Since my teens, I have had my ups and downs, but I think I have learned to manage it better. I happen to be celebrating a birthday this week. The number is a bit of a shock to me. But, still, it could be worse and if I remain healthy it will get worse.HAHAHA.

I wish I had a magic wand to wave over my hurting teen. I wish I could take the pain away. But I can’t. I hope that I have the compassion to help her through this difficult time in her life. I hope I can give her the strength to stay healthy and brave.

My heart beats fast, I seek clarity today. I have to breathe and trust it will work out. She is an amazing human being, if I could only find the way to show her.

I have been busy writing about addiction, detox, withdrawal and on and on. It is a job that is good to me. I have just started re-reading a novel that I have gotten half way through writing. I have been unable to touch it in about a year and a half. Life has a way of interfering with plans.

Anyway, I have vowed to myself that I will complete this novel and sell it this year. Of course, I  have determined that it will be a big success.  Will she or won’t she continue to write about addiction….

It is as if I have been missing from this part of my life. I know actually that that statement is ridiculous, as I have very much been in every part of my life. It is more that at the end of the day, I lacked the energy and motivation to write. I guess I needed to push through that feeling. I think it is more accurate to state that I must continue to push through that feeling or nothing of my own will get written. That would make me very unhappy.

So, here’s to new beginnings, or continued efforts or whatever.

Anything goes when we open ourselves to change. My years of marriage were a struggle  and as the number reveals, I held on for a long time. My marriage was fraught with tension, meaness, love, frustration and many more emotions that don’t need to be mentioned. It would be unimaginable to think of being with one person for that length of time and not to have experienced a lifetime of feelings, not the least of which was learning how deeply one can love one’s children.

Anything goes when confronting other people’s emotional reactions. All those well thought out analyses of any situation do not prepare us for someone else’s emotional reality. Oh. Did I mention that anything goes when dealing with a 17 year old daughter or the necessary but sadly experienced emotion seperation of a dearly loved son.

The  year quickly draws to an end and I have taken a full time writing job, given up writing a business column, moved into my own home, left my dogs behind, discovered a side of my children I never knew existed, yet I feel strong and content with my decision and actions. There are new writing plans for the new year, and I hope to live up to my plans.

What the new year holds for me remains unknown. No doubt I will have set backs, progress forward, successes and maybe disappointments. As long as I stay intouch with myself and accept that anything goes, I will probably move through this new year with grace and some serenity.

Wishing 2010 adieu while welcoming the possibilities in 2011.

Happy new year.

So, for the moment I will continue to have the same blog look I have had for a number of years. This new year, however, I want to really attract more visitors to my page. I guess I should do a bit more work on that issue…

The year is drawing to an end. A decade is coming to an end. And, my marriage is ending. I have had control over the last ending. It has been a long term marriage that produced two wonderful children- my beautiful Miss L and my boy Ben.  I love both my children dearly though they can both be trying at times, to say the least.

While my husband is unhappy with my decision to end our marriage, we have moved through the transition with grace. I owe him a good deal of gratitude and would not want to continue to hurt him through this process. I would not want my children to suffer, though I know they too are in pain. But, as the year ends, I reflect back and believe I did the right thing. Perhaps I should have done this earlier when the kids were younger but I didn’t.

My son said, “Mom, I have come to accept that I am not loosing my family. It is just changing configuration”.  That is how I see it. I will always be connected to my husband. Yes, because of my children but also because I have spent the last 42 years of my life with this man. Can that be wiped away. No. Would I want that to be wiped away. No.

Over the last few months, I have found it difficult to see that I have been responsible for causing these people I love such pain. It is indeed sometimes hard to reconcile that since I am not in pain. I believe I did what was right for me.

So, the year comes to an end, the decade comes to an end, and my marriage comes to an end. I   I look forward to this new phase of my life. I look forward to seeing my children continue to grow and thrive. I look forward to helping my husband heal in whatever way I can.

Happy holiday to all — whoever you may be.

My mom played the piano regularly during my childhood but then she stopped. She was really quite good at it.  I remember that my brother and I, we were just mere little tots, took piano lessons together. That was a disaster. There were lines drawn on the piano bench and fights about territory. We then moved on to separate lessons. The problem shifted to our piano teacher who had her cup of tea and her pencil which was always on the note as she demanded “WHAT Note IS THIS!!!”  She kept me playing the Spinning Song for months. The more she  demanded that I play it, the less I played it or practiced. You know where this is going…I stopped taking piano lessons.

Once I was in college and then graduate school, I wished I knew how to play. I always wanted to be able to sit at the piano and play out a mood.  Fast forward many years and I have two children. One, my oldest, a boy, is extraordinarily talented musically. So, after playing the trumpet for many years he decided one day to teach himself to play the piano. His knowledge of music is light years ahead of mine and he hears lines of music, if that is what it is called, that I cannot. He can be listening and he will say “did you hear…? Sorry,” I have to state, “I can’t hear it.”

He is off at college studying Arts Management and creating his music. He plays the keyboard (he doesn’t have a piano at school) when he needs to play out a mood, when he wants to fool around, when he wants to create. I wish I could do that.

But, he is away at school and I don’t get to hear him play very often anymore unless I put a CD in of his older songs.  Anyway, I have digressed. I was going to write about working the computer keyboard. The piano was to be a segway into the real topic.

I guess the real topic, writing, will wait till my next post.

We went to celebrate, belatedly, my parents’ 65 th wedding anniversary and my dad’s 89th birthday.  They did well, though the boat was a bit large for them and a bit small for me.  We were comprised of my family of origin and all the offspring from that original unit.  My son Ben was not on board as he was working at school. My partner was not there either.  So Miss L and I shared a cabin. That would well for me — I couldn’t swear for her though.

The cabin was larger than I had envisioned and we all had balconies. That was very pleasant, and I spent a few hours on the balcony during the day and late at night. I was surprised by the night skies. I have seen magnificent night time skies filled with stars. There didn’t seem to be as many as I have seen in the mountain skies. Still it was beautiful and one night, as I was gazing, I thought I saw the outlines of constellations. I guess to much time on the seas makes one hallucinate.

The ship was nice but the crowd scene was a bit of a shock. I learned how to tune them out or just ignore them. There is an expression that seems apropos to the issue of people:  I love humanity, it is people I can’t stand.  Anyway, this mass of human flesh were focused on food and alcohol.  The size of a good many cruisers was unparalleled. As my Miss L would say, ” there were a lot of fat people there.”  Yuck. To see people, even some of my own family members ordering multiple dishes or notice as people loaded up their plates in the buffet was nauseating. There is a reason why some people are obese. They eat too much.

So after much talking about this or that, activities were chosen.  Miss L and I, my brother and my talented nephew Mr. J. went to see the ruins at Tulum.  That was a bit of a disappointment. I can remember visiting Chichen Itza  and Stonehenge years ago when one could wonder freely among the ruins. It makes a huge difference in being able to connect with the site when one can physically engage with it.  But then, the masses have chipped away at the stones or defaced the paintings with grafti making the ruins off limits to those of us who really are about them.  It was interesting to see the ruins but I felt disconnected.  I think Chichen Itza was far more interesting then Tulum but Tulum is situated on a beautiful spot. 

In anticipation of the voyage, I bought a “Netbook.” I was all set to work hours on my novel.  Instead, I thought I needed to down load microsoft office which I did before the voyage. On boat, I had to pay to get online because my program wasn’t working. Then my brother in law told me about open office. Needless to say, it was $90 later and 4 attempts at downloading open office unsuccessfully. I finally got my microsoft program to work. Not a great deal of progress was made on the novel though I did re-acquaint myself with the story. For that it was worth the effort. I then had to clean up my Netbook when I got on land again and successfully downloaded open office.

Would I sail again. Yes. I love going on sail boats, I love the ocean. I have always found peace at the ocean. But, I think I will aim differently for the next cruise. I would love to go on one of those offered by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in NY– cruise the river ways of Europe stopping at various cities to see the museums — Or perhaps sail down the Nile past the pyramids.

I am glad I went. I know at least in calm seas I can handle it.  A balcony is a must however.  Well, here I am back on land ready to jump into my regular life again, for the moment and on solid footing.

The search for Betsy’s friend and my daughter’s dog continued. During the search there were all manner of promises made about who would be responsible for walking and feeding the dog, who would train the dog etc. The outcome of those discussions were always the same, 
“the dog will be mine. She will be my responsibility. I will take care of her every need and I will train her,” swore my daughter.

Alas, this story, as so many other tales we have heard  ends in a not so surprising way. We got the dog, another lab. Indeed, a yellow lab and named her Laylah. She is much nuttier than my sweet Betsy but she is a very sweet dog; Wired tight might be a good way to describe Laylah.

The wonderful exciting day of her arrival came and my son, my daughter, and myself drove to get the puppy. The next morning my daughter left for several weeks.  That left my son, home on vacation and myself to take care of this baby dog.  That was difficult at best. I was up every night in the middle of the night walking the puppy. By the end of the first month I thought I would collapse from exhaustion. I hadn’t been prepared to take care of a baby. 

The months have come and gone and Laylah has turned 1 year old. She is better behaved than she used to be, but like so many retrievers she has a nasty habit of chewing on anything and everything.  She has destroyed countless pairs of shoes, important papers, parts of walls and sides of door frames and anything else she can manage to ingest. Betsy had her moments as well, she had a knack for finding prescription medication.  Laylah also loves to eat poison mushrooms. One would think the dog would remember she gets very ill when she munchies on certain things growing in the grass.

Still, with all her craziness, she is a sweet loving dog– my daughter hates her. Ms L can be mean to the dog and yell at her when the poor creature hasn’t done anything wrong.  Laylah was lying under my desk just prior to this blog post when Ms. L marches into my office.

“Laylah come here,” Ms. L demands. Laylah gets up. “Sit down,” my daughter demands. Laylah sits. Ms. L pulls out a pair of ear phones that Laylah has decided were worth chewing. Dangling the wires and chewed ear phones in Laylah’s face,  Ms. L says “Bad dog,” 

Ms. L doesn’t understand that the moment for reprimands has passed. The dog has no idea what the issue is now.  I come to Laylah’s rescue and Ms. L , who lobbied so hard for “her dog,” storms out of my office stating “I hate her.”  

It is a good thing that Laylah is so cute or she might not get away with so much bad behavior. Actually, it is amazing that she has lived through the first year. Still, when she comes and lies next to you and puts her head on your leg it is tough to be angry with her. She is cute and  after all she is a silly yellow lab. She is my Marley.

I enjoyed and hated working on my doctorate. But, I discovered that I loved doing historical research. I liked putting together the pieces of a time period to fill out the picture.  I am always excited when I have to learn something new. The thought of working on a masters in this field or that holds its fascination for me and I often contemplate going back to school.

That is my background. I began substitute teaching this week. I admit that I have always taught on a college level and so the spheres of high school and college are light years apart. I will admit that on my first day I was terrified. In one short week, I have had several opportunities to understand the environment.  Sadly, I am not optimistic about my experiences nor about the fate of the children I shared class rooms with.  

My most horrifying time came yesterday – last period. I was to cover for a 12th grade english class. OMG!!!!!!! Chaos. Noise. Cursing. The start of a fight. I managed to keep mayhem from breaking out but little else.  There was a test to be administered. The teacher had told me watch for kids who hand in test B with test A scored. I didn’t think I could do that when charged with the turn ins. I began to collect the tests. From the start, kids did exactly what he said they would do and I tried to call them on it. I was shocked. The teacher had left and a woman who works with some of the kids came in for a few minutes. She said, “they are all going to cheat.” I think almost all of them did. Right in front of me as well. The exam was a school wide test. Some kids do not even try. I asked one or two “why don’t you try it,”  but they shrugged.

The thing that struck me most about this week’s experiences was the lack of interest about learning.  I sat in on two different government classes. I am willing to talk to anyone about politics and what better way to make “government” come alive than to talk about current politics. No, No, no. Don’t have a conversation. I was told.  

It was the weirdest feeling to be in a class room and not teach. To sit and try to keep kids quiet for two hours at a time.  I thought it was me, but when I saw how hard the english teacher worked to get his group organized and seated I knew I didn’t stand a chance.

I left feeling disgusted at the kids for not being the least bit interested in anything. I left being disgusted that I had waisted my time, as I do enjoy teaching.  And, I left wondering what would happen to these kids who didn’t know how to act, to speak, to be courteous  to each other.  I left sad these were the kids who were entering to larger community. Maybe they would end up being productive individuals but for the most part they didn’t give out that kind of awareness.  

I know the world is different but still. I don’t think the answer lies in standardized test or memorizing times tables. But rather, it lies in creating not squashing a lust for learning, a desire to be inquisitive and the perspective that is larger than the immediate moment.

That sense of myself does not relieve me from succumbing to my fears or insecurities it just provides me with an awareness that any particular moment I am acting crazy.

Any way, the day began with the instructors being introduced. What did I do? I sat there and beat myself up for not having organized such events. Blah, blah, blah.

We moved into the mornings challenges which were based upon team efforts. They were fun and in the end not terribly threatening. Hmmm.

After lunch we began our personal challenges. Climb a rock wall, something called the bridge walk (walking across a cable sooooooooo many feet above the ground, and a trust walk. I didn’t get to do the trust walk, I ran out of time.

I began with the rock wall. Years ago, I had done the rock wall more than once because my kids were doing it. And, because for most of that time I was in shape reaching the top was not a problem. I volunteered to go first. I climbed up the first half then on to a ledge to begin the second half of the climb. I got a bit caught up in the first few foot steps, I am not sure what they are called, but there I was holding on to the wall trying to figure out what to do next. The instructor yelled “don’t stay still too long, just keep moving.” I wanted to but couldn’t figure out where to go next. I placed my foot on this thing that was angled so I could only be there a second and had to move on. Yes, did that. People below cheered. I was shaking now. Moved up again and then lost my hold and flew backward. I caught the wall again but my fear conquered my will to keep going. The instructor yelled “do you want to come down?” “Yes, yes. yes.” I cried out. “OK , put your feet flat on the wall and lower yourself down.’

It was not a very graceful descent but I got to the ground. Cheers and congrats were forth coming. But I was disappointed in myself. No, don’t focus on the accomplishment. Focus on the failure. What failure…. I stayed on at that event and helped with the security rope and cheering others on. Two made it to the top in my group, impressive, most didn’t make it half way, but they all tried.

I next went to the bridge cable walk. I stayed working the ropes at this event for a while getting a sense of it and watching other women conquer their fears. Then I decided to go. Before me were two women who I had moved worked with in the morning. One started to cry as she was getting her security rope attached. The trainer said “do you want to do this?” “yes,” the young woman answered. “GOod. You look at me” the trainer said “before you go up the ladder, then listen to my voice when you are walking on the cable. If you want to come down just let us know.” I was this woman’s ladder spotter. Up she went, tears and all and across the cable.

Next woman began her preparation with fear and saying “I failed at this 20 years ago.” I said “today is a new day. Doesn’t matter what you did 20 years ago!” I am such a big shot sometimes, especially when it doesn’t concern me. Then my turn. I decided once I started climbing up the ladder, up the pole on the stakes there was no turning back.”Don’t look down, just keep going.” I told myself. Up the ladder, “transition one” I yelled, Up the pole, “transition 2″ then up on the log to step on to the cable. The wind was very strong. I looked around a bit, not down but I was scared. I needed to keep moving. No looking down. But an occasional “WOOW!” escaped my mouth to let out some anxiety and to let the world know I was all the way up there. Across the cable. No thinking just doing. And I did it.

Releasing my self, “fall backwards hold the rope and we will lower you down” Not as easy as it sounds. Trust, trust trust. That was the crucial issue. Trust myself to do it , trust the women on the ground holding the safety rope that they will not let me crash to the ground. I am here to testify they did their jobs well and so did I. I was soooo high after that. I no longer cared that I did not make it up to the top of the wall. I had climbed the pole and walked across the cable. What a glorious feeling that sense of power. I hope to remember it when my fears tell me otherwise.