Holiday Cheer

It's hard to beleive that the holidays are the happiest time of year. I am a stress head with lists everywhere and my brain jumping around so much. THe thought of 3 days of getting together with my family and then a 5 hour drive with crabby kids to spend 3 days with L's family... where is the good cheer? I keep thinking that I will stop drinking, and yet the thought of NY without drinking, is not a good thought. Every time I think that the shopping is done... I buy more stuff, and really pay more -$15 - for shipping on pajamas for the boys, quite ridiculous. and yet I could not have been able to buy those pajamas any earlier. THere is really no way I could make that kind of committment before thanksgiving.
So where is the middle ground and where is the fun part of the holidays. Well, I really am trying to stay positive and not be grouchy... I wish that christmas morning was actually at night, the atmophere is so much better, lights on the tree, gas int eh fireplace and I can drink... way more fun. How does the tradition go that you can open presents at night?

Learning to keep quiet

Everybody has the urge to say "I asked you about 10 times last week, what do you mean you forgot?"
Saying that is the easy way to score points and we all like to score points. It makes us feel right, and right makes you feel better than the other person. But, feeling better than the other person is really such a short lived feeling, because really what we all want is for the other person to feel better about us. We like to say "I told you so" because that makes us feel smarter, but not smarter to the rest of the world. The other person feels bad and then they think bad things about you... like "I hate it that you were right and its not nice that I feel bad, so I will think bad things about you and then we can both feel bad."
Really, want you want a relationship to feel good, you learn never to say I was right and I told you so and you are wrong... because what that ends end meaning is, I was right and I am better than you... then, obviously that person is not going to feel good about you and you won't feel the love from the other person, which is really what you wanted in the first place. Because mostly we do not care about being right, we care about the world liking us.

Mars and Venus

I like to make jokes about how different my husband and I are when we try and communicate and I frequently site the popular "Mars and Venus" scenario. But, when I think about it, its very different from Martians and Venetians trying to communicate. It reminds me of the trip I took last year to Guatemala. I really speak very little Spanish, and yet, I could generally understand, through context and through guessing and through sign language what a person was trying to communicate to me. In fact, I found the language barrier to be fun more often than it was frustrating. It was exciting to see how different emotions and vocabulary could be acted out and how many different ways there are to explain a word such as "hot"... the food is spicy, the food is warm from the oven, there is not air conditioning in the taxi cab.
So, when my husband and I try and communicate it is usually frustrating and indirect. sometimes we even try and communicate through magic and ESP. Often, I am thinking what I want him to know and I am even in other parts of the house talking to myself or the pile of laundry or the stack of dishes in the sink, and I want him to know what I want. Likewise, he says nothing and does nothing and then doesn't understand when he gets nothing...

Back to work

So Lee went back to work today, and actually around my house it felt good. He had his lunch packed and seemed in charge and ready to leave the responsibilities of the kids good bye. Because, as much as the summer is fun and being home is fun, it means that you have to take care of more than just yourself. When it is your day to work, you can leave the laundry and the dishes for the other person bc you will be gone and they will be home. So today, I got it all, but also when you are home and it is just you, you can boss everyone else. So I had a nice morning bossing everyone around. Then I had a gouchy afternoon folding laundry while Lee got to work.
I am starting t really feel sad that the summer is over, I am not ready to start the nightly painao practice and homework fights. I keep thinking that this will be the easy year. Then my rational side realizes that every year is better and worse that the year before, although in completly different ways.

Whats wrong with parents these days?

I know that much has been written about kids and sports and if parents would just butt out that kids would all play nicely - perhaps you could even go so far as to say that if all parents butt out that all our kids would actually be professional athletes... mhh.. some thing to consider. Anyway, as I am working on the intramural soccer teams and trying to get all the girls in best color tshirt for their skin tone and all the boys on teams with the kids that they haven't had a fight with in the last two seasons, well I really notice how few parents volunteer - bc currently I have 10 teams and only 6 coaches - and how many parents make special requests. Why is it that the parents that scream and squawk the most are the ones that never even make it to the games. How about the crappy comment that says please place Danny on the same team as Adam, Josh and Derek bc we all car pool - come on! I know better than that - we do not carpool in the suburbs - even if we like to think that the reason that we bought the huge 10 passenger SUV that should be outlawed everywhere except the desert - we actually buy those big cars bc we are going to car pool!
This fall I will just try and experiment with fall soccer. Because there are not enough coaches I will let each team loose on their own, and I bet that they make it to the state tournament. Just get all the coaches out of the way and the kids really will work it out for themselves....

Teddy's House

I guess that everyone has to start somewhere. After reading all the hype about blogging - this must be replaceing journaling - I thought I needed to try it. Perhaps this can become my outlet for daily journaling and I can finally take that off of my annual new years resolution list. Yesterday was the last day of school, which makes today the official first day of summer vacation. As I do every year my head is full of plans to make this the best summer ever. My kids are going to embrace summer reading and we will spend many lazy days lounging in the backyard, drinking lemonade and reading the great classics. My children will then enter school in the fall, suddenly genius - I always knew that they were geniusis we just needed a summer vacation for thier brain cells to develop....

Anyway - I also think maybe I can start saving those daily funny stories about your kids that everyone is constanly telling you to write down and you know that you should but of course, you never do... I might try that also.