the size of a very small bathroom, which I could deal with except that the three girls always needed to be in at the same time as me. The "beach" which I had specifically inquired about was pretty much nonexistent, partially due to the huge rain/thunderstorm that had taken place the night before our arrival. The "beach" and water were also covered in branches and lovely green algae (which, with husband's assistance, only cleared up on the day we left). The rain that fell on Sunday was excessive, and which continued to fall, every day (with a few hour exception on Tuesday and on Thursday). Six year old Z got pink eye and a minor sinus infection on the 2nd day, which resulted in a trip to the local health center. She whined and complained and cried to go home the majority of the trip. We couldn't grill, we couldn't sit by a campfire and make smores, we couldn't play in the sand or even go swimming. And the house didn't have a tv (which normally would be fine, except we couldn't do anything else!). Never have I been so glad to get home! I can't even think of some funny, witty things to say about the whole week. All I can say is, next year will be, has to be better.