School Report

December, you always escape me. I thought I was doing pretty well this year until I had the horrifying realization that Christmas is THIS WEEKEND. Oh, lordy. Unprepared, always unprepared. My holiday To-Do List is nowhere near completion. I have visions of cookie baking and gingerbread house making and doing Christmas-y crafts with Sody...but in reality, none of that is going to be happening in the next few days because of work. Plus, when you are broke you need to make your Christmas presents - actually, I still like to make presents when I am not broke - and that means finding the time to make Christmas presents, which is definitely hard to come by this year. It been a big, messy, busy month so far: my birthday and preschool parties and work parties and all of us getting sick at the same time and a short last minute trip to NJ for Joe because his grandma died. I think we are all a little exhausted already.

But I realized that in all the hubbub I have not yet done a report on what Sody thinks of preschool. She has a few weeks under her belt now and I would say so far it is going swimmingly. The first couple days were no trouble at all - dropped her off, she was ready for adventure, left us in the dust. After that, I think she started to realize this wasn't going to be a once-in-a-while adventure, so there was a little more trepidation (worse when I dropped her off than when Joe did, as neither she nor I wanted me to leave) but all in all she has been a total champ. The best is all the stuff she comes home with: the menorah finger painting and Kwaanza noodle necklace and glittery Christmas card she made. And the songs! She is singing us new songs she is learning, and I am eating them all up. My favorite thing is picking her up at the end of the day - I am never a worse driver than when I am going from my work to her school, all impatient and excited and zooming there too fast - and watching her play and interact before she realizes I am there. I get a teeny glimpse into her world without us. I want to know so much: does she like the kids there? do they like her? does she miss us? is she happy? did she eat her lunch? what did the teachers talk about today? did anyone try to take her baby doll? does she stand up for herself? does she share? etc etc etc.

Above all though, she seems to like it there. Thank God. Here are a couple of shots we took on the first day of school (she called her braids "Dorothy braids" as in Wizard of Oz) :

Time, Time, Time, See What's Become of Me

There is just no time for anything anymore. I realize this is the dumbest complaint in the world because everybody and their grandma has this problem. Have you ever met anyone who has had enough hours in their day? No. I know this. But, Jesus... everything is just about rushing these days. Rush to get out of the house with everyone's teeth brushed, rush to get to work on time, rush to pick Sody up from school, rush to get dinner on the table and Sody in the bath and then, finally, wrestle Sody into bed. Bonus points if it's actually anywhere near her bedtime of 8 o'clock. And then all I can manage to do is zone out to some idiotic tv show, pass out, and start all over the next morning at 6 am. It's exhausting. And it's life. That's just the way it is, the way we live, the way of the world.

I'm not really into it, I gotta say. I do like being busy and I do like having a job, but the relentless schedule of constant motion seems hard to keep up with. Where is the time for my kid? My husband? For keeping my house in order, or working out, or cooking healthy meals, or - god forbid - a hobby for myself? Where do people find time for their lives?? I truly do not understand. Every moment is starting to feel accounted for, which scares me. I don't want to keep moving and moving and moving and then miss everything important. I need to take a breath. I need to have an afternoon with absolutely nothing on the agenda. I need to have many uninterrupted hours with my kid to do absolutely nothing with her but hang out together. Slow down, smell the flowers, blah blah blah.

How do we keep up on this hamster wheel? Or, WHY do we? Short of escaping to some bizarro locale in the middle of nowhere to live in a cheap little shack, I am struggling to figure out an answer to all of this. My saving grace is that I have an easy job that is close to home - one that I don't have to think about once I leave the building. How do working moms with actual stressful jobs and commutes even begin to do this? It's so puzzling. I feel like I am missing out on some key piece of wisdom about making it all work. Maybe there was something other moms studied in school and I was absent that day. Something about making all the little pieces of your life fit together nicely so that all the trains keep running smoothly. Because, really, I feel like my trains are seconds from derailing most days around here.