Just another day in the "hood"...parenthood.

At 12:45 this morning I was woken up by the whispering voice of my seven year old daughter telling my husband on the other side of the bed, that "there is water on the bathroom floor Daddy." My husband, Bill, who hasn't had more than six hours of sleep in one night for the past three days, sleepily replies, "I'll clean it up in the morning honey, go back to bed." I hear her shuffle off down the hall. I was barely awake myself and completely satisfied with the morning cleanup plan as I too have been sleep deprived for the last few days. I went right back to sleep only to hear her return a few seconds later, but this time her voice is bordering on a cry, "No Daddy, I think we have to clean it up now, it is all over the floor!" Both of us are on our feet and down the hall to find water flowing out of the bathroom into the hallway. The toilet is over flowing and water is pouring over the sides of the tank! Bill shuts the water off and we start throwing towels everywhere. He informs me that the toilet was not working last night and that he took the back lid off and sat it over the toilet so no one would use it. I quickly see the "crime" play out in my head. My daughter must have woken up to use the bathroom and seeing the porcelain top on the toilet seat did not communicate to her "broken toilet, use the downstairs bathroom" to her seven year old brain. No, she just saw the obstacle and moved it, simple, problem solved. Then flushed the toilet after using it just like her parent's taught her put the porcelain lid back where she found it, turned off the light, and went back to bed. Probably she was in bed for a minute or more until the sound of the toilet went from the normal filling of the tank to it overflowing. I can see her little quizzical face in bed knowing that that sound is not normal nor good and that she is probably responsible. I remember that feeling so well as a kid, knowing that you have to tell your parents what is happening but also knowing that you could be in big trouble. In a child's world this is as stressful as it gets.

Back in the present, I look around to find our daughter to ask her what had happened but she had left the scene. I find her in her bed with her covers pulled over her head crying. I sat down next to her and asked her what had happened. "I didn't do it, she replied." I said "It's okay, we're not mad at you." Then the tears come and the story is told just as imagined. The two of us go down stairs to get a glass of water while Bill finishes mopping up the mess in the bathroom. Now the upstairs bathroom sits directly over the kitchen and downstairs bathroom, and what we find in the kitchen as we round the corner, is about what you would expect. The water is coming down through a vent over the stove, into two cupboards where I keep my cookbooks, down the wall and onto the stove and then over the side onto the floor. I can also hear it dripping inside the wall of the second bathroom and the clicking noise of wires shorting out. My daughter starts to cry again and just sits down on the dining room floor. I start trying to rescue my cookbooks and give her the job of wiping them off with a hand towel as I move them one by one. Now this is the kind of scene that would normally push me to the point of freaking out. I am usually fine with a catastrophe as long as none of "my things" get ruined. Somehow though I am able to keep the freak out inside my head this time and not let my daughter hear me yelling, "Not the Dean and Deluca cookbook, we got that as a wedding present" or "that was my Great-Grandmother's Practical Recipes For the Housewife that her mother had given her as a wedding present. Oh f*#k." I'm really trying to work on not getting angry so often.

It took about 45 minutes to get everything dried off and one load of towels started before we got our glass of water and made it back upstairs. Our daughter clung to me as she confided how scared she was to come and tell us and that it was "really hard to tell the truth." To which I said, "I know, it can be really hard to tell the truth but I'm glad you did and I'm proud of you and I love you." As I said this to her, I realized what I was saying was what all of us need to hear and feel when we are scared and feel ashamed, just to feel loved and forgiven and as quickly as possible. Even with the honest mistakes we make we punish ourselves so much and it . I always struggle in parenting with whether or not I have properly addressed my children's bad behavior or explained their mistakes ad nauseum, hoping that this will somehow insure that they will not be repeated. Often times this is delivered not in a loving way but with an angry voice because my children can be infuriating and ruin my things, and I like "my things." I get mad and forget and put "my things" ahead of their feelings and I don't like when I do this. In the end, Dean and Deluca and my Great-Grandmother's Practical Recipes for Housewives will live to see another day and for today, I have managed to clean up the mess and keep my child's feeling intact.

her majesty

her majesty
Originally uploaded by Caselet

little precious

little precious
Originally uploaded by Caselet

The Gemini

In the spring of my 8th grade year, my class took a trip to Cedar Point to celebrate the completion of junior high school. Packed into two school buses we made the 3 hour trip to Sandusky, Ohio to spend the day waiting in countless lines to experience 8-10 seconds worth of pure adrenaline fueled awesomeness. It was 1988, I recall my outfit that day with the kind of pride that only a teenage girl of the late 80's can appreciate- White Esprit T-shirt paired with white Jams shorts and white lace less Keds tennis shoes and topped off with the proverbial Spring break acquired pale pink chipped shell necklace (you know the one...) and Swatch watch. I was unstoppable. The hair was permed and the bangs were large and stiff with Aqua Net hairspray. The "big ride" at Cedar Point at that time was called the Gemini. For weeks the talk at school had centered around whether or not one was going to ride the Gemini. The name itself invoked fear and uncertainty in me. This was my first trip to Cedar Point and having only been to Disney World my experience with hardcore amusement park rides was lacking compared to many of my peers who no longer questioned whether or not they would ride it, but rather, how many times. As we poured out of the buses and through the gates, it was without discussion where we would go first. Up until this point, I was full of false pride and bravado that I would probably ride the Gemini "maybe 3 or 4 times." As we made our way through the park, passing the other "smaller" rollercoasters, fear started to encroach. By the time we got into line for the Gemini I was having my own full blown anxiety attack. This of course was not communicated to those around me and I did my best to appear fearless. As the line crept closer, I stared down at the amusement park map that I held and made awkward suggestions like, "maybe we should ride the Corkscrew first and save the Gemini for last," hoping to delay the inevitable. Now if you have ever been to an amusement park you know that once you get fairly close to your turn you enter a covered maze like structure. The way I see it, this serves a couple of purposes the most obvious being that the maze controls the crowd and the cover protects people from the elements but you can't tell me that funneling people into a maze isn't also engineered to prevent people from quietly changing their mind and silently heading off for the Merry-Go-Round or a cotton candy with noone around them the wiser. The covered maze essentially ensures ridership. The more cautious, second-guessing, apprehensive type individual has to basically decide at this point which is more painful, enduring the horrors of the ride or the public humiliation of having to turn and shamefully walk past each person(sometimes 1-200 people)with the universal acknowledgment that they are a big crybaby and want their mommy. For those of us who are or were, in this case, more inclined to confront certain death than look foolish to others enter the "covered" aspect of this portion of the line. The overhead coverage while creating a pleasant relief from the sun also limits your view of the majority of the ride and something happens when you can no longer see the top of the ride, your mind forgets how high in the air the top of that first hill actually is. I am sure Amusement Park designers use this tactic to dampen the fear of those in line and lull them into a false sense of safety. And it works because once I could no longer see the top of the rollercoaster my fear started to subside and I started to actually think I was going to get on that ride so much so that I did. What happened once the metal harness came down over my chest and the car lurched forward is something I will never forget. It was the sudden realization that there was no going back. The cars started click click clicking up that first dreaded hill and all my concerns of maintaining composure suddenly vanished and I yelled "I want to get off! Seriously, let me off!!" But I couldn't, I had already agreed to the experience. With the crest of the hill in sight, I said a silent prayer, looked out over Lake Erie and at that moment, without any degree of control, decided to enjoy the ride. Wooosh, down we went and while I only peeked once through closed eyes it was exhilerating. I recall the sensation of my hair moving as one intact unit as the wind rushed at me, at times lifting my bangs right off my forehead only to place them down again as I went up and down each subsequent hill. I rode the Gemini twice that day and a number of other rides, but none as memorable as that first trip on the Gemini.

Ahh yes, it all makes sense. The fear and the feeling that there is no turning back now is very present for me. So, I guess I need to sit down, put my harness on, and enjoy the ride a little more.

It should also be said that I learned the limitation of Aqua Net that day. Aqua Net Strong Hold is a force to be wreckoned with, however, it was no match for the torrent of wind I experienced over the 8 hour period of that day. I feel not just a little sad to think of what my thirteen year old self must have looked like as I stepped back onto that school bus at the end of the day, exhausted, with probably only a half a dozen pieces of hair still struggling to comply with that morning's demanding instructions while the rest lay flattened and defeated across my head.

In the beginning... there was a blog

I start nursing school on Monday. This morning I woke at 4:30 feeling nervous and excited. I layed there thinking about the last year and a half of pre-requisites and all the unknowns ahead of me. I came down stairs to my computer and started to go through my internet routine: read the news, check email, facebook... when I remembered that I had started a blog last year that I never did anything with. After some work I located it and after staring at it blankly for some time I decided that I would try again, but this time I would focus on the next couple years of my life as I juggle family life and getting through nursing school. That's bound to be interesting, right...? I guess we'll see but at least it might give me some insight into my feelings and help manage stress. But for now I have two more days to prepare my home life before classes start for the semester. Most things are organized and I feel pretty secure with the the household. I go back and forth with my emotions feeling excited at one moment and then terrified the next. I know it is going to be stressful I just don't know in which direction it will come from first. My fears and concerns are many:

• underestimating the difficulty of the curriculum to come
• added stress to marriage and family
• the kids getting sick and trying to manage caring for them while managing school responsibilites
• the unbelievable expenses ie, tuition (around $5000), books (this semester $650.00),childcare, and all of the unforseens
• what if I don't like it? then what?

For now I need to focus on getting some work done. My goal today is to make and freeze a couple of dinners for nights when cooking is just not gonna happen.