Today I saw a former professor of mine at a coffee shop. She taught my first creative writing class in graduate school. She was advising a new grad student who had just moved to the area. I found myself shamelessly eavesdropping. Because writers do that, doncha know. And this writing-related siting coincided with my newly found resolve to get back to fiction. And poetry. And things other than this creative nonfiction that is the day-to-day. I want to keep up with this day to day, but I feel like as I become less overwhelmed mentally I have the space to make room for intellectual pursuits of my own choosing. Translation: I can do things I want to with my brains instead of just reserving them for the workplace. My workout buddy was sick today. But once again I made it to the gym. And used the elliptical trainer for an hour. Reading the whole time. I can't remember now the long stretch of time during which I read nothing for pleasure. Now I am a total reading hedonist. A readonist. 11yo is ready to try a boys-only tap dance class. Leaving me on my own with the other adult beginners. Really I don't think I would have taken the class without him, and I am finally ready to take the class on my own, too. We are good support for one another even when neither of us is any good at the thing we are attempting. Like when he went ice skating for the first time and I was so wobbly on my own skates I was convinced I was going to plow into the ice chin-first. He watched people skate for a long time from the edge of the rink. Then he wanted to try, but only if I held his hand. I was convinced that he stood a better chance of being flattened by me than anything else. I certainly did not expect to be of much assitance. But what happened was this... when he held my hand standing on his wobbly skates, my skates wobbled less. And together we helped one another around the ice. Until we were both ready to skate alone. This morning I tried an experiment: the anti-yelly morning. I decided that no matter how crazed the children made me with their lateness and their inattention to time and scrambling for things at the last minute, I would not engage in yelliness. Because really, the yelly doesn't get things done any faster. And it doesn't even help me vent my anger. It just makes me more agitated. We made it to the bus in plenty of time. I am fairly certain that neither of the children packed hot fudge sundays and cotton candy and bags and bags of Halloween candy in their lunches. When I arrived at the bus stop I informed the 11yo of my experiment and said that I thought it worked pretty well, but that I wasn't sure he had remembered to brush his teeth and wondered what we could do to make sure that it happened without angry prompting. Because who wants to do something that is always associated with parents hollering. I felt like such a parents magazine kind of a mom. He decided that he would brush his teeth when he woke up in the morning. I decided that I would dress like a toothbrush to remind him. Now I have to finish everyone else's costumes so I can figure out how to look like a toothbrush... :) Grateful Crap: Day #2 absent creeping dread. (daughter had no idea I was writing about skating and just asked for skates in her size so she can skate. creepy.) Equatorial Actions: meds 100mg lamotragine, 450mg bupropion, 150mg venlafaxine 60 minutes elliptical trainer playing with the band tonight Comments are closed.
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K. BuchananQuaker, teacher, parent, |