Saner Today

Okay - I’m feeling better.  I went to several grad parties this weekend and had a good time and didn’t see or eat anything that makes me feel like my party won’t be up to par.  I live in a very sane and sensible community.  Graduation parties have home made food served off of paper plates with big jugs of lemonade and sheet cakes.  We sit on folding chairs in back yards and living rooms and everyone is low key.  Because most of the parties are squished into two weekends (private schools one weekend and public the next) people just rotate from party to party so I won’t have to entertain people for long stretches.

My biggest hurdle is my temperament.  I read somewhere once that the difference between and introvert and extrovert is that an extrovert gains energy from being around other people and an introvert gets their energy drained by being in large groups.  Clearly I am in introvert because by 6:00 last night I was ready for bed and didn’t want to talk to anyone for a week.

Next weekend I’m going to have to conserve my socializing quotient because I’m pretty sure it’s considered rude to invite people over to your house and then sneak upstairs and hide in your closet.

Last night I just set my color coded spreadsheet aside and sat alone in the quiet for a while.  It felt good.

Now I’m just going to hope that we get our rain quotient for the week over by Friday and have a beautiful weekend.  We could have the whole thing inside the house if we have to, but I think it will be much more comfortable outside and if there’s one area of my home I truly love, it’s our back yard.  It’s pretty and shady and private.  And Rich worked his butt off all last week getting it into good shape so it looks extra spectacular.

Now if we can get through these last few days in one piece, I think we’re good to go.

Things That Are Freaking Me Out Today

I’ve done really well about this party next week.  Normally, I get frantic about hosting large gatherings, but we made a list in March that we’ve been steadily working on and it’s nearly done.

But that was just the prep.  Now it is crunch time.

I had a dream last night that the party had started and there were people there that I hadn’t invited and a man I didn’t know was sitting at my counter scolding me because the appetizers weren’t ready and then I turned around and realized I had not even started boiling the potatoes for mashed potatoes.

I woke up this morning hyper ventilating a bit.

Ok, a lot.

So I made myself a pretty spreadsheet to try and make myself feel calmer and it helped a little, but here are the things causing shallow breathing today.

1. My baby is graduating.  Waaaaaaah!
2. I am hosting a party next week.  A big one.
3. But I do not know how big.  No idea at all.  I thought I had a grasp of approximate numbers and then Reagan sent out Facebook invites to 150 people.  
4. I don’t know how many chicken strips to order.
5. I dont know how many mashed potatoes to make.
6. My house?  It’s a mess.
7. There are places on the wall in be basement where paint has been gouged off and I don’t have time to repaint the room.
8. My daughter is starting college in three months.
9. The poodle needs a haircut.
10. The boy needs a haircut.
11. I am stress eating.
12. Stress makes my grumpy which makes my family grumpy which makes me grumpy which makes …
13. What if I forgot something?
14. I opted not to order balloons because the helium shortage has limited what you can get which made it seem pointless, but what if no balloons is wrong?
15. What if no one comes?
16. What if everyone comes?
17. No matter how many people show up, I don’t have enough chairs.

The hope here is that by writing this list down, I’ll get it out of my system and be able to move forward in peace and serenity.

I’ll let you know how that works out.

This Week. . .

… I went to a rcok concert.

I did not actually listen to REO Speedwagon or Styx much in high school.  I preferred The Cars, The Police, Howard Jones, Tears for Fears, Duran Duran, Alphaville … whatever genre you want to lump those into.  REO and Styx were for girls with big hair.

I may have had shoulder pads, a perm and cropped pants but I did NOT have big hair.

Since high school my musical tastes have expanded and I enjoy some of the old stuff by these bands so on Saturday we went to an outdoor concert featuring these two and Ted Nugent.

Turns out I am not a Nugent fan but boy oh boy do the folks who are his fans make for some excellent people watching.

Wow.

REO and Styx were great though.  I got what I truly wanted out of the night:  a rousing rendition of Come Sail Away and I left happy.

Happy but freezing.  

…we have had the craziest weather of this crazy spring.  That night, in the three hours we were outside, the temperature dropped 15 degrees.  It got down to nearly freezing that night.  Today, less than 72 hours later we hit a high of 100.

The only thing crazier than snow in May is 100 degrees in May.  I don’t know why anyone would live here.

…Hayden got his driver’s license.

He turned 16 in March but he wasn’t in a hurry to get his license and we weren’t in a hurry to insure another teen so we put it off.  With Reagan gone this week though we are sure missing that extra driver and so he is officially licensed.

…we have gone through 80 bajillion photos.

Rich is putting together a glorified slide show to play in the background at Reagan’s graduation party next week.  (Next week!  Ack!) This is definitely adding to the verklempt.  Here is a picture from 17 years ago:

Reagan looks completely different of course, but I don’t think I have changed a bit, do you?

Don’t answer that.

… the end of the school year is so close we can hardly stand it.

 This time of year is not my favorite to be working in a school.  The kids are just this side of crazy and the adults are short-tempered.  Not a good combo but with the end in sight everyone is able to push on to the finish.  Seven more days!  Woo-hoo!

Recital 2013

I should really not be writing right now.

Every emotion I posses is bubbling just under the surface and if it boils over into a blog post, that could be ugly.

Recital weekend always does a number on me.  Recital weekend combined with Mother’s Day and putting Reagan on a plane to fly to Denver for some R&R… I’m verklempt.  (Name that TV show.)

Let’s just look at some pictures of my lovely girl and minimize words, shall we?

She really is lovely, right?  It’s not just because I’m her mama?

Want to know a fun fact about lovely dancers?

What you see onstage is beautiful.  Choreographed, rehearsed and the culmination of intense preparation.

What you see backstage is almost as much fun.

Beautiful girls with pretty hair and makeup doing lightning quick changes in and out of glittery costumes.

It’s a feat of choreography itself.  It really is.

It’s so much fun to walk into the dressing room and see all the loveliness rushing around, and then … the smell hits you.

There were 20ish girls in there, each of whom own three pairs of dance shoes in which they have danced for 5-12 hours a week for the past nine months.

It is not a good odor.  Not good at all.

But then they rush back out on stage and clearly all of the hard work and sweat are worth it.

Goodness I love that girl and I love watching her dance.

Except for that whole overwhelming emotion thing of course.

Sneaky Month

May snuck up on me.

It was easy to do seeing as how it disguised itself as March complete with freezing temps and snow.

SNOW.

Never, in all the years I’ve lived here has there been snow in May.  But here is the picture to prove it:

That is my new flower bed under blankets and a tarp covered in snow.  The plants are still looking a little bit puny, but I think they’ll survive.  We still don’t have leaves on the trees though and I’m thinking it will be a spring without lilacs which is a sad story indeed.

Does anything smell better than a lilac bush on a spring night?

Nope.

Disguised or not, May is here.  The dress rehearsal for Faith’s recital was all day long on Saturday.  I ran back and forth from home to watch her various dances.  I just never can pass up an opportunity to watch that girl dance.  I was sitting in the theater watching the litlle bitty girls in their adorable costumes trip across the stage and wave their arms and wriggle their tiny tushes.  I remember watching Faith at that age and wondering why on earth I was paying tuition money so she could learn to skip in a lopsided circle.

Dance is a slow building skill.  Now, after nine years she can do this:

I don’t expect that you’ll be able to pick her out of the group - the video isn’t that good.  (Hint for my mom:  click on the rectangle thingy on the lower right corner to enlarge the video.) But at :56 you’ll see her all the way on the left go into this series of turns that blows my mind.

How is it that a kid of mine can do that?

Genes are weird.

When I wasn’t watching rehearsal, I was at home cleaning out the storage room.  This has been a year of gutting.  Every room in the house and the garage and shed were totally cleared out over the past year.  The two rooms that hadn’t been done, Reagan’s and the storage room, got finished this week because we are having a garage sale.

Found in the storage room:  evidence of Hayden’s skill maturation as well.  He was delighted to find this copy of his first video game.

Putt-Putt.

While Faith has gone from awkward plies to a la seconde turns, Hayden has gone from Putt Putt to Call of Duty.

Somehow this does not inspire the same level of sentiment in me.

Must be a boy/girl thing.

And speaking of sentiment … 20 days till graduation.

Perhaps May didn’t sneak up on me.  More likely I am in denial.