Fantasy vs. Reality

I am finally settling.

So much of my life is spent in chaos and I am thinking, 'I will be happy when _____ happens.' Well, ______ happens and I then feel at peace, then I panic awaiting the next jolt. I read a lot of Jewish on line stories and inspiration. There are several rabbis who I think G-d appointed to write for me. One of them is Rabbi Shishler. He wrote a great piece that you can see I responded to here. Since reading that, I am doing my best to enjoy the present moment. Inevitably chaos will resume. It always does and let's face it, it is what I write about and it makes me laugh. After I yank out my hair.

Fortunately G-d doesn't care when I curse people and things. He just says, "Kaylee is ranting again." He sends me a fascinating article by some rockin' rabbi at Chabad.org and I am calm for a bit.

(I'm not presently Jewish but so many of the articles resonate with me.)

If my life went as I wanted it to, I would write like this:

"This morning I awoke to my dear husband bringing me my favorite loose-leaf tea. We talked for a few minutes, then he took a shower. I got up and made him his favorite coffee and had it waiting for him on the counter in the kitchen. I went around the house and woke up the children. They loved the stone ground oatmeal with the side of fresh fruit that I had prepared for them.

"While I dressed, the children made their beds and got dressed. My eldest of the elementary school kids had made school lunches the night before.

"We left for their schools on time and I paused and admired the flowers in the principal's office that his wife had sent to him.

"I got home and did my housework. I do the big things. My children are good about keeping up with their chores so I just vacuum, do the laundry, cook and keep the little kids' room organized.

"I really don't know why some women are so frazzled all the time."

Instead, I write my reality:

I awoke to my husband saying, "Oy! I don' feel so hot." I asked what was wrong and if I could get him something. I was seriously congested and had headache that I'd gotten an ice pack a few hours earlier and asked if I could get one. He kept muttering, "I don' feel so hot." After he said that nine or a million times I snapped at him, "Don'T drop your T's!"

He wanted some tea, I got up to make him some and realized that the kids assigned to kitchen duty had not put the honey away. It seemed like one of the younger kids got into it because it had been knocked over and the lid was loose. I zapped some water and heard yelling down stairs. My sons were arguing over who was going to walk the dogs. It was only 4AM so I told them to go back to sleep. As I was leaving their room, the older one tackled the next younger one on his bed. I flipped on the lights. "What did you do that for?"

"He flipped me off!"

The attacked one denied it.

I was incredulous. "It was pitch black in here! How could you even see it?" I made him do 10 push ups for me in the hall while he complained how it was a terrible way to start the day.

I went up stairs and made my husband some tea, cleaned the honey mess and took the tea up to my husband who was back asleep so I put the tea on his night stand.

I decided that I couldn't go back to sleep so I cleaned up the kitchen. When it was time for him to wake up, I came out and my husband was annoyed with me because the tea was not hot and he'd not realized the time lapse. It was time to wake up for him and his tea was luke-warm.

I went down to zap it again. I couldn't wake up the kids who are in high school so I announced that I was turning on their lights on the count of three. There was screaming, "Moooooom!" My husband wanted to know where his work badge was. It was next to the tea I'd made.

My husband and older kids got out the door with some yelling and snapping. I got the younger kids up. I went back into my room and the tea was not touched.

While I showered, I heard lots of yelling. Apparently the dogs hadn't been taken out and there was a mess on the floor. I came out in , assigned dogs to kids and cleaned the mess up. I got dressed and couldn't find matching stockings. I wear skirts and stockings with garters-- it is old fashioned but I love them. I went in to my eldest daughter's bedroom. She had borrowed them as well as some of my stilettos. "Why did cloud have THESE?" I said, to no one in particular. My grade schooler daughter was standing in the doorway and explained, "She and Heather were trying them on. They were dressing up like hookers."

I gasped at her language and then asked, "Do you know what a hooker is, sweetheart?"

She didn't.

I told her that hookers wear hip waders and fish and that hooking is illegal. I made a comparison to snagging. She said "Oh" and left the room. She really didn't care. I threw on some sweats. My preschooler was charminingly mismatched. The rest of the kids had changed and were ready for school.

Some how, we were still on time. I told the kids to grab their lunches and realized that none were made the night before. I quickly threw them together and they had a lot of candy.

Trying to get out of the house, I had one of the dogs who had been taken on a walk want to come with us, so I put her on a leash and I walked out the door and she pulled when I wasn't ready and I fell on the ice in my driveway and split open the back of my head. I was bleeding bad but I angled the mirror to check it out in my bathroom and I was OK, it was just a flesh wound and not that big of a gash. I didn't have any gauze but I had a box of panty liners which I did a fast operation on with scissors and tape and parted my hair and taped it to my head and put a scarf on over my head.

I got in the car a few minutes alter and school was ready to start for one set of kids. We drove to the school and I had to sign them in. The principal saw me, "Mrs. Crumpet? May I see you for a minute?"

I knew it, I was in trouble. Did I realize that I was running late again? I started to explain it and how my mornings go and how I tried-- I stopped. A wise man once said to me, "There is no try. There is only do. Or fail." I took the scarf off my head, "Sir, do you know what this is?" I ripped off my bandage and handed him the fraction of the panty liner. He started laughing. I told him about my morning and that I'd gotten up early. By the time I was done, he had tears of mirth in his eyes. While he is Catholic, he and his wife only had two kids and he didn't know how I did it. He had some pretty flowers in his office and I knocked over the vase with my purse as I stood up to leave. He laughed harder and told me to exhale and take my time getting to the next school and to be safe.

~~~~~~

Ahh! I think I am settling! I sure hope nothing comes up to throw my sense of calm out of order!

What I know as normal is probably not calm.

I have started getting all the kids to bed by nine o'clock in the last couple of days and I think I may move it back to 8 o'clock. One of my college friends had been a medic in the Vietnam war and he told me about helping a field nurse do an appendectomy on a soldier in the middle of a fight. There were bullets whizzing over their heads as they operated on the guy. It was a seemingly otherwise normal operation. . . this is how I sometimes feel!

Of course not all mornings are THIS crazy. When mornings like this happen, I get more into my chore charts and discussing how we treat each other and  going to bed on time. I am happy thinking about this. On the calm days I brace myself for days like this. It makes no sense, does it?

And if I ever achieve calm, what will I write about?

My Grandmother Passed Away Last Week

In the middle of me breaking ground and going places that I'd never gone before, I did not blog about something that was happening: my grandmother was dying. She died while gasping for air and knew what was happening on Thursday night. She was 95 years old with multiple organ failure.

I chose a Jewish version of her name as my baptismal name. I think that my family may be Jewish (I'm such a Jew-wanna-be! LOL) because she had told me, back when I was getting marriage counseling with my ex husband and discussing family traditions, about her mother telling her about her mother who used to light a candle at sunset every Friday night. My mother until 15 or so years ago would not cut meat and vegetables on the same tray, but they thought I was silly when I said it was Jewish and insisted that we were Lutherans AND WE JUST HAD A JEWISH SURNAME WITH THAT PARTICULAR GRANDMOTHER, DAMMIT. :)

My grandmother was a cook for a school and she and my late grandfather owned a restaurant for a while. She sewed and made beautiful porcelain dolls, one that she gave to me after a miscarriage. I'd take that doll on stage with me in a Mrs. Alaska pageant. She thought that that was pretty cool! I have saved several quilts and afghans that she made for me.

She was a pretty lady, both inside and out. When my mom had a serious surgery in Seattle, I was 9 years old. We had to stay there (going down from Fairbanks, Alaska) for 3 months. Every day she dragged me to see Great Grandma every day. I was mad because she was in an old folks' home which smelled of cleaning agents. One day Great Grandma threw up on me and I thought that my arm would fall off. For a week she let me sit in the car while she went in, then she made me go in again. I whined, "It's not fair! Why do Karen and Terry not have to come?" (They were cousins my age who taunted me for having to go.) Grandma said, "Because they don't have good hearts like you do!" She didn't state the obvious, that they lived 20 minutes away in the other direction, no, Grandma chose to tell me that I had a good heart. I'd complain more and she'd keep telling how sweet I was and in spite of how I reacted, she was unable to be convinced otherwise.

I would wind up volunteering a lot ond going places that no one likes to volunteer at-- unless they have good hearts like me! LOL I've done Hospice, Compeer, CASA, 4A's, toname a few. She was very proud of me when I worked at an Extended care facility because she said, "Those homes need people like you."

Last week I called her a couple of days before she died and she'd been mostly in and out for two weeks, but that one time, she was awake and called me by name. She said she'd see my kids soon.

I last saw her at my dad's wake. We barely spoke before her ride was ready to take her home and she asked me if I'd come see her. I cried so hard when I said I would. I knew I'd not make it back down.

My cousin who is a paramedic was with her and he broke down. The whole family was there with her-- kids, grands-- everyone. It was OK that I wasn't there. The kids and I made a banner for her that she saw before she died. We wrote "We love our great grandma!" on it and put all of our hands in fabric paint and signed underneath. I think that my mom thought it was too hillbilly because instead of hanging it over part of her casket, she says that she put it in the casket.

The weekend was made worse with my Kairos teammates. I was not droopy at the prison. I was getting sick but I wasn't depressed. Now i am feeling blue.Of course my mom is sad with both of her parents gone because the feeling that I had when my dad died of being next is double bad for her.

My younger brother had a little fun-- as he schmoozed with the family, people asked about me and he said that I had wanted to come down but that I had a "retreat" in prison. (He said the word retreat with finger quotation marks.) He would of course wait a few counts then tell them what I was doing, but even had I not had the "retreat" I couldn't have afforded to go down.

Enough about Being a Mom, Miss Sarah!

Our governor needs to quit talking about being a mom and get on the real issues. She is running for VP, not Princess of Wales. It's been one week since my mother roused me out of a peaceful slumber to look at the news, and all I have heard about is Sarah being a mother and Bristol being about to be a mother. ENOUGH ALREADY. I have met the governor and I honest to God like her and lean right, but let the kids stay home from now until election day, Guv. You have to stand on your own now. Princess Diana said, "I knew what my job was; it was to go out and meet the people and love them," but this isn't what you are up for! McCain already has a wife, but you are allowing the press to put you almost into a wife-like role. It is time to start speaking to reporters and answering the hard questions. We have the general election in just 7.5 weeks (4 November 2008.)

Sarah Palin's lack of military knowledge is something that I don't believe. Alaska lives next door to an unstable country, Russia, which has nuclear warheads. I've lived near military bases in the past (and watched TopGun!) and have heard about (but never confirmed) that the pilots of both countries push boundaries in each direction. You'd suspect it even if you'd not heard of it-- and what I heard was from other kids the way they tell ghost stories. Wouldn't the governor of Alaska need to have a "highly-unlikely-need-but-just-in-case-plan" if they invaded? Surely with Alaska depending on the military economically (they have two huge bases in Anchorage and when Congress has shut a few down, entire communities have been hurt bad) she understands their importance. When military bases close, Alaskans worry. When troops deploy, businesses in the areas close to the base get hit hard.

North Korea is one sortie away from us. THAT has scared me for a while, nothing like the Beloved Father wanting to take over our oil fields or thinking that the US would have a rough time defending us.

Alaska exports fish and barley to Asia. Does the governor know about this? Surely she must have had some experience in dealing with these nations, and this needs to be discussed and highlighted.

I really want to know what she knows about the Constitution and how she will bring us back to what the Founding fathers intended.

I hope that very soon Sarah quits speaking of family as her only speaking point. She certainly has a job lined up with James Dobson if the VP doesn't work out and she doesn't make a second term as governor. For now, I need to know other things, I'm sick of hearing what she has done and I want to know what she is going to do and how what she has done and what she knows will make her the natural choice for this. I don't want to hear about Obama from her or John McCain.

This is all I have for now. For further reading I highly suggest that you read What Do I Know and Progressive Alaska. Both of these guys are professors at UAA-- I think What do I Know is retired, and they are wise. They do lean very left, but you have to read the other point of view and consider what they are saying even if you don't agree with them. If you can't challenge your ideas, then you are not growing and you are intellectually dead.