It has been a difficult few days. It is not always fun to be the momma. Sometimes you have to be brave enough to speak hard truths even though your children may hate you for it. Hopefully, only temporary hate, though. The hope is that they will see the love behind the words and find they are still able to love their momma despite it all.
I try to keep perspective when I am feeling down and despised by someone I love. I try to remember that there are much worse things than having your child angry at you. I have faced harder things. Like the death of a loved one. I will take my child's fierce anger over that anguish any day.
We have all had good days, even great days. Days filled with laughter and sunlight and joy. They are often unexpected gifts. Just this past week I was doing who knows what upstairs and stopped just to listen to and enjoy the sound of two almost grown girls laughing together in the basement bathroom as they got ready to go out for the evening. It reminded me of so many other laughing, fun moments I have had the privilege to be witness to as my children have grown.
Life is so full of brightness. We sometimes forget that when we are struggling and down. Hard times can leave us feeling that the darkness is all there is and we start to lose hope. We can go for days, weeks, or even months or years struggling with dark and difficult times. When that happens, we begin to wonder why God has forsaken us. Why hasn't he answered our prayers? Why do we suffer in the dark?
And then I thought of something.
I thought of the moments of my life like the pieces of a mosaic. Each day of my life, each moment I live through, is a piece of that mosaic. On the good and beautiful days, I am placing a brightly colored piece in the mosaic. On hard or difficult days, I am placing a dark piece into the mosaic. As I work, I can only see one small piece of the whole artwork. Only one small portion of my life. It is easy to loose perspective when that is the case. I can't tell you how many times I have told my students to step back and look at their work from a distance... to see the whole picture and gain a new perspective.
Such it is with our lives. If we could see our lives through God's eyes... see the whole mosaic with all the light and dark pieces in their proper places... we would see a beautiful soul in the process of evolving into something wondrous and extraordinary. A mosaic of only light pieces would be bland and uninteresting. A mosaic of only dark pieces would be dreary and equally uninteresting. But the patterning of light and dark... that makes the composition stronger. And stunning to behold.
No one wants dark and difficult days. No one wants trials or tribulations. Yet, when looking back on them, we recognize their worth. I am a stronger, more empathetic person for the darkness I have overcome. I can serve and lift others who are struggling in similar ways. I am who I am because of all the experiences I have lived through; not just the happy, easy moments. In fact, it is actually the difficult times that refine character and make us stronger.
Am I asking for more dark pieces in the mosaic of my life? Absolutely not! But I recognize that there is a reason for the struggles, and a purpose and pattern to all we experience in this life.
Remember to step back from time to time and look at the bigger picture.
Seeing it can give you strength.
Trust Issues
Will and I went to Parent/Teacher conferences at the high school this afternoon. Not much to report there. We got in and out and on our way in just a little over an hour. I was starving, so I decided we needed a Wendy's pit stop. On our way there, Will made a comment that was the genesis of this post.
"I don't really like driving." he said.
He went on to explain that he thought driving was a pretty poorly laid out means of transportation, with a high level of risk and too many opportunities for a bad ending. The fact is that two massive metal contraptions pass within feet of one another at high rates of speed, filled with strangers who are trusting one another to not zig when they are supposed to zag.
I completely understand where my son is coming from on this, because I have always felt the same way. I had a really hard time coming to terms with driving when I was a teen. In fact, I didn't get my driver's license until I was 18 years old for that very reason. I really didn't like driving. I wasn't a bad driver (neither is Will), I just didn't like it.
After Will said that this afternoon, I remembered a Top Gear episode Helena was watching the other day. One of the show's hosts, Jeremy Clarkson, had an opportunity to drive a specific car on a specific race track that he had already "driven" in a popular video game. He was trying to see if he could drive it just as fast in real life as he had in the game. He couldn't. His analysis of why he was unable to recreate the same track times caught my attention. He said that while he was racing around the track, his mind would suddenly think, 'what if a tire blew right .... now?' or 'what if I lost traction going around this curve?' Essentially, the whole time he was racing the car in real life, his mind was supplying him with every worst case scenario it could come up with, causing him to drive more conservatively than he had in the video game, where his brain KNEW there were no life-or-death consequences to his actions. His conclusion was that race car drivers must not have much of an imagination, or a means of shutting it off.
That's Will's and my problem. Too much imagination. Both of our brains are supplying us with an instantaneous barrage of worst case scenarios every time another car passes us while driving. It is also why I am such an absolutely ROTTEN passenger. At least when I am driving, I do have control over one aspect of the whole dodgy experience. When a passenger... I have absolutely NO CONTROL of any of the variables! My mind goes into overdrive supplying me with all sorts of not so calming assessments of what might go wrong at any given moment. Sometimes, truthfully, I just have to shut my eyes in order to remain calm while sitting in the passenger seat.
I really don't mind driving so much anymore. I was able to reassure Will that it gets better with time and experience. You learn to deaden your imagination a bit and trust the strangers around you ... sort of.
OK. Maybe not the trusting strangers part. I still expect anyone and everyone around me to pull a stupid stunt with their vehicle...
"I don't really like driving." he said.
He went on to explain that he thought driving was a pretty poorly laid out means of transportation, with a high level of risk and too many opportunities for a bad ending. The fact is that two massive metal contraptions pass within feet of one another at high rates of speed, filled with strangers who are trusting one another to not zig when they are supposed to zag.
I completely understand where my son is coming from on this, because I have always felt the same way. I had a really hard time coming to terms with driving when I was a teen. In fact, I didn't get my driver's license until I was 18 years old for that very reason. I really didn't like driving. I wasn't a bad driver (neither is Will), I just didn't like it.
After Will said that this afternoon, I remembered a Top Gear episode Helena was watching the other day. One of the show's hosts, Jeremy Clarkson, had an opportunity to drive a specific car on a specific race track that he had already "driven" in a popular video game. He was trying to see if he could drive it just as fast in real life as he had in the game. He couldn't. His analysis of why he was unable to recreate the same track times caught my attention. He said that while he was racing around the track, his mind would suddenly think, 'what if a tire blew right .... now?' or 'what if I lost traction going around this curve?' Essentially, the whole time he was racing the car in real life, his mind was supplying him with every worst case scenario it could come up with, causing him to drive more conservatively than he had in the video game, where his brain KNEW there were no life-or-death consequences to his actions. His conclusion was that race car drivers must not have much of an imagination, or a means of shutting it off.
That's Will's and my problem. Too much imagination. Both of our brains are supplying us with an instantaneous barrage of worst case scenarios every time another car passes us while driving. It is also why I am such an absolutely ROTTEN passenger. At least when I am driving, I do have control over one aspect of the whole dodgy experience. When a passenger... I have absolutely NO CONTROL of any of the variables! My mind goes into overdrive supplying me with all sorts of not so calming assessments of what might go wrong at any given moment. Sometimes, truthfully, I just have to shut my eyes in order to remain calm while sitting in the passenger seat.
I really don't mind driving so much anymore. I was able to reassure Will that it gets better with time and experience. You learn to deaden your imagination a bit and trust the strangers around you ... sort of.
OK. Maybe not the trusting strangers part. I still expect anyone and everyone around me to pull a stupid stunt with their vehicle...
Late Teens
And, no, I am not referring to teens that are always late...
... oh, wait a minute. Yes, I am.
The late teen years (16-19) are an incredible adventure...
... for the teen.
For parents, the late teen years can be full of frustrations and expenses. Expenses? We have watched our car insurance double, our food and utility bills go up, and experienced sticker shock at gift giving times. There are school fees and technology needs (no joke). But the expenses are really just part of the experience of raising kids, and are manageable because we know they are temporary. Soon enough the kids will leave home and the expenses will drop substantially.
No, the frustrations are the part I really want to talk about.
Thinking back to when I was 16-19 years old, I still didn't really see my parents as individuals. Not yet. They were still MOM and DAD. MOM and DAD had one function only. To provide for us kids. That meant they were supposed to feed us and clothe us, take us on vacations, pay for our stuff, and nag, pester, and harass us about school/church/chores. In the meantime, it was my job to inform them of how outdated their view points were, how things were different now, and that they should just trust me and let me do whatever I wanted. [Yeah, I never convinced them of any of that, by the way.] By the time I was 19, I was pretty convinced I was all grown up. I was "An Adult", who didn't need my parents telling me when to be home or what to do.
It wasn't until I was truly an adult (meaning I had moved away and was now fully supporting myself financially) that I started seeing my parents as individuals with needs and wants that really had NOTHING to do with their kids whatsoever! Woah! And I didn't empathize with my parents' struggles with teen aged kids until I had teens of my own. So, I don't expect my kids to understand or empathize with me anytime soon.
Still, it would be nice.
Where is all of this rambling-ness going, you ask?
I just really, really want my daughter to be courteous and come home at a reasonable hour on weeknights. Not stay out til midnight or later because she doesn't work until evening shift and can sleep in the next day. Great for her, crappy for me. I do have to go to work in the morning and would like to have a good night's sleep.
Just give her a curfew, you say? Yeah. Nineteen is a difficult age for that. She feels she has a right to stay out as late as she wants. And really, if she was living in an apartment with roommates, she could. But she is not living in an apartment. She is living at home.
She has told me to just go to bed and not wait up for her. My response to that is simply that just because she is being selfish doesn't mean I am going to be selfish. You see, I wait up because I love her. I wait up to make sure I don't sleep right through a call for help. I wait up to remind her that she is not an island. Her actions do affect those around her who care about her.
It is true that apartment living with roommates is much more "freeing". But roommates don't wait up for you... because they don't love you. It doesn't matter to them one way or the other if you make it back home again in one piece. That sounds callous. Of course, they'll care. After the fact. After something disastrous happens. But they won't stay up waiting for a phone call that tells them you need help. Someday, she'll have a spouse who will wait up for her, because he will love her and not want to go to bed until he knows she is home safe.
I know she'll move out sometime soon, if only to feel that freedom of having no one care enough to wait up for her. It feels so liberating, at first. But, really, it can be incredibly lonely. I remember living in an apartment with 5 other girls and feeling severely depressed and homesick because no one truly loved me in that apartment. I didn't realize that was the reason for the homesickness, at the time. I just knew I was miserable and lonely in a house full of other people.
Until the day she moves out, it is my job to love her enough to want to wait up to see her safely home. And care enough about her to hear about her adventures.
I just wish she could see me more as an individual who needs a good night sleep before I go to work and less like MOM who has outdated points of view. I know she loves MOM. I just wish that she loved Kate enough to come home early on weeknights.
Running
I ran 6.6 miles, today. That is 10% more distance that last Saturday.
Yup. Marathon training has begun.
For the past several months, I have been doing what I guess could be called "maintenance" exercising. Just trying to maintain a base level of fitness. I have tried to exercise 4 or 5 days a week, mixing it up with running, cycling class, swimming, and some weights. I have done this because I knew I'd be facing a tough marathon training regime starting in mid February.
And, here we are.
To train for a marathon, I have to build up the endurance to be able to keep my body moving for miles upon miles. It is not something than can be done cold turkey. Not without damaging your body. The pounding of 26.2 miles can only be endured with a body that has been slowly toughened up for it. At least, I hope it can be endured! I have to tell you, this race scares me more than anything I have yet done. Not even the half ironman scared me the way this running distance does.
So, every Saturday workout now becomes my "long run". I have deleted the pool from my Saturday lineup (I'm sad about that) so that I can focus exclusively on piling the miles on. Every Saturday will be a 10% increase from the previous week. That is just a small enough increase each week to prevent injury (I hope). Meanwhile, my weekday workouts will slowly build, too.
Actually, most of my weekday workouts will remain exactly the same. But within a few weeks, my Wednesday run will start to build mileage, too. It will stay at approximately 1/2 the distance of the Saturday long run. So, when Saturday's run hits 10 miles, Wednesday's run will be 5 miles. The rest of my week will stay the same. Mondays are 30 minutes of sprints and 1 hour of pool. Tuesdays are 1 hour cycle class and 30 min. arm weights. Wednesday was 1 hour cycle class and 30 minute run, but that will change, now. And Thursday is 60 minute intervals run. Friday and Sunday are my rest days.
I can only hope that the weather decides to cooperate and bring an early spring so I'm not stuck running 10+ miles around and around the indoor track in a mind-numbingly endless loop.
Here's a cute track story for you...
This morning as I was running my miles on the track, there was a family also exercising on the track. Their little boy looked to be about 4 years old. I was the only endurance runner on the track, and he noticed me running past. At one point, he was sitting with his big sister on the bench when he saw me approach. He quickly jumped up and started racing me! I matched his pace and he made it nearly one full lap of the track before he had to fall out of the race. I gave him a big cheeky grin and a high five for racing me. That did it! He sat in wait for me and "raced" me at least 5 more times, each time getting a high five. His momma and his grandmama both got a big kick out of it. So did I!
Yup. Marathon training has begun.
For the past several months, I have been doing what I guess could be called "maintenance" exercising. Just trying to maintain a base level of fitness. I have tried to exercise 4 or 5 days a week, mixing it up with running, cycling class, swimming, and some weights. I have done this because I knew I'd be facing a tough marathon training regime starting in mid February.
And, here we are.
To train for a marathon, I have to build up the endurance to be able to keep my body moving for miles upon miles. It is not something than can be done cold turkey. Not without damaging your body. The pounding of 26.2 miles can only be endured with a body that has been slowly toughened up for it. At least, I hope it can be endured! I have to tell you, this race scares me more than anything I have yet done. Not even the half ironman scared me the way this running distance does.
So, every Saturday workout now becomes my "long run". I have deleted the pool from my Saturday lineup (I'm sad about that) so that I can focus exclusively on piling the miles on. Every Saturday will be a 10% increase from the previous week. That is just a small enough increase each week to prevent injury (I hope). Meanwhile, my weekday workouts will slowly build, too.
Actually, most of my weekday workouts will remain exactly the same. But within a few weeks, my Wednesday run will start to build mileage, too. It will stay at approximately 1/2 the distance of the Saturday long run. So, when Saturday's run hits 10 miles, Wednesday's run will be 5 miles. The rest of my week will stay the same. Mondays are 30 minutes of sprints and 1 hour of pool. Tuesdays are 1 hour cycle class and 30 min. arm weights. Wednesday was 1 hour cycle class and 30 minute run, but that will change, now. And Thursday is 60 minute intervals run. Friday and Sunday are my rest days.
I can only hope that the weather decides to cooperate and bring an early spring so I'm not stuck running 10+ miles around and around the indoor track in a mind-numbingly endless loop.
Here's a cute track story for you...
This morning as I was running my miles on the track, there was a family also exercising on the track. Their little boy looked to be about 4 years old. I was the only endurance runner on the track, and he noticed me running past. At one point, he was sitting with his big sister on the bench when he saw me approach. He quickly jumped up and started racing me! I matched his pace and he made it nearly one full lap of the track before he had to fall out of the race. I gave him a big cheeky grin and a high five for racing me. That did it! He sat in wait for me and "raced" me at least 5 more times, each time getting a high five. His momma and his grandmama both got a big kick out of it. So did I!
Senior Registration - Part 2
Wednesday's registration went off without a single hiccup! HOORAY!
I admit, I borrow trouble on a regular basis. On Wednesday afternoon, I hurriedly shut down my classroom early in order to make sure I made it home in plenty of time to sign into class registration at exactly 3:00. I worried that I'd be stuck in traffic, or that I'd get pulled over and ticketed (so I did NOT speed), or that some less than brilliant individual would unexpectedly pull their minivan in front of me, causing a crash (like that would ever happen...)
Thankfully, none of the above occurred and I arrived at home with almost 30 minutes to spare.
Why exactly 3:00, you ask? Because that was the moment the registration portal opened... and classes fill up on a first come, first served basis. If you aren't quick enough, the carefully designed schedule you and your child spent several days constructing could go up in smoke. That happened to us one year. I had troubles with signing in that put me 5 minutes behind the curve. Only 5 minutes. We were left scrambling to try and construct an acceptable schedule on the fly as classes literally got pulled out from under us right and left. What a nightmare!
But not this time! I was in and out and on my way in five minutes! Of course, I only had to build half of a schedule. Here it is...
A DAYS
A1 Seminary
A2 AP Calculus AB
B DAYS
B1 English 12
B2 Government/Citizenship (Sem 1) - Weight Training (Sem 2)
That's it! Will has all his science requirements done. In fact, he has all his math requirements done, too. That calculus class is being taken as an elective.
I'm glad I was able to get in successfully, because 4 of the 5 classes I signed him up for were full only moments after I was done. Weight training was the only one not filled. That class will be mixed with younger kids.
Will is going to be done at the high school at 10:30 every morning. That will give him time to come home and eat an early lunch before heading off to his afternoon class at Mountainland Applied Technology College. I have not yet signed him up for that class, because I have to wait for the admissions to come available. That won't be until sometime this summer. But I have spoken to the secretary, gotten his demographics entered in their online system, and am setting up an appointment with the counselor there. He will be in class at the college from 11:30 until 2:30 every day, learning all sorts of computery stuff.
I think he will be very happy. All that time just focusing on computers. Also, high school has not been a great time for him. His "friends" have turned out to not be very great friends, after all, so I'm hoping he'll meet some new people over at the IT class. It should be full of high school seniors from schools all over the valley who are all into computer stuff.
In the meantime, Will is still planning on joining the National Guard on his 17th birthday and spending this coming summer at basic training! More on this later...
I admit, I borrow trouble on a regular basis. On Wednesday afternoon, I hurriedly shut down my classroom early in order to make sure I made it home in plenty of time to sign into class registration at exactly 3:00. I worried that I'd be stuck in traffic, or that I'd get pulled over and ticketed (so I did NOT speed), or that some less than brilliant individual would unexpectedly pull their minivan in front of me, causing a crash (like that would ever happen...)
Thankfully, none of the above occurred and I arrived at home with almost 30 minutes to spare.
Why exactly 3:00, you ask? Because that was the moment the registration portal opened... and classes fill up on a first come, first served basis. If you aren't quick enough, the carefully designed schedule you and your child spent several days constructing could go up in smoke. That happened to us one year. I had troubles with signing in that put me 5 minutes behind the curve. Only 5 minutes. We were left scrambling to try and construct an acceptable schedule on the fly as classes literally got pulled out from under us right and left. What a nightmare!
But not this time! I was in and out and on my way in five minutes! Of course, I only had to build half of a schedule. Here it is...
A DAYS
A1 Seminary
A2 AP Calculus AB
B DAYS
B1 English 12
B2 Government/Citizenship (Sem 1) - Weight Training (Sem 2)
That's it! Will has all his science requirements done. In fact, he has all his math requirements done, too. That calculus class is being taken as an elective.
I'm glad I was able to get in successfully, because 4 of the 5 classes I signed him up for were full only moments after I was done. Weight training was the only one not filled. That class will be mixed with younger kids.
Will is going to be done at the high school at 10:30 every morning. That will give him time to come home and eat an early lunch before heading off to his afternoon class at Mountainland Applied Technology College. I have not yet signed him up for that class, because I have to wait for the admissions to come available. That won't be until sometime this summer. But I have spoken to the secretary, gotten his demographics entered in their online system, and am setting up an appointment with the counselor there. He will be in class at the college from 11:30 until 2:30 every day, learning all sorts of computery stuff.
I think he will be very happy. All that time just focusing on computers. Also, high school has not been a great time for him. His "friends" have turned out to not be very great friends, after all, so I'm hoping he'll meet some new people over at the IT class. It should be full of high school seniors from schools all over the valley who are all into computer stuff.
In the meantime, Will is still planning on joining the National Guard on his 17th birthday and spending this coming summer at basic training! More on this later...
Senior Registration - Part 1
I can't believe it is here already! It is registration time for Will's Senior year in high school.
My baby.
Ugh. I know he'll hate me saying that. After all, he's a lean 6'1"teenager, now. He has big hands and big feet, and he has to practically fold himself in half just to hug me these days.
There is so much potential hanging around him that it is practically a vibrating force. I can feel it. He is thinking about and planning for the future. More on that in another post sometime later, though...
Will has almost all his graduation requirements filled. He still needs a senior English class, and the Government/Citizenship class that all seniors are required to take. Other than that, he needs 5 elective credits. So, just 6.5 credits stand between him and graduation. And a schedule that has slots for 8 potential credits.
Here's the plan as it stands today...
He'll take Senior English and AP Calculus AB (first semester college calculus). Both are full year classes. He'll take Gov/Cit first semester, and weight training second semester. And he'll take release time for seminary, which won't earn any credits, of course. That will all be scheduled in his mornings. The mornings net 3 credits for him.
In the afternoons, he'll leave the high school campus and travel over to the MATC (Mountainland Applied Technology College) campus at Thanksgiving Point for their Information Technology certification course all year. In this course, he'll get a chance to certify in A+, Network+, Linux+, Security+, and a bunch of other stuff that means absolutely nothing to me and just looks like a bunch of letters strung together.
The Tech college and the high school have an agreement. He can take the tech college class and receive high school credits! Four of them, in fact. And, the courses are tuition free to high school students! This class normally has a $2,000 tuition fee, so it is really great that he can take it free while still in high school! There is a lab fee of a couple hundred dollars, but I'll gladly pay that to give him a head start in a field he is interested in.
If we manage to build the schedule we have planned, it will give him 7 credits to finish high school.
High school registration was supposed to happen at 3:00 this afternoon, but the district is experiencing some network hardware malfunctions, so registration has been postponed to Wednesday.
So, Part 2 of this post will come later this week when we have successfully managed to get Will signed up for the classes he wants.
Stay tuned!
My baby.
Ugh. I know he'll hate me saying that. After all, he's a lean 6'1"teenager, now. He has big hands and big feet, and he has to practically fold himself in half just to hug me these days.
There is so much potential hanging around him that it is practically a vibrating force. I can feel it. He is thinking about and planning for the future. More on that in another post sometime later, though...
Will has almost all his graduation requirements filled. He still needs a senior English class, and the Government/Citizenship class that all seniors are required to take. Other than that, he needs 5 elective credits. So, just 6.5 credits stand between him and graduation. And a schedule that has slots for 8 potential credits.
Here's the plan as it stands today...
He'll take Senior English and AP Calculus AB (first semester college calculus). Both are full year classes. He'll take Gov/Cit first semester, and weight training second semester. And he'll take release time for seminary, which won't earn any credits, of course. That will all be scheduled in his mornings. The mornings net 3 credits for him.
In the afternoons, he'll leave the high school campus and travel over to the MATC (Mountainland Applied Technology College) campus at Thanksgiving Point for their Information Technology certification course all year. In this course, he'll get a chance to certify in A+, Network+, Linux+, Security+, and a bunch of other stuff that means absolutely nothing to me and just looks like a bunch of letters strung together.
The Tech college and the high school have an agreement. He can take the tech college class and receive high school credits! Four of them, in fact. And, the courses are tuition free to high school students! This class normally has a $2,000 tuition fee, so it is really great that he can take it free while still in high school! There is a lab fee of a couple hundred dollars, but I'll gladly pay that to give him a head start in a field he is interested in.
If we manage to build the schedule we have planned, it will give him 7 credits to finish high school.
High school registration was supposed to happen at 3:00 this afternoon, but the district is experiencing some network hardware malfunctions, so registration has been postponed to Wednesday.
So, Part 2 of this post will come later this week when we have successfully managed to get Will signed up for the classes he wants.
Stay tuned!
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