Laughing at Chaos - Where Wildly Different Is Perfectly Normal

Jan 19 2015

{GHF Blog hop} Reel life this ain’t

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People have told me for years that our lives here would make a great sitcom. That’s all well and good, but no one would believe it. A gifted or twice-exceptional family doesn’t transition well to a screen, big or little. Hobbies and jokes that few would get. Too nuanced, too much angst, not enough laugh track.

And yet producers and screenwriters keep trying. They pump out movies and shows and instead of authenticity we get one-dimensional characters. The Math Genius. The Tortured Artist No One Understands. The Over-Achieving Girl Obsessed With Grades. The Precocious Nine Year Old.

Even worse? Reality shows that pit gifted kids against one another, in a sort of intellectual Hunger Games. They’re called scholarship competitions, but so is Miss America, and you know as well as I that people aren’t watching that to see who gets the money for college. They’re watching to see who has a wedgie in the swimsuit segment, if one of them throws a stiletto while wearing an evening gown, or if the flaming baton routine sets the theater on fire. And they’re watching young gifted kids to see if…no, when…the kid fails. “Oh, the kid is a genius? Well, let’s just see about that! Smartypants, too big for his britches. Cut that tall poppy down.” I have a hard time envisioning John Q. Public watching to see the kid get better and better, instead watching to see how high he can get before he falls. He plays Caesar and thumbs down it is.

Instead of real life we get reel life.

Where’s the twice-exceptional kid who is fully capable of higher level work but is refused gifted services because he doesn’t test well or produce enough high-achieving output? Where’s the gifted adult who struggles in a traditional job because she is bored and suffers from existential depression, terrified that this is it? Where’s the tween whiplashing between intellectual age (40), emotional age (4), empathetic age (80), and true physical age (8)? And where are the parents doing the heavy lifting of all of this?

I get it. It’s hard to put perfectionism and Dabrowski’s over-excitabilities and Impostor Syndrome and asynchrony into what is essentially an entertainment medium and not lose people because ~~of the oftentimes heart wrenching moments~~ they can’t relate. Long, drawn-out meltdowns because a kid has hit his limit is not entertainment. I wouldn’t want to watch it, and I’ve lived it. Those who don’t live it aren’t gonna get it and don’t wanna watch it. Can’t say I blame them.

The closest I’ve ever seen to a true gifted family is the 2004 Pixar movie The Incredibles. It’s one of my favorite movies, and not just because the mom isn’t pushing up the daisies. It’s a gifted family, forced to hide their gifts because society doesn’t know what to do with them. Sound familiar? More success in print. Surviving the Applewhites by Stephanie Tolan not only brings a gifted family to light in perfect detail, but is written by a vocal gifted advocate and one of the original members of the Columbus Group.

I’d love to see a real gifted family on my screen. Movie, TV, not picky. There’s a new documentary coming out in the next few weeks about twice-exceptional kids and I’m really looking forward to seeing it. But a movie? Sitcom, drama, dramedy? I’d even go for a clever mockumentary. I can’t see it ever happening. It’s far too challenging for a producer to take on, and the easy money is on the stereotypes. Far more profitable to paint the gifted with a broad (and often inaccurate) brush.

Then again, J wants to be a filmmaker (also architect, vet, photographer, something with travel, something else with geography). Give my 2e second born a decade or two. We may see a real gifted family on our screens after all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Today’s post is part of the January Gifted Homeschoolers Forum Blog Hop, on media portrayals of the gifted. Please hop around and read some of our other contributors!

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Jan 14 2015

Mindful of the year

Categories:

Everyday Life, Just for me

by Jen

It’s a new year, time for a new word. But not just any word. My Word Of The Year (cue fireworks and inspirational music and dancers and please let’s not forget the hula-hooping llamas this year, m’kay?).

For the last several years I’ve chosen a word through which I’d focus my life. 2011 was a miserable horrible bitch of a year and strong got me through it. 2012 was about recovering from the previous twelve months and grateful helped an awful lot. In 2013 I decided enough was enough. For 2014 I was determined to make my story count. Some years the word worked better than others.

I started tinkering around with possible words back in October. For awhile I thought Be was going to be it. And then the universe took a swipe at life and they started rolling around trying to give each other wedgies and wet willies and my attention was otherwise occupied. Next thing I knew it was Christmas and not a clue as to 2015’s word. I figure in the last year words couldn’t get through the daily crap to be heard. Sure as hell has been the case with writing and blogging and thinking and imagining. Thankfully we had the most chill holiday in recent memory and my brain was finally allowed to play around with words; the universe and life had been sent to their rooms, grounded until further notice.

By then Be had lost its luster, and no other words were poking me in the brain. Intention tried but didn’t get very far. For a week or so fierce was a strong contender, but then I realized I was in a really growly mood and that probably wasn’t the best mindset for picking a word. I was urgently journaling (because I often don’t know what I think until I start writing) and Tom was popping the champagne on New Year’s Eve before I finally landed on my word. We’re not sure how well we’re going to get along this year, my word and I, but we’re together for the next dozen months and willing to give it a solid go.

Mindful.

Yeah, mindfulness is all the rage right now. It’s a matter of time before the mindfulness backlash articles join all the gluten free backlash articles and once again I’m mocked for my choices in life.

It’s just…it’s time.

I’ve been unhappy for years. There. I’ve said it. I went back and reread the old blog posts about my words, and nearly all of them mentioned how crappy the year was and how stressed and miserable I’d been and how I planned for the next year to be better. Several years of that shit. And here I am, nine years after starting a blog, still pouring my heart and soul into words on the internet, vowing to ease up on the stress and be content, still bloody miserable as hell. It’s one thing to just think you’ve been stressed and miserable for a long time, it’s another thing entirely to have it in front of you in black and white, in the very words that came from you. Like a time machine of vowels and consonants, poking you in the eye, taunting you with how you haven’t improved and you still suck and why haven’t you figured out how to fucking manage adulthood yet. Nearly J’s entire life. I’ve been struggling and sad and feeling out of control and stressed for nearly his entire life. That’s hard to admit. Has nothing to do with him, and everything to do with me.

I can’t and won’t continue like this. Something has to change. And not just change, but drastically change. So many things have changed over the past few years, things we thought would make everything all better: new job, new house near family, homeschooling, me working, me not working, plans and hopes and dreams and ideas, this and that and the other thing…but none of those made any difference in how I felt. The only constant in all of those changes was me and how stressed and miserable I was. Everywhere you go, there you are. The problem is me. All me. Just me.

So in trying to find a word I was stuck. I needed something that would encourage me to heal myself, to like myself again, to have something resembling inner calm again, so I can go do the stuff I desperately want and need to do. I’m starting to feel that if I center myself, start at ground zero so to say, start with a strong core of resilience, then I can have the wildly varied life I crave. It’s unpredictable and often makes me batshit crazy, but I crave it. I want to write AND teach and play flute AND homeschool AND rock as a parent AND have a strong marriage AND be a reliable and loving friend AND have a well-oiled household AND be prepared for the unexpected AND have time for myself. I just…I don’t have the energy to do it all. That can be chalked up to unchecked depression and anxiety, an unstable emotional core, and feeling like I have very little control over anything. Also, too often I’m just too tired or overwhelmed or depressed to cope, and things get pushed aside or the importance downplayed (if it’s not important then I don’t care and then I don’t have to hurt that it’s not getting done…oh, HI THERE PERFECTIONISM). I don’t want to live like that anymore. So I was trying to find a word that would help me get to the point of liking myself again, of knowing myself. I’m not this stressed and angry and bitter person I feel I’ve become in the last several years. I don’t want to be that person.

Some of the most authentic and soul-baring writing I’ve done in years, right there.

So the word for 2015 is mindful. It’s not one I came to easily. That word…it’s an arranged marriage. I’m sure by December we’ll have grown to respect and maybe even love each other, but right now we’re just strangers in it for the long haul, sneaking sidelong glances when we think the other isn’t looking. The universe shoved us together saying, “Trust me for once for crissakes,” and so I shall. I don’t know what mindful will look like in my life this year. I’m sure there will be meditation (another thing I’ve been told for the last 20 years to explore), and I’m equally certain there will be no small measure of frustration. Beyond that, not a clue. I do know the last two weeks I’ve had not a single anxiety attack and have moved through my days with calmness and ease. No small accomplishment, given all the chaos here right now.

Mindful.

Alrighty then.

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Jan 12 2015

Blog drift

Categories:

Everyday Life, Just for me, Random thoughts

by Jen

My friend Pamela has a phrase that so perfectly sums up what and how I’m feeling right now it’s as though she lives in my head.

It’s…

Hold that thought. Everyone should have a friend like Pamela. Though we live a thousand miles apart and only met in person last summer when we were roommates at the SENG conference, she is one of the best people in my life. She’s not only a “hide the body” kind of friend (and I am so blessed to have a couple of those on speed dial), but a “talk me off the ledge” and “here, have some wine” kind of friend as well (I can only hope I’m as supportive of her). There are a few others in this category as well, they also live only in my computer, but she’s the one to first introduce me to

…blog drift.

I can’t decide if that sounds fluffy like a snowdrift in December or menacing like a snowdrift in February.

Blog drift is kinda like a combo of blog depression and anxiety with a healthy dose of writers block and more than a touch of “have I written all I could say on this?,” over-salted with burnout and maybe a little bit of boredom and a whole lotta “do I even want to continue.” It tastes like flat seltzer water. I’m sure a correction will be forthcoming if I don’t have that quite right.

I’m feeling a whole lot of blog drift lately. Surely that’s obvious, as I think the posts here have tapered off to just a few a month and I couldn’t even get my poop in a group long enough to write on parenting over-excitabilities for the most recent GHF blog hop.

When I first started blogging, nine years ago this past week, I did it on a lark. I’d been reading blogs for a year and finally decided to just do it already. Before I picked up a flute (at age nine) I was going to be a writer. I knew that, I took writing classes, I wrote stories for fun, I loved it. And then I picked up a flute and that became my creative outlet and writing fell off. Until nine years ago. For ages I’d write stuff in my head and it’d evaporate; now I had a place to park it and people read it and enjoyed it. I’d share the granola fight the boys had in J’s crib (there was still granola in the edges of the carpet when we moved several years later), ruminate on current events, write about my love of the library. Anything and everything. Because I was writing about my kids, I started writing about gifted issues, because it was part of our lives. That gradually became more of the focus, and sometimes I’m grateful for that and sometimes I’m not. And sometimes I wish I were still very anonymous (which is how I started out) and could rant and rave and scream at the skies like I could before my name was out there. Over the years blogging became a marketing tool, and I am notoriously bad at marketing myself. (For example, I wrote a book. No, seriously. And people seem to really like it. And I am horrible at marketing it, much to the chagrin of my publisher and editor. Did you know I am writing a second one? Yeah, hard to talk about that one too. Could someone please wave a magic wand and help me get over this? Or teach me how to market myself without deep embarrassment or feeling like I’m bragging?) I don’t see blogging returning to what it was before marketing took over, and I don’t like that. Gah, now I sound and feel old. Get off my lawn.

And so I sit here, nine years later, and make faces at my blog drift. I’m at the stage now where I really should figure out exactly what I want and need to do with my site. Do I take it more seriously and branch out from there? How, and in what direction? Do I make it a landing site for a new career I’ll build (advocacy? parent coaching? writing? something I haven’t thought of yet? all of the above??) or do I tone it down and make it a fluff site for my brain droppings and focus on building my real-life flute studio? It’s getting harder and harder to write about my sons; they deserve privacy as they navigate adolescence, even if some things are epic blog gold and it kills me to not share them. While I contemplate what do I write if I don’t write about gifted kids, in reality I’m struggling with who am I if I’m not a mom? Because if we write what we know, what do I know other than that? Who am I really? And what do I write?

I’ll figure it out. Somehow. Surfing down this blog drift I’ll figure it out.

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Jan 06 2015

Let me tell you about…meeting your child where he is

Categories:

Everyday Life, Humor

by Jen

The most vulnerable place for a woman is flat on her back, wrapped in an ill-fitting paper gown, feet in stirrups, butt waving in the air. Oh sure, childbirth is maybe a BIT higher on the vulnerability chart, especially with the revolving crowd of health attendants, but there’s more going on there. An action scene, so to say. You’re not just lying there trying to make small talk with a near stranger as a room temperature piece of chrome gets wedged into your hoohah and you have the urge to stick out your cervix and say ahhhhhhhh.

Those were the thoughts making me giggle as I sat and waited for a recent appointment. Hey, I was alone in the waiting room, no one was there to give me the side eye for laughing at apparently nothing. The Smithsonian Magazine article I was reading on King Tut’s tomb wasn’t that amusing. (Aside: that magazine was practically untouched, the weekly rags were battered.) The soundtrack to my mental amusement was canned music and some sort of all-medical news channel. OBGYN TV 24/7. But heavy on the OB, because no one wants to watch GYN news. Actually, heavy on the post-OB, because no one wants What To Fear And Loathe When You’re Expecting TV. Hard to get advertising for that.

I managed to block out the canned elevator music (years of practice), but eventually the TV stories wormed into my consciousness.

“…so you come to your child the first time and make sure he is dry and warm and fed. The next time come in and just pat his back to soothe him. The next time come into the room and soothe him with just your voice. The next time just from the doorway. It may take four or five hours, but eventually he will self-soothe and fall asleep. He needs to learn how to self-soothe in order to fall asleep.”

By the time the disembodied voice got to “four or five hours” I had turned completely around and was disintegrating the TV with the lasers shooting from my eyes. I wanted to tell the young pregnant mama who had walked in to ignore the idiot on the television because morons should not be dispensing parenting advice. (Especially male morons. This is why I see a female doctor; I want the person who is saying “this will be uncomfortable” during an exam actually know that it will be uncomfortable because she has also endured the breeze up the backside fun. Seeing a male OBGYN is akin to a vegan dispensing steer butchering advice.)

So let me tell you about letting your child ~~self-soothe~~ cry it out. The child has not read the books nor heard the “experts” and does not give a flying fuck what they say he should do and how soon. Some kids NEED more hands-on comforting than others. That’s just how they are wired, and no amount of shushing from the doorway while you choke back your exhausted sobs is going to put that kid to sleep. Ask me how I know this, I dare you. Also, four to five hours in the middle of the night is the longest eternity in the history of the universe; I am regularly schooled on universal timelines by a kid who loves quantum physics and yet I stand by that statement. I am nearly 14 years past “sleep training” an infant but dear lord I am not past the trauma that brought to our home, and frankly am a little astonished that piece of shit advice is still being dispensed. A first time mom with a high-intensity infant, I was desperate for sleep. Andy would not sleep longer than a two hour stretch at any given time. He’d wake at night hungry and feed for 45 minutes to an hour. Every two hours. For months. He didn’t sleep a 4-5 hour stretch until he was nearly six months old, and we didn’t have family nearby to help. And when he was awake, he was AWAKE and ALERT and holy god THE COLIC (This is why I take great joy in waking him in the mornings, and will until he has children of his own. I’m an evil mama. Mwahahahahahahha…..) Then at six months the ear infections started and…<cut to Jen sitting under her desk right now, shaking and rocking and breathing deeply>

I refuse to say “this too shall pass,” however true that may be, because in the thick of it you’re convinced you’re never going to sleep again and this tiny tyrant screaming his head off will be the first human in history to never ever sleep, and woe to the kindly old lady at the grocery store who says to cherish every day because they go so fast. Yes, they do, and some days just cannot go fast enough. I miss my tiny babies, miss those sweet smelling heads and nomming on little toes. Teen and tween boys do not have sweet smelling heads and dear lord I’m going nowhere near those toes. I sure as hell don’t miss lack of sleep, endless crying, trying to live around the hope of naps, diaper bags, and cracked nipples. So while there is plenty I do not miss, I do have a few regrets. No, I take that back. Just one.

I regret that I didn’t listen to and respond to my child, instead of the one morons dispensing advice seem to think exists. My oldest son needed more touch, more comforting, more me, more everything (for years) and because I thought I could mold him into the child society said could be created, I missed out on parenting my infant. My kid needed me, just as sometimes I desperately need to be held for a long time and loved; if I were shushed from across the room instead of being comforted with patient love, bet your ass I’d keep screaming too, even now. Or I’d withdraw into myself, convinced I was on my own. (I did do better with J, thank god. Hate to think I totally borked up both boys…much.) There was one night…ONE…when I took him into the living room and was so overwhelmed and exhausted I crawled onto the futon and Andy slept on my chest. First decent night of sleep either of us had had in ages. Why I didn’t continue to do that I’ll never know, short of me being slow to learn and a slobberingly exhausted piece of mess. Oh, and because everyone knew a child had to learn to sleep on his own by a certain month.

It took me over a decade to finally say fuck it to conventional wisdom and parent the sons I have, and even now I struggle with that every single day. How dare they have their own strong personalities and opinions and wills! Once I finally accepted that they’re just wired the ways they are and that nothing I do will change that, we were able to work together and get them to where they needed to be faster and with less stress. If I’d figured that out from the beginning, things would have been easier on all of us. At least I figured it out before the teen years hit. Kinda.

So mamas of all ages, kick the guilt to the curb. Listen to the experts with a grain of salt or two. You are the expert on your kids, and if your kid needs more snuggly attention to sleep, or to pace and bounce while concentrating, or homeschooling to effectively learn, ignore the disembodied voices of the experts and meet your child where he is. You’ll all sleep better for it.

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Jan 02 2015

I can haz summer now?

Categories:

Everyday Life

by Jen

It’s January 2nd.

I can haz summer now? Please? The holidays are over, we’ve had our chance at a white Christmas, we’ve toasted the new year and critiqued the Rose Parade marching bands. The usefulness of winter is over. There really is no further need for cold temperatures and the threat of snow. And don’t tell me we have winter so we appreciate summer that much more. I believed that last year. After the Polar Vortex Winter of Hell and Frozen Damnation, I was going to appreciate the hell out of summer and bask in the heat and sun and even the humidity.

It was a short and cool summer. I was robbed.

It’s Chicago, it’s the start of real winter now. Three months of cold and snow and gloomy skies (OMG the gloom). Temperatures are tolerable right now, but next week we have subzero highs staring us in the face, eerily reminiscent of last year’s early January Polar Vortex. I’m just hoping school isn’t canceled again, but if it’s really a high of -3 on Wednesday we can probably assume a day here at home watching science videos and me not teaching flute lessons. Gah. No bueno.

It’s time for summer, or at the very least, an early spring. Very early. Starting now.

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Dec 31 2014

About that twice-exceptional radio interview

Categories:

Gifted and Talented, Just for me

by Jen

Sometimes I sits and thinks and sometimes I just sits. And sometimes I quits a job and sits wondering if I did the right thing and the universe responds with a big YES by throwing something in my lap so very unexpected and delightful that I can’t help but sit up and pay attention. Yes, this really happened.

Last month, on what was very likely the very worst day of 2014 (and I say that because there are not many hours left of this year and it’s sunny out and no premonitions of doom indicating that day in November will come in second), I had a bit of a nervous breakdown and quit my job. Many reasons, but one of them was that I could no longer balance my life in a healthy way. There were no open hours for emergencies or problems and something had to give. It was not an easy decision, but it had been coming for some time. Still, I berated myself for not being able to make it work, for not being superhuman enough to make it work. So I quit and went to bed. There’s a lesson here in self-care, I’m still learning it.

The next morning I woke to an email from a woman I met recently who is a fellow flutist and the producer of an online radio health show. She wanted to see if I were interested in playing trios and quartets with some of her students, and if I might also be interested in being interviewed for a episode on twice-exceptional children. Well. Hm. Let me see. Yes, and holy cow are you serious really of course YES!

The afternoon of flute music was something I hadn’t done since college and didn’t realize just how much I missed it.

The interview on the Radio Health Journal came out last week (the link goes to iTunes podcasts; the interview is dated 12/21/14, you may need to scroll down to find it). I was one of three participants, the other two being Dr. James Webb (founder of SENG) and Dr. Megan Foley Nicpon (of the Belin-Blank Center at the University of Iowa). I provided the parent perspective of twice-exceptional kids (and also that of a GHF Ambassador), and I’m still amazed my voice, my opinion, was the one shared, of all the parents of 2e kids out there. While I wish more of my comments about homeschooling made the cut, my bit about parents and the misconception that they’re bragging about their kids when talking to others is in there and makes me very happy. I was pleased with how the radio show came out. There’s always the chance that comments are misconstrued or a different tack is taken, but this was a great introduction to 2e kids from people who are living and breathing it. For the record, 2e in this house smells a lot like a kid who needs to shut up and get in the shower already before I have to fumigate the house. There’s only so much you can blame on the dog, dear sons.

Neither of these awesome opportunities would have been possible had I still been working. Door slammed, window flew open. And for a change, I was paying attention. I’m now looking around at some other windows to see if I can pry those open as well. I still want and need to work, but I’ve finally decided that I must be my own boss, or at the very least work on my own terms from my own house. Like a five year old who states in all seriousness that he’s going to be a fireman/doctor/veterinarian/superhero, I’m going to be a flutist/teacher/homeschooler/writer/something-to-do-with-gifted-kids-something-or-other. I think I have a better shot at it than that kid; at least I know you can’t have a cape while fighting fires.

So I’ll just sits and thinks here for a little bit and figure out how to get those windows open. There’s good stuff there on the other side.

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Dec 26 2014

And the greatest of these is sloth

Categories:

Everyday Life

by Jen

Oh Staycation, how I love thee. I love thee like an empty bladder and full tank of gas, like exhaustedly snoring children and a snappy Malbec, like a clean house and a clear calendar. I see you far too infrequently, but I’ve enjoyed the hell out of you this week.

Tom has had the whole week off, and we have done a shocking amount of nothing. If there was an Olympic event of We Are Going To Do Absofuckinglutely Nada, I guarantee we’d be hoisting flowers and waving from the top podium as tears of joy silently slid down our cheeks. This has been the calmest and quietest Christmas we’ve ever had, which I find outrageously funny given the chaos that is circling around us outside this protective holiday cocoon. All hell will break loose again on Monday, but right now? My guys are downstairs watching the very first Simpsons episode while I write, and a quick glance at my daily to-do list AND my coming-up-next-to-do list tells me it’s almost empty. Let me repeat: my to-do list is almost empty. I’m slightly twitchy and worried that I might get…gasp!…bored.

So I am taking full advantage of this quiet and calm eye of the storm. In mere moments I will continue my quest to hold the couch to the floor every day of this Staycation, and at an appropriate hour (5 pm minus it’s a holiday minus it’s Friday minus none of us need to go anywhere tonight OR tomorrow morning equals moments after I post this) I will pour a generous beverage and toast the evening. I haven’t been out of the house in two days, may attempt to stretch that to three, which might be a non-flu record.

Lust, gluttony, sloth….the greatest of these is sloth. Ahhhhh…..

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Dec 17 2014

There’s a laugh around here somewhere

Categories:

Humor

by Jen

I don’t think I have seen the sun in over a week. Winter in Chicago has arrived. Incessant gloom and chill and dark and please tell me the sun is visiting you, wherever you are. My Happy Lamp is on ten hours a day and not touching the melancholy, I’m pounding hot tea to keep my sanity (coffee is again off limits because my stomach threatened a violent coup), and those Christmas cookies aren’t going to binge eat themselves.

Yes, I believe I do have a touch of the depression. Maybe slightly more than just a touch. Perhaps a full body slam into the boards.

So a little something to increase cheer and turn that frown upside down (I hate that phrase, no idea why I just used it). I found some old notes, mainly of things the boys have said in recent months, and some of them were so off-kilter hysterical they require sharing and I’ll deal with the inevitable “Mooooommmmmm!!!!” later. Identities are concealed to protect the innocent.

….

“Why does my saliva not bounce around in my mouth when I’m bouncing on this ball?”

“<smacks his lips> Mmmm…saliva. Water on-the-go.”

….

Me: You and your brother needs dress pants for Easter services.
Him: We have pants!
Me: They don’t fit, they’re too small.
Him: The tighter the pants, the closer you are to God.
Me: ….

….

Me: I can’t keep up. I don’t know where you’re coming up with this.
Him: My hippocampus.

….
Me: You’re not going to wear tight pants to church.
Him: Why not?
Me: No one wants to see the outline of your butt. I’m your mother and I don’t want to see it.
Him: Who wouldn’t want to see my butt? It’s not all about you! Think about the others!

….

Him: Stubby tailed dogs always tell the truth.
Me: Huh?
Him: They don’t have tall tales.

….

Thirsty, and looking in the fridge:
Him: “Mom? Can I have an Alan Turing?”
Me: “…???…Do you mean an Arnold Palmer?”

….

“Mom? Can you milk a horse? Oh! You know what would be great? Pig milk! Liquid bacon!”

….

Him: Mom, what are flavored condoms?
Me: (why in hell do I get these questions when Tom is not here?) They’re condoms. In flavors.
Him: But why? Penises don’t have tongues.
Me: (I deserve a bloody medal) But their partners do.
Him: …..

(Welcome, creepy google searchers. Go away now, nothing to see here.)

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Dec 05 2014

Today I will DO ALL THE THINGS!

Categories:

Everyday Life

by Jen

The hardest part of the day is when my brain slowly comes back online in the morning. It’s a slow and laborious process, hindered by the fact that during the boot up process I have to get a kid up and out the door to school and that I’ve had to give up coffee again because I’m pretty sure I screwed up my system to the point of being allergic to that blessed bean of the morning. This is not a pleasant turn of events. Coffee makes the awake happen, and while tea is a passable substitute, it doesn’t quite have the visceral kick. On the bright side, now I’m not going through half my day with a raging stomach ache and/or wondering if I’m having a heart attack. So tea it is.

It’s usually 9:30 or so before I’m fully functional. This makes early morning flute lessons a special challenge (I teach at a local high school one morning a week). Again on the bright side, teenagers are barely functional that time of day themselves, so it’s the walking wounded in that practice room for awhile.

But sometimes my brain switches on a little faster and suddenly I find myself thumbing reminders and things to do into my to-do app. One after another after another. “Oh, I can do this today and this one too and I’m sure this one can get done if I sneak it in and let’s not forget this.”

Please file this under I am a raging lunatic.

Today is/was such a day. We were up at the crack of crazy to watch the Orion launch. (Fun fact: at T minus six seconds to launch our streaming crapped out on us. Actually, not a lot of fun in that Fun Fact.) But that jolted my brain into semi-coherence a little faster than usual, and suddenly I found myself with iPhone in hand, rapidly adding plans to my day. Dumb, dumb, dumb. I got about six things done and hit the wall. Okay, lunchtime! Yeah, that didn’t work. Okay, do this one thing. Nope, not that either. So now it’s mid-afternoon and my TODAY I WILL CARPE THE HELL OUTTA THAT DIEM! attitude of this morning is flopping around like a sad deflated balloon.

I think I prefer my brain stuttering through the morning.

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Nov 25 2014

‘Tis the week of Thanksgiving and all through the house

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by Jen

…all sorts of things are stirring and not a single one of them are on the stove. We managed to take a crazy time of year and Plus It with business travel and holiday travel and behind the scenes chaos and a sneaking suspicion that last week’s exhaustion crash was my thyroid begging for attention and not the usual desperate need for sleep because of the season’s lack of sunlight. There are no fewer than four half-written posts in my drafts folder, all of which I’ve written in the last few days, thinking that I’d actually get ahead of NaBloPoMo (silly, silly Jen), and a growing list of things I need to do before tomorrow.

So here, have a recipe. Vodka Cranberry Sauce, originally posted two years ago. It is strong, it is potent, if you make it today by the time dinner rolls around in 48 hours you’ll knock people on their tryptophan-laden asses. It is fantastic with leftovers, and could even be stirred into ginger ale or Prosecco for a little added kick. Just keep the kiddos away from it or you’ll have a “it wasn’t funny at the time” family story to be shared every year for eternity.

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