Happy Birthday, Mom! ...and a Weekly Check-In

I love you!! Hope you celebrate with wine and something non-compliant and delicious!

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I think we're caught up after going out on the town Sunday night. ;) We saw The Church again. We met the band!! It was pretty awesome, walking into that room behind the stage to the VIP Meet and Greet, seeing them all sitting in there, waiting for us. Surreal. There were only about a dozen of us with passes. We got to know some other super-fans and even exchanged phone numbers (weird)! The whole thing was amazing... but it made us TIRED. Guess what? 43 and 48 are not so young anymore, haha! Sunday night didn't end until 2:00 am. Yes, we went to work the next day. Yes, at the normal time in the early morning. It's just what you have to do, you know? Or, it's what you have to do when you don't have an "unlimited" vacation-days policy, a la all the new Millennial-run companies. (SO UNFAIR.) We put ourselves to bed at 9:30 Monday night.

Anyway, we've been sleeping HARD since then and feeling pretty much back to normal, although I have been taking it suuuuuper easy on the dinner menu for the week. I feel kinda ashamed.

M - hot dogs with chili, and frozen tots. 3 hours sleep, don't bother me.

T - chili with rice, and rotel cheese dip with chips. so I cooked, and actually there were tomatoes in both the chili and the rotel, so there's vegetables. maybe I don't feel so bad after all.

W - tonight is Shawn's night to cook and I planned frozen Fish Sticks/Fish Tacos. I made some jalepeno tartar sauce this morning. What to go with it....? probably Kraft mac and cheese and maybe a little salad (you up for that, dear husband?)

TH - yeah, that's going to be a fast food night in between piano and choir.

F - I have some chicken breasts, and maybe I can pull something amazing out of my hat. Funnily, Friday has become a big cooking night this semester, since Thursdays are nuts and I can relax the schedule on Fridays. I kinda like the challenge of seeing what I have in the pantry. (Reminds me: I need to restock pantry staples garlic salt and PB/grape jelly. Not for dinner, just for stocking.)  

S - dropping Alex off at a co-ed party (still surprising: he's 13!) and going out to dinner without him. The mom who's hosting his party said adults can stay if they like, she'd have drinks and snacks for parents. But I asked Alex what he wanted me to do, and he said, "Hmmm. You can drop me off." Knowing that the host-mom is one of my best friends! Ha! Thanks a lot, kid! But I'll skip it for his sake.

Next week, I promise to cook some balanced meals. Hidden spinach, coming to a casserole near you.

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I've been reading non-fiction lately. Two memoirs. The first was The Glass Castle, which Mom pointed out in Barnes & Noble a few weeks ago, and reminded me there's a movie coming out. I really didn't know a thing about it, but wow, was it interesting. About a family with what I would call negligent, irresponsible parents, and how their kids survived their very odd, unmoored, poverty-stricken upbringing. It was an eye-opener, and I want Alex and Kate both to read it. I think it will make them much more appreciative of their nothing-short-of-amazing lifestyle. (In comparison, I mean.)

And next, I downloaded Wild from the e-library, by Cheryl Strayed. I love it. About her hike on the Pacific Coast Trail. Strangely, I've read a lot of hiking memoirs. Well, this is the third but it feels like a lot. Into Thin Air was the first, by Jon Krakauer, and then A Walk in the Woods by Bill Bryson. Loved them both. This one's the first I've read by a woman, and it's awesome as well. I do not understand why someone would do a months-long hike like that by him or herself. Ever. I cannot fathom. I've almost finished it, and now I want to re-read the other two. 

Reading, I think, is my preferred way to party on a Sunday night (even though our last Sunday really WAS epic, thank you, honey, for the tickets and for sharing your favorite music with me all these years). 

Doughnuts

There's no great way to get doughnuts before school. One of the privileges of being in 7th and 8th grade at our school is that, on Wednesday mornings after Mass, you get doughnuts. A different family is volun-told to bring them each week (ahead of time, thankfully). So tomorrow's our day.

• Option #1: I could get them tonight, but by 9:30 tomorrow morning they'll be dry and stuck to the bottom of the box.
• Option #2: I could offer to drive carpool tomorrow morning (Shawn usually does it, not me), and stop "on the way," in quote because there's no doughnut shop actually ON the way. The whole thing would probably ensure that we were one of the last cars in the carpool line and stress the kids out. I would also get to work late but I hardly care about that. 
• Option #3: I could ask Shawn to stop tomorrow morning on his way (also not really "ON" the way), which would stress him out more than it would me, and make him late to work. 

My gut says to go with Option #1, because 13-year-olds will likely eat doughnuts whether they're dry or sticky or not.

Service Hours

In middle school, our kids are required to turn in 3 hours of "service" each quarter. I use quotes because it's a little loose, what they define as service. For instance, you can run a 5K that's "for a cause," and that counts. If you are a member of the Safety Patrol one morning a week, that counts. And while I understand that those two services do some good for some people, I think they're pretty weak if you're actually trying to nurture a servant's heart in a kid.

Maybe I look down my nose at those options because when I was in high school, we had to do service, and Marybeth and I had a weekly appointment at a nursing home, where we helped with bingo, played the piano and sang hymns we didn't know, or just talked to the residents, and it was always awkward and a little uncomfortable. I think we did it for a semester. Come to think of it, I also did nursing home service when I was a pre-teen, at the request of my friend Nikki (or maybe her parents). One of the nursing home residents I met would sometimes call me up at home, to chat. Uncomfortable. I was 11, and she only barely knew me. She could kind-of ramble and I remember trying diligently to end the calls. I guess she needed someone, and now looking back, I hope I was at least a little bit of a comfort to her.

Anyway, since it's Alex's last year in Catholic school and he'll have to do even MORE service during his Confirmation year coming up, I have been thinking we need to progress beyond Safety Patrol. (I should say that he's also helped a couple of Eagle Scouts on their projects, but now he isn't in Scouts any more, so that's out.) There should probably be some kind of sacrificing involved, like a couple of hours on a weekend, don't you think? I'm not making him go to a nursing home, but I did sign us up, him and me, to work at the Parish Picnic this Saturday. They needed a lot of volunteers, so I picked the Putt Putt Challenge. Sounds pretty stress-free and hopefully we'll get the sense that we're serving the community in some way. (He has to turn in a form every quarter that asks, "How do you feel you benefited spiritually from this service?" That's hard to answer for school Safety Patrol, he's told me. Might be hard for putt-putt, too, but we'll see.)

I'd like to do something even more meaningful, like helping at the St. Vincent DePaul society store or a homeless ministry, but it takes a bit more effort to connect with those things. I'm going to try, though.

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Opposite of service: What I really want to do this weekend is N O T H I N G. Not that we've been doing a lot on the weekends, really, but Wednesday and Thursday nights, I've just come home exhausted. I guess having hurricane company drained me. And I think being bored at work doesn't help. Seriously, yesterday I had so few tasks and deadlines, I felt it physically (and mentally) by the end of the day. Restless, but seated at a desk. Anxious, but also unmotivated. You know when you lay around and do nothing all day but you feel extra tried by the end? It was like that. Awful. Today I made sure to have a couple of work tasks ready and waiting.

And then, I will look forward to:

• Cleaning my kitchen. Totally needs it after two weekends of company in a row.
• Going to the grocery store on a Friday night. No one will be there and it will be blissful!
• Switching my purse. Had to buy a new one yesterday at Target -- it had been SO long since I'd spent $100 at Target! (I also got new sponges, with which I'll clean the kitchen!)
• Decorating for fall? It could happen. 
• Having my morning coffee on the back patio, and needing a sweatshirt if it's chilly.
• Finishing my book (The Glass Castle - really good!)

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One other thing. I started daydreaming yesterday that I'd really love to rent a cabin in the mountains some fall weekend. Take an extra day off, even. I don't quite know why, except, well, I DO know that being outdoors makes me happy, and the woods seems to be my "happy place" more than the beach. Also, it's like being at home without having any chores that need doing. I wonder if we can make it happen this fall? Early Nov. or late Oct. maybe? I barely even care about seeing fall color -- I'd just like to have the getaway and the fresh air. Hmm.

Mid-Short-Week Check-In

Our Labor Day Weekend was just lovely. I'm so thankful Mom and Dad came to visit. It meant I didn't need to ask off work, or "work" from home on the kids' extra day off (Teacher In-Service). Although I hated being at the office that day, at least they all met me for lunch. And now I have more PTO days banked, to get me through the holiday season. That's always a good thing.

Anyway, we ate some yummy food (I'd say brunch on Sunday at Reveille was a highlight, as well as jambalaya on Tuesday), (well, and hamburgers on Sunday night in the backyard!), played a lot of cornhole and I have the mosquito bites to prove it, went to the bookstore allllll together once, and truly enjoyed the early mornings and fall temps on my back patio. Yay! So many of my favorite things! We even spent a couple of hours one morning watching 2 deer who were in the backyard woods. RIGHT. THERE. They stayed such a long time, even though we were moving around not-too-quietly. It was kinda magical.

Also, it's wonderful to have guests who don't feel like guests.

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Today is one of those marathon days that start up once school's in session. The kids have piano at 6:15, and I'll need Shawn to meet me there so I can get back to choir practice by 7:15. (I'm not really excited about it, as you know if you have read me for any length of time. I love singing, but I always complain about choir. Just... some of the people require too much effort. Sigh. Very Christian of me. But as long as the kids are in school at St. Joe's, I guess I'll keep up with it so we can get the "participating" Catholic tuition rate. Ha. The minute Kate graduates from 8th grade, I think I'm done.)

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And tomorrow, our annual (?) hurricane evacuees may arrive for an extended stay. We're.... of course happy to give them safe refuge. But kind-of less happy than we should be. They're guests that really feel like guests. Oh well. The kids'll have fun with their cousins.

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Update (Friday morning): Choir practice was really fun last night. Since it was the first one of the season, we started a whole pile of new music, and I realized: I really love sight-reading. Sight-singing. For years, it intimidated me (back in college, particularly). But I've gotten comfortable with it, confident, and I especially love when I get it right. Our director, Alvin, is a joy. He's so funny. I had to give him a hug afterwards, and then he amped it up even further by complimenting me. I left feeling really FILLED with happiness. (One of the big/contrary personalities wasn't there last night, which I know helped keep the atmosphere pleasant.)