Friendly Skies and Super Stars

In the last 24 hours I have looked into booking three, no, four flights for my three kids. Wow, it's a busy time of year. Personally, my favorite airline to book with is Southwest. Easy online website, no change fees if you do it online, no bag fees, and lots of flights and prices to choose from. 

Chicago daughter was going to be home this weekend after a long ago planned trip to Vegas, but got a second interview on Tuesday for a job she really wants, so back to Chi town she goes. Can you guess how much it is to fly out of Vegas on a Sunday night?! They've got you if you have to be at work on Monday! It was cheaper to have her drive with her friends back to Orange County and then fly out of Long Beach on Monday. She'll stay with Auntie then get dropped at Long Beach airport. So I won't even see her until she comes back. Hmmm, we don't know when. I guess that will be the next flight I book.  

Youngest child is headed into her first college finals week ever. Not sure how she'll survive, but she's got friends to help her through. And she's growing by leaps and bounds every week.  However, she's still not sure if she'll have a final on Friday, and the flights home from San Jose are expensive except for the 6:00 a.m. on Friday morning or the 7:00 p.m. Saturday. When will you know if you have to take that Friday final??!  Oh, well, at least she's booked for Saturday. 

Today my son called asking me about flying in to town next weekend to meet friends near Irvine for a trip to Big Bear. Should he fly into Burbank and we meet him with a car to drive south? We have four cars for the two of us at the house right now, but I suggested he fly into Orange County, go up the mountain and back, then sleep at his Aunty's house so she can drop him at LAX on her way to work on Monday. She's coming in very handy over these two weekends, a super star in the eyes of my kids (as well as me and my tired cars), and the bonus is that she gets to see her adored niece and nephew (who are hard to pin down under normal circumstances). 

I'm exhausted, so I'll be at home, drinking wine while I sit in front of the tree listening to holiday music, waiting for my home to be full of my family once more.

Holidays 2011

So I'm baking and cooking and shopping and planning for the big meal on Thursday. LOVE this time of year. But because 1/3 of my children will not be joining us it is also a time of year that leaves me melancholy and sad at times. And because of the hormonal challenges that accompany this age of my life I am alternately elated, depressed, angry, impatient, happy, hyper, or tearful. Right now I'm hyper and happy, so I thought this would be a great time to post a holiday blog. 

So the story behind the reason that my middle maiden does not join us from Chicago is that she was supposed to stay in Chicago the Thanksgiving of the first year she was away at college due to the cost of travel. But I couldn't stand the thought of her being away so, with help from Grandma, I secretly flew her home. Picked her up at Burbank airport, 20 minutes away on a good day. The Wednesday before Thanksgiving is not a good day. It took us 6 hours (yes, I said 6) on the 5 freeway to get home. The first two hours were wonderful, full of catching up and reminiscing. After that there was a lot of lying and backpedaling on the phone to those at the house to try and keep Claire's arrival a secret, and other than that we were out of conversation. And had to pee really, really badly. I'm pretty sure by the time we got home everyone had figured it out. Claire and I are still scarred from the experience.

Needless to say, we haven't done that since, and she has established a wonderful tradition of making a feast at her apartment with the other ex-patriots hanging around. I'll never forget the first year of the feast and all of the phone calls I got about oven temperatures and how long it takes for a jello to set. Of course I loved every minute of it!

So Thursday we have some old friends joining us who we haven't seen in a couple of years. The needs of our parents have taken us away from each other recently, but we have decided to adjust as needed. This year my cousin won't be joining us because her daughter-in-law has a new job and is on call, so she wants to be available to spend an on-call Thanksgiving with them. I totally get it. Our family comes first, but in order of priority: Kids, parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, lifetime friends, other friends, acquaintances. As kids move out and get jobs, as parents age, as siblings marry and procreate and divorce, things change and we flex with that change. Fortunately, in the United States, the holiday season starts at the end of November and lasts through the New Year. Hopefully we can all see each other at some time during the holiday season!

Chardonnay and Calm, Blue Seas

How did this happen? The last year of my 40s is slipping away like sand in an hourglass. The boys of summer are finishing up their run. My class is humming like a well-oiled machine. Evenings on the patio are crisp with the clear, fresh wash of cool breezes flowing across our valley. How on earth is 2011 almost over? 

My children are spending time with each other independent of me, or my planning. They now enjoy each others' company and call/text/email/message each other regularly. Life moves on without consulting me. Come on, I'm supposed to be in charge here!! I guess I should just relax into it and let it happen. It's inevitable, the passage of time and the changes in me, my husband, and those around us (most of our changes involve sagging body parts and unexpected aches and pains -god, are we really talking about our health issues??). Mo and I talk more about retirement planning and living trusts than what we are going to do this weekend.

I'm having a hard time with all of this. Anyone else? I can no longer keep track of the current stars of the box office or Billboard charts. I feel so.... well, so... hmmm. Behind? Old? Out of touch? Like I've stepped off the train and am sitting on the platform watching it roll by. But with a glass of really nice chardonnay in my hand, or maybe gin and tonic. With lime. In my gloved hand, wearing a nice wool coat. With boots. Really tall boots. But not the ones with the spiky heels.  Waiting for the other train. The one that takes me to the pier where the cruise ship departs. Yah, that's it. The cruise to the Mediterranean. Okay, I think I can slip into this phase of life now. As long as there is wine and calm blue seas...

Change and The Light

There is a moment, a day, in September, when the light changes. The sun crosses the sky at a lower angle, the shadows are longer, the afternoon feels later than it actually is. These are the signs that fall is creeping towards us, ready to sit at our table very soon. Everything is a little more golden, a little less brilliantly outlined, a little softer, more shadowed. This change affects me. Today, it feels like a nation of change.

Ten years ago violence against our nation struck all of us. Each one of us has a story of where we were, who we were with,  and where our family members were at that moment we found out about the planes. Every one of us has a story of how we have changed, how our lives have changed because of this experience. All of us felt the horror, the heartbreak, to our core, and all of us remember how we came together as a nation afterwards.

I did not listen to the radio that morning, so when I walked into my classroom and found my partner teacher on her cell phone, asking anxiously if the person on the other end of the phone had heard from his daughter yet, the urgency and grief on her face made me think that someone in their family had died. She looked at me incredulously and said, "You haven't heard?"  Every day since then, and I mean every single one no matter where I am or what I am doing, I wake to or turn on the radio to listen to the news.

The light signals passing time. A new season approaches. The tears still come when I see the images and faces of the tragedy of 9/11/01. I don't think the passage of time will ever change that.  Where were you? What did you do? Please share this post and respond. Sharing experiences is a privilege and one of our most important human experiences.

You Must Pass Go

Time moves on. Another roll, count the spaces, buy, sell, move on. Empty Nest. At least that's what they call it and that's what I've got. That was never part of Monopoly; maybe The Game of Life mentioned it somewhere. My nest is supposedly empty now. Only it's not so empty. This weekend, the first empty weekend in our careers as parents, my husband decided to clean and organize the empty rooms. This pissed my off just a little. Already you want to purge the mess of our kids from your life and make it look like they never were??! But that's not really what he had in mind. I guess I may have a little bit of a hoarding thing going on. Considering I still have vhs tapes of Neverending Story and Winnie the Pooh. And we haven't had a vhs tape player in about 6 years. I guess it's time. Time to take the board games to my classroom. Time to put the cassette tapes in the trash and to get the family movies transferred from vhs and 8mm to DVD. But don't do it to me all at once. I can't, just can't, go through the drawers and closets just yet. The prom and formal dresses will remain hanging in the closet. The stuffed animals in the box under the stairs will stay there. I'm thinking that grandchildren will love the Ravensburger puzzles I've collected over the years and just can't part with (they are beautiful works of art). Will they love Monopoly and Clue the way my kids (their future parents - weird) did? Probably, so I'd better keep those. I'm sure I can find a corner in a closet my husband won't look in. And if I put the stuff in boxes marked "stereo" or "college text books" he won't bother them. At least not for a while.

Sick, Ill, Not Feeling Well

So why does it take a sore throat and sinus infection to get me to actually sit still for more than ten minutes? If it weren't summer, I'd make myself get up and go to work, I'd get through the day, and then, maybe, I'd go to the doctor in the afternoon and get some medicine. And back to work I'd go the next day.

Is it a mom thing? A female thing? I know it's not a male thing... Men are well known for their ability to sit through inane television shows (how many ways can an animal die/procreate/capture it's prey) or sports games, remaining primarily in the vicinity of the couch. Oh, they may leave that area to go just far enough to procure a beverage, usually beer, or a snack, but back they go until the bitter end. Women have a harder time focusing solely on one task for the length of time it takes to get through 9 innings, 2 halves, or 90 minutes. Come on, we all have our favorite sports, and I'm not saying that we aren't fans, even of Deadliest Catch. But do we really sit and just watch? I know I spend about a third of the time watching, even a college softball game, the rest is spent wiping surfaces, folding laundry, paying bills online, even playing Words with Friends or catching up on Facebook.

ADD? Easily distracted? Although these are true of myself at times, I believe that my inability to just do nothing comes from a feeling that I am unworthy. I have not earned "free" time, because there is so much more to "do". I have not (and never will have) completed my duties so am not deserving of the time-wasting activity of watching t.v. uninterrupted or just sitting enjoying the view over my backyard fence (fyi I'm not a voyeur, I live on a hillside with a view of mountains). Many women have at least a niggling of lack of self worth, of being undeserving. So my question is, why do we have to deserve something in order to enjoy it? A reward is more enjoyable when you have earned it, but who decides if you are worthy? And why on earth would I wait until I feel so miserable I can hardly move to just sit.

I've worked hard to get where I am. It's labor being a wife, a mother, a student, a friend, keeping a nice house and cars (often pleasurable labor, but still difficult) . It's a labor of love taking care of all the people who rely on me. I think I'll go open a beer and see what's on t.v.

Summer 2011

I love summer. I am off work and get to catch up on some of those projects and books and chores, etc. that I've been putting off or just haven't had time for. I feel like I have a lot of time, then the hours slip away and I've done...nothing but spend hours on the computer paying bills, looking for good deals on airfare, and catching up on Facebook!

The past couple of weeks I did spend some precious time at home watching my girls and boy and their friends and family interact, cook, swim, tan, and gossip. We plan special trips and our family reunion during these warm, relaxing months. During our family reunion weekend a cousin who follows my blog challenged me to write more often. I am going to designate a regular time for myself to write this blog and hope that the muse is there when I ask it to be.I sincerely apologize in advance for all the blogs that will be museless.

This summer is a summer of change for our family. Number One, son, is working full time, all done with school, at least for now. A doctorate is most likely in his future. Number Two, daughter, is a full time  Chicagoan, job hunting, waiting to finish one more semester. No more softball. She only came "home" for two weeks. She jammed a lot into those two weeks, but it felt, for the first time, like she was on a vacation while here, and returned "home" when she went back to Chicago. Number Three, daughter, is in that limbo between high school and college. For some reason she seems to have suddenly matured. I even watched her and her friends make a full meal all by themselves a few days ago. Okay, I had to tell them where the butter was and how long to boil the pasta, but otherwise they were quite independent! 

I told my husband last night: My job is done. They don't need me anymore and can live productive, independent lives without any input from me. Until they start having children, that is....