Barnmaven

Our real lives

 

I was thinking about my brother the other day.  I wonder sometimes in those last days of his life what thoughts were going through his head, if he was in pain, if he knew he was in trouble.  I wonder if he knew he was teetering on the brink of dying and whether he was OK with that or if he would have wanted more time to change things.  I prefer to cling to the latter notion.

I don't believe he was living the life he envisioned himself having, not by any means. That's the thought that inevitably leads me to the rabbit hole, the endless conundrum of the probability of any one person ever fully achieving self-expression versus the actual necessity of this occuring. 

Bloom where you're planted.  Be happy in the shoes you're in.  Success is the path, not the destination.  I want to believe these things - and in many ways I do believe these things - but I also believe that these are things we are taught to make us feel better about being forced into lives many of us have no viable option of escaping.  We gratify our need for expression and validation by telling ourselves - and asking others to confirm it for us - that we're OK.  

Its a beautiful, terrible thing, the human condition.  The ability of this world we've constructed to continue functioning, like the Matrix, relies on our inability to slow down and think too very hard about these things.  You can't grease the wheels of society if you are busy throwing aside convention to follow your dream or die trying.  It doesn't take too much imagination to believe that there are forces at play in our world that depend on this, on the natural tendency of tired, overwhelmed people to smooth over the wrinkles between reality and their sense of how things ought to be.

Tradition tells you to keep your nose to the grindstone, that life isn't fair and that conformity is essential for the majority.  We can't be all airy-fairily gallivanting off to chase our dreams.  Someone has to stay home and keep the lights on.  And so we make the sacrifices, pluck our dreams apart brick by brick until they are small enough to fit the lives we're living instead of changing our lives to fit our dreams.

And I don't know whether it is right or wrong - or if those words can really be applied - to follow one path or the other.  

Some of us tread the middle, and maybe we're okay with it, even more happy than not about it.  We all know people who are desperate to unhook the yoke and can't - or won't - because they didn't realize their dreams until too late and they don't know how to untangle from the obligations they've created, or they lack the resources to step out of the life they're in to find the one they want.  I would guess that's probably the case for most people.  And I would also guess that many people spend a lot of time trying to convince themselves and everyone else that no, they really are doing just what they want, even if inside them the dreams they once held shrivel up into nothing.

I wonder what Ken's dreams were, the ones he held inside and was never able to nurture into reality.  I wonder where his tipping points were and what he felt about them.  

Do we get a medal for being brave enough to learn to be happy with the life we have even if it isn't the one we wanted?

You know, I don't know what I really wanted to be in life.  Mostly I just wanted to be an adult (and its questionable whether I yet qualify).  I feel that I've spent a lot of my life mostly living in the moment and coping with the results.  Like everyone else I wanted to be famous.  If pushed - very hard - I could tell you that I wanted to sing for a living, but when no one ever came leaping out of the wings to offer to make me the next radio star, I suspected it wasn't really an option.  I always considered my horses to be a hobby, and it wasn't until the last few years I've wondered why I didn't think of them as a possible career.  Sure, I wouldn't have ever been rich, but I'm not rich now anyway.  

No, like most of the rest of the human race, I fell into a job that turned into a career and I've worked as hard as I needed to get where I've gotten and if I'd worked harder or been smarter I might have made if further by now but I'm not sure I really care.  

Don't get me wrong -- my life is really pretty great.  There are areas that could definitely use some improvement, and whether I want to admit it or not, I can see the places where I've painted myself into corners.  They aren't forever corners, not a one of them.  They are the obstacles I've chosen and I can either let them stop me or I can let them motivate me to do things differently in the future.

I imagine I will spend the rest of my life trying to identify the things I really want to do and trying to find ways to do more of those things before I'm too old to enjoy them.  And that's OK, and I don't necessarily think its sad in the context of my own life until I recognize the places I see it in the lives of others.  My brother didn't live long enough to start finding the ways to make his inner self become real again.  That's at least as tragic as the fact that the person he was supposed to be got lost in the first place.

Ken is the poster child for those of us whom circumstance dictated a life other than the one we would have chosen for ourselves.  Too many people don't have the resources or the support to self-actualize, to do anything more than try to survive, and just thinking that makes me start to feel a sense of panic, because I know deep down inside that we're meant to be and do more than just survive.   

I could spend my time wishing things were different, but I suspect, rightly, that my efforts are better spent doing things to change the equation for myself, for those I love.  

This self-actualized little boy is following his dream of being the cutest cowboy that ever lived.

And the women are scarce

 

How's that bawdy line go?  Montana, where the men are men, the women are scarce and the sheep are...

I couldn't presume why women are scarce in Montana, but in my neck of the woods its likely because they're out riding their horses.

Ayers Road, Sunday afternoon:

An outstanding ride, excellent company.  I need more weekends like that.

 

Saturday briefly.

Conversation at about 3 am this morning:

Me:  SG, how long have we been together? 

SG:  Mumble mumble something mumble

Me:  About three years?

SG:  Um.  Yeah.  (Snores)

Me:  Can you tell me why after three years of being together you have suddenly in the last six weeks lost the ability to put the toilet seat down when you're done?

SG: (Laughs) (Snores)

Me:  Is this some sort of passive aggressive thing?  'Cause if I get a wet ass in the middle of the night I'm not going to be PASSIVE aggressive about it.

 

 

 

Relationship math

 

I love to read relationship books.  Whenever I read something that reminds me of my relationship with SG I marvel at how intuitive, how clever, how well researched the author must be.  When I read something that doesn't fit us at all, naturally either the author is a charlatan or we are the exception to the rule.  My husband is more than a standard deviation from the mean, if you know what I mean. 

Anyhow, this current book I'm reading is all about how Attachment Theory is really what comes into play in our love relationships, that our primary relationship with our partner follows many of the same patterns as child/parent attachment.  Similar to the way a healthy parental attachment fosters a sense of security and the ability to be happily independent in a child, a healthy attachment in an adult relationship makes each partner feel safer about indpendence - both theirs and their partner's.  According to this theory, then, a clingy, jealous or insecure partner isn't just being a jerk:  they're dealing with abandonment issues. 

Makes sense.  It helps me see my distaste for SG's road job in a different light; a person whose standard motto regarding relationships goes something like, "Everyone leaves.  Period." isn't likely to feel too secure about having their partner off living the single life for a couple of months at a time. 

Time and love do much to cure the places we are broken, and SG and I have seen a lot of that happening over the course of our relationship.  I'd love to say that I'm completely without insecurity, but I would be lying.  I am, however, much more secure in this relationship than I can recall being in a very long time.  

Which is good, because we're pretty sure he's going to end up going back on the road.

Its not that his in-town full-time job is a horrible job, or anything.  But its not what he's used to.  Its not what he likes or wants to do.  He likes the road.  He likes his solitude.  It doesn't mean he likes being away from me or that he doesn't want to be with me.  But its work and pay that agree with him, and if being alone for several weeks at a time are the price, its one he's happy to pay.  Not everyone has the luxury of choosing what they do for a living.  Hell, at best we choose between several imperfect options and pick the one that's simply the least worst. 

We've had some very long and occasionally very intense discussions about this of late.  We've spent time exploring our feelings about our relationship, about ourselves, about what we want out of our lives and where we want to be ten or twenty years down the road.  We've talked about what's hard about him being gone for me -- being lonely very much the primary issue, followed by being overwhelmed -- and about what's hard for him about about the current situation. 

Compromises in relationships don't mean each party gets what they want and then they hold hands and skip down the primrose path while rose blossoms fall from the sky and birds sing love songs.  Oh, no.  Compromise means sometimes I have to give up more than I think I want to and other times the short stick gets drawn by my husband.  Compromise means maybe my husband goes on the road, but at the same time we get someone to come help with the housework and the yard so that I at least get a break to do things that I want to while he's gone.  Compromise means maybe he doesn't take the six month job that would bring a much bigger payout, but takes fall and spring work and spends the winter at home.   And lets be honest, the days he's here and I get to go gallivanting off on my horse while he stays home and wrangles my offspring there is absolutely no doubt about who is getting the short stick.

So little in life is absolutely perfect.  I would say, if pressed, that SG is the perfect man for me.  I think he would probably say I'm the perfect woman for him.  I know there are times both of us will tell you how the other is driving us insane or irritating the crap out of us, but even then there are billion reasons its worth it to get to the other side of the trying days.

Remind me I wrote this come fall, will you?

Internet, I cringe

I must start by making one thing...no, TWO things clear:

1.  I am a half-assed copyeditor.  I type fast, and make typing errors that I very often don't catch until well after I've hit the "Publish Now" button.  Just one more reason I'll never be a "brand."  Sue me.  HOWEVER:  Typos are not spelling errors.

2.  When I rant about spelling & grammatical errors I'm not talking about your Facebook updates or personal emails.  I'm not even really that concerned about personal pages and blogs.  What sends me into apoplexy are the errors I find crawling through "professional" websites like ants at a picnic, the kind that seem to regularly make it past copyeditors on major internationally-read news sites and web magazines.  So unless you write for or copy edit for one of them you are not the subject of this post and I love you dearly even if you do murder the written word on a daily basis. 

 

I've considered making one day a week an official "Rant & Rave" day here at Barnmaven.com, but one of the many things I've discovered I lack as a blogger is the ability to maintain a regular (or coherent) schedule. 

If, however, today were Rant & Rave Monday, it would be the perfect day to talk about words and what they mean and how words that sound the same mean very different things and how important it is to your audience that you use words in the proper context.

I read once that avid readers make better spellers, since the frequency with which we see words naturally increases our familiarity with the proper spelling and meaning of them.  I can only apply this anecdotally to myself, since I fell in love with the printed word at the tender age of three and have only narrowly managed to escape reading my way into poverty by garnering incrementally better-paying employment every step of my career.  If I didn't make what I make today, books & horses would have me filing bankruptcy a thousand times a thousand (Except they don't let you file that often, in which case I'd just be sitting under a mountain of debt and scrounging family dinners out of restauarant garbage cans or begging for change on freeway off-ramps).

If the digital media outlets I read are any indicator, the proofreading and copyediting professions are dying a very painful and slow death.  Is it simply that the proliferation of written media has created an amplified venue for such errors, or is it an even worse situation in which the lack of professional editing creates a compounded situation where people read works with mistakes and proliferate those mistakes honestly because they trusted websites like The New York Times or the Wall Street Journal to present professionally written and edited articles?  I mean, if the WSJ can't spell "depository" correctly, can ANYONE?  Or when CNN's front page article says that "Conversationalists" aren't concerned about the environmental impact of golf balls in Loch Ness, should we  dismiss it with a "hey, its a mistake anyone can make"?  Sure, anyone can make that mistake; NOT everyone is writing headliness for one of the largest news outlets in the first world.

Is the deterioration of the ability to properly spell and to use words properly a natural phenomena?  Am I simply unwilling to let go of an art that was doomed from its infancy?  Maybe someone with a masters in linguistics could enlighten me, but until then, I vow to go down swinging.

Personally, I think that blogging itself and the mass proliferation of bloggers into media outlets has something to do with the problem.  Many legitimate news outlets have recognized the value and power of the blogger's voice; however many also seem to be taking a pass at doing more than eyeballing submissions for spelling and grammatical errors.  Hint:  Huffpo, if you want your writers to be taken seriously, help them with their words.  Please.  When one of your bloggers writes about the "hoards of visitors" that came to see her new baby, I don't think she meant that she's hoarding the people who came by and perhaps saving them for a rainy day.  I think you might have kindly told her that the word she was looking for was "hordes" and that one word is something that TLC has a regular show about and the other is the pillaging throng she probably thought she was referring to.

To another writer who was recently touched by a story in the news:  It didn't strike a 'cord' with you unless you meant it hit the thing you pull your drapes with.   The phrase you are reaching for is "struck a chord," because the metaphor is a musical reference.

And while I'm at it, Huffpo, please fire whoever is writing your front page top news story headlines.  They make you sound like the National Enquirer.  Half the time I wonder if you haven't been hacked by Anonymous and set up to sound like a third-rate gossip rag.

Writers, you really do have a reponsibility, if you are submitting work for consideration or writing because you are paid to, to ensure the clarity and accuracy of your words.  Don't assume the media outlet is going to do a good job of editing your work; if you want to come across to your audience as a professional and a subject matter expert, you only help yourself by making sure your work is correct in its substance and its form.  If you are not strong on spelling and grammar, do yourself a favor and hire a copyeditor who is.  Pay them a few bucks per piece to make you look and sound as good as you'd like to. 

What I do for a living, what I'm paid for, I must do well.  I was hired for my expertise and experience in my field, and the people who pay me expect me to be the subject matter expert in my skillset.  The same goes for those of you who make a living crafting with your words.  Writers in digital and print media not only carry the responsibility of producing good work; you have an additional and not-small task to be the arbiters of our language.  The words you produce will influence those who read them now and in the future.  You are either helping to preserve good spelling and form or you are helping to destroy them.

I remember being young and reading so many words I'd never heard spoken aloud.  On many occasions I would attempt to use them in conversation.  Sometimes I'd get laughed at, but I truly appreciated those who made the effort to correct me.  They saved me from much future embarassment.   In the same spirit, I leave comments when I can for those writers who have erred, not to embarass you, but to save you from imprecision; may you now go forth and do the same for others. 

 

When to let go - and when to hang on

When Roscoe was fairly young still, about four years old, he began limping slightly on his back legs.  Because of the way he lays down, on his belly with his legs out to either side, I assumed he had dysplastic hips.  I don't know why I simply decided this was the case, but I distinctly remember being told by someone who had a dog with hip dysplasia that this was a common way of laying down for dogs with that condition.  I figured Roscoe would eventually need surgery, just not yet, and that was good because it would give me time to save money.

A couple of years ago it became apparent that he was in a worsening state of pain.  I thought maybe I could afford a surgery by then, so off to the vet we went.  The vet noted the beginnings of atrophy on the leg he uses the least and took X-Rays.

The news was not so great:  Spondylosis.

Spondylosis is a chronic and degenerative condition in which bone spurs begin to form in the spine.  Over time these spurs grow in size and begin to bridge betwen the vertebrae.  At first the dog begins to lose flexibility, but as the condition worsens it becomes quite painful and can have a serious impact on quality of life.  There is no surgical cure that has been shown to successfully relieve the condition.

Standard treatment, and where we started with Roscoe, is a pain reliever.  We were given Rimadyl for him.  Mostly we gave it on the days he seemed in pain.  He would typically be stiff and painful a couple of days out of the week, nothing too bad and nothing the pills didn't seem to help him with.  I was told, however, that eventually the medication would no longer be enough to control his pain, and at that point we would have to consider putting him on injectable steroids.  This would relieve his pain, but also seriously shorten his life because of the other side effects, so it would only be a last resort.

The last week or two, despite his regular medication, Roscoe began showing signs of getting worse.  It started with him soiling his crate, a typically rare event.  We thought maybe he'd gotten a bug or eaten something that disagreed with him.  I didn't piece it together until I got home Tuesday night and he was lying on the floor of my bedroom, crying, and he had made a very large mess right in front of my closet.  He couldn't walk at all, and the pain had made him incontinent.

We went to the vet.  I was terrified that I was going to be told there was nothing they could do for him, and girded my loings for the worst.  I was so relieved when the vet assured me that we could definitely get him feeling better.  She increased his dose for the pain reliever, added an opiate, and told me that if the additional pain relief didn't help with the incontinence issues she could prescribe a hormone therapy.

As soon as we got home I gave him both of his meds and within a half an hour he was playing with T-Bone like nothing had ever been wrong the day before. 

I don't think I'll ever be ready to say goodbye to Roscoe.  When Hercules passed, there was no decision to be made -- his heart was seriously enlarged, he couldn't breathe, and the many medications they gave him to try and help weren't doing anything.  He was so afraid and so sick, letting him go was the kindest thing I could do.  But with Roscoe's condition, his health comes and goes.  When he's in pain he is obviously miserable, but he can seem almost miraculously better in a matter of hours if he gets meds or a massage or just rests long enough.  If you'd asked me about his long term prognosis on Tuesday night I would have replied that he was near the end of his capacity to cope. That night I spent much of the evening curled up with him on the floor, crying and whispering stories in his ear.   Wednesday morning, after he'd spent the night on my bed snoring gently into my ear, he was walking on all four legs.  He was limping, of course, but nowhere near the crippled puppy he'd been the night before.

We've been through so much together, Roscoe and this family.  I fell in love with him through a picture in an email. He moved from North Carolina to New Jersey and then he moved all the way from New Jersey to Washington State with us, and of the three dogs that made that move, he is the only one still alive.  He survived being shot.  He has gently welcomed every new member into our household.  He's seen me through divorce, through dating, through remarriage and through the lonely times when SG is on the road.  He and I have a lot of history between us.  With a good vet, the right medications and a lot of love, I hope we have a lot more.

Spilt milk

The laptop I bought on closeout for the kids resides on my breakfast bar. 

When its not being used to play Minecraft or  watching Justin Bieber and (shudder) Ke$ha music videos,  it becomes a resting place for one cute gray polydactyl kitten. Did you meet Hemingway yet?  No?  Here.  Readers, meet Hemingway. 

Hemingway showed up in our garage about two months ago during a several week cold snap when the outside temperatures were hitting single digits.  I opened the garage door to grab something out of the box freezer early one morning and a small furry gray shape went darting away from me and under the car.  It was small enough to be either a very small cat or a very large rat, and it was dark enough for me not to be able to discern which. (Yes.  I screamed.  No.  I am not ashamed.) 

I woke up SG who came out to help locate and identify our newest houseguest.  It took a little while but eventually we heard a very very tiny "meow" from behind the luggage.  Hard as we tried we could not catch him and couldn't get him to come to us, so we started leaving the garage door slightly open and putting out food and water for him.  We worried about his survival because he was so small, but every day the food we put out was being eaten, so we knew he was alive.  I finally got someone to loan me a live trap and we put the food dish inside it.

Three nights later we managed to catch Coco, who was extremely unhappy with us over it.  I reloaded the trap and forgot about it for a couple of days until SG went to get something out of the garage one morning and came back in the house with the trap full of a frantically meowing kitten. 

Now I've dealt with feral cats before and they are notoriously opposed to being handled, so I fully expected to open that trap and have a spitting, hissing, clawing, ANGRY kitten come barrelling out of it.  Instead, a little gray and white furball ran right into my arms, purring and rubbing against me as if he'd been waiting for me his whole life.  I suspect he was very cold and very lonely and happy to have someone warm to cuddle with.  He crawled up my shirt and it was then we saw his six-toed front paws and both SG and I knew he would stay with us.  The name choice was obvious -- Ernest Hemingway is one of history's more famous Polydactyl cat fanciers, having been given one by a ship's captain.  Polydactylism is a dominant trait, so that first cat became the founder of a large polydactyl cat colony.  Hemingway's estate in Key West is currently home to around fifty descendents of that first cat.  Polydactyls are thus commonly referred to as "Hemingway Cats."

(Hemi is the second polydactyl kitty to enter my life, and rather coincidentally, the first extra-toed kitty I had was also a gray and white boy I named "Crash Davis" after Kevin Costner's character in Bull Durham.)

Hemingway's origins are somewhat of a mystery to us.  We are not aware of any feral cat litters in the neighborhood and none of the neighbors reported a missing kitten.  He couldn't have been more than seven or eight weeks old based on his size, and his friendly nature isn't indicative of a feral litter.  Regardless, he's part of the family now.

Yesterday I had to stay home from work to get an emergency crown on one of my back molars.  Turns out 20-year old fillings have a habit of undermining the structure of your teeth, as I unhappily discovered at dinner on Saturday. 

Hemingway was snoozing on the lid of the laptop on the counter as he is wont to do nearly every day when the kids aren't using it.  If they leave the lid open he will walk and nap on the keyboard, which has mixed results -- either the laptop freezes up, which sends the kids into a frenzy when they try to use it later, or it sends out undecipherable emails to equally undecipherable addresses and opens odd websites. 

I managed to snag an appointment to get my tooth fixed, but when I went to leave the house I could not find my keys.  I spent a good ten minutes tearing the house apart looking for them.  As I was frantically searching the kitchen counters. I lifted up a sheaf of papers on the breakfast bar, startling Hemingway out of a sound sleep. He levitated straight up, then landed with scrabbling feet on the counter, knocking over a glass of milk that Race Car Man had left unfinished.  Now I not only couldn't find my keys, but a pool of milk was widening under the mouse, the laptop, my envelope with all of our tax paperwork and my Blackberry.  Heavens to Betsy! 

I clutched my Blackberry to my heaving chest, scooped up the laptop, gave it a cursory wipe, then threw a wad of paper towels down on the rest of the puddle and continued on my search for car keys.  I finally did find them on the workbench in the garage right next to the driver's side door of the car; I must have left them there when I got home from dropping the kids off at their bus stop.  I have no idea why I would have done that, except that I have been completely discombobulated ever since my tooth fell apart.  I was already late for the dentist.  After four hours in the chair getting my new crown installed, I completely forgot about the milk mess.

Last night when Race Car Man went to play on the laptop he gave me a round tonguelashing over the sticky mouse and milk-speckled lid which I had failed to finish cleaning.  Sensory issues and sticky things are an endlessly bad matchup and typically grounds for screaming exceeding the sound barrier, so I count myself lucky he was only Complaining Loudly. 

I wanted to tell him, "There's no use complaining over spilled milk," but I don't think he would have appreciated it.  At least the laptop still worked.

Hello new header

I just adore this photo I took of Bugs and Penny the other day.  I had just put hay out for them and Penny decided she would eat with Bugs.  Bugs didn't really want to share, but he's become far more tolerant of her since the other horses moved out.  I stylized it a bit through the photo editor, and every time I looked at it I liked it even more.   I'd been thinking about revamping my header anyway, and with this image it seemed the right time to make a change.    Besides, I'm growing my hair out.  New look for me, new look for the blog. 

Finding a catchall phrase to include in the header was kind of tough.  Its difficult for me to categorize this blog.  The subjects that present themselves to my forebrain as writing topics are so disparate as to make pinpointing my "niche" nearly impossible.  I will never be a brand.  Its a good thing I don't blog for a living, we'd be living in a cardboard box under the overpass.   There are times recently that I've seriously considered quitting this venue and finding different outlets for my words, but like a lot of things I like to do, if I push them back into the realm of ideas rather than actions, I'm afraid they'll disappear.  This place forces me to find reasons to write, to find subjects to write about, to explore my life and my relationship with my life and the people in it.  In doing so I find patterns and solutions.  Besides, spring isn't the right time to lay this to rest.

Life seems more hopeful at certain times of the year, and this is one of them.  As the daylight extends its dominant hours and the winds begin to blow more warm than cold I find my mood and outlook improve greatly.  Everything is possible, and things that once seemed mired in quicksand seem to present solutions.  I have more energy.   In spring I fall back in love with everything.  Including blogging, apparently.

Its really just narcissistic navel-gazing, this thing.  Oh, its also the chance to complain or gloat in public, the opportunity to vent to a wider audience about your currently malfunctioning appliances in hopes someone will toss you a sponsorship, a platform to maybe get a post that trends and gets picked up by an outlet with a broader platform and increase your internet fame.  Its also exhausting sometimes to decide what you can and can't write about or to pick up the relationship pieces after you've said something publicly that can't now be taken back.  You can pick every word carefully but just like in real life --eventually you'll say something you regret.  With any luck, more often than not, you write things you can be proud of, things you hope people will read and think about, things that do more good than harm.

Its not like a fancy header will do anything to improve the quality of the writing, but hopefully it enhances the viewing experience.

Happy almost spring!

 

Not doing what I can't

I think I'm starting to get better at this grownup thing.  Perhaps, just maybe.

Race Car Man started a few weeks ago with a new therapist, this time one at a place whose clientele are people with autism (as opposed to a therapist who deals with autism among other things, which for us did not work so well).  I think its helping.  He's had more good days at school, he's starting to get homework again.  My ex had a schedule change at work that allows him to go to our son's classroom two days a week for a couple of hours which is fantastico.  If I could only find a way to make life outside of Minecraft even remotely palatable for this child all would be straight up and down.  You can't have it all. 

Amazon Girl also started with a therapist last week, as the doors of pubescent hormonal hell have apparently opened wide and beckoned her therein.  She's struggling emotionally and needs some support from an adult she can talk to about life, about her parents, about her brother -  which means a third party is required.  Fortunately the last therapist she saw, the one I really really liked, is still practicing and takes our insurance. 

Then on Wednesday nights I still have obedience school with TBone.  And Sundays there's church and then Amazon Girl has her riding lesson, and most Saturdays from here until the sun goes away in the late fall again, I have something to scheduled to do with my horses.  SG has guitar lessons every Tuesday and just got started with some group political thingamajig.  And so on.

Sometimes in between all of that we sit down for a few minutes and breathe and maybe fold a load of laundry.

Last week Race Car Man's therapist asked if we wanted to start him in her next social skills class.  "Sure, when does it start?" 

Next Tuesday. (Two days ago)

Its a class he needs, BUT - it starts at 3:45, just 5 minutes after he gets out of school, AND its a half hour ride away from his school.  And I work full time.  And my husband works full time.  And if I had some time to sit down and sketch out a plan it we can do it but Next Tuesday just does not work for me right now and I for ONCE in my goddamned adult life opened my mouth and said the magic words:

"I'm sorry but that doesn't work for our schedule right now."

I didn't even feel guilty about saying it.  I felt relieved.  I am doing all that I can do for my family and myself right now and I am not going to try and cram one more thing down our collective throats, not at this moment. 

There have been a lot of times in the last several years where I've felt almost all of my waking time was consumed with trying to frantically get everything done that I am supposed to do and failing miserably at it.  Its a horrible pattern - try to do more than you're capable of, fail, drop two or three of the balls you're juggling and then spend a month trying to dig out of the hole you've just created for yourself.  

Perfectionism just isn't going to happen for me right now.

There will be a point where our schedule will open enough to make the social skills class do-able for us.  It will happen.  Just not two days ago.  

Slow down. The tempo isn't as fast as you think it is.

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