This past spring, I posted about our forlorn backyard. The space was characterized by packed dirt and scattered scrap metal. It was well into spring, I thought. I was sure that was as good as it got.
At the end of my last post about our Cayman Islands trip, we’d just been left hanging by our in-country contact and had almost two hours to burn until we’d be able to do the cave tour we had planned for the morning. I was feeling hopeful that we’d find something interesting to do while we waited.
Sure enough, right down the road was the entrance to Mastic Trail.
Trying to find a socially acceptable way to discharge negative emotions has been a lifelong quest for me.
As a high schooler, after watching the 1989 movie Dead Poets Society, I would regularly yawp out in nature when things got to be too much.
Since then, I’ve discovered swimming, live music, and waterfalls. All of those things are weather- and location-dependent, or “subject to availability.”
Sometimes I can let it all out in a meditation. I can’t plan an outcome for a meditation and expect success. That isn’t how it works for me. Often, when I’m at my most stressed, I’m also at my lowest functioning, and it’s really hard to be clear-headed about my options for de-escalation.
Have you been there?
Something magical happened today. I slept in. When I got up, the Chaplain left with the five middle kids for the strawberry fields. Our oldest was already at school taking a test, and I was left with the baby.
The baby and I read a story over and over (Tickle, Tickle, by Helen Oxenbury), then he described the pictures to me. (He pointed to one baby’s butt and said the longest string of intelligible words I’ve ever heard from him: “Poop diaper yuck sorry.”) After storytime, he played happily by himself and stayed out of trouble so I could sew.
When the truck pulled in later in the morning and everyone poured out of it, arms full of clementine boxes brimming with strawberries, I wasn’t sure if I was ready to set aside my sewing to start jam.
It turns out I didn’t have to.
We fall asleep reading the classics at our house. Why this matters may make more sense if you keep reading.
I’m in a little tussle with my school district right now.
The way it stands, I provided the same end-of-year information in 2018 to my school district as I did the year before, and this time, they said it wasn’t enough.
