Author Archives: midlifenatalie

My youngest daughter, AG, is having a hard time with…well…pretty much life in general.  She has always been an anxious type of person, and the closer she gets to her teenage years the worse things seem to be getting.  Several months ago I took her to a counselor to see if we could figure out what to do with her and for her.  The counselor was an older lady approved by our insurance.  We didn’t know anyone who had gone to her, but from the things I had read she was good.  I knew from almost the moment we met her that she wasn’t going to work out.  She was older, and she acted older.  That would be a problem.  She seemed easily distracted, and by the end of the first session she was reversing my child’s name.  Despite my concerns we made a 2nd appointment.  We showed up for the 2nd appointment, but she never did.  She never called, and we never went back.

This year AG started junior high.  Excited doesn’t even begin to express how she felt about it.  It was all she could talk about.  Changing classes, lockers, and the general freedom she would have was all I heard about for weeks.  School started and by day 3 AG hated school for several reasons.

Reason 1 – They were given 5 minutes between classes, and were allowed to go to their lockers at the beginning of the day, before 4th period, and before 8th period.  Even during locker times they were only given 5 minutes which according to AG wasn’t enough time to get to her locker and make it to class on time.  AG decided that since she didn’t have enough time she would just carry all her stuff with her the whole day.  They aren’t allowed to carry backpacks so we bought her a huge binder that zipped shut to help.  Poor child carried her lunch to all her classes as well.

Reason 2 – AG didn’t have any friends in any of her classes.  I found this hard to believe.  I knew that several elementary schools filtered into the junior high, but on 6th grade orientation night she saw several people she knew in her classes.  Apparently just knowing them doesn’t make them her friends.  Lunch was assigned seats for 6th grade, and AG sat between 2 boys.  One spit when he talked, and the other kept touching her food despite her asking him not to.  After much encouragement she finally told the teacher about the kid touching her food, and he was moved.  I encouraged her to talk to the other kids and make friends.  She said she didn’t know how to make friends and wasn’t good at it.  I thought about it and realized that she hadn’t really ever had to make friends before.  She did when we first moved to the states, but in 2 years she had only made one really good friend and a couple of kind-of friends.  Living in Turkey her friends were automatic.  For work purposes we teamed up with other Americans, and they had kids her age.  Automatic friends.  They went to her school and her church.  The community was small and the friends were like family.

(I’m hitting publish and calling this part one.  I wrote it a week ago and haven’t had time to get back to it.  I plan to try to write part 2 today, but it seems that I rarely have time for writing these days so it may be a few days before I can finish my thoughts.)

The other day my apartment maintenance people came to fix the squeak in my dryer.  It was getting on my nerves and starting to be a fire concern.  Anytime I took clothes out of the dryer the side of the drum hit the back of the dryer, and it would spark.  I couldn’t help but wonder if it was sparking every time it rubbed during the drying cycle.  So I called to report it.  About a week later a note was left on my door saying that the dryer had been repaired.  Upon closer inspection I saw that the person who took my maintenance request stated on the work order that the dryer wasn’t drying.  I never said that.  Maintenance supposedly replaced the heating element and fixed the dryer hose, neither of which seemed to be a problem in my opinion.  Now the dryer is quiet, but it isn’t drying the clothes.  Ugh!  I’ve called back to report the new problem, but I’m not sure when they’ll be here to fix it.  In the meantime I’ve purchased a drying rack for my clothes.  I had been thinking about getting one anyway so it wasn’t a huge deal to me.

This is what I went looking for.

This was our drying rack in Turkey.  Most people there don’t have a dryer so these are everywhere.  Evidently that’s not the case in America.  Now I only shopped at Walmart, but they usually have a little of everything it seems.  I could only find 2 versions of something similar to this.Source

I purchased the large one for $20 and set it up in my living room.  It is definitely smaller and saves space, but the clothes are all hanging on top of each other.  It doesn’t seem to be the best option for hanging a dryer full of clothes.  I looked online to see if I could find a store that sold anything similar to what I used in Turkey.

Apparently you can buy one of these from Wayfair online.  It looks very much like what I had in Turkey, but the problem…they are over $70!  I can’t remember how much they cost in Turkey, but I can guarantee it wasn’t anywhere close to that price!  I would venture to say they are less than half that price over there.  No way am I willing to fork over that much for a drying rack.

I thought I would check out Ikea since they are a foreign company!

They had a similar version to the Turkey one.  It was a few inches smaller overall and doesn’t appear to be quite as sturdy from the pictures, but it definitely has a better price.  $19.99.

I guess I’ll just stick with what I got.  I don’t plan to have to use the drying rack to dry all the clothes all the time.  I just thought it was interesting how different things are here.

As silly as a story about a drying rack seems it makes me realize that somedays I still miss that place that I called home for 7 years.  I guess I always will.  It defined me in a way that can’t be ignored.

I’m exhausted.  All the time.  I go back and forth between home and school, between sixteen 5 year olds and four kids of my own.  The tiny bit of kid-free time I have is reserved for Fleur de lis.  Poor girl gets a tired, exhausted me a few hours a week.  Most of the time we make the best of it, but sometimes we don’t connect well.  I know it’s normal to have moody days every once in a while, but I don’t enjoy either of us being moody on a day when we get to spend time together.  I feel like the days are wasted somehow.

I wrote that last paragraph a few days ago.  I didn’t publish it then because I was too tired to finish what I was writing.  Today I don’t feel like writing it anymore so I’m hitting publish on this one and starting something new.

Living overseas afforded me many opportunities to explain who I was and why I was there.  Most people were friendly enough, but we did run across a few who were quite suspicious of us.  They didn’t understand why we would choose to leave the USA and our families and live in a poor, Muslim country.  We couldn’t explain all of our reasons why.  If we had been completely forthcoming in our explanations we would have probably been asked to leave the country.  We weren’t doing anything wrong, but we learned over the years to tell only part of our story.  We called it being economical with the truth.  That skill served me well over the years.

There are several stray cats that roam my apartment complex.  I, along with several other apartments, put out food on occasion to feed them.  Recently there was a pregnant mama cat who was a regular visitor.  When she disappeared for a few days I wondered if she was having her babies.  When a skinny mama cat showed up looking for a meal I knew there were babies somewhere nearby.  My youngest child was obsessed with finding the newborn kittens.  She looked around finally determining that the only place they could be hidden was behind a mattress on the porch of the apartment next door.  After several days tiny mews could be heard from that porch.  She was right.  The sweet Asian man who lived there let us go peek behind the mattress to see the kittens.  There were 5 of them, and they were so tiny.  She was thrilled that there would be kittens to play with soon.

Two weeks after the kittens were born we looked on the porch and noticed the mattress was gone and so were the kittens.  Since the sweet Asian man doesn’t speak any English I couldn’t ask him about it.  My child looked for those kittens and couldn’t find them anywhere.  She wished the mama cat had moved them to my porch.  I let her put a box with a towel in it on the porch knowing that the mama cat had just moved them so she probably wouldn’t be moving them again.  Several days went by and no kittens.  I rarely saw the mama cat.  One Wednesday evening we got home late and mama cat ran out to meet us.  She was hungry.  My child fed her and peaked behind the box on the corner of my porch.  She squealed in delight when she discovered that the kittens had been moved to our porch.

The next morning she ran out to see the kittens.  We left for school, but as soon as we got home that afternoon we looked at kittens.  Later that evening I realized that I hadn’t seen mama cat since the night before.  I figured she must have fed them and be off roaming the complex.  I woke up several times in the middle of the night to check if she had come back.  No mama.  The next morning the kittens were crying.  I was pretty sure they were hungry, and I hoped mama cat would come back while I was away.  That afternoon there was a steady vigil at the window as we waited for the mama cat.  That night I got up 3 times to check for mama.  I was starting to worry.  We had been careful not to bother the kittens, and the mama cat had always been so friendly.  She let us pick her up and loved for us to pet her.  I couldn’t imagine that we had spooked her.

By Saturday morning I knew I had to do something.  It had been 60 hours since we had last seen the mama cat.  The kittens were mostly sleeping with only a little bit of crying now and then.  My daughter begged me to keep them and feed them myself.  She cried and thought I was being a terrible person because I wanted to get rid of them.  I explained that I was trying to do what was best for the kittens.  I finally had to take her to her dad’s so I could take care of them.  I called several pet rescue places only to be told that they didn’t have room.  Most places I called only had  automated messages explaining their services.  I talked to one lady who acted like I was a terrible person, because I wasn’t willing to foster them myself.  I explained that I taught school and was gone for 10 hours or so a day.  I didn’t have time to bottle feed five 3 weeks old kittens.  I called the SPCA and discovered that they only took animals by appointment.  Their next appointment was the following Friday.  I wanted to cry.  Nobody was willing to help me.  I knew that if I didn’t take them somewhere I would eventually come home to dead kittens on my porch.  Letting them starve to death was something I couldn’t do.  I finally decided to pack them up and drive to as many shelters and rescue centers as necessary until someone took them.

I pulled into a shelter about 30 minutes from my house.  I walked in to the admissions waiting room and saw dogs and cats and owners.  My box of kittens mewed loudly at being disturbed with the noise.  When it was finally my turn the admissions lady took one look at my kittens and said that they would take them, but they weren’t of adoptable age.  I knew what she was telling me.  They were going to be euthanized.  I just nodded as tears fell down my cheeks.  I knew it was the best thing, but I hated that I had to do it.  I hated that I had allowed a box to be put on my porch.  I hated that the mama cat had brought us kittens and then disappeared.  I hated that I knew I couldn’t tell my daughter the whole truth when she asked me about it later.  I told her that the shelter would make sure they were taken care of.  I told her that we couldn’t visit them, because it was too far away.  I told her that one day we would get a cat, but no that they couldn’t save us one of those kittens because they had so many animals coming through that they needed to get rid of the old ones as soon as they could in order to make room for the new ones.  I tried to just be economical with the truth, but it sure felt like lying.

It’s been a week since I made the trip to the shelter.  Mama cat still hasn’t ever come back.  I’m sure something happened to her to keep her away.  As much as I hate that part of me is glad she is gone.  I would have felt horrible if she had shown up on my porch looking for her babies.

Guess what…school started.  That means way less time for blogging and blog reading and relaxing in general.  I do have a couple of posts in the works that I plan to finish this week.

The first week of school went surprisingly well.  This new crop of kindergartners is already so much easier than last year’s bunch.  One of the first grade teachers commented that she had an autistic kid and a discipline problem at each of her tables.  I know.  I’ve been there!

So now that week one is over and my busy weekend has drawn to a close as well I don’t have time to blog.  I did find time this week to lose my voice and get a slight cold.  It happened every year before so I guess this time around shouldn’t be any different.  Thankfully next weekend is a long one so maybe I’ll have time to get well then.

When I lived overseas I heard quite a few of the missionaries from other organizations use curse words.  Not a lot and never in reference to someone else, but enough to make me wonder about it.  I was talking to a good christian friend about it once and she told me…

I don’t happen to think cursing is a sin.  What difference does it make to God if we say darn or damn?  Now he might get offended if we use his name in vain.

I thought a lot about those words.  They were freeing.  I never cursed nor did I feel the need to start peppering my speech with those words, but I felt the weight of judgement leave me.  Before, anytime I heard anyone say anything I deemed inappropriate a wall went up, and I automatically judged them.  It wasn’t a conscious thing.  It just happened.  Immediately I thought…oh, they must not be a Christian/have morals, or…too bad, they must have come from a dysfunctional family, or…what a shame, they probably aren’t the best parent.  I didn’t bother to watch and see if any of those things were true.  The words were enough to make it true.

On my other blog my audience started out quite narrow.  Family and friends from church.  Later friends I’d met and co-laborers were added to my audience.  It never would have occurred to me to use any sort of foul language due to my audience.  I knew their sensibilities.  I knew some of them might be offended.  Even as my audience grew to include people I didn’t know, people who said all kinds of things on their blogs, and a host of others I still never used curse words due to the fact that the original audience was still reading.

Now, on this blog, things have been slightly different.  I’ve used a few forbidden words here and there.  Not much, but enough that I’m sure it’s been noticed by the few people from the old blog who’ve been invited to read here.  And to them I offer this.  In my daily life I will on occasion say hell or damn or ass.  That’s pretty much it.  I will not use those words in front of those people who I know will be offended.  I don’t need to make a statement.

Furthermore, when I hear curse words used by those around me I don’t judge them.  I don’t let that be a barrier to friendship.  I don’t put up walls based on words.  I let actions speak louder.

I had planned to write a post this past week, but I was so swamped with school stuff and kid stuff that there was literally no time for anything else.

I owe my parents big time for all the help they provided over the last week.  My dad took my daughter to an appointment with an oral surgeon on Wednesday where it was decided that her wisdom teeth needed to come out the next day.  I had mandatory meetings at school and then Meet the Teacher night that night so dad took her back for the actual surgery.  She threw up in his car on the way home so he got to deal with that as well.  He went to the grocery store to make sure she had things she could eat, and he went to the pharmacy 3 times to get her medicine.  Because I was busy the whole week I had already planned for my kids to spend the day with my parents on Friday.  My dad ended up taking another one of my kids to the doctor that day after it was determined the fever he’d had for a couple of days might be due to strep.

Between all that’s been going on I’ve worn myself out.  I got sleepy this afternoon and literally passed out for about 15 minutes.  I was talked to, and I didn’t even move.  That’s totally not like me.  And now, since it’s 10pm I’m going to head to bed.  I can barely keep my eyes open.  Hopefully I can rest up some for Monday.  There are at least 16 kindergartners who are counting on me to be at my best bright and early Monday morning!  Night.

The past couple of days have been blah.  And now I’m gonna blog about it which won’t make me feel better at all.

Yesterday we had a party for my youngest.  She’s stubborn and hard and fussy.  She has never been an easy-going child, but we love her anyway.  Someday her strong-willed personality will serve her well I’m sure.  But yesterday was not one of those days.  She wanted a bounce house for her birthday.  She didn’t want to invite anyone except her best friend.  I made her invite all her cousins for a couple of hours just so that it was more party like.  She had fun and seemed to be glad they were there.  Until she wasn’t.  She cried because the little kids were following her everywhere.  She cried because she didn’t get any alone time with her best friend.  I could understand her being upset if those things were true, but they aren’t.  She did have cousins around for more than a couple of hours, but she had time to play in the bounce house before they arrived and for a short while after they left.  Ross, my wasband, finally asked me to take her to my place.  He had had it.  He said that she had no room in her life for others and that she was the most selfish person he had ever seen next to…  He didn’t finish his statement.  I asked if he was going to say me, and he just chuckled.  I wanted to cry.  I did get a little teary.  I know he thinks that I made a selfish decision, but I am not a selfish person.  I had been in a good mood, enjoying hanging out with the family, and I hated that he ruined it.  I went to bed feeling blah.

I got in my car this morning and started her up.  There was an awful metallic sound then the car stalled.  I waited a minute and started the car again.  Sound not quite as bad but still there so I turned the car off.  I decided to do a little inspecting under the hood.  Now I know absolutely nothing about cars, but I figured I could at least look to see if I could spot the problem.  At first glance nothing seemed to be amiss.  Then I saw what looked like the handle of a tool on top of the battery.  There was a metal wire attached to it.  It didn’t look like it belonged there so I picked it up. And out came this.

Except it looked more like this one.

I’m guessing it was left in my car by the last guy who worked on it.  I’m just thankful that it didn’t break anything.

After I determined that my car was ok to drive I went to Office Depot.  I purchased a few things and attempted to pay for them with a Visa gift card that my parents gave me for my birthday last week.  I had already spent $48 of the $100 gift card.  I knew this because I wrapped the receipt around it as a reminder about how much was left on the card.  For some strange reason the card was declined.  When I got to my car I called to check my balance and it was $0.  I’m not sure if someone stole the card number or what, but it made me sad.

Tomorrow begins the first full week back at school.  A full day of meetings and then maybe an hour of working in my classroom.

And because I’m feeling all blah I’m going to bed.

For a better read and a lighter subject here’s a conversation that happened in our house.

Jacob: Mom, what are we having for breakfast.

Me: How about cereal? Have you ever had that before?

Jacob: No, what is it?

Me: Let me show you.

At this point I proceeded to open the cabinet where the cereal is kept and tell him about the different kinds of cereal to be had. I walked away as he got his bowl and spoon and began pouring himself a bowl of cereal. A few minutes later this is how the conversation ended.

Me: Jacob, what are you doing? (asked because he was carrying his bowl of cereal into the living room)

Jacob: Trying that stuff you called cereal. (said in somewhat of an exasperated tone)

I laughed and let him eat in the living room…at the table of course!

I was born in New Orleans.  I lived in or near the area until I was 10, but my memories of my time there have faded over the years.  When Fleur de lis and I took our trip to New Orleans one of the things I wanted to do was visit the house I lived in between the ages of 3 and 8.

Time and quite possibly years of neglect from her owners had not been good to her.  The bushes were so overgrown the front door and windows were barely visible.  The driveway also seems to have suffered the same fate.

We drove around the block where I scanned the houses for the one thing that stood out in my memory.

The catwalk.  I have vivid memories of walking down this sidewalk between the houses in the middle of the block to visit a friend on the next street over.  At the time I had no idea that most neighborhoods didn’t have these built-in shortcuts.  Having the catwalk made an impression on me, but only when I moved away and didn’t have it anymore.  Strange that.

We also drove around the corner to another place I walked to on a regular basis.

My elementary school.  Despite the building being the same nothing about the place looked familiar really.  Only the name and it’s location.  I spent the better part of 3 years there, and I don’t really remember what it looked like.

After visiting the places I called home those many years ago we crossed the river to visit Fleur de lis’ memories of the Upper Ninth Ward.  Years ago Fleur de lis had family who lived in the shotgun houses that dotted the landscape there.  They were her home away from home.  I was so excited to see the houses and the streets that were the setting for the story of her youth.  While the Upper Ninth had changed quite a bit since her relatives moved away the houses were still there.  I saw the stoop where she sat and waited for the Roman Candy man.  I saw the corner store and heard tales of trips down the street.

Later we drove to the town she had lived in to see more houses and schools that were part of her past.  I heard about college days and grocery stores and TV shows that filmed there once upon a time.  And finally, with tears in my eyes, I met her parents in a cemetery in that same town.

I loved being there in those places and connecting like that.  I had no idea how important this trip would be to me.  It was something I didn’t even realize I needed.  And I came home full and deeply satisfied.

Ok…I just imported my old blog to this blog. Now there are hundreds of posts here. I’m going to work on culling them down over the next few days/weeks/months. I honestly have no idea how long that will take me. In the meantime enjoy a blast from my past.