Twenty Ten

The end of a year, the end of a decade.  It was an eventful one.  In this ten years, I graduated from high school, college, and graduate school.  I got a driver’s license and later had my first car accident.  I got my first and second real jobs.  I fell in love, more than once.  I experienced the pain of loss at a magnitude I never imagined.  I had mono, and pneumonia, and probably swine flu.  I got married, bought a house, and adopted two dogs.  I became a social worker, then a clinical social worker.  I lived out my childhood dream and became a teacher.

In fact, many of those things happened in 2009 alone.

I could make a resolution now to eat healthier, exercise more, worry less, and be more patient, all things I should get better at.  But I’ve never really made or kept any sort of resolution, except those made on a whim.  I don’t know if I will ever experience 10 years with so much change ever again, but some change will come.  I hope to find a job I really love and will probably at least attempt to have some kids.  I wonder if I’ll ever get a PhD or if I’ll find some whole new goal in life.  At the end of the next decade, my nephew will be 10 years old and I will be 10 years older.  I will probably lose a few grandparents and most likely will say goodbye to my precious Bella.  The next 10 years will, without a doubt, include a few unexpected surprises, some happy, some sad.

I long for the future to come so I can see what happens next.  And yet, I wish I could freeze time and live life just as it is now because, sometimes, it feels so perfect.

Merry Christmas

Better late than never…

Last week, John and I went on a self-conducted tour of local houses decorated by crazy people with too much time and money on their hands.  Regardless, we appreciated the craziness.

Lights to music.

Two houses, too many lights.

Excuse the blur.

This one was pretty awesome.

Just no way to capture the insanity...

This one deserves a second photo.

I hope you have enjoyed the sparkling Christmas vomit as much as we did.
Wishing you a very Merry Christmas, the happiest of holidays, and a safe and happy New Year.

Today I got yelled at…

I really couldn’t think if a more fitting title.  Today was horrible.  And not really because I got yelled at.  I get yelled at all the time – it is part of my job, to sit on the phone as somebody yells at me and blames me for things I have no control over and then I validate them and pretend I have no feelings of my own.

But today, I was not as tough as I would like to be.  I was forced to defend and defend against irrational statements, ridiculous beliefs, and I eventually cried.  I cried at work and people saw me.  That is just one of the worst things ever.  And yet, I know that I cried because I care, I care that one of my kids will spend his Christmas in the cold walls of a residential because nobody at DYFS would arrange transportation for him and his father doesn’t care enough to come get him.  I care that certain kids are not getting the best treatment we could give them because their parents can’t see through their games or their own personal issues.  I care that one of my kids would rather spend Christmas in residential than with his aunt because all he really wants is to be with his mom who clearly has no desire to do the few simple things she must do to take him home, ever.  So, I guess it’s justified that I cried at work today, but I went home feeling like a failure because I couldn’t take the heat.

This sort of stuff is everyday for me.  I suppose that’s why CNN rates social worker as the #1 stressful job that pays badly.  I suppose that’s why I sometimes fantasize about a career change, maybe housekeeping or book store clerk.  But I suppose even maids and clerks have bad days too.  We all have days where some little ball of stress in our personal life just can’t be squashed down and hidden away anymore.  We have days where we just wish the person on the other end of the phone realized that we’re human too, we have feelings, and we aren’t the enemy.

So, I had a bad day.  Then I went to Quick Check and finally filled my tires to a reasonable cold-weather air pressure and vacuumed the dirt in my car that has been there for a couple of months.  I felt accomplished, at least a little, when I pulled out of the gas station into the traffic.  And then I looked down and saw my gas light on.  I guess some days were just meant to be bad.

I totally get it, Alexander.

What’s a Wheeler?

Our little piece of insanity.  Our toy-chewing machine.  Our failure of a seeing-eye dog.  Our goofy, garbage eater.

And then it was home…

Finding Home

Throughout my life, I’ve lived in various places across the state of New Jersey.  Surprisingly, never outside of the state- even with going to graduate school in another state and the majority of my family living out of state.  Against all odds, even the strangest places become home with the right amount of time and the correct mix of people.  A drafty apartment sandwiched (pun intended) between a Hungarian Deli and an apartment full of partying, drug addicts.  A corner room off of a dirty kitchen within earshot of a bar…and with no heat.  A summer cottage on the side of a hill with a lake view.  And now, big house in the woods, but not too far in the woods that we can’t see the busy road and the steady bustle of school children.

After about a year of searching, John and I have found our “home.”  It is, quite possibly, the home we will raise our children in and the home we will grow old in.  It’s hard to imagine that sort of finality when my life has been so full of constant change up until this point.

And yet, it took a few weeks of living here before I really missed it when we were away.  And it has taken even longer to get it to feel like a “home” and not an empty, echo-y warehouse for boxes.  It will be even longer before it is truly filled with “us.”

And, in many ways, I’m not quite sure what this house, this property, and I will mean to each other.  In some ways, it is so typically American, a 4-bedroom ranch with a big back yard in a good school district.  I feel less connected to it than I did to our cabin.  And yet, I am ashamed to admit, that I love being able to get to a major store in under 5 minutes.  And hidden within the stereotypical “American Dream”, we have found a plethora of new restaurants to try, a nearby set of abandoned railroad tracks to walk our dogs on, and the beauty of the changing seasons seen for the first time in a home that is truly ours, and ours alone (along with Wells Fargo).

Not Forgotten

I have not forgotten you.  Life has just gotten a little crazy.  But I will be back soon!

On Wine and Babies

You might wonder what wine and babies have in common.  Really, not much.  But I did attend my cousin’s baby shower at a winery on Saturday.  It was a lovely setting with surpisingly beautiful weather.

More to follow on the finger lakes wine region, cousins’ winery, and why I’ve been so neglectful.

Patience will pay off in the end!

Garden Diary – Update

Somebody has taken an interest in my garden diary, so it’s time I admit that I am long overdue for an update.  This summer’s oddly mild and rainy weather has prompted a change in my garden.  In the past, I was often guilty of under-watering my plants, leading to some crispy, brown leaves.  But I am now learning that rain leads to dead plants, mushrooms, and slugs, among other mysterious changes.  It’s a whole new garden.  I discovered the slugs when I started noticing entire leaves being eaten away in one particular garden.  I was instructed by a master gardener to put beer in a bowl and the slugs would be drawn to it.  This is true and slugs are gross.  But I think I caught a few.  I’ll keep working on it.

My potted zinnias are blooming, but weakly.  As I have neglected my blog, I have also neglected my garden.  I weeded last weekend and this has helped motivate me to finish this summer out right.

Here are a few shots of what’s left after a summer of partial neglect, too much rain, and a lot of slugs.

These last for a long time!

Garden having a drink.

Zinnia? Tiny little thing.

Vinca with more rain on it.

Daylily

That's one hungry slug.

Mums already

Dahlia with slug damage. So sad!

Recession

We’d be hard pressed to find a person in this country who has not had some experience with foreclosure, unemployment, or other economic difficulties.  For me, I’ve seen most of it repeatedly.  At the time of our wedding, my father-in-law was unemployed after being laid off.  Then, this Spring, my mother was laid off after working for her company for ten years.  We’ve looked at numerous foreclosed homes, realizing that our dream is somebody else’s nightmare.  Although, we personally have been lucky to have secure jobs, the economy remains in a state of crisis all around us.

For my mother, this has been a true challenge.  She was raised in a time when a high school education was an accomplishment.  Each of my parents came from blue collar families, their own parents never having completed high school.  In fact, most of my grandparents did not even go to high school at all.  Two generations later, jobs appear to be reserved for the college educated.  In many ways, this is a testament to the advancement of our society, a great value placed on education.  But it also devalues our older generation as less worthy because college wasn’t for blue collar families in the 1970’s and earlier. 

Although a new grandson is helpful, my mother is hurting.  Work gives her life a sense of purpose, as it does for all of us.  She has worked at low-wage jobs most of her life, having to prove herself among more educated individuals.  And she made a great living, committing 10 years to a company where she went from administrative work to accounting work.  Now, she is being interviewed for positions by individuals that are younger than her own children.  She is being offered unlivable low wages with no health benefits.   At a time when my mother should be looking forward to a retirement, she is, instead, looking for a job that doesn’t seem to exist.

Neglect

Due to my sad neglect and serious lack of writing 100 words per day, I will now take this time to make a sweeping update on my life.   Please imagine that speedy scene in Amelie, if you will, where images flash as the narrator speaks quickly.  It’s been a blur:

I was hired as an adjunct professor.  John now does his own laundry.  It’s an experiment or maybe an identity crisis for me.  We’ll see.  I have decided to embrace the cabin.  I cleaned and nursed Bella back to health after her snake bite.  I filed 3 years worth of paper work.  My attic is bursting at the seems.  We have offered on and lost our 12th house.  John is depressed.  Bella turned black and blue.

Bella got better.

My sister had a baby.  He’s perfect.

She named him after my father.  I still can’t call him by his name.  For now, I call him “Buddy” which is what I call all baby boys.  It’s also the name of my sister’s dog.  Nothing new in the garden except weeds.  I still haven’t planned for my class.  I’m preparing for my fourth winter.

Well, I think that’s it.