A boy gets a cast on his leg

 

Colin went to visit the orthopaedist today, and he came home with leg cast that will be his close and personal friend for the next three weeks. I don't feel 100% comfortable with the diagnosis since the doctor spent half a nanosecond looking at his x-ray, but then again the doctor is the expert, right?

Since the Urgent Care clinic is connected to our hospital, they could pull up his x-ray in the computer system immediately, and display it on a large wall monitor. I think that is just the coolest...I'm of the opinion that every doctor should be connected to a network, and that every teeny tiny scrap of your medical history should be accessible in a database, so that the information a doctor has is as up-to-date as it gets... Anyway.. Off track here... So he glanced at the x-ray and said it was an easy fix - just put him in an above-the-knee cast for three weeks and he should be just fine. He was not concerned about the growth plate at all. I guess I should feel relieved, but I feel a little apprehensive..

So Colin got a cast put on his leg. First the nurse removed the rest of his splint (pictured above, courtesy of photographer Colin), then put on a long 'sock', wrapped his leg in some kind of squishy material - similar to that thin packing material you use to wrap fragile stuff in, and then used a wrap that hardens within minutes. Colin was not exactly the best patient...he was pretty squirmy. The nurse gave Colin a Batman action figure that had an exact replica of the type of leg cast he was getting.

Batman helped Colin control his wiggles somewhat, but then Colin was still wiggling as he played with Batman. There were other characters, so out came Spider-Man in his leg cast, Darth Vader in his arm cast, along with Captain America. Luckily these two 'broke' their left arms, so they could still fight each other right-handed. :). We all tried in our best Darth Vader voices to amuse Colin...

"Colin...(Vader breath)...I am your father..."

Colin had about 15 color and design choices for his cast, and so he immediately chose 'safety orange'. A very appropriate choice for this boy! Dean tried to steer him towards OU red, of course. The casting from start to finish took under 15 minutes (!), and we were done. It is a waterproof cast, so he can shower, bathe, SWIM...and it is supposed to dry out in about an hour. I don't think we will attempt the swimming thing (he would sink like a rock) but it is good to know I don't have to give him a sponge bath for the next three weeks.

All afternoon Colin got increasingly mobile, hobbling all around. You can hear his cast scrape along the floor, so I can tell when he is moving around, which is nice. I can't believe he is already putting weight on it, but apparently it doesn't seem to bother him because he didn't complain of pain even once all day. Tough kid!

 

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A boy breaks his leg...

If there ever was one of our kids to end up in the ER, it would be Colin.  He's the rough-and-tumble one.  I can't remember a time when he didn't have a bruise somewhere...  I just always assumed that regular trips to the ER would be the norm for this kid.  I am completely amazed that it took him four years to finally make that happen.

Just a couple of days ago, on Wednesday afternoon, Colin broke his leg jumping on the trampoline.  I was upstairs, pulling laundry from the dryer.  Dean was downstairs, working on the computer.  Dean happened to be home that day, as he was feeling like crap that morning and decided to call in sick.  As the day went on he felt better, so he was getting some work done from home.  I had just come from downstairs, and I had noticed in passing that the neighbor and his kids were jumping on their trampoline.  I heard the bustle of Jordan and Colin going outside to do the same thing.  Within a minute there was yelling and screaming coming from our side of the fence.  I hollered down to Dean to go tell Jordan and Colin to be quiet so that they wouldn't annoy the neighbor who was outside enjoying some time with his kids.  Then I heard Dean come in with a sobbing Colin and he brought him upstairs.  I came out of our closet where I had been putting the laundry away, and there was Colin, laying down on the floor and Dean looking him over.

Now, I am the kind of mom that is the wait-and-see type when it comes to injury.  99% of the time it is not as bad as our four little drama queens make it out to be.  I am hard-pressed to even dispense a band aid.  There has be BLOOD...LOTS of it.  This time around I was skeptical.  There was nothing outwardly wrong to suggest that there was an injury to Colin's leg, except the fact that Colin refused to put any weight on his leg and seemed to be in a lot of pain.  I manipulated all of his joints in both legs, there was no swelling, and he couldn't point out the exact location..he just indicated the entire left side of his body, which isn't exactly specific.  As time went on the area under his left knee grew warm, so we figured that was where the fracture likely was.  (Well, we didn't know it was a fracture, but all signs were pointing that way..)

Given the fact that he refused to bear weight, Dean thought it best that we go to Urgent Care.  Now, in the meantime, Jordan completely lost it.  It was basically his fault.  He had jumped hard on the trampoline, in order to bounce Colin really high.  It was intentional, but totally meant in the spirit of fun.  The kids like it when he does that.  We were kids once too, and we both remember that it was fun to bounce kinda crazy like that.  The problem is, Jordan can't quite regulate his quest for fun with keeping things safe.  We've warned him a thousand times that Colin and Owen are too small to bounce really hard like that, and to keep it in check.  He forgets...  So, as it became apparent that it was serious, Jordan just lost it and started bawling because he felt so bad.  Even at 13 going on 14, Jordan is a sensitive kid, and he wears his heart on his sleeve.  So, we asked him to pull it together and hold down the fort while Dean and I took Colin to get checked out.

The exam was pretty quick and routine.  Colin was not happy to be there, and refused to talk to any of the doctors or nurses.  He wouldn't even accept a popsicle from the doc - I had to be the go-between.  He had a couple of x-rays done, and sure enough, there was a small fracture line at the top of his tibia.  The doctor placed his leg in a splint and wrapped it up and sent us home.  Nothing could be done, casting-wise, until the swelling went down.  Of which there really was none, but whatever...

Since the splint goes up the back of his leg and up past his knee just a bit, Colin can not bend his leg.  So getting him home, strapped in the car seat was an issue at first.  Luckily we had a spare fleece blanket, and so we devised a long sling to suspend his leg.  We used the handle that is just above his seat to tie the blanket to and adjusted the height so that his leg was at just the right angle - it actually worked pretty well!

So for the past day and a half, Colin has been either on the couch or in bed.  We have to carry him everywhere, so bathroom trips are the most difficult thing right now.  His leg has to stick straight out, so I have to prop it up on my knee while he sits down and does his business.  His siblings have been kind enough to bring various toys to him and take turns playing with him on the couch, but I can tell this will get old, very quickly.  I think reality set in for him a bit yesterday, when he asked if he could go outside and play in the sandbox with his trucks.  'No'.  Jump on the trampoline?  'Are you serious?  No.'  Ride his bike?  'Uh...no'  This kid is a constant mover.  So the upside is that we will now know where Colin is at all times.  The downside is that Colin won't be happy about that.  At all.

Today we are going to the orthopaedic center - the same place I had my shoulder surgery done - to see a specialist.  Unfortunately the pediatric guy was booked solid, so Colin will be seeing a 'bone specialist' instead.  This is probably a good thing, because the fracture line is awfully close to the growth plate at the top of the tibia, and this could lead to some serious problems as Colin grows - like uneven bone length kind of stuff...  We'll know more in a few hours.

Not happy to be here...  "Stop lookin' at me!!"

Daddy helps with the popsicle

He looks happy here.  Which totally does not make sense.

A close up of his x-ray.  The length of the fracture is hard to determine here.  The top of the tibia is called the metaphysis.  The gap is the epyphyseal plate (growth plate) which is filled with epyphyseal cartilage, and the smaller section above is called the epiphysis.  The metaphysis and epiphysis eventually fuse together, and ossify, in the late teens.  The growth plate is where new bone growth takes place.  The further you travel down the bone shaft, away from the growth plate, the harder and more mature the bone.  Fractures in young children often take place at the ends of  long bones, where the bone is very fragile still.  Fractures in this area are problematic because they can interfere with the growth plate doing it's job in producing new bone.

Simple Woman's Daybook Entry

Outside my window... It is a bit overcast and cloudy right now, at 8 a.m., but the day is supposed to be warm and sunny.

I am thinking... About skiing with Rylan tomorrow.  I need to figure out what we are wearing and I am thinking about the drive.  The news channel just showed the traffic on I-70 this morning, and it was horrible.  It won't be as bad tomorrow morning, but the drive home will be!

I am thankful... That earlier this week, when we went to McAlister's Deli for dinner, six year old Owen was happy to play along when I pointed to different letters around us and asked him, "What's this?"  Owen dislikes playing any sort of answer-call letter games.  He dislikes letters, period.  :/

From the Learning Rooms... I heard back from Colorado Calvert Online Academy this week - they received our applications and all three older kids are registered for the fall! (happy dance)  I feel such an immeasurable sense of relief.  We hit the books this week with a renewed sense of purpose, and it felt very good.  I looked into duoLingo this week, and brushed up on my rusty Spanish by completing the intro round of lessons.  It is not as entry-level as I had hoped - more adult-friendly then kid-friendly, but it is very thorough by requiring an equal amount of reading/writing/speaking in both English and the chosen language of study.  I think Jordan will benefit from it.  One drawback to Calvert is that it does not offer any type of foreign language, so I think this will be a good stand-in.

In the kitchen...Nothing but an empty cup of coffee...be right back!

I am wearing... The Saturday requisite of pj's and robe.  No socks.  And my freezing toes could really use a pair.  Be right back!

I am creating... Still trying to come up with a solution to coming up with a weekly menu.  I hate menu planning.  I hate shopping.  What might help me is a list of recipes to choose from.  So I am making a master list of about 20-30 favorite recipes for each of several different categories: chicken, beef, pork, fish, meatless, pasta, Sides, Salads, and breakfasts.  Each list is divided into three columns: the recipe name, where I can find it (book, file, iPad...), and the ingredients it calls for - apart from staple items.  That way, when I sit down to menu plan and write the shopping list, I am sitting down with 9 sheets of paper - not piles of cooking magazines, cookbooks or endlessly scrolling through Flipboard or my Facebook wall.  Last Sunday I worked on 'Sides', and it took me all day!  I now have a nice list of about 35 recipes to start with though!  That will probably evolve into my longest list, since it includes subcategories like rice, pasta (ex. orzo), grains (ex. couscous), legumes, and by vegetable.  Some of the recipes are on simple end, like 'Steamed carrots".  No recipe needed, of course, and all I need on my shopping list is a 1 lb. bag of carrots.  I am making sure that I have a good variety of recipe complexity  - including lots of slow cooker meals to help this homeschooling mom deal with Arsenic Hour.  This is going to take a long time to finish and fine-tune, but I hope that it is done by the end of April.  I am soooo tired of frozen fish sticks.

I am going... Well, if all goes well, Rylan and I are heading to Copper Mountain tomorrow.  We'll head over to the ski shop later this afternoon and get our skis, boots and poles.  Dean and Jordan went skiing in December, and Dean got a free lift ticket from Copper after enduring over an hour of being stranded on a broken ski lift.  He has been after me ever since to make use of this ticket.  I am not the biggest fan of Spring skiing since the snow can be sloppy, but the base is phenomenal with all the snow that we have had, and it is still cold enough up in the high country that it isn't all slushy like it usually gets in late March/ early April.  So we are going!  This will be Rylan's third time on skis, but she hasn't been since the season before last, so I don't know how she will do.  I am honestly not looking forward to it.  I am hurting all over since I just started back up with running this week (horrible timing), in my hips especially.  My shoulder is still not 100%, and I am not 100% from the BR surgery either.  I am terrified of falling, being in such tender shape right now.  I am a pretty decent skier so I don't usually fall, but with Rylan in the mix, she will undoubtedly cross my path and I will have to ditch to avoid her.  Hope for the best!

I am wondering...Hmmm.. nothing?

I am reading... In the non-fiction arena, I am reading Parenting Beyond Belief: On Raising Ethical, Caring Kids Without Religion, edited by Dale McGowan.  It has been on my reading list for some time.  I didn't realize it was actually a collection of essays and such by a variety of authors, but I am enjoying it for the most part.  There are a couple of pieces so far that have made me cringe because of rather bold word choice, but other than that, I find it rather rewarding to read words on a page that echo my exact thoughts - it is comforting to finally hear other people who feel much the same as I do.  I don't discuss religion much with others, so at times it can feel like you are the only one who feels a certain way.

In regards to fiction, I am still slogging through Diana Gabaldon's Drums of Autumn.  It is almost punishing at this point.  I. just. want. to. finish. it. and move onto something 'funner'.

In the garden... Last week I picked my first tiny crop of butter lettuce and baby spinach, and it is just about time for picking again.  My 'crop' is planted in a single seed-starting flat, and sits in my large west-facing window.  We planted several weeks ago, and they are growing fast!  I will wait to transplant them outside for a couple more weeks.  We are also maybe just a couple weeks away from picking some fresh green beans.  The kids picked some dried-up bean pods that had poked through our fence from the neighbor's garden, so we planted them (indoors) in January to see what would grow.  Low and behold, the plants have climbed up a trio of 6 ft. bamboo poles and back again, flowered profusely and now numerous tiny green beans are growing.  It has been fun to watch it grow a few inches every day!

I am hoping... I don't hurt myself tomorrow..

I am looking forward to... Some mommy/daughter time!

I am learning... or 'relearning' Spanish verb conjugations.  uugh.

I am hearing...Owen singing along with a Backyardigans song on TV, Colin playing with toys upstairs and the washer entering the spin cycle.

Around the house... Today is 'get every-last-bit-of-laundry-done' day.  And 'find Colin's lost tennis shoe' day.

I am pondering... Not much, at the moment.

One of my favorite things... Vanilla yogurt, granola, sliced bananas and juicy blueberries.

A few plans for the rest of the week...Ortho appts for Rylan and Jordan.  Rylan is just finishing up 18 straight days of cranking her new expander, so now they will measure and determine the date the braces will go on.  Maybe Jordan will hear when his braces will finally come off.  Which is 9 months overdue, at this point.  We also have our homeschool science fair next weekend, so this coming week will be spent working on our projects.  Jordan will be presenting his work he is doing on his quadcopter, and Rylan is experimenting with making butter.

Here is a picture for thought I am sharing...

Denver Zoo, 2-27-14

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A change is on the horizon..

Colorado Calvert Academy

yep

It's no secret that this year has been difficult on the homeschooling front.  Or last year.  Or the year before that.  Or the year before that.  Each year has presented its own unique challenges, and the majority of them were mine in the making.  Apparently I thought that since I was a HSAHM, (homeschoolingstayathomemom), I had oodles of free time on my hands.  So I volunteered up the wazoo for whatever I could get my hands on in an attempt to prove myself to my toughest critic: me.  It totally backfired.  I learned that being too busy with fluff means that you won't have time to educate your kids.  My kids are not lacking in ability, but they are severely lacking in instruction time, and as the years have flown by, the accumulative effects are showing.

The lack of time can't be addressed until I clear my schedule.  This year has shown a very sharp decline in doctor appointments, thanks to resolving my shoulder issues last spring, and my BR last fall.  These appointments have been sneaky time-wasters.  I am resigning from our homeschool association's board, effective in May.  I am stepping down from leadership in the Girl Scout troop, also effective in May.  After three years, it's time for another mom to take the helm and share the burden.

So with all the 'free time' on the horizon, I intend to fill it with the things that had been desired all along -long lazy trips to the library, museums, afternoons spent reading, playing games and craft projects.  And I will have this time because someone else will be doing the legwork of the planning, the curriculum procuring, the grading, the feedback (some), the record-keeping.  That someone is Colorado Calvert Academy.

The clouds of discontent have been looming for years.  We knew the present situation wasn't working, but the answer was never to stop homeschooling.  We (Dean and I) love the freedom it provides, and we want the kids to stay at home.  But.  With days and days going by with minimal progress, what was going to be the catalyst for change?

For one thing, I have trouble getting things done when there is minimal accountability.  I am not the type of person that ever tried to sneak sloppy work by the boss in the hopes of squeaking by.  I was a type-A, straight-A student.  Sloppy is not acceptable.  But when there is no one looking over my shoulder, reminding me that I really need to stop surfing the internet and get schoolwork going, or that I need to stop wasting time in a fruitless effort to communicate with the unwilling masses of our homeschooling association, or that working on the finances of our Girl Scout troop during school time is not necessary...I will fritter away the hours.  Day after day.  I need accountability to keep me on track.  After seven years of not punching a time clock, I got lazy.  Very lazy.

Looking down the road, in the long-term, I feel a rise of panic when I realize, deep down, that our children will not be prepared to lead the kind of life we are hoping for, if nothing is done to change our course.

So enter Colorado Calvert Academy.  A fellow homeschooling mom has been using Calvert since her daughter was in K.  She has talked about their experiences over the years, but for whatever reason it never really appealed to me.  She used Calvert via a virtual school, and I think that was my turn-off.  I didn't want the pressure of staying on someone else's schedule.  Now I see that that very thing is what I need most.  In return for joining an online school and jumping through their hoops, I get a top-notch curriculum for free (you can do Calvert curriculum at home - to the tune of $1200/year/student), the teaching support, field trips, potential school friends for the kids, and relief from the financial burden of purchasing my own curriculum from at least 15 different sources on an annual basis.  The $$ savings will be huge.  HUGE.  Also factor in the time saved researching different curriculums - I have spent HOURS trolling the internet for new stuff, different stuff, ways to use stuff... on and on...  Not to mention, knowing how much to do in a day, pacing, working in too much of a subject area into the schedule or not enough... well, staying on schedule period...  I have always been akin to planning waaaay too much into a day.  The kids get burnt out and so do I.

We start when school officially begins, just after Labor Day.  I can't wait!!!

Sláinte!

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A mom turns 70

My mom celebrated her 70th birthday today. Mom invited her sister Sandy to come play duets in church (mom on organ, Sandy on piano), and then after church have a party with friends and cousins. My mom and aunt Sandy have a lot of cousins.

Mom and aunt Sandy grew up playing duets in church because my grandma was the church organist for their Methodist church for decades. A summer visit to my grandparents meant thunderous joyful duets in church (mostly the postlude) with my grandma on the organ and mom on the piano. If luck would have it that we were all visiting at the same time, mom and Sandy would play. People would not get up and file out, they would stay and listen and applaud like crazy when they finished. It was the same after church today. The congregation and choir started to applaud, and then mom and Sandy launched into 'Happy Birthday', followed by a very solemn 'Amen'. Haha..

 

We wandered down to the party room, where a lot of yummy potluck food was waiting. We had a good time visiting with relatives and watching a continuous slide show of family pictures from all stages of mom's life thus far... She has traveled so many different places, and is still doing it now. In a few weeks she will be flying to Paris, and at the end of the year she is traveling to South America for a five weeks tour where she will visit Argentina, the Easter Islands, Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia and a whole bunch of stuff I am forgetting.

My SIL made a memory book and asked everybody to write down a specific memory of an event they shared with mom. I wrote about the time mom and I drove across country, on our way home from Boston. I was 21, and it was in August, just a few days after my birthday. I flew to Boston, where my mom and my brother were waiting to pick me up at the airport. Mom had previously drove from CO to Washington D.C., where my brother lived, and they drove up to Boston. When I arrived, we did the touristy things you do in Boston, including a visit to "Cheers", for a celebratory beer in honor of my birthday. Trouble is, I left my luggage at the airport, in a luggage locker. Including my purse and I.D. :(.

We left Boston and drove north, visiting places along the way. Kennebunkport, LL Bean flagship store in Portland, Bar Harbor, and then camped in a campground in Acadia National Park. It was our last family adventure. We camped, we drove, we got lost, we hiked, we bickered, we ate....we had such good time. We saw my brother off on a plane back to D.C., and mom and I continued to meander our way home. We saw the Man in the Mountain in N.H., crossed Lake Champlain on a car ferry, drove into Canada, came back across and braved a desolate, scary-looking Detroit, drove through morning rush hour traffic in Chicago (that was an experience), saw our old house in Madison, WI, and then came on home. It was a lot of fun. My mom is the best travel companion. Our family has the habit of driving on blue highways, so we see a lot more of what there is to see, and get invariably lost several times. In getting lost we have made so many neat discoveries, hole-in-the-wall eateries, colorful people...my mom embraces that experience above 'getting there'. I love that about her. :)

Happy Birthday, mom. Thank you for all you provided me, taught me, and modeled for me.

 

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When the day is done...

I had a crappy weekend.


Like, really crappy.


Events in the dramatic lives of that of our homeschool community - our email list of families we know and love, and of families we have never, ever met except through words on the computer screen - took a real nose dive early in the day on Friday.  And...well, I was as deep in the fray as you can get. 


Here is the gist:
Over a month ago, a lady I've never met comes up with an' issue' that is really a non-issue.
Others on the list chime in, and now they've hopped on the bandwagon too.
Really - it's a non-issue.  We solved this non-issue two years ago.  I remind them of this, because it is my job, as Secretary, to keep tabs on the happenings of our group.
They all proceed to ignore me.
I spend a few hours of time I don't really have to explore this non-issue further.
I share my findings, they all still ignore the facts, but they want a meeting.
I reserve a space, outline the procedures for the meeting (after researching what they are) and announce the meeting - again, not because I am a busybody, but because it is my job.  This, again, takes hours of time I don't really have, but I did volunteer for this gig.
The day of the meeting, the lady who wanted the meeting alludes to the fact that she will not be attending, and asks who can be her proxy.
She gets an immediate response, but sends her stuff to someone else.
The meeting time arrives.  Eleven people from our group of 120 families show up.  Really.
We have great discussion for two solid hours.
We never really to do hear what this lady had to say, because of technical difficulty with a smart phone.  Nobody's fault...
Not surprisingly, everybody at the meeting agrees that this really is a non-issue, and we table the discussion.
Meeting results are announced the next morning by somebody else.
The lady immediately flies off the handle, and accuses the attendees of the meeting of making rogue decisions without input, and that we voted out of fear of the issue that is a non-issue.  She uses some pretty bold language to make her point.


What would you say?  How would you feel?


Here are my feelings at that precise moment I read her email...


I spent HOURS of my time researching in preparation for this meeting, this meeting that this lady wanted to have, and she didn't even have the courtesy to show up, or at least offer an explanation before the fact.
A few other individuals spent hours of their time as well.
What this lady said felt exactly like a slap in the face.
This group is the most ungrateful bunch of whiners on the planet.
I have given sooo many hours of my time, on behalf of this group over the years, and it really, really sucks that so few people are willing to share to load.
This lady just hit every last nerve in precisely the right spot to provoke an immediate response from me.


So I responded.  I called her on her choice of words, I reminded her that people put a lot of time into this discussion - a discussion she didn't even bother to attend - and that all who were in attendance made the kinds of decisions we did based on the information we had at that moment, and that no VOTE had been made - just an agreement to form a committee to look into this issue that is a non-issue further.  I've been one of the moderators for this email group for a long time, and have handled many a blow up.  I am blunt when need be, but not mean.  My concern has always been that our discussions be civil, but not personal, because we are a community, first and foremost.


Her response?  The most pathetic passive-aggressive response you can imagine.  Complete with terminology like" I'll crawl back under the rock from whence I came".  I did not attack this lady.  I called her on her choice of words.  I called her on her assumption that others would be doing the work.


I send a message right back - not giving her the attention her words are craving for - but letting her know that we are a community, and her opinions are of equal value to everyone else's, and if she still wants to share them, join the committee!


A friend immediately responds privately to me with kind words, as she knows exactly how sensitive I am to this kind of thing.  It helped.


Another 'friend' immediately responds privately that my email was too long and attacking, that I should have let '__' respond instead, and that I should now be quiet and let others 'sweep up the mess'.  My thoughts?  Not fit to print here, I'm afraid.


I see two other friends in person a couple of hours after this all began.  They both thought that what I said had to be said, and that I said it just fine. 


And then more time passes, more emails are written on the thread (not by me), and then the paranoia sets in.  I begin to second-guess myself.  I begin to think that my friends are just being nice, but that they don't really know how to tell me that I am actually a real bitch when these list blow-ups happen, and that I don't really handle it well.  Ever.


Yeah... deep paranoia.  Now I am the one crawling into a hole.  And that is where I have been all weekend, in a deep, dark hole feeling like everybody just puts up with me but doesn't actually like me very much.  I've been doing a lot of reading and thinking - and the things I have come across have all spoken to me in a different way.


A blog post about what our calendar really says about us...


My calendar says that I prioritize time spent doing things for our homeschool group and our girl scout troop way too much.  It also says that Rylan has too many activities - but she doesn't seem to think so.


An article detailing the experiences of Rachel Canning, an innocent woman mistaken for another Rachel Canning, an 18 yr old girl suing her parents for college tuition, in regards to strangers engaging in cyberbulling.


This quote stuck with me: "It's really shocking how bold people can be when they're behind a computer screen,"


Ouch.  And the truth is - its true!  When you are behind a computer screen, writing to somebody you have never had personal contact with, it IS shocking the things you can say.


I don't want to be this person anymore.  I don't want to be the person that tells other adults how to behave.  The type A in me will never bring other people in line to my liking, and why - oh why- does it matter so much to me in the first place?  Why am I more concerned about some other lady's issues than with the fact that my six year old still struggles with identifying all the letters of the alphabet? Where the hell are my priorities?  I don't know..


Here is one more thing that got me thinking.  It's a song by The Alternate Routes, Nothing More.  I've listened to it, over and over this past weekend.  Here are some of the lyrics...  It is the last line that sticks with me the most.  I think it pretty much sums up my emotional well-being for the past ten years, actually.


To be humble, to be kind.
It is the giving of the peace in your mind.
To a stranger, To a friend
To give in such a way that has no end.


We are Love
We are One
We are how we treat each other when the day is done.
We are Peace
We are War
We are how we treat each other and Nothing More


To be bold, to be brave.
It is the thinking that the heart can still be saved
And the darkness can come quick
The danger's in the anger and the hanging on to it.




I am an angry person.  I get angry when I want to resolve a situation that I know I can't control.  I get angry when it's really sadness and fear I feel.  I get angry when I don't know what my role is.  I get angry when I feel apart, separate.  I get angry when I feel overwhelmed.  I get angry when I feel hurt, or frustrated.  Anger is my go-to emotion.  I guess I feel a little too comfortable there, since I spend so much time feeling this way.


Anger shortens friendships.
Anger shortens just about everything, really.


I don't want to be the person I am anymore, when the day is done.  I rarely feel good about my day when it's over.  I am usually listing my regrets, playing that endless negative loop in my head of what a terrible person I am.


I will be holding that first verse in my mind, repeating it over and over, in the hopes that I can remember to do better before I say or do something I will later regret - or at least wish I had handled it differently.  Changing the things in my life that aren't working is one thing, but changing a major personality flaw is a whole other deal.


The first step is always admitting you have a problem.