Monday, September 26, 2011

The neighbor kid...

There's a kid in our neighborhood, who is 9. He's a friend of my youngest son. He's here a lot. He was here most of the summer. He's a nice kid, and my girls love him. His mom asked me at the beginning of the school year, if I would watch him a few days a week after school, and that she would pay me. I told her fine, even though the thought of having another kid to watch made me hesitate.  It's nice at the end of the day to just have my own kids. However, who am I to say no? That's unfortunately not my style,  a backbone is required for that, and we all know that I don't have one.
One day after school, when all hell was breaking lose because my girls were tired, and screaming at me, and because I was trying to get dinner ready, the dishes done and snacks passed out, I heard a voice behind me say "excuse me, Mrs. F?"  It's the neighbor kid, who has been sitting there watching the chaos "I think you're a really good mom" My heart has melted, and I said "awhh, thank you, that's really nice" and he continues, "you do so much for everyone! My mom just gets stressed out" Then he walks away.
It was the nicest thing anyone has said to me in a long time. Of course that moment faded quickly, when one of the girls started screaming at me for water, or something they can certainly get for themselves, but refuse to because apparently I owe them this because I have sent them away to school for the day. I announced to everyone what our neighbor had just said. In a sort of "see, someone thinks I'm awesome, now shut the fuck up!" kind of way (without cussing of course)
Anyway, the point of this, is that despite my hesitation to watch him, I'm glad I did. I know he loves it here. His parents recently divorced, so he alternates weeks between his mom's house, and his dads. I think coming here is sort of a refuge of all the stuff at home. He has an older brother, but they don't get along.
The next morning at the bus stop, I asked him if her remembered what he had told me. He said he did. I told him that that was the nicest thing anyone had ever said to me, and that it totally made my day.. he said thanks, and may have blushed a bit... I think that I may have made his day!

Thursday, September 22, 2011

Things that I Have Recently Broken...

-the lawn Mower (not our nice new shiny riding one!)

-the chain saw (I know! what was I thinking?)

-the wheelbarrow (same day as the chainsaw!)

-my tailbone.. (long story..)

My husband is having a hard time affording my clumsiness.. sorry dude.


Wednesday, September 21, 2011

Swimming...

We got one of those metal frame pools this summer, the ones they have at walmart. This was the best $250 bucks we ever spent! The kids LOVED it. And so did I.
For years, we've been saying we needed to get swimming lessons for the kids.. however, having 4 of them, and living on a tight budget, it just never happened. The boys can now swim. The girls are well on their way, but they wore life jackets in the pool because they couldn't stand in it. (it's 4 ft deep).



 Having 7 kids here for the summer made this one of the best places to hang out! Here are the girls with their cousin..
I emptied it yesterday.. drained it right into our leech field (I'm sure that's not a problem!) It's sad to see it laying on the ground..all dirty and slimy. Summer is my favorite season, and I'm sad to see it go. I am already looking forward to setting it up next spring, it'll be up early!! It was a good summer with the pool.. I'm not sure what the kids would have done without it.. it was our "stay cation"!

Tuesday, September 20, 2011

My dad's father passed away this summer. I had only seen him once, I can't even say that I met him because no one ever introduced him to me.  I got a glimpse though, and I guess that should have been good enough. My grandfather had 3 children with my grandmother. He drank himself into a stupor regularly, and when my dad was a teenager, he left. My dad didn't see him again until he was an adult.
He lived in Alabama, until hurricane Katrina destroyed his single wide, and he was forced to move back to NH, to the 3 kids he had abandoned a couple of decades before. My aunt was his main caregiver, even though he had been absent from her life for several decades. He was one lucky son of a bitch. I'm not sure I would have given him the same respect.
When he passed away, and my father called and told me, I felt sad for what could have been, and for what wasn't. I think my dad may have felt the same way. It wasn't devastating to him, like when he lost his mother back in 1995.  He made a joke about getting an extra week off of work, for bereavement. The silver lining.
My dad has not been a huge part of my life. He's unlike his father though, he didn't leave because he was a drinker, he left because he was 30 years old, with 4 kids (2 of which weren't his) and because he had met another woman. I often look back at those times.. when I was 7, and couldn't for the life of me figure out why my dad didn't want to be with us. I thought I must have done something. If only I had been a better kid.. If only I had behaved.. I understand now how these thoughts aren't rational, but to a 7 year old it was fact.
I think my dad must have felt the same way when he was a kid. Not understanding why his father loved his alcohol more than him.
I missed Father's Day this year. I usually send him a card, maybe give him a call, but this year, I did nothing. Not intentionally, I tortured myself daily about getting my shit together and at least mail him a card. But I failed. A month or so after fathers day, I was on my way to the store, and decided to stop in and see him, he only lives a few miles from my house. I was going there to ask him to borrow some money (summers are so hard with my husband not working- he teaches). Earlier in the spring we had to sink a significant amount of money into our cars, money we were saving for summer. I visited for a while, and just could  not do it. I couldn't ask him for anything, and felt like I was a kid again wishing he could understand what I was feeling, without having to tell him. As I was leaving, and feeling like a total failure for not being able to do what I had gone there to do, I started crying. I told him how sorry I was that I had missed father's day. This show of emotion made him clearly uncomfortable, and confused. He told me not to worry about it, and that he had missed a lot of things too.
I am over being mad at my father for not being there like he should have been. I know he did the best he could.. some people aren't meant to be parents, like his father.. He had no role model, no one to teach him how to be a parent. I know he has regrets.. and I bet if I had gotten up the nerve, he would have given me the shirt off his back. Or at least lent it to me!

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

Mountain View

I wish I could go to Mountain View California.. just for a couple of days.. to see my boys! They are playing in Neil Young's benefit concert for the Bridge School. All acoustic.. for 2 days.  Maybe next year..

Yup.. another post!

I was diagnosed with ADD last October. It was by coincidence that I made this discovery, and not to go all Dr. Phil and Oprah on ya, but it was my "Ah-ha" moment.  My entire life I had wondered why I never seemed to fit in anywhere.. Why I had always had such a difficult time in school.I'm sure that I had ADD as a child too, I just managed to develop some really good coping skills over the years. Many women are diagnosed after they've had children, often times after they see signs of ADD in their own children, and start reading up on it.. it's Coming to the understanding that I wasn't actually unlearnable, but that my brain had a highly genetic neurological disorder called ADD, let me finally understand why I failed out of college...and why despite other successes in my life, I never really felt like a success. ADD is a disorder, but not necessarily a deficit. Everyone with ADD has the H part as well. The hyperactivity piece. And how this is displayed in people varies. For some people it's their inability to sit still, or control themselves physically. For other people, like myself, the hyperactivity is happening in my brain. I am a constant flutter of thoughts, and ideas. Struggling constantly to focus on one thing at a time. For me, the medication takes away the fluttering. It slows it down, and allows me to focus on one thing at a time.
After I was diagnosed with ADD, I started to see it in everyone I was close to, and yes, everyone loved being diagnosed by yours truly!
I have continued to see my therapist, she's a great guide for me as I work through the junk that comes with having ADD. When I started thinking about how my undiagnosed ADD had taken away so much potential from me, it got me super pissed, and super motivated. That was when I started sewing like crazy. The meds were helping me stay focused. and I could create, and finish  projects.  I got a bunch of bags, put them on facebook, and sold 50 pieces in a month.
This diagnosis of ADD has left me feeling raw and exposed. Which is why I've never blogged about it before. Soon after my diagnosis, my husband went in for an evaluation as well. He's tried medication (which in my opinion, worked really well for him) But he's decided that he would rather not take anything. We are all a work in progress..In other news, my girls are doing amazing in kindergarten. They love it! Like the boys, they have completely done the opposite of what I thought they would do. They get on the bus, excited, and happy.. and once again, it was me who worried more than them. I am adjusting to the peace and quiet that comes when all your kids are in school. The best part is how clean my house stays! yay!

Monday, September 05, 2011

Kindergarten for the twins..

Tomorrow morning, my girls are starting kindergarten. I'm not sure how this happened.. It literally seems like yesterday I was bringing both of them home from the hospital, and settling into the insanity of having two babies at once (along with my boys who were 3 and 6 at the time).
I have been waiting for this day for almost as long as they were born.. All four of my children in school. And now that it's here, I'm feeling all sorts of unsettled emotions..joy, sadness, anxiety, disbelief.. How is it that my babies are 5? And that my oldest son is 11! He started junior high last week..and is loving it! Thank goodness that boy adjusts well to change. My youngest son has started 3rd grade, and is loving it also.. My girls, on the other hand, are not loving it so much. There were months when my daughters refused to talk about school. The  mere mention of it would send them over the edge. They are so afraid of  missing me.. They remind me so much of my sister and I, when we were their age. I remember being dropped off at kindergarten, and both of us having to pulled off of my mom's legs, screaming. This was sort of what happened back in June when the girls went in for orientation.. I left the classroom, with both of them screaming for me. I could hear them in the parking lot and felt like a complete failure.. how could I not have prepared them for this? Although the only preparation for it was talking about it, which I tried.. and since enrolling twins in preschool on a teachers budget wasn't a possibility, I felt as though I had totally screwed over my own kids.
I'm over that now though.. (thanks to my wonderful therapist) I know I didn't fail them, in fact it's not a bad thing when your kids are bonded to you, right? like glue, with curly hair..   I am still going to be babysitting for my nephews, who will be 4 next month (hard to believe, I know!) I will have 3 hours, 3 days a week, with no kids in my house! holy shite. I've been in a bit of a panic though.. what now? what do I do with all my children in school? The thought of going back to an office job makes me want to hurl. Really, I would rather have another baby! I still have time to figure that out though.. right now, I'm just going to try to get through the next few weeks with all the changes going on..
Maybe I'll have time to write more on my blog..  I'm going to be sewing more.. I have gotten pretty good at it (if I do say so myself).  I sold a bunch of my bags at a consignment shop in Portsmouth over the summer. My goal for now is to keep busy enough with that, so that I won't have to join the workforce- ever! I will be my own work force!
Wish my girls luck on their first day of school (and their mother too!)