Empt(ier) nest

Tags

expectations, granddaughters, me-time, routines, St. John's River

Earlier this week as I checked to see if it was time  to pick Olivia up from school, it hit me:  When school starts in the fall she will go until 2:10, and this stay-at-home Grammy will have my entire morning free.  Every day, not just my Wednesday each month when I run away to Fresno for the day, but every Monday through Friday.  There will be a first grader and a fifth grader in our house, and my schedule will undergo a drastic change.

Now for many women this is commonplace, but it has never happened to me before.  As a mom with a job outside the home, I went back to work full-time when my daughter was five and a half weeks old.  She was in day care until she started school, and in after-school day care after that (I have shared before how my decision to continue working after her birth is one of my very few regrets in life).  So I didn’t experience this lengthening of my “free time” as she grew older.

I am kind of panicky about it.  How will life’s expectations of me change, now that I have the entire morning to myself?  More importantly, how will my own expectations of me change?  Will I rush to “over-schedule” those empty hours (I tend to do that), or will I simply enjoy the peace and quiet?  Will this be the time that I finally find a workable housekeeping routine (don’t hold your breath here)?  Or will I grant myself the flexibility and freedom to extend my reading-in-the-garden time, or set up a permanent creating space in my bedroom?

It was a beautifully cloudy morning for my walk along the St. John’s River Parkway today.

Right now I am enjoying my early morning walks by the river after dropping the girls off at school.  And I love that moment each day when I ask Olivia how her day went, and she answers with some variation on, “Awesome!”

I guess that time will simply come later each day.  To be continued in the fall…

 

 

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Gentle giants

Tags

drought, landscaping, progress, Redwood trees

Four of our neighborhood’s gentle giants came crashing down this weekend.  One — the Redwood at the end of our cul de sac — was mostly dead, thanks to our ongoing drought and neighbors who didn’t bother to water via hose.  I have watched it get more and more brown, then perk up a bit when the rains came this winter — too little, too late, I’m afraid.  It was one of two standing guard over our street, and the new owners of the adjacent property chopped it down yesterday.

One lonely Redwood by the stump of its neighbor

The other three were down around the corner, and as far as I could tell, were thriving.  I was stunned to drive past on the way to church this morning and see piles of trunks and branches chopped all willy-nilly, where yesterday beautiful trees had stood.  I will miss walking in their shade and smelling their rich, foresty fragrance.

Most of our neighbors’ homes were built 20-25 years ago, and landscaped at that time. Unfortunately, the builder planted trees with an eye for how they would look at the time the houses were sold, not what they would become in the future.  Many of the yards had Redwoods planted within a few feet of the roof lines, where they would soon damage the house if left unchecked.  My house had a total of five, two on one side and three on the other (we dug up the one closest to the garage and transplanted it to the back yard, where our dog ate it right down to the ground a few months later).

Now the neighborhood is overgrown, many homes are being sold, and their new owners are coming in and chopping down full-sized trees (not just the Redwoods, but many landscape trees) to “open up” their landscaping.

Somehow this doesn’t feel like progress to me.

 

Playing hooky

Tags

blogging, playing hooky, routine, skipping classs

For a daily blogger, skipping that first blog post is rather like playing hooky from a college class:  It is really hard to do, but eventually you give yourself permission.  You are on top of your coursework, you are horribly tired, it is gorgeous outside and you need to go to the park…anyway, you come up with a workable excuse, and skip class/blogging.

The next day is easier.  You have lost your momentum/you don’t know what the assignment was/and it is still gorgeous outside.  So you don’t go to class — again/don’t blog — again.  And if the class meets twice a week, you have lost an entire week.  How do you go back and face the prof after missing a whole week?  And as a blogger, you can’t even face the prof that is in your brain!

To carry the analogy even farther, unless you are very brave you can end up dropping the class (and that W on your transcript can become an F if it is too late in the semester.  Ask me how I know.).  If you are a blogger no longer blogging, you become restless because part of your routine is missing, but daily life has rushed into that space and threatens to claim it entirely.  And eventually you sit down to reclaim that missing space and realize that two months have passed.

That is where I found myself this morning.  Two full months have passed, and I have missed Trigger’s Horse and I have missed you, my readers.  I feel like I have let us all down — my classmates and my prof.  But I am back.  Please find room for me in your schedule.

Happy spring!