I told myself this was the year.
In an incredibly difficult decision that I prayed and agonized over for weeks, I sadly stepped down from co-coaching Superhero 2’s beloved Odyssey of the Mind team this year, both to prioritize the precious family members I’d abandoned while supervising important things like the painting of cardboard and the constructing and reconstructing of robotics birds in my garage and also to return to writing. [And also to return my retired soldier his garage after five years of Odyssey and co-op shenanigans that essentially shrank the space he claims in our home to a double row of Sterilites on a web-covered metal shelf. The man spent 20 years of his life dodging bullets; he needed a hiatus from dodging bins of brushes and pieces of poorly-sawed off pipe all over his garage floor. 😉]
With Friday spontaneous practices and Sunday long-term practices and holiday construction days and a million and one in-between trips to Good Will and the Dollar Tree off my plate, I was confident I’d have plenty of time to both frolic in fields with the littles and simultaneously dust off this dormant adult brain to formulate real words again — like the kind that don’t include puns.
Writing will indeed return to the land! I vowed as I packed up little lunchboxes and washed bookbags monogrammed with previous brother initials that we just told the youngest would build character, and I dropped little boys off for the only day this year their hair will appear to be anything but mop-esque.
All four superheroes have now been in school for three weeks.
I reduced my volunteer commitments by approximately 1 billion.
With all this supposed extra time, I blocked off two days per week on my calendar to formulate real thoughts and write real words and pretend to be a fully functional writing professional, even if operating in a strongly caffeinated state.
And what in three blessed weeks have I written?
Exactly my name.
On 500 releases, permission slips and emergency medical forms.
And zero other things.
Because #thefirstweekofschoolishard.
#andthesecond
#andfortheloveofallthingsholywhycantigetbackonthebike
The first week of school, I received a letter from one of Superhero 2’s new 8th grade teachers.
In the most beautiful gesture, this tender and kind-hearted woman asked the parents of not 5-year-old kindergartners but 13- and 14-YEAR-OLD hormone-ravaged teenagers to please write a letter or an essay about their child for her so that she could get to know these middle schoolers in all their pubescent glory.
Just God bless. I mean, to accurately depict who these ever-changing superheroes are at this stage, she might just need a letter from each parent written five different days of the week.
#teachersareheroes
Although my intention was to be the first on the sending-you-ALL-the-words-about-our-boy-who-has-all-the-words train, I quickly found myself buried in forms and figuring out all the new season carpools and getting all the kids to the activities they needed volunteers to help kick off and attending all the races, rehearsals, practices and performances that August Michelle had somehow forgotten about in all her May-worn magnificence. (Brain block is indeed a survival mechanism.)
Three weeks went by and I *still* hadn’t submitted a word.
“Mom, isn’t that thing due soon?” Superhero 2, the anti-procrastinator who finishes all possible weekly work on Mondays, asked me.
In a parental scam we writers sometimes use to cheat the system, I quickly turned to my reliable back-up: the blog. Surely I could plagiarize myself, slap a “Dear Teacher” on the top and make my deadline without reinventing the wheel.
Only when I scanned the blog (where I haven’t posted a thing for 11 months), I realized, except for the letter I wrote LAST October to Superhero 2 and all his 7th grade buddies explaining why in life, you just can’t do it all, there WAS no update to plagiarize.
Because this once motivated journalist/blogger has clearly been using her degree on lots of days in the last year.
So, friends, this is my kick in the batooty.
I’m now on deadline.
For a middle school teacher who neither pays me nor gives me grades but is somehow more motivating than the annoying woman who lives in my head who I just feed truffles and Bueno Bars to quiet up.
Which means I’ll surely be posting not just ONE but FOUR blog updates for the first time in a year (because Type A firstborns have to make things symmetrical, identical and fair).
It just may TAKE me a year to get them out. 😉