parenting

504 Meeting at the Junior High

By / March 27, 2014

The meeting was sandwiched in between the end of the junior high school day and me needing to leave to pick up Patch from Elementary school. We had thirty minutes to determine whether Gleek qualified for a 504 plan and what the paperwork should say. It was a formality really. The school administrator and the counselor had both spent several hours with Gleek during an incident several weeks ago. They saw the need. The other three in the room were teachers, there to provide insights into how Gleek behaves in various classrooms. Everyone listened and agreed that some extra care is merited. For the most part the only challenge Gleek represents is that she is difficult to re-direct and often distracts herself with drawing or with a book. Ninety five percent of the time, she is absolutely fine, normal, charming. The other five percent she is really intense and requires special handling. We signed the papers with instructions for that five percent.

It was a pleasant meeting. I had a good rapport with everyone there and felt that they’re on my team to help my girl. So it puzzled me that I felt sad as I drove away. I pulled on the feeling to see if I could figure out where it comes from. It was attached to two things. First I remember the last time I had a meeting like this for Gleek. It was about this time last year when everything was so chaotic and she was in crisis. We had far more questions than answers. It made me sad to be reminded of that time even though this year is far different. The second thing was that this meeting crossed a threshold. I’ve made Gleek’s diagnoses official with the school. It is a positive step and necessary, but there is a little stab of sadness because I’ve acknowledged that my daughter needs something outside of what schools habitually supply. When I write it in a sentence like that, I’m puzzled why I feel sad. Almost every kid needs something that the school doesn’t usually supply. Why should having Gleek’s needs quantified on paper make it different. If anything I wish that all kids could have their needs so carefully considered. The sadness lies in the fact that situations which are not hard for most other kids are very difficult for Gleek. She works very hard to be the charming and kind person that her teachers see in their classrooms. Because all during the ninety five percent of the time when everything is fine, she needs to be prepared to handle the five percent when emotions rev out of control.

The trickiest part about having a child who is fine ninety five percent of the time, is that I begin to forget why we have all the structures in place. I begin to second guess. I am tempted to do away with the parts of the structure that are time or money consuming to maintain, things like therapy. Everything feels good, but then I have a 504 meeting where I have to list out the official diagnoses. Then I remember that these people in the room and the psychiatrist who signed the diagnosis paper, would have no hesitation in bumping me if they felt that Gleek did not need the resources they are providing. The fact that they recognized Gleek’s need helps me to know I’m not just making this up. I would like it to all be my imagination, because then I could just stop imagining it, problem solved. Instead I get to walk alongside my girl while she treks her way through a long and difficult growing process.

The good news is that Gleek is already amazing. She already manages things far better than one would expect from someone with her particular bag of challenges. The even better news, I can tell we’re aimed toward a good future where she is empowered to choose her own life and succeed at it. The path is likely to be winding and dark in places, but the 504 meeting means that Gleek has guides at school who have instructions for how to help her. This is good. I’m glad of it, even if the meeting itself tugged out some sadness.

Snapshots

By / March 8, 2014

The sun was setting out the window to my right sending warm rays of light through the wind shield and into my eyes. Link was napping in the seat next to me. He was along on the road trip to fetch his sister simply because he likes road trips and he likes his sister. Three hours to her college dorm and then three hours back so that we could have her home for ten days of spring break. On the other end of those days we’ll make the trip again. But I was not thinking about the drive, I was measuring the height of the sun. Link had a digital photography class and his current assignment was to shoot sixteen photos by the light of sunset. We’d hoped to arrive in Cedar City in time to shoot photos at the historic cemetery there, but the sun was fast vanishing. It would be gone before we arrived.

“Hey Link, if you want sunset pictures today, you’d better take them out the window of the car.” Link blinked himself awake and mumbled that he would just take them some other day. My head filled with unspoken arguments. After being sick for four weeks, Link had lots of assignments to make up. Photography was among them. My task managing brain wanted him to knock out all the assignments as quickly as possible so that they would be done. But they were not my assignments. They were Link’s and I had to get out of his way and trust that his more measured approach would result in work completed by the end of the term. It was a careful dance, sometimes nudging him to do a little bit more, mostly trying to keep my hands off. The sunset was right there. The camera was in the car. Maybe pictures taken from a moving car would all turn out bad, but it was worth a try. I said all these things to Link and he pulled out the camera to humor me.

The sunset hid behind some mountains and then peeked out again. Link began to revel the challenge of trying to catch an object, a tree, a passing vehicle, in relation to the sunset. Once a flock of birds flew across the glowing sky and he attempted to capture that.
“It’s like Pokemon Snap!” he said to me smiling. “Only I need a better camera.” I watched him managing the low batteries by turning the camera off between shots. Unfortunately this meant he was not always ready when a shot appeared. We definitely need to upgrade the batteries, or figure out why the camera manages to drain batteries dry in less than ten minutes. Photography would be more fun for him if he could just shoot without having to worry that the batteries will run out.

Link reviewed the shots on the camera screen and claimed that some of them are good. We planned another photography outing to a park for the next day, just to make sure that he’ll have sixteen good shots before the due date. Going to a park with ducks and a pond at sunset sounds like a lovely way to spend a Saturday evening. We’ll probably bring the other kids with us. They won’t care so much for the photography or the sunset, but they’ll like the park and the ducks.

The light dimmed and Link put the camera away. We sat together in companionable silence. I thought how different this March felt compared to last year. Back then so many things in our family were shifting. We did some relationship recalibration with Link because somehow our love for him was not getting communicated to him in a way that he could see it. Gleek was just headed into the descending slope of her meltdown and stress which would result in major school interventions and some necessary diagnoses. Kiki and Patch were both picking up on the general stress and also dealing with grief over the fact that life was aimed irrevocably toward change. Kiki was going to leave for college. Life was going to be different, and none of us knew how that was going to feel. The emotional landscape of our household in March of last year was a rocky, treacherous, messy place.

This year March arrives with a sense of things coming together instead of falling apart. We’ve passed through the transition year and arrived in a place that is different, but better in many ways. Kiki’s life is hers to direct and she does it well. Link has begun to take the helm and steer his life. Gleek still has many things to learn about emotional management, but we’ve got the right structures in place for her to learn them. Every day I see her unfolding and engaging instead of curling tight to keep herself safe. Patch has discovered his own strengths and how to face anxiety by teasing himself out of it. Everywhere I look, I see growth and family members aimed in good directions. I am no exception. I am less afraid than I was and more ready to embrace the joy that already dwells in my life.

We arrived in Cedar City just barely too late to photograph in the cemetery. The sky was still light, but Link pointed out that the magic hour was gone. Colors and sun had faded from the sky. We still drove into the cemetery to take a look at the generations old headstones and the looming trees. Link was somber at the quantities of grave markers. I felt a little of that too, though I noted that almost every single marker had flowers or decorations of some kind. They fluttered in the evening breeze. These people were not forgotten. I would have liked to get out and walk around and read some of the stones, but Link was ready to see his sister and he was hungry.

Once we collected Kiki and got back on the road, I listened to Link, who often doesn’t talk much, tell her in detail all about taking pictures on the road. I thought about the road ahead, and not just the one we needed to drive that day. Truthfully, we have as much transition ahead as we’ve just weathered, but not all at once. We know how to survive transition and we know that good things come after. Next March will be different, but I don’t need to worry about that now. All I need to do is catch some moments so I’ll have them to remember later, like sunset photos snapped quickly out the window of a moving car.

IEP & 504

By / March 8, 2014

Last September I wrote a post about Public School Resources for Parents of Special Needs Kids: Elementary Edition. I’m still collecting information for the Junior High and High School editions. This week I collected lots because I had my first IEP meeting with the high school team and I scheduled a meeting at the junior high to set up a 504 plan for Gleek. (There was an incident that demonstrated need.) Last week we picked Gleek’s classes for next year. Next week we’ll do the same for Link. So I’ve spent a lot of time squinting toward the future and trying to predict what they will need six months from now. I’m going to get it wrong. I know this because I did the same thing last year and we ended up shifting Link’s schedule around three different times to adapt for unexpected developments and complications. The teen years are so huge developmentally. Even if I craft the perfect plan now, they’ll change between now and next school year. So mostly the plan is based on current needs with an addendum that we’ll adapt as necessary.

I really want to unfold this further, but it is nearly midnight and I spent the last six hours driving to retrieve Kiki from college. (She’s home for a week of spring break. Yay!) So let this post serve as a reminder of the detailed parenting post I need to do soon.

Horseback Riding, Barn Community, and Parenting

By / February 11, 2014

I sat wrapped in a thick coat, scarf around my neck, gloves on my hands, because the arena is not heated. In front of me is a vast swath of soft dirt pocked with the prints of the horses who have been exercised that day. Gleek sits astride one of those horses, riding in a circle on the end of a lunge line while her teacher holds the other end and calls instructions. Around and around they go, walk, trot, canter, and Gleek begins to learn the rhythms she needs to make with her body so that they match to the horse she is riding.

“She’s got a really good seat Mama.” The woman has come up to me while I was focused on the rider in front of me. I’m surprised to be addressed, because I’m in full self-erasure mode. This time with the horses is Gleek’s time. I drive her here. I observe. I do not insert myself into any of the conversations. Gleek’s interactions with the horses and with her teacher are what matter here.
“Thank you.” I answer, glancing at the woman. She isn’t really focused on me, she’s watching Gleek and the horse. I’ve noticed that among the people around the barn. Almost all of them will stop to watch horses and riders in motion. This woman isn’t really engaging with me. I’m “Mama” the sideline sitter for my daughter’s display. The woman just wanted to make an observation to an audience before she moved away to ride her own horse.

I watch Gleek as she bounces up and down, posting to the rhythm of a trot. This is not the first time I’ve been informed that Gleek has a good seat or a natural seat. I watch, trying to see what they see, but my eye is uneducated. I see my daughter on a horse. Sometimes I can tell that she is trying too hard, not letting the motions flow naturally. Other times I can tell that she’s getting it right. I listen to the calls of the teacher and I watch, but half the time when the teacher calls out “There! That’s much better!” I can’t see any difference. I don’t know enough to tell a good seat from a bad one. I can’t tell if these horse people are truly impressed or if they’re trying to be encouraging to a beginner. Either way, I’m glad for the encouragement. Each time we come, Gleek is showered with compliments that are interspersed with gentle education and corrections. It is exactly what she needs and she loves it.

The first few weeks Gleek announced “I want my own horse” as we departed the barn. I agreed that it is a good dream, but made no promises. The conversations have shifted. Now Gleek says things that start with “If I get my own horse…” She has begun to see how complex owning a horse truly can be. You don’t just go buy a horse, we need to understand what sort of a horse will meet our needs and allow Gleek to do the things she hopes to do. That means that we first have to figure out what sort of a rider Gleek is. She needs several years of riding instruction before we can truly know. Horses also require lots of infrastructure and a community of people who are willing to trade off work. We’re beginning to see how such communities work. We’re beginning to understand the ways in which life would need to wrap around horses if Gleek wants that for herself. She has so much growing to do in the next few years, it is tricky to predict what will happen.

I don’t know what these horseback riding lessons will bring. I do know what they are giving to us right now. That is all I really need to focus on. So much of parenting anxiety is generated by attempts to predict the future. Parents feel compelled to do things now because of college applications or impending adulthood. But the future is never exactly what we think it will be. When Kiki was in high school we made choices that went against the standard college prep advice. Those choices did affect her options, but she ended up at a good school that is perfectly suited for what she needs. It is far more important for me to see Gleek as she is now rather than to try to adjust now because of some imagined future.

In another month the weather will be warmer. I won’t have to huddle inside my coat on the horseback riding days. I’m also slowly learning the names of people and horses around the barn. This is part of joining the community. I will need to participate as well as Gleek. Each time we come, Gleek is smoother in the saddle. She’s begun to hold the reins as practice for the future when the lunge line will be removed. Slowly and carefully Gleek is learning skills and most of them have far more to do with self control than with controlling the horse. Around and around she goes, walk, trot, canter, learning to move with the horse. I watch because the process is interesting and because the older she gets the more I become audience to her show.

Speaking About Therapy

By / January 8, 2014 / 2 Comments

“Okay Patch, I’m going to drop you at home and then I’ll take Gleek to her appointment.” Patch nodded. He knew that something was going to be different when Gleek was in the car for the pick up from school. Usually I come alone.
“What does she have an appointment for?” Patch asked.
I hesitated before saying “It’s just an appointment.” Patch accepted that and the conversation moved on.

The appointment was for therapy. During that moment of hesitation I was acutely aware that Gleek was sitting in the back seat. I realized I did not know how she felt about therapy. Did it embarrass her? Did she care if her brother knew about it? Did she even think much about why she is going? It had become just a thing we do, but after that question I began thinking about all the times I said “appointment” instead of clarifying what it was for. In the tiny omission of the word “therapy” I was obscuring it’s existence and I realized this was due, not to consideration for Gleek’s feelings, but because of my own discomfort.

Psychology has come a long way since the days of Freud, and yet many of his basic assumptions still permeate the field. This is the natural result when a theory becomes the foundation of many other theories. Psychological professionals are no longer steeped in Freud, but many popular cultural assumptions come directly from him. For example if a child has emotional troubles, then it is assumed that those troubles are either the result of some sort of trauma or because of poor parenting. I’m seeing a shift lately where articles and movies are beginning to say that mental illness may be genetic or chemical rather than caused, but the other thought is absolutely there. We see an emotionally troubled child and wonder who caused it. Who is at fault.

I live with all those assumptions in my head and they turned on me viciously last spring when Gleek’s bundle of mental and emotional challenges manifested in a way that concerned school personnel. She’d veered out of quirky and landed solidly in the realm of disordered. I knew the right steps. We sought diagnosis and then therapy because the problem was bigger than we could handle alone. It is one thing to seek help and it is something completely different to feel at peace with the results of that decision. I struggled with a lot of self doubt. It took me months to realize that on a deep level I felt that having a kid in therapy represented a massive failure in parenting. Parents make jokes about that, about how their kids will end up in therapy because of this or that thing. Those jokes come from a place in the parental heart that is crying out “please do not let my child ever be in so much emotional pain that she needs therapy.”

We got there. We are there now, not because she is actively in pain, but because we’re hoping to teach her some emotional management skills so that if her internal world spirals out of control, she knows how to get it back. One of the very most critical of those skills is knowing that therapy is available and that going is not a weakness nor something to be ashamed of. If our weekly trips can remove that hurdle for the rest of her life, that is work well done. If she learns enough that she never spirals down again, even better. Yet there I was, subtly undermining one of the primary hopes because I was avoiding the word therapy.

I felt judged by Gleek’s first therapist, a young intern. I don’t think it was her fault, the judgements were echoing inside my head and attaching to things that she said. However it was obvious that the therapist was focused on treating the parent/child system, which did heavily imply I was part of the problem. I would walk out of the appointments feeling like I needed to be better, give more structure, set more limits. Those things did help. Yet the point was to teach Gleek to get to the heart of her emotions, not to teach me how to manage better. Half of the therapist’s suggestions were things that I already did. It didn’t seem like hugging her twenty times per day would make that much difference over the seventeen times I was already doing. I suppose it could have been an affirmation that I was doing okay at this parenting thing, but it added to my concerns. We were doing so many of the good things, yet the therapy appointments were necessary. I spent lots of time wrestling with why, until I realized that in this situation “why” is not really a useful pursuit. I also realized that that particular therapist wasn’t right for us. The second therapist, four months later, was better. Or maybe we were better. By then I’d begun to come to terms with my emotional tangles regarding having a child in therapy.

I asked Gleek if she minded me telling her brother’s she has therapy. She shrugged “I didn’t realize that they don’t know.”

The next week when I picked up Patch from school I said “You’re own with Link for a bit because I’ve got to take Gleek to her therapy appointment.”
“Gleek has therapy?” Patch asked.
“Yes. She just needs to learn some skills to help her figure out and resolve her emotions. That way things don’t get as hard as they were last spring.”
“Things were hard last spring?” Patch said, and I laughed one of those surprised laughs that bursts out like I’ve been punched in the gut. Gleek’s struggles had turned her world and mine upside down. Patch hadn’t noticed.
“You remember when she was having a hard time in school with panic attacks?” I said
“Oh. Yeah. I kind of remember that.” Patch said. We then talked a bit about anxiety and the kinds of things that a therapist can help people to learn. It was a good conversation because Patch gets anxious too and perhaps someday he’ll not be afraid to seek help learning skills in a time of need.

Slowly but surely I’m learning to mention the therapy when it is appropriate, rather than dodging the mention. Helping to normalize therapy is a small gift I can give to every child or parent who may need it someday.

Things I Didn’t Expect When I Decided to Have Kids

By / January 7, 2014 / 1 Comment

Sitting in a 30 degree barn trying to edit entries for a PDF while my daughter sits on the back of a horse who is not entirely on board with this whole trotting thing. My fingers were gloved, but cold and at least half of the time was spent adjusting the saddle or stirrups. Naturally her last proclamation as we left the barn was “I want my own pony!”

Sitting down at the table and reaching across to touch my son’s hand, because I want his full attention for my apology. I owed it, because in response to his homework stress I had increased my volume and frustration. He was overwhelmed and I made it worse instead of teaching him how to navigate through it. I get tired, especially after a long day of trying to make all the good parenting moves even when they run counter to my inclinations. So I snapped at him and he ran to his room. So I apologized as my father once apologized to me in similar circumstances.

Handing a kid a timer with instructions to turn off the rice when it beeps so that I can run to the store and by bread for a different kid who doesn’t like the rice dish. Normally I’d tell him he’ll survive or let him find other food, but I had lingering lack-of-bread guilt from all weekend long when we also did not have bread because I kept not going to the store.

Running to the library at 8:30pm because Netflix doesn’t have any good documentaries on WWI that are available for streaming. (Also there was no Netflix when I decided to have kids, so there’s that too.)

The sheer quantity of dishes and clothing that I would have to argue the children into cleaning. Even though the fact that they have chores should not, on any day, be a surprising and devastating piece of news. Yet somehow the announcement of chores is always greeted as the End of Days. Except this afternoon my teenager brought the can in from the curb unasked, because kids like to confuse parents with hopeful signs of maturity.

To be scolded by my cat. I know that has nothing to do with having kids, but really I never thought I’d have a cat. I’m allergic to them. For the longest time being around them gave me asthma attacks, but this one showed up and somehow I acclimated to her and now I’m fine so long as I don’t rub my face on her. Which leads me to the place where I have a small furry creature who follows me around and yells at me because I’m reading her mind improperly.

That they would make me laugh, not just in an “oh look how cute” way, but also in an intelligently clever way.

Yes all these things happened today. Tomorrow I’ll learn more new things.

Boxing Day and Organization

By / December 27, 2013 / 2 Comments

I like boxing day. I don’t know what the actual cultural traditions are around the day. I know it falls on the day after Christmas and is British in origin. I have a vague notion that it was the day when wealthy gentlemen would box up gifts and goods to distribute to their less-well-off tenants. Thus Christmas was full of new things for the gentlemens’ families and boxing day was focused on charity. Or, if you were one of the poor, then boxing day was the day of new things.

For me, boxing day is when I clear away all the boxes and accumulated packaging. Many of those boxes get filled with things we don’t use or need anymore. I took a car load of things over to a thrift shop to donate. By noon tomorrow I’ll have accumulated another car load of things. It is amazing how much stuff just sits in the corners of our house, unnoticed and unneeded, but never cleaned up because it isn’t really in the way. Except it is. Because those corners and storage spaces need to be cleared so we have places to put the things we actually use. It is time to clear away all the accumulated stuff from this past year when I did not have the brain to sort. As an example: the shelf in my laundry room where I shoved outgrown clothes until I had time to give them away. The shelf was over flowing, so I filled a big garbage sack and gave the things away. There are lots of spaces like that. Flat surfaces covered in random things because I needed a place to put them down. This week I am clearing them off.

I am also helping the kids tackle their rooms. Link doesn’t need any help here. In the past year he has sorted through his own things and gotten rid of the things which are no longer relevant to him. Patch has a harder time with this. Sorting is overwhelming to him. So we started with a garbage bag and a donation box. Then we picked one spot in the room and began. Once we got rolling, Patch quite enjoyed the process. He liked being able to see how much space he has. even better, he can find the things that he really wants, instead of them being buried under trash and old stuff.

Gleek’s sorting is going to take a lot longer. She has always been an accumulator of small things. Sorting is not just a matter of things she wants and things she doesn’t. Instead we have to dig deep and find all of the stashed rock collections. There are half a dozen purses, each with a similar collection of useful items such as pens, Carmex, pretty rocks, shiny things. The purses must be emptied, the contents evaluated. Each purse considered. Sorting Gleek’s room gives both her and me decision fatigue. I really long to just tear through it when she’s not there. That is what I would do when she was younger and the result would be multiple garbage bags full of things that Gleek never even missed. At younger ages that was appropriate, but now Gleek needs to learn to organize her own things. This is particularly true because Gleek’s collections are one of the ways that she manages her anxieties. Learning how to keep the collections under control is a critically important life skill for her. More important, facing the collections also brings up the associated memories and she has time to process them again when she is not under so much strain. I can see these memories wearing on her. She gets slower to answer my “what shall we do with this?” then she says she doesn’t want to sort anymore. So I bring us to a stopping place and we stop. I have this space between Christmas and New Years when business things are slow. The internet is slow. I can focus most of my energy on putting my house in order. Gleek and I can afford to do a little bit each day.

Going through my room and my office was a lot more fun. In those spaces I can make rapid fire decisions. This stays, that goes. This newly cleared drawer can be re-purposed for something else. When I am done the clutter is cleared away and the surfaces are ready for dusting. And I have boxes and bags of things ready to be given away. I like donating things. I’ll never have to clean them up again. We have an unusually large amount of stuff to donate this year. I believe it is the result of our year of transition. We all changed this year and so the stuff we want and need is also different. We’re re-shaping our spaces to better reflect who we are now instead of who we were.

By the new year our house will be much more organized. It will finally have joined us, prepared for the next phase of our lives.

Snow Falls Again

By / December 22, 2013

Snow is falling today. Each flake is tiny when landing on the ground, but they have been falling all day. They land on the piles of snow which still have not melted from the snow storm before this one, or the snowfall before that. Most winters the kids are hoping we’ll get some snow in time for Christmas. This year it has been on the ground for weeks. I stepped outside in it, to feel the hush which always comes with snowfall.

Then I thought back all through the year to another day when snow fell, way back on February 9th, when I wrote another post that talked about snow, but was really about many other things. I read that post today while I was gathering information for the 2013 Tayler Family Photo Book. When I wrote that post I was at the beginning of my year. I’d had a hard week and knew there was quite a bit of emotional sorting yet to do. The week was harder than the post makes clear. At the moment of that post I did not know how long that sorting would take or how complex the emotions would become. I look back with sympathy for my past self. It got so much harder in the next couple of weeks. Then it got harder again before it gradually became easier. It is now December and we’re not done sorting yet. Reading that post makes my heart hurt and I realize how very emotional the process will be when I begin pulling together my annual book of blog entries. It will dredge up all the memories of the hard things which happened this year. Part of me wants to just close the door and move on. We’ve made our shifts, transitioned into a new familial life stage. Next year might be a time when we can just settle in and be glad. I would love that, but I have to finish this first. I have to read through it all and remember it. In that process I will be able to let go some of the trapped emotions that are attached to the events.

Snow is falling, illuminated by the Christmas lights on our front yard tree. I don’t know what the weather will be for the rest of this winter. Perhaps it will all be as snowy as the past few weeks have been. I hope that the emotional weather for next year is not as tempestuous as the year just past. It seems logical that it would be, but I can’t control that any more than I can dictate to the sky whether it should snow. All I can do is clear away the snow that has already fallen so that I am better able to handle what ever comes next.

Skipping Elf on the Shelf Does Not Make You a Bad Parent

By / December 6, 2013 / 2 Comments

I see articles about Elf on the Shelf, Kindness Elves, or November dinosaur adventures, all of which are traditions that require daily creative effort from parents after they’ve put kids to bed, and I think that maybe parents don’t need to do that stuff to be good at parenting.
Actually, let me take out the qualifiers.
You don’t need to do that stuff to be good at parenting.
If you love it and it adds joy to your life. Great. Go for it. If it burdens you, do something else. Find a tradition or point of connection with your children that brings you joy: read stories, play video games, go on walks, parent child yoga, whatever. The point is that you share something, not that you attempt to contort yourself for the current popular fad.

I’m so glad these things are popular when my kids are too old to care. I’d have been terrible at them. Twenty-five-year-old me would have felt like a failure for being terrible at them. You can ask my kids, I was a horrible tooth fairy. And it is okay. My kids are happy. Their lives are full of their own creative efforts. They are not emotionally scarred because they had to dig the teeth out from under their pillows and hand them to me in order to get paid. In fact, that has become a point of connection, a family joke.

So I say to parents of young children, skip the dinosaurs and elves unless they genuinely make YOU happy as well as your children. You don’t need the stress.

An additional note of caution: time and energy intensive traditions may not be possible every year. This year’s joy can become next year’s overwhelming burden. If it was fun last year and you hate it this year, find a way to let it go.

Bits and Pieces

By / November 20, 2013 / 4 Comments

Kiki called home yesterday. Apparently she saw that I’d said we assumed all was well with her since we figured she’d call if something was wrong. So she called just to chat. Mostly she told me about her classes and the fun things going on. I watched her talk and realized, again, that I miss her. I don’t miss her the way that some of my friends miss their recently-moved-out adult children. It isn’t like part of my heart is somewhere else, or that we have a hole here at home. I miss her because she is fun to be around and she makes me laugh. It is going to be fun to have her home for Thanksgiving next week. As I was listening to her, I got a strong sense that she is in the stage of life where all things are possible. She could choose so many different things and is just beginning to see what they all are. This is different than my stage where I’ve got 20 years invested in my current paths. I could choose something very different, but there is lots I’d have to give up. Kiki’s stage is wonderful and I’m so glad she gets to have it.

Patch helped me with the postcards again this year. It has become an annual tradition. He and I sit together putting stamps and labels onto the postcards that thank all the people who have ordered things from our store this year. He talks to me about things as we work. Often they are comments on the places where the postcards are going, or thoughts from school, or from the games he’s been playing lately. Patch is pretty good company and the cards are all ready to go out tomorrow.

Howard had a depressive episode earlier this week. He tweeted about it quite a bit as it was ongoing. Being open about the depression is therapeutic for him, it is also a small part of what we can do to de-stigmatize mental health issues so that more people seek help when they need it. I was thinking about it and realized that I should probably write up a post about the other half of the equation. Howard can talk about depression. I can write about what it is like to be married to a depressed person and the things loved ones can do both to help and to keep themselves healthy. It gets difficult.

This week I was worn down by the never ending tide of small tasks which I do for other people. I have a record keeping job for our scout troop. I’ve had it for awhile and my whole mode of operation has been to just quietly keep the records, because me doing this job allows the part of scouting which I think is actually valuable: which is that boys get to have growth experiences. We just had significant leadership turn over in our scout troop and suddenly I’m the one who knows how everything works. Instead of being invisible, I’m now the expert in a system that is confusing and labrynthine. On top of that was Link’s ever revolving list of homework. I’m helping him track it and get it done. For each assignment I’m torn. Do I help here so that he can focus his learning energy there. Or do I stand back and let him struggle with all aspects of the assignments. Am I helping too much? It just hardly seems fair that he spends so much of his school hours being variously confused because he missed hearing or tracking some small piece of information. Except it is even harder for me to track the info since I’m not in the classes and have to go off of things Link tells me and occasional emails from teachers. I’m probably helping too much.

The shipment of calendars arrived today. This means I need to shift into shipping preparations. I’m going to have to unpack that part of my brain and figure out what the steps need to be. Tomorrow.

The Kickstarter is slowly progressing. I’m grateful for each person who finds their way to it and decides to pledge. I need to make slow but steady efforts for the next 10 days and then a big push for the last day. 67% funded right now.

We had adventures in healthcare coverage this week when one of Gleek’s prescriptions was ten times more expensive than usual. Our fear was that the new healthcare legislation had changed our coverage and the medicine was no longer covered. The good news is that our plan is grandfathered. It can’t be changed by new laws. The price change was simply because Gleek maxed out her prescription plan for this year and we’ll have to pay full price instead of just a copay until January. It is also possible that our plan being grandfathered is a bad thing because it means our plan still doesn’t cover any sort of mental healthcare. We’ve spent quite a lot on mental health this past year and it has all been out of pocket. I don’t see that number going down next year either. So now I have a homework assignment to try to figure out if it is to our advantage to stick with the current coverage or to change to something new.

I used to be a person who started thinking about Christmas right around Halloween and who had most of it purchased before Thanksgiving. Now I’m a person who deliberately avoids thinking about Christmas until after Thanksgiving. Too many other things in my head.

Thanksgiving, now that I am looking forward to. The internet always goes to sleep during that weekend, which means that work won’t accumulate. Instead I’ll get to spend time with my extended family. Kiki will be in town. And my sister and her family will be arriving from Germany to spend a few months in the US. Also, there will be pie.