Curse you potato chips!

I have a problem. I love potato chips. I particularly love potato chips when my monthly visitor bangs on my door, which, now that I'm "old", seems to be all.the.time. LOL! I have passed my love of those salty crunchy nuggets of gold down to my son as well. I am so lucky that, generally speaking, G is a great eater. He'll eat fruits and veggies over junk food most of the time, and is essentially a pescatarian. But chips are his downfall and he has skimped on too many dinners due to his diving into a bag of chips before I got home from work. Damn kid. ARGH - work got in the way...I had such profound things to say...more later perhaps.

How the hell do I have a 5th grader?!?!?

My kid started 5th grade last month. 5th grade. Intermediate school in our town. Changing classes?!?!? He informed me that he thinks 2 girls in his class are SUPER cute - "like sexy-cute Mom" (yes, we had a chat about how 10 year old girls are, in fact, NOT sexy - don't worry). He's definitely firmly entrenched in his 'tweenness. It's funny, I remember my mom telling me OVER and OVER when I was a child and then when G was a baby that parenthood makes time fly, and that I will wake up one day and he'll be moving out. It might be cliche but damn if it isn't true. At least after the first year. Funny - my nephew just turned 1 - the week G went back to school - and I think his first year dragged even for me - and I'm not his mother! G's 9th year, which encompassed the same general timeframe as E's first, seemed faster. And it was the same amount of time. How is that possible? I need to get back to blogging more. I'm in here now for 3 reasons. 1. I need to consolidate 2 spreadsheets into one for work and I'd rather rip my eyes out. 2. I watched Julie and Julia, or whatever it's called, the other day and was inspired by her bloggy-ness! 3. I was just talking to some of my online mom friends about blogs - particularly blogs by only child moms. Hey that's me, and I have a blog AND I've written about G being an only. So...let's see if I can make this happen more successfully again now. I need to blog for my sanity and my mental health and now that I'm parenting a 'tween only - I think that might be even more the case! Oh and by the way - you will be brought to your knees in confusion the first time your kid uses the word sexy. TRUST me. HOLY CRAP!

life will break you

There is a quote about life love and loss that I really like. Its by Louise Erdrich and it begins "Life will break you." Indeed. Today was a moment in life that broke me. It shattered me as if I were thin ice on top of a deep pond in February. It's funny because the shifty crappy overly emotional utterly complicated situation that caused me to break has had these moments before. This isn't new. This has happened before in almost the same way. And I have no idea why. But I can tell you the exact moment it happened. It was like a part of my heart ruptured. I shut down. I, who is never st a loss for words, had nothing to say. Moreover I couldn't even speak. I couldn't articulate how I felt. I felt broken. Ruptured. I know this will shift but I'm not sure anymore how I want it to recover. I care about those in my life deeply and hard. It leads me to high and apparently unrealistiic expectations. So given that - now what? Aren't I worth someone's effort in the same way people I care about are so incredibly worth it yo me?

back to begin

I haven't posted or written in a long, long time.  Very lax of me and probably not a good idea.

Today was a bad bad horrible rotten no good day in a string of hard days over the last two years.  The kind of day that breaks you.

It broke me.

So now I am going to try to shift my energies and focus, blog here, get my thoughts on paper, and get my shit together, once and for all.  Today showed me that ignoring reality well just fucks you over.

Just once I'd like to be second

I've read plenty of books about birth order - and most of them resonate with me.  You see, I'm a first born and, what's more, there's a sizeable gap (3.5 years) between me and my brother.  I was an only child for a good long while (what with onlies and eldests being so similar).  I am like a walking textbook - sort of - of an eldest child.

You know what I mean?

I am the good girl.
I am the kid that was the good example, that did things in the right order - finished high school, college, grad school, good job, marriage, kid.
My siblings took divergent paths.  And I don't begrudge them for that.  In fact, in a way, I'm a bit jealous that they dared to take the road less traveled, so to speak.

Don't get me wrong - I have had my share of intrigue, mystery, lapses, and downright missteps in taking the "right" path.  I'm not so sure following that straight road was the right decision for me all the time.  In fact, I know it wasn't.

But here I am.  I'm rapidly approaching my 38th birthday.  I have a great - albeit challenging - kid and a marriage that is, well, not exactly stellar, but now 12+ years old somehow.  Pick a big life event - I've done it.

So as the oldest - I've done it.  This means that I have somehow set the bar, and somehow - YEAH RIGHT - become the expert, the go-to girl.

I love that my siblings look up to me.  I love that they regard me as someone who knows what she's doing - although clearly, I don't.  I am in awe that they look at me in that light.

But it is OVERWHELMING to me.  I've had one marriage that I'm not exactly great at.  I have one kid who I have clearly fucked up in a mild sense over the last 9+ years.  I'm still fucking him up and now that he's taken the big leap into the 'tween years, I have a whole new set of challenges - body parts changing, weird smells, strange relationship challenges with girls - the list goes on and on and the fact is, I don't have a hope for a clue how to navigate it.  Luckily, I have friends with like-aged children, so we mutually vent, compare notes, and giggle over our general level of cluelessness.

The fact is, I'm not expert.  I have my own child and husband-related oddities and confusions to deal with.  I don't really have someone to go to, to ask what to do because my over-achieving, verbally gifted 9 year old was crushed when he "only" got a 91 on his first language arts test of 4th grade.  I was equally crushed by such things as a kid and I don't know how to help him.  I didn't know how to breastfeed him when he wouldn't latch due to my uber-flat nipples, and I didn't know why 1-2-3 Magic didn't seem to work for him.

I can make suggestions and I can try to be helpful, but I feel grossly inadequate and, what's worse, it just adds to my sense of overwhelmedness.  And makes me feel like a suck-ass "good example".

SIGH.  Perfectionism sucks.  Curses, you crazy personality traits that come with being the first-born!

the long climb up back into the saddle

I'm back.  My hope is that I'm back for a while, on a more regular basis, but life tends to hand me all kinds of weird crap that derails me from my time where I can be me - like here.

It's been a hell of a summer.  I got a no-money, no-title "promotion" (so that's not actually a promotion, really, is it now?  just the blessing of a job when my boss no longer has one, and the opportunity to manage a group of 7 people with no real management title).  It's been an interesting road since that officially took effect a month ago.  I feel like I have an ally in my new boss and in the peer of mine who has the same role managing the other half of our dysfunctional team.  I"m doing my best, but when they tapped us on the shoulders to take on these new roles, they didn't take away 1 slice of our jobs - and we were both already over-allocated.  Oh well, it's a chance to try to prove to the people who don't know me, or don't know what more I can do, that I'm not just a kick-ass BA, but I can be a great leader, mentor, and peer to other managers.

I became an auntie (again) to my sister's son who barged into our lives a bit late in the middle of Hurricane Irene.  He was born with major amounts of disinterest in joining us (my sister's OB described him as "cozy inside"), in the midst of a storm that would knock Connecticut on its ass for several days...

I somehow worked with 2 other crazy individuals from my itty bitty high school to pull off one of the more disorganized events I've ever worked on - my 20th high school reunion.  It was a success and probably the first time in a very long time that I've gotten sufficiently drunk so as to be concerned that I would be rather ill and to drive me to spending numerous hours on the couch drinking water the following day.  It was fun to reconnect with some people that have only been names attached to Facebook profiles, though - even if for just that one evening for now.  It was also an ugly reminder of the fact that I am rapidly approaching my 38th birthday, and high school was, in fact, more than half my life ago now. 

It's funny.  I see the kids lingering outside the upperclass housing at Wesleyan when driving through Middletown and think "damn kids, they look like babies".  Yet I realize that part of the problem is that, while I intellectually know I was that same baby-faced kid in the fall of 1991, I don't actually *feel* that much older than then - at least not unless I make an ill-fated attempt at running for several days in a row.  Oh I know how old I am, and I know that as the parent of a 9 year old, it's unlikely that I'm actually a 17 year old college freshman.  But I don't feel that much older.  Or that much more mature.  Or wiser.

Strange how life works because if I do stop and take a breath, I know I'm older.  But I don't feel all that different - I'm equally as clueless about the stage of my life I'm in now as I was when I wandered through Hanover to Hanover High to have my work permit signed way back in September 1991.  My cluelessness has changed from not being sure how the hell I could manage to graduate, let alone excel, at my Ivy League college of choice when so many of my classmates were light years ahead of me, to now wondering what I'm going to do about parenting a 'tween, who announced at dinner (in a restaurant) tonight that if he crosses his legs too tight, it hurts his balls more than it used to...

I'm waxing philosophical and thinking back to my college years because I find myself a bit uncomfortable in my skin lately.  It's odd in a way.  When I was 17, I didn't know who I was at all.  I was awkward and geeky and gawky and a downright nerd.  I was shy and quiet and felt like a loser most of the time.

At 37, I know I'm a nerd and I'm comfortable with that - proud of it, really.  I wish my body were a bit more toned (who doesn't?) but I love it anyway, especially my great legs and ass.  ;-)  I know that I am great at my job, well-respected, and I don't really feel socially awkward anymore.  I found a niche of people who like me for who I am.  And I know who I am.

I think the problem is that, now that I know who I am, that person doesn't really feel to fit quite right inside my life.  It's not as bad as a square peg in a round hole, but maybe more like a round peg in a slightly too small hole.

The thing about life is that depending on the road you follow, you make a lot of significant choices about where you're headed when you're young - 22, 23, 24 - and despite thinking otherwise, probably aren't yet fully formed.  I think I was probably 30 or 31 before I really was in tune to who I was.

And now, 6 or 7 years later, I've gotten used to that person I am and I'm wondering exactly how I wound up where I'm at.  Don't get me wrong - I don't regret where I am.  I love my son and I have a great career.  But something still doesn't feel quite right.

Hubby would argue that this is where my over-thinking gets the best of me, and maybe he's right.  But maybe he isn't.  The thing is, this isn't about what I THINK so much as what I feel.

I feel antsy.

So here I am, back in my blog, trying to figure out why and, more importantly, what to do about it.

In 9 short years, my now-4th grader will be waving goodbye to us from a dorm room somewhere.  I'll start a new stage in my life again, this time as a parent from afar.  Thinking that it's been 9 years since I brought that screaming, poor-feeding, jaundiced 7lb baby home, it suddenly doesn't feel too far away.

So I need to get my shit together.

overwhelmedness breeds blogging avoidance

It's June, and I haven't written in here in far too long.  I'm happy to report that I have gotten my shit together, at least slightly, when it comes to working out.  Some weeks are better than others, but overall, I think I'm doing ok.  I need to do more - but I feel like I've been more on track at least for the last 3 or 4 weeks.  Of course, tonight my stomach decided to give me some minor trouble (typical - stupid IBS) and so I skipped my workout routine, but it's my first day off since Saturday, so I'm giving myself a free pass.

Otherwise, life has been overwhelming.  That's all I can say.  I have been on a rollercoaster, both personally and professionally.  I don't want to dive too deeply into things right now.  All I can say is that no matter what, lately, as soon as I think maybe things have evened out, I'm thrown for another loop.

The good news is that through all of this, I am blessed by a few incredible friends.  I know I've said that before, but I can't say enough how fortunate I am to have a few amazingly supportive people around me in my life.  I suspect that as I end this current decade of my life, I will be faced with some big choices and significant changes, and I feel very lucky that I will have these chosen few people there to walk alongside me.

Oh and my baby turned 9 a couple of weeks ago.  UNREAL.  REALLY!

I have been knitting.  My sister expecting a baby is good impetus for that.  :-)  My sister and brother-in-law opted to not find out the gender of the baby, which has left them stuck with a heap of lame gender-neutral items.  Neither of them are a fan of pastels (who is really?) but prefer bright colors.

So what better choice for a baby due in late August, whose parents' anniversary is the day before Halloween, then a pumpkin hat and bootie set.  SUPER CUTE.  Making things is a nice distraction from my day-to-day life chaos, and some of my underlying loneliness and unhappiness.