Hello Muddah, hello Faddah, Here I am at Camp Granada

June is fast approaching. Yes, it’s only March, and you may disagree with me – but to me – it seems like June will be here much sooner than I’m prepared for.

For the first time ever, I’ve signed Rachel up to go to a (Jewish) sleep-away camp for two weeks. She’s going to have an absolutely fantabulous time, I know. The activities they’re going to do there are just amazing: Horseback riding, Archery, various sports: hiking, volleyball, softball, climbing. There’s all sorts of artistic activities too: music, drama, arts and crafts, photography.

And of course, there is an exposure to Judaism that I can’t fully give her here. She’ll be with other Jewish kids (although kids of other faiths are welcome to go to the camp – but my guess is that is somewhat rare). I’m hoping she will walk away from the camp with a deeper understanding of what it means to be Jewish – even though we don’t always follow all the “rules” here at home.

There’s an enormously long list of items I have to send her with. Many things I’ll have to buy (like a frame backpack – the kids hike and camp out in the woods one night). I have no idea how I’m going to fit all these things in her suitcase…

… and this begins the explanation of why June feels like an unstoppable train headed this way. As much as I know she’s going to have an incredible time. As much as she’s looking forward to it – she’s barely been away from home for an overnight. Granted she’s very independent, but still. I know she’s not worried… but I sure am. They have a policy of not letting the kids contact the parents unless there’s a serious problem because they feel that it makes things worse and they’re trained and used to dealing with any seperation issues…. but still…. Two weeks. And!… AND!… She has to fly to this camp on her own. Is this an isnanity test or what?!?

Everyone has been saying this camp is amazing. She’ll be fine. And really, I think I’m not so much worried about her… I think it’s me who will be freaking out the two weeks she’s away. Meanwhile, she will be too busy having the time of her life. She’ll come home happy as a clam, and I’ll be a nervous wreck. LOL!

Have you ever heard this song?

Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh
Here I am at Camp Granada
Camp is very entertaining
And they say we’ll have some fun if it stops raining!

I went hiking with Joyce Fivey,
He developed poison ivy.
You remember Lennard Skynard,
He got tomain poisoning last night after dinner!

All the counselors hate the waiters,
And the lake has alligators!
And the head coach wants no sissies,
So he reads to us from something called ‘Ulysses’.

No, I don’t want (this should scare ya),
But my bunkmate has malaria!
You remember Geoffrey Hardy,
They’re about to organize a searching party!

Take me home, oh mother, father.
Take me home, I hate Grenada.
Don’t leave me out in the forest,
Where I might get eaten by a bear!

Take me home, I promise that I will not make noise,
Or mess the house with other boys.
Oh please don’t make me stay;
I’ve been here one whole day!

Dearest father, darling mother,
How’s my precious little brother?
Let me come home if you miss me;
I would even let Aunt Bertha hug and kiss me!

Wait a minute; it stopped hailing.
Guys are swimming, guys are sailing.
Playing baseball; gee that’s better.
Mother, father, kindly disregard this letter!

Brand new day

“

These are not the words you want to hear, half-asleep, 5am in the morning. (Not that those words are ok anytime of the day) And thus began my day of balancing taking care of Zach while lugging my laptop around with me and trying to keep up with emails and whatever little projects I could get done. Fact of the matter was that he ended up being fine. I kept him home for the day, because I didn’t know what that was all about and wanted to keep an eye on him to be sure he was ok. But mostly he just wanted to play all day. Chalk it up to another day I’m thankful for my “work-at-home” life – even if I didn’t get that much work done today. heh.

Silence

Sometimes I want to come on here and apologize for being absent – but I have been purposefully silent. When this blog went public again, it was important for me to step back and not be as open as I had been. There are times that I really miss the ability to pour my soul out somewhere. But pouring your soul out doesn’t always fix things, sometimes it makes things worse. And with a password protected blog, sometimes it felt like it didn’t matter. If I stood in the woods and poured my soul out to the silence, did it really count? No. Kind of like the tree that never fell there too.

I don’t know what the solution is. Maybe that’s because the solution keeps changing on me.

We’re dealing with some family issues that I can’t get into great detail about on this blog. It’s been hammering away at my strength and has made me go from the very worst deep depression, to having hope again. I know I have to talk about it to deal with it, so I’ve been confiding in a few friends. It’s pretty ironic that as much like an outsider that I feel here, I seem to have more friends here than I have had anywhere else that we’ve lived. Talking has lessened the weight of this. But I still have to deal with it. And we’re weeks and weeks away from anything remotely resemebling a solution or help. IF we’ll even get it. I can deal with the problem providing I’m not told again there isn’t a problem. There is. But unless the help you need is going to walk a mile or ten in your shoes, it’s hard to get them to see it, I think.

I’ll just have to wait and see and hold onto that hope my friends gave me.

The post that wasn’t

Life is seriously kicking my butt right now. There was the pre-vacation work panic, the vacation “I refuse to turn on the computer except to play facebook games”, and now the post vacation work panic. There’s actually posts floating around in my head.

There’s a post about how I skied last week – Sometimes ok, sometimes not ok. Sam crashed into me once and I fell. And cried. I thought about quitting. Then I didn’t and I went back for more punishment on the slopes. Now I want to go back for another lesson now that I have in my mind what I need to improve on (aside from steering clear away from Sam when he skis!!) FYI – he’s a bit of a daredevil – skiing backwards, through woods, etc. My daughter too. Oy.

There’s a post about some cool iPhone apps. That one I will definitely be making.

There’s another post about some cool products I have – I even have a giveaway to uhm… give away. Yeah. Words aren’t working for me at the moment.

There’s a post about how work is great, I’m not even advertising, but still people are finding me. In fact I think I may have too much work on my plate. (Maybe I need to charge more?? Or will that scare too many people away? LOL)

There’s a post about how despite all the exercising and dieting I’m a bit discouraged with my appearance at the moment and am tentatively investigating… something. Surgery? Tummy tuck? Mini tummy tuck? Laser something? I don’t know. Between kids and weight loss, I have… skin. How do you loose skin? It’s not fun, and it’s not really all that fair. (I know, life isn’t fair. I’m nearly 40. Maybe I should give up my dreams of wearing a bikini. I never have – I guess I never will) The cost is kind of prohibitive from what I’ve been able to gather – and really ANY cost seems so vain. The whole thing is so vain. I have a voice in my head that yells at me for even thinking about spending money on something so selfish. The money should either go towards my kids education or retirement. Anyway… I’m still looking.

That’s all there’s time for now. More to come once I dig out…

What a difference a day makes

On Saturday I went back to give the skiing another shot. I figured, with my level of discomfort and fear of the whole thing I was probably better off getting a private lesson, just to get over that hump and feel more comfortable. That is exactly what I got.

Talk about being out of my comfort zone – I went up there by myself feeling totally scared. The last time I went it wasn’t the most fun. But at least I’d had a friend with me. This time I was totally on my own. At least I already knew the instructor (I had requested the one from the last lesson) and knew she was a lot of fun and very patient. But even she said that she had been surprised (but really happy) that I’d come back. After the last time, she would have expected me to throw in the towel and said to hell with it. But I didn’t feel the last time gave me a fair assessment of the sport. It had been snowing, my equipment sucked. Not a good way to start.

Despite it all, by the end of the lesson she had me turning back and forth down the hill to control my speed; we moved from the very very easy hill to a more steeper one. I was able to navigate around people in front of me. I actually only fell once the whole time – and even then I sort of did it on purpose because I wasn’t slowing down enough and I wanted to stop. After that, I was getting better at controlling my speed so I didn’t need to just bail like that to come to a stop. And the best part, I was really starting to have fun. When we went down the steeper hill, I really felt like I had gotten it. She was really happy with the amount of improvement I’d been able to do.

And now? I can’t wait to go back. I’ve been thinking about the whole experience all day – I’ll probably be on the mountain in my mind all week. Next weekend we’ll all go up. I’m going to do a group lesson (now at least, I feel like I won’t be holding anyone up), Rachel will do a lesson too. And we’ll try to sign Zach up for an afternoon lesson. Sam will probably just be on hand for Zach’s lesson since his and Rachel’s lesson would end an hour before mine does, as well, this will be the first time we put Zach on skis so we have no idea how he’ll react. My instructor said that probably one more (group) lesson and I should be good to do some green runs on my own outside of a lesson.

Aside from wanting to learn, I was really hoping that this would be something that we could do together as a family and it’s starting to look like we just might be able to do that. That it can be something that we all enjoy doing together.

I’m also still on a high because for years, I have had a pretty strong fear of skiing. I really didn’t know if it was something I was going to be able to do. I’m not exactly very athletically inclined. (Understatement of the year) I had always imagined myself getting on skis, not being able to control my speed and just hurdling down the mountain without breaks. So doing this; getting to the point of actually feeling comfortable on the skis; getting to the point of not being afraid – and in fact ENJOYING it. I feel like a faced and conquered a fear. It’s extremely empowering. I can’t wait to get back on the mountain again.