life simplified

I often dream I'm in high school taking a calculus test. I have no idea what the questions are even asking and I realize I haven't been going to class for some time which explains my complete confusion. I'm disappointed in myself for letting things get so out of control. And there's the underlying meaning, I think. I'm no dream analyst but this one's pretty easy to pin down.

So last night, for the first time ever, my math test dream was very different. Almost amusingly so. First, the test is not calculus. It's elementary algebra. The problems are simple. I'm combining like terms and simplifying equations. Occasionally, the problem changes after I solve it and I have to solve it a second time but I've got this one. There's a substitute teacher and everybody else is goofing off but I'm in the zone and focused. Nothing can stop me.

I look at the clock. Only one more problem left. Time to spare! I look around the classroom for my boyfriend who's usually there to intensify the humiliation of not knowing any calculus. He's absent. So I send him a text. "Where are you?" The glaring lights of my cell phone are in blatant defiance of the rules. I think he must be home sick.

Note to subconscious: Your boyfriend got married 20 years ago and moved across the country. And, you didn't have a phone that wasn't attached to the wall in high school. But thanks for this one, anyway.

The last problem is a piece of cake. I woke up smiling.

one room

I spent last weekend in a Room. We traveled to a city about four hours away from home to cheer for my son in a soccer tournament. Four days, four nights, and only about four of the hours were actually spent cheering. The other ninety or so hours, I spent in the Room.

Ninety hours in a Room gives you a lot of motivation for a little escape. Since the kids occupied the laptop and TV most of the time, I found time to read a book, not a text book or a book I need to read for work, a book of my choice. Room, by Emma Donoghue, is a story about a woman held captive inside a 12 X 12 room. I had to smile more than once at the irony of it's story and my own situation. Ultimately, I found the ideas about perspective poignant. It's all in how you look at things. Our world is shaped by our own ideas. We make it how it is essentially. So here are two versions of my weekend:

Ninety hours in one room with three kids. The sore throat I felt developing on the ride down was in full swing by mid-trip. It rained all day, Sunday. It was cold and gray and muddy and I was sick with no place to be quarantined. None of us slept well. We wore things off the floor more than once and thought we would rather starve than eat another french fry by the end.

But for four days I didn't wash one dish or get out of bed until after 8. The four of us were united in purpose; to cheer and to win. We were close. We spent two hours in the warm sunshine by the pool. It felt like heaven after a particularly frigid winter. And while reading a book, I savored the freedom I enjoy; even to spend a weekend in a Room. Freedom to choose it, good or bad, is the real prize. Every day.

fine thanks

To avoid embarrassment is just one reason I'm becoming a hermit. When people ask me the most basic question, for the life of me, I can't give a basic answer.

It's the daily double answer "Fine, thanks" and the question is "How are you?" How do I come up with something like, "Well, I'm feeling a little better than yesterday, you know, when you can feel your immune system starting to win the battle ... " Did I really just use the term "immune system" and "battle" in response to a friendly greeting?

I think "fine" is really lie. I rarely feel fine. I always have some kind of opinion about how I feel. Fine is SO indifferent and average. Life's too short to be fine. If you're kind enough to inquire, I'm not going to lie to you.

And "How are you?" is a complicated question that deserves an introspective response. People pay a lot of money to sit in a chair and explore their answer for many well-documented hours. Can anyone really answer that question in less than one volume? I just need to remember that the people walking down the hall with me aren't getting paid to listen and they didn't buy my book. And, considering this whole rationale, the hermit plan isn't such a bad idea.

free time

Be careful what you wish for! Here I am with nothing but time and I can't get a thing done.

What you didn't know when you were a kid was that teachers were looking forward to summer vacation just as much as you were, maybe more; and for the very same reasons: no homework, more time to relax, family vacations, and sunshine. And here it is. Now what?

Give me a long list, a deadline, or a back-to-back schedule and I'm in the zone. Some days like that I sit back at the end of it and am just a little awestruck at what I have accomplished. But give me nothing but time on my hands and I'm a mess. I bounce around from this to that and do a whole lot of nothing. At the end of the day and really can't believe how I've managed to do so little.

So I'm contemplating a radical summer idea: Implementing a rigorous summer schedule for myself to accomplish a long list of to-dos: Cleaning out, systematic sorting, untackled projects, and planning for the future. Just the exact thing I have been wishing away for the past nine months.

I'll just be sure to include a few of the following items on the daily schedule:

1. Long walks

2. Sitting on the porch

3. Writing for fun

4. Gardening

5. Reality TV

6. Sleeping in

7. Napping

8. Lengthy conversations with people I love

9. Poolside reading

10. Baking

Can't wait to get busy!

the worst

The longer you stay away from writing the harder it is to get back in. So I'm writing, really, just to eliminate the self-induced pressure of such a long-awaited blog. And just to completely assuage my fear of not meeting expectations I'm going to entitle it "the worst" blog ever. Phew, now I can be successful. (I need therapy)

I needed some dry ice last night on the final grocery store run of the evening. Its a good thing to have a teenage boy to ask when you need to locate dry ice; there's no aisle marker. (FYI ask in the butcher shop) Explaining to the butcher that I needed it for a great visual aid for a presentation the next day seemed harmless enough. But apparently, this particular butcher had extensive experience with dry ice and the making of soda bottle explosives and proceeded to give me an earful of his eventful history with the making of dry ice bombs.

What he didn't know was that I am well acquainted with such tactics and the methods thereof and that he wasn't really telling me anything I hadn't experienced in my own kitchen and backyard. I should have kept nodding and smiling and acting completely impressed but I just couldn't keep my mouth shut. Just had to mention that I had, in fact, seen, and had tried to supervise to the best of my ability, the making of such explosive material.

Obviously appalled, the butcher then proceeded to warn me of the dangers of this activity and to give me detailed parental advice on how I should immediately put a stop to such behavior. Thank you very much, please hand me the dry ice now.

Completely deflated, I put the piece of smouldering ice in my freezer for the night hoping to keep it from falling into the wrong hands at least for one night and to, perhaps, regain my "competent mother" status in the future.

Here's the thing, dry ice evaporates! Wouldn't you know, it was the size of a small ice cube by this morning. I thought, maybe it would still be enough my my "big effect" moment but when I poured this into that in front of my audience...nothing. Flat on my face.

The only thing you can really do at this point is dust yourself off and try again. Try to salvage your presentation, try to keep your son out of danger, try to listen to someone who needs to be heard and not take offense, just try to get something written, and, most of all, try to give yourself a break. Nobody is "the best" all the time.