Chatting

My social calendar is more full than it has ever been.  I meet people for lunch.  Rich and I get together with other couples for dinner.  I have a Wednesday night dinner group made up of other ladies married to company executives. 

(That sentence is funny to me.  It brings to mind a group of women in dresses and heels, sipping martinis and talking about JFK.  Or, as my children like to tease, it sounds like The Real Housewives of Thief River Falls.  Neither is true.  The dress code is very casual; most of us have jobs and the main topics of conversation revolve around the ups and downs of relocating our families.)

Of course we also have church and have made connections there.  I have even signed on to be a mentor mom for a new MOPS group that is starting here.  For those of you who don’t know, a mentor mom is someone who has survived the raising of preschoolers and is therefore considered qualified to advise other moms going through it.

Which is a long winded way of saying:  I am old.

All of these activities involve meeting new people.  Which, along with substitute teaching, means I am having to learn new names and faces at a rate which is taxing my brain and social skills.  Then, of course, I have to learn the stories that go with the names and faces.  For an introvert who generally tries to avoid meeting people, this is kind of a lot.  I spend most of my days feeling like I walked in on a movie that started before I got here.

“Wait - now who is that again?  And she’s married to the guy with the beard, right?  Oh! The guy in HR? Really? I thought he was with Sue.  Sue - the one with the three boys in college.  Her name isn’t Sue? What is it? … “

And so it goes.  I’m slowly getting up to speed with a handful of people I see regularly, but am still at surface level conversation most of the time.  I appreciate everyone’s willingness to talk to me at all.  They all have lives and families and circles of friends that existed before I got here.  I’m sure they don’t need to add in another person.  Goodness knows when I lived in Lincoln, I wasn’t seeking to add anyone else to my life.  So I appreciate everyone’s patience with my fumbling attempts at conversation.

Do you think it would be too much to ask for the entire town to wear nametags and carry short bios?

Homesick

Technically I am in my home.  The mortgage to this house has my name on it.  It’s filled with my stuff.  My husband, two of my kids and all of my pets live here with me.

But it really, really doesn’t feel like home.

I miss Lincoln.  I miss my friends and my house and the city itself.  Real restaurants and stores and just the familiarity of recognizing everything as I drive along.  I miss having memories attached to my surroundings.  This new town is nice and the people have been friendly but it’s all strange and uncomfortable.  

I just want to go home.

I want to go back to my house in the north end of town. It wasn’t a perfect house, but at least I knew it’s faults and peculiarities and how to deal with them. I want to walk the familiar route through my neighborhood where I know the people in the houses I pass and their stories.  

I want to shop in the grocery store where I know where everything is.  I want to see the faces of friends and neighbors in the aisles and I want Jerry - who has bagged my groceries for over 10 years - to smile and tell my I’m looking good today.

I want Reagan to be able to stop by and do a load of laundry and eat my food while we watch Say Yes To The Dress.

I want Faith to be her happy, sociable self again.  Not this sad child who misses her friends and her school and her dance studio and clings to my side like she hasn’t since she was very small.

When Hayden leaves for college in a few weeks, I want it to be a few miles down the road - not 9 hours away in a different state.

It’s good to go through hard things - it’s where we learn and grow the most.  But it also kinda sucks and today I’d rather not.  Probably I shouldn’t even publish this particular post because it’s pretty pathetic, but this is where I’ve chosen to record our history and so I will so that when I look back at this time I’ll be able to (hopefully) see how far I’ve come.

Profit From Pain

I was thinking about pain this weekend.  There are all kinds of pain: physical pain, emotional pain, mental pain, people who are a pain in the rear …

You get the idea.

I make it a point to avoid pain.  Because it hurts, and I am notoriously wimpy.  I do not like to hurt.  Not one bit.  But then I thought of all the times I have experienced pain, and each and every time I have learned a lesson.

Some of the lessons were simple.  Things like:

• Wear sunscreen.
• Do not do an hour of Pilates if you are 44 and have not exercised in six months.
• Stop eating the cake when you are full.
• If you are a freshman in high school, it’s not such a good idea to tell the girl who is part of a gang to “Sit and Spin”.

Actually the cake one is a lesson of which I am aware, but apparently have not really learned yet because I continue to eat the cake after I am full.  

Other lessons have been more complex and layered.  Examples include:

• Spend time with those you love while you can.
• Know when the relationship is more important than the argument and treat it as such.
• You don’t have to say everything you’re thinking.
• Look for the best in others and the worst won’t bug you as much.
• I am responsible for my own thoughts, feelings, actions and beliefs.
• I am NOT responsible for yours.

These are all important life lessons which have come from pain and I am grateful to know them.  Which, in turn, should make me grateful for pain.

Being grateful for pain.

I don’t think I am quite there yet.

I do think I face pain better than I used to though.  I am more willing to walk through a storm if I have to, because I know there will be a reward on the other end.

Which still doesn’t mean I like it.  

Do you think that maybe one of these days I’ll actually become a person who learns things the easy way? Like by reading a book or something?

It seems unlikely.

Until I do, I guess I am glad that pain at least comes with a purpose.

My New Job And An Old Movie

Today was my first day at my new job and I am highly encouraged.  I met a lot of people.  I think some of them were named Linda and I believe there was a Mark or two.  And a Daisy.  There was definitely a Daisy.  Just don’t ask me to match any of those names to faces.  

Of course it’s miles less entertaining than the office of a middle school but everyone was friendly and I figured out a few things on my own which is encouraging.

Also?

I have a thermostat all to myself.  After sharing a thermostat in an office full of women who were never all at the same temp at the same time, my own thermostat feels like a luxury.

It’s the little things people.

On to more important subjects…

This weekend I used guilt to coerce invited my daughters to watch Steel Magnolias with me. I looked at it as an educational experience.  The movie covers cinematic history, Southern culture, feminism and 80’s fashion.  All important subjects for the modern young woman to study.

There was also the matter of the fact that I forgot about a locker room scene where several young, male bare butts are on display.

Biology? Check.

I had forgotten just what a good movie Steel Magnolias is.  Those actresses were flawless.  Each scene was better than the last.  And that graveyard scene where Sally Field loses it?

Epic.

This movie was released in 1989 when I was Reagan’s age.  The first time I saw it, I related to Julia Robert’s character and I was definitely touched, but this time?

This time I related to Sally Field and I started sniffling in the first ten minutes.

I just can not imagine that journey as a mother.  Don’t even want to imagine.

I thought it was interesting though how I’ve come full circle on that movie since it was released but the story absolutely still holds up.

And I will never, ever get tired of the magnificent 80’s hair and the “blush and bashful” wedding.

Love.

As for my girls? I think Reagan liked it.  She cried in the right places.  Faith, on the other hand, fell asleep.  It was criminal.  I think that her penance should be watching Terms of Endearment with me next week.

In case you missed it when I posted it on Facebook the other day, here is my menu for the next five weeks, including links to 18 recipes.  Enjoy.

To Do

I have two weeks off until I start my new job.  My preference would be to spend those two weeks eating cookies and watching HGTV.

But then I couldn’t yell at the kids for sitting around all day, eating me out of house and home.

Also?

This new job requires that I work a real schedule as in 8-5 every single day.  As much as I complained about having to be at work at 7:15 the last two years, it was totally worth it to be home by 4:00.  How am I going to cook real dinners? Have time to stop at the grocery store? Get Faith to dance on time?

I know.  Most of the adults in the country work this schedule and manage just fine.  I’ll figure it out.  But until I do, I’m in planning mode.  Before I start working I want to:

1)  Get my yard looking beautiful.  In three weeks I am hosting a rehearsal dinner for 50+ people for my best friend’s oldest son.  (Which seems impossible as he was just born a couple of years ago.  I know because I was there.  He is the only baby other than my own that I watched enter the world so it’s a pretty clear memory and could not possibly have taken place 21.5 years ago.) Right now my yard is completely covered in Cottonwood cotton.

Not much I can do about that but hope it disappears before the party.  Serving a meal with cotton as a condiment isn’t uncommon around here, but not my first choice.

2) Come up with a game plan for preparing the food.  The menu is relatively simple.  We are going to grill marinated chicken and serve it with a green salad and Roasted New Potato Salad. Some nice rolls on the side and a brownie sundae bar for dessert and we are good to go.

I just have to figure out a time schedule to get it all done on time.

And recruit my family into helping me.

And have a minor anxiety attack.  You’d think this is optional, but it’s not.  I have yet to host anything major without one.

At least my anxiety is predictable.

3) Plan a month’s worth of menus for my own family.  The getting home at five and having to make dinner right away thing is seriously worrying me.  I’ll feel a lot better if I have the menu for the next month planned out along with grocery lists.

4) Paint Reagan’s former bedroom and Rich’s office.  They both need it desperately but both have to be cleaned out first.  Realistically, this isn’t going to happen in the next two weeks but I’m adding it to the list anyway so I can feel guilty about it later.

5) Come up with a chore list for Hayden and Faith.  I know that once I start work and am not here to wake them up and then nag them all day that they will probably sleep till noon and then lie around until 30 minutes before I’m due home and rush to get chores done.  But at least they’ll get done and I won’t be here to see the lazy part.

It’s an ambitious list and just writing it has worn me out. 

I think I’d better go watch some HGTV and recharge.