Not a Saint, Maybe a Poet, Definitely Crazy

Something compelled me to pursuit a full-time job. Oh, maybe something to the effect that I am not getting any younger, I have no retirement plan and it’s time for a shake down. Well, I got it. I am working full-time in a self-contained classroom composed of autistic children. They are amazing beings. I personally am wired in an odd way with the MS business and all, but I can only imagine what the electrical impulses look like in their brains. It is fascinating and frustrating all at the same time. You see the manifestations of their misfirings in everything from trying to hit you because they can’t express their frustrations and pains, or by screaming because they cannot move from doing one thing to another without utter chaos in their minds. The chaos pours out as bad behavior in their bodies and sometimes you have to be quick to not get the brunt of their feelings. I have never been more physically and mentally exhausted from a job. I hope I can keep going. I am already attached to the kids and wonder how each day will go and hope for the best. As a parent of a child who is mildly “on the spectrum” I understand how hard it is to see the future for these fragile little people, because first, you have to get through today, or the next thirty seconds. We hope for the best and for a tolerant world that will support and embrace these unique children. The crazy part is dealing with the bureaucracy of a big school system and the struggles of the teachers to mesh as much as possible with the mainstream. With no planning period and no actual breaks at all, the days are long (esp. since they are 45 min longer than last year) and beyond comprehension in terms of physical output. Currently, the district is trying to figure out how to measure these teachers in the “Pay for Performance” metric. Too bad sweat equity isn’t quantifiable in this case. If anyone is still out there, thank you for reading!

What not to iron?

Hmm? What's an iron?

Oh yeah, that electric monster that you fill with water and curse at while you run it's hot body across, whatever... Maybe you can help me add to this list of things to iron/not to iron...


What to Iron and what not to Iron

Do not iron:

YOUR HAIR
Your clothes while they are on your body
Waffles (unless it’s a waffle iron)
any food
Underwear
Bed sheets, who cares and who has the time?
Nylon
Sequins or beads
The sticky parts of a graphic tee


Do iron:

What you plan to wear for an interview
Your kids clothes so they don’t look like orphans
To impress your date, yes you might have to iron jeans


Have professionals iron:

Your hair
Shirts that you wear with suits (although if you are smart you will buy the wrinkle free...)
Tablecloths (if you actually own such a thing)
Draperies/curtains (unless they are super easy)

The Good Boys

The Good Boys

As the NBA finals approached and the Dallas Mavericks began their cardiac therapy for all their fans, I began a chant in my mind, a little prayer.  A voice kept saying in my head “The Good will win, the Good will win!”  They powered back from behind many times and when they made it into the finals, I began to worry (a little) that Miami would be too tough and I didn’t wish any “badness” to happen to Miami, I just felt that the Good Boys deserved to win.  Miami set an uncomfortable tone from the beginning as they built their powerhouse team. But when they celebrated their season before it even began, I thought it was like opening a bad can of sardines. It smelled terrible and started their season with the entire rest of the NBA mad at them.  They were gloating before they had any right to do so, and I know a little of that bad mojo stayed with them to the end. Dallas played their hearts out and earned the championship.  It showed the Heat that you can’t win a championship just by buying some of the best players.

I have been a Mavs fan for thirty years.  Since I was two.. ha ha... so when the final buzzer sounded on that Sunday night I found myself in tears at the realization that they had done it!  They solidly won their place in NBA history.  I can’t imagine that you could find a team with more heart than the Dallas Mavericks.  The real fans have always believed and hoped and dreamed that this day would come. 

In the early 80‘s, my sister worked for the Hyatt Corporation in Dallas and helped do the set up for the meeting where papers were signed and the Mavericks officially became a part of the NBA.  The Mavs offices still have photos of that event on the walls.  At the centerpiece of the ‘signing table’ was a basketball that belonged to my young nieces and had been scooped up by my creative sister from her garage that morning.  The Mavs owners, the Carters, took the ball from the centerpiece as a memento of the occasion and the Mavs office later sent my sister a new ball, signed by the whole team!!

I don’t usually write about sports, but this has been a wild and fun ride. Thank you Dallas Mavericks!  The whole country (with the exception of Miami..) was rooting for you!

The Fabric

I am a fabric junky, but I don't sew. I have a whole bin of swatches, samples and snips that beg me to do something with them and I am not sure I ever will.  I can spend hours looking at fabric and dreaming of sofas, chairs, bedrooms, pillows, curtains..... I would need multiple houses to use all that I see that I love...
I have hauled a few of my pieces out for school projects for the kids and I really did cover my dining room chairs myself, so I am not completely incapable of doing something with fabric as long as it involves a staple gun.  My love of fabric began as a child. My mom is an amazing seamstress. She's made countless items for my three sisters and me.  When I was old enough to shop on my own, I often wandered in fabric shops, fell in love with a piece and had to have Mom make something for me.  I knew I was lucky.  I don't know how she had the time. She worked full time and kept the house neat as a pin, made all desserts from scratch and cooked 99 percent of our meals.   I think that sewing was her escape.  She would be absorbed in a project and looked forward to the evening hours after the dishes were washed and put away and we were all tucked in, so she could tackle the zipper or piece the bodice to the skirt.  I knew early in my life the difference between dotted-swiss and pique, wool from wool gabardine, cotton from polyester.  It is no wonder I obsess about fabrics.  I could use a little more success in the use of fabric.  I took a sewing class once, made a skirt, wore the skirt once and threw it out. It was not a good experience.  I bought a sewing machine about three years ago and it sits in the bottom of my closet, waiting for me.  I will try another class one day, maybe I will turn my fabric fetish into a cool hobby or something.  Maybe there is a sewing camp for sewing class drop outs!! I might need some more fabric...

The colors and textures that I love about fabrics are a lot like the quilt of friends and family I have who constantly support me and care for me. I have had a less than stellar month for lots of reasons (I have MS and for the first time in five years it has been causing me some aggravation), but I have had some great kindness and love poured out on me and I am so grateful for all of it.  The healing and the recovery is impossible without it.  The meds can't do what you do for me.

In gratitude and until I write again, be well.

Dusty

Dusty

Our lives are quite busy most of the time.  Not much time for sitting still unless it is forced upon us, like when you have to be completely still for an MRI.  I am struck by the thought of how very little time is spent being still and listening to one’s own thoughts. I did this during a recent MRI. Through the first round of brain pictures, the technician did not plug my headphones in and I was forced to think of things to distract my body and mind from all the clunking and shrieking going on inside the tube.  Some people freak out at the thought of this confinement. Even without any official claustrophobia I felt a little twitchy. I have decided that spending small amounts of time on one’s own thoughts is enough.  If I could only focus on happy things that would be grand, but the noise in my head about applying for jobs, not feeling qualified for anything but chief laundress and poet (not very lucrative), what I’m going to make for dinner after spending two hours with a child that desperately needs help with homework, wondering if I’ll have time to take a walk for exercise to stay healthy/lose weight/fight my high cholesterol....  In this day of techno-bombardment, infotainment,  nonstop news and analysis, our thoughts take a beating and sometimes I use the rest of the world’s misery to help me drown out some of my own.   The noise of the mundane, perpetual neuroses that drone on in my ears is too much to take sometimes. Other times my own mess is quite preferable to the tumult of the world’s chaos.  Why can’t everything just be still for a moment?

My 85 year old mother has more stillness now than she’s ever had in her life. It sounds like it might be nice but it isn’t really. She played basketball into her forties, rode roller coasters into her fifties, wore high-heeled shoes into her sixties.  She is still keeping house after living in the same house over 50 years.  She knows every square inch of it and could easily get around blindfolded.  She can hear the dust land.  Dirt and trash set off a sonar-like sensor that drives her crazy because she wants to make it all go away.  Her arthritis keeps her from being able to do the deep dark cleaning she used to do, but by golly her house is far cleaner than most and she does what she can everyday.  Use it or lose it.  Doing something is far better than doing nothing when your choices get reduced by what life throws at you.  Don’t dare try to do any of it for her though or she might rip you a new one...Aging hurts. Dust hurts when you can’t do anything about it.   Your knees my not let you kneel, or you hands may not have the strength to scrub. You can feel the dust falling on you, around you and after cataract surgery with the lens replacement you can see it all better than you ever could. How maddening.  

No one wants the dust to settle. Not really.  Our usefulness gives us purpose.  Sometimes the more challenges we face, the harder we try to prove we can still jump the hurdles, in full make-up and high heels. 

Soles Without Soul

Really??? Really??!!!  I made fun of the secret French fashion society a few blogs ago but maybe I ought to sling a few arrows in the direction of Italy. As I see this year’s Idolettes  tromp down the stairway from heaven in their mega-platform, stiletto-heeled boots/loafers/pumps/sandals/golf shoes while singing and holding a microphone as they plunge toward terra firma at the bottom, it makes me nervous.  I think they should earn special awards for not falling to their deaths or maybe gift cards to podiatry establishments. I guess they look “hot” in the fashion stilts to someone. Do men really like seeing women wobble around like toddlers taking tiny little steps...oh.. I guess they do.  Sort of a vulnerable angle or something.  I remember my Dad saying once that women did not look as attractive in flat shoes (my Dad the fashion guru - umm not really.)  

I am such a wimp when it comes to heels.  I lost all balance and good equilibrium in the postpartum fog.  This doesn’t seem to affect many young mothers that I see running around town in their crazytall shoes carrying a forty pound diaper bag and a baby carrier loaded down with an adorable infant who has no idea that at any moment the whole magilla could go sprawling in all directions.  Many pick fashion over comfort and safety. Maybe they are truly as Herculean as they appear.  I am just sayin.... the idea of balancing on some tiny point, (and no you can’t convince me that platforms are comfy either at that height) makes me think they might as well let the foot doctor have direct access to their checking accounts. 

I am a shoe freak as much as the next girl, but count me out on this trend. I think they belong in the Museum of Interesting Shoes. Art, yes. Footwear, no.

Ashes

To give up or not to give up? That is the question. I rather like the idea of Lent and the practice of doing something different in my daily life’s routine--something that jolts my world a bit and makes me think about sacrifice.

I never really thought about sacrifice until I had children, but then I knew that if I had to throw myself in front of a bus to save them, I would, without hesitation. Moms sacrifice a good bit of themselves in the process of rearing a healthy brood. Let’s start with the body. I know that my doughy road-mapped belly will never feel comfortable in a two-piece swimsuit again (not that I ever did...). During pregnancy I did not lose one hair from my head or at least it was not noticeable, but right after childbirth and really ever since I shed like a darn sheepdog. After having children my equilibrium completely changed and made it impossible for me to ride a merry-go-round or even on a regular swing.. I feel like I am going to hurl on the simplest of rides. This is a bummer because I used to love all the wild stuff at Six Flags and could ride just about anything, jump off and turn around and ride again. I see the effects of aging in me much more than I see them in my husband (and we’re the same age) - my hair has more gray, my face is more obviously wrinkling, neck sagging etc. Let’s move on to the mind before I jump out the window... :-)

Now, what was I going to talk about? Give me a minute, I know it will come to me. Have you seen my keys? Where is the #!$*!@# cell phone, oh, for Pete’s sake, I just had my glasses... I think we have an over-accumulation of mindtrash - full of email, texts, phone calls, junk mail, schoolwork, workwork, guilt, the fighting off guilt, worrying about what you need to do next while doing two things currently... Who has the capacity to know where the kids shoes are? or where you can find a pen that writes or the match to all the socks??? It’s too much. Moms and Dads sacrifice time, self-interests, pursuits of dreams, souls? ( maybe the uber-moms...). I struggle with guilt when I pursuit things just for me... I am working on that.

I didn’t go into detail about our recent trip to DC, but the event was so enriching and enjoyable - even with 140 fifth graders! Sacrifice permeates the very mortar of all the buildings, memorials, and monuments there. Bells toll for all the people in our history who worked for something great, some high ideal, for the sake of all people.
I am always overwhelmed with patriotism when I visit that city. On our last day in DC, our school presented a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns at the Arlington National Cemetery. Even the hardest of hearts had tears at this reverent ceremony. I ran out of tissues and sleeves as the trumpeter played Taps. The young guards that pace and protect that space 24/7 know about sacrifice, as do the families and friends of all that are represented by the white stone markers.

It seems a little anti-climactic to give up chocolate, silly to sacrifice soda... doesn’t seem to have a great deal of meaning in the grand scheme of things. It’s not like defending a people’s freedom or throwing yourself on a grenade but maybe the little sacrifices are supposed to remind me of the bigger ones.