The Boy Who Stood Alone

The recess bell rang and that was my cue to pack up my little daycare family and head for home.

We took a few minutes to shake the sand out of our shoes first, so recess was in full swing by the time we made our way across the tarmac and out of the school ground.

I noticed a boy leaning against a brick wall in an alcove, out of sight from the rest. The moment I noticed him, I thought of the days my second son attended that same school. He got picked on a lot in those days. When I asked him where the teachers were, he said this happened out of their line of sight.

I saw "my son" standing there when I noticed this boy and I was on high alert to be aware of anyone who may be lurking and just waiting for an opportunity to pick on this boy without being noticed.

No one else was around. This secluded area seemed to be the place this boy went to "endure" recess.

He had a look about him that shouted to me "I feel different", "I don't fit in here". Recess looked very uncomfortable on him.

After we passed him, I kept looking back and checking on him. Was he okay? Did anyone else notice him? Was there anything I should have done?

I was walking with a stroller full of joy. I watch people of all ages and sizes light up like a Christmas tree when my little group of children beckon and wave and say hello. I could have tried to walk a little closer to see if my little people could spread some of their "happy".

I felt like an interloper as we exited the school ground. Adults and children are very wise to be cautious of people who hang around playgrounds. I don't think I looked like a threat to anyone as I made my way home with my three little ones who had just finished playing at the playground. But I still didn't feel it was right to approach this young boy.

I wondered as I walked home. How would my children have handled finding a student who had voluntarily segregated himself from the crowd?

One of the blog authors I read is the mother of two autistic children and one of her biggest concerns is exactly what I saw. "How will they be treated by others in the big, scary world out there?"

Glennon Doyle, from Momastery publishes a letter she wrote to her son at the beginning of each school year "The One Letter to Read Before Sending Your Child to School"

I am grateful for eyes that have been opened enough to see what was invisible to me before. As I looked up the "One Letter to Read..." and started to reread it, suddenly I "knew" what to do.

I printed off the letter and I will stop by at the school today and tell them this little story of what I saw at recess yesterday. I will give them a copy of Glennon's letter and hope that it falls in good hands.

I know the schools are doing all they can, with the limited resources they have. The one resource they do have is their student body. One student can make all the difference in the world to one scared and lonely child.

If schools taught nothing more than compassion for those we do not understand, our world could become just a little bit of a better place.

It is Time to Do Something!

"I have a growing list of things-undone, decisions-unmade and commitments I don’t have the energy to commit to, going on in my head at the moment so I don’t feel like very good company and will keep this brief."

This paragraph was taken from an email I sent out at the end of "quiet time", during my daycare day yesterday.

I started the same day needing to speak to another adult. I sent out an SOS to my friend who also runs a daycare from her home: "Craving adult conversation today. I think I've been too quiet lately..."

We talked and she told me what I needed to do.

"Make a decision." "Get rid of the pile of dirt that is sitting in your back yard." And so on and so forth.

Yes, I woke up in the middle of the night and slept fitfully for the remaining hours before my alarm went off because of a pile of dirt.

I have things that need to get should be done before winter decides to pop in one day and stay. Tidy up the garage, get rid of the excess dirt from digging out a window well for our new basement window. Turn off the sprinklers.

I have paperwork to finish off and deliver for my mom. I have columns due. I want to write up a newsletter for my daycare families.

Why can't I pick up a paint brush any more? Why don't I get rid of the box of donations I have collected? Why can't I wipe down the outside of the kitchen cupboards? Or clean a window? Why is doing laundry so hard?

I can't decide what to do about so many pesky little things. Making a decision about any little thing has blown into epic proportions.

I crave solitude but I need people. I need to talk but I have nothing to say. I need to leave the house but I want to stay alone.

My brain is conflicted over every little thing lately. Deciding what is for lunch has become one of the hardest parts of my day. If one of my daycare family disrupts "quiet time", I feel like my world is going to collapse all around me.

I have started today with an empty clothes hamper and a nearly empty dishwasher. I have pulled out phone numbers so I can arrange to get my hair cut and have someone come to blow out our back yard sprinklers. I have picked out four columns to polish up and submit. Mom's paperwork is sitting on a table in the kitchen.

Today is the day I do something.

Doing nothing weighs heavy on my mind. I can't carry the weight any more so I have to dump some of the weight.

I hate fall. The shorter days are messing with my mind. I'm not sure what to do except I know I must do something.

Today is the day I recoup from "Sunday".

I took another Cat Day and wasted all of the daylight hours catching up on watching TV programs I had "PVR'd" (because our hard drive on the PVR had bad sectors and I was going to lose everything I had taped).

It was a tough job but "someone" had to do it. I can't afford to do nothing when there is so much to do.

It is payback time. Time to get up the couch, stay awake and literally "move some dirt" so I can shift my focus from "what I have to do" to "what I have done".

It is time to do something.

And the Beat Goes On

"The drums keeps poundin' rhythm to the brain. La-de-da-de-de, la-de-da-de-dah ..."

And so another weekend begins.

Two hard things behind me (groceries are bought and dancing is done) ...

One more to go (one short, eight hour work day out-of-my-home)  ...

And then my weekend shall begin.

La-de-da-de-de, la-de-da-de-dah ...

[And yes, the Sonny and Cher song "The Beat Goes On" is now on repeat in my head - here it is, have a listen and share the beat of the rhythm with me as you dance through your Saturday]

"Yes" Seems to be the Hardest Word

I am struggling with an almost debilitating commitment issue these days. If someone told me I would never have to leave the house again, I may be the happiest person alive.

I quite literally shut down after my daycare doors close for the day. My blinds are drawn, the doors are locked and I done.

My definition of perfect evening is a day when the cat litter has already been cleaned and a quick, self serve supper is all that is on my agenda. To be in my pj's by 6:00 p.m. is a dream come true.

I don't form coherent sentences after 7:00 p.m. without an additional caffeine boost. Yes, I can accept spur of the moment "Do you want to meet for coffee?" dates. These are best issued in the form of "Do you want to meet in fifteen minutes?" This same date booked a day in advance creates no end of angst in my disturbed little mind.

The onerous job of buying groceries takes everything I have leftover at the end of a day. This job cannot be combined with cooking supper or having a shower or a coffee date.

Buying groceries entails leaving the house when I least want to leave it, spending money I don't want to spend and then coming home and unpacking the car and putting everything away. It never fails. I always have a ton of stuff to unpack because each time I shop, it is like I am expecting the world to come to an end. "If I just buy everything I think I'll need for the next two months, maybe I won't have to come back!" Then I run out of milk and the whole procedure has to be repeated in a week or less.

Then there are the regularly scheduled appointments. The cat's nail trims and blood donations. Each time I get those jobs done and over with, I am flooded with relief because maybe, just maybe "next week" I won't have to leave the house. But I do. Because I am out of milk. Again!

Marking a "date" on the calendar is like counting down the days until a dentist appointment is over with. Something that should be fun, uplifting and something to look forward to becomes Doomsday to me. "Just get it over with..." seems to be the mantra in my head as social commitments come and go. I am so much better with "Do you want to meet in fifteen minutes?" The word "NO!!!" does not have time to enter my thought process when I'm too busy brushing my teeth and putting on my shoes.

Why do I write this? Because last night I said, "Yes" to a dance lesson. The last time I walked through those dance studio doors was the eve of "Andre's last day" with us. We had made the decision to put our ailing, senior kitty down the following day and I honestly didn't even know if he would still be alive when I got home. My heart was breaking into a million tiny pieces and the pain came out my feet.

Every single dance step hurt me to the core of my being that night. Something on the ball of my foot was causing excruciating pain and one slow minute led into the next. Finally my dance partner said the words I wanted to hear all night. "Please feel free to leave anyt...." I don't even think he finished the sentence and I vanished.

Now I have to go back.

I think I fixed my foot (turns out it was a corn, right on the ball of my foot that was causing me such duress). Our cats are hale and hearty. I mowed the lawn last night and I worked up such a sweat that a shower was necessary. So my hair is good to go.

The only problem is that I do NOT mow the lawn, have a shower AND buy groceries all on the same evening. That is asking far too much of my tired old body.

So, you guessed it. I still have to buy groceries tonight. And then, I must unpack them and not only stay dressed, I must make the attempt to look like I actually care about my appearance and leave the house one more time, when all I really want to do is be jumping into my pajamas.

Blech.

When I received this call, it was with a great apologetic tone because they did not give me adequate notice. All I could think of was NO notice what-so-ever is best for me. Instead of ruining a whole five days, it has only "ruined" an evening and a day.

Anticipation is something that is reserved for quiet evenings and cat days. Uncommitted time with limited social interaction is what I crave the most.

And to make matters worse, I must wake up and leave the house to go to work tomorrow morning. My heart sinks to the floor with this knowledge.

I must leave the house. Tonight. And tomorrow.

But on a positive note, because I must buy groceries tonight maybe, just maybe, after I get home from work tomorrow, I won't have to leave the house for the duration of the weekend.

"Yes" has become the hardest word for me to say. I am pretty certain I'm missing out on some of life's greatest moments because the only place I want to be, is home. I have friends who "need a friend" and I am not the person who I need to be, to be the friend I should be.

I'm not loving who I am at this moment in time. It will pass. It always does. If I just get enough "Cat Days" under my skin, I'll be good.

I hope your weekend is filled with moments where you feel like a cat, just sitting back and taking in the sunshine.

Our days are only going to get shorter from this point, onward. I think maybe I'll pack my bags and move to Australia until this trend ends.

Transitions

My little daycare family is undergoing a time of great transition at the moment.

Not only have three out of five "only children" become older siblings and had their world at home turned upside down, but we have taken in a little one year old of our own.

That is a lot of change for a little person to comprehend.

As our four year olds moved on and out of daycare and into the preschool world, I shuffled things around to reflect the changes which on the cusp of happening.

And now that time has come.

Our new little one year old is transitioning into her world with us and had her first lunch here yesterday. The high chair that I moved downstairs a few weeks ago is back. Everyone else shuffled their way down the line to independence. From the high chair to the booster chair. From beside me to across the table from me. From the booster chair to the bench behind the table. 

So far, so good.

Our nap time transition has been a little tougher so I am glad I started early.

My "star napper" has been moved out a room of his own, into a room which is shared by at least one more. I have strategically placed the daycare cots into cozy little nooks so no one can see the other guy. But they can hear them.

This week, "a cold" has infiltrated our home. So the breathing is loud and heavy. As I sat in our new shared napping accommodations, listening for the sounds of kids settling into a deep restful state of slumber, all I could hear was the sound of light sleeping as the breathing never quietened down to that state where you know everyone is down for the long haul. 

Today, we will have a house full. My newest little guy is going to stay home to celebrate his second birthday with his parents. My newest little girl is going to come and stay for lunch. My two pre-school girls will be spending the day (or a part thereof) with us. My little guy who became a big brother a few months ago is spending an extra day with us today. 

Then there is my one "constant", my two-and-a-half year old girl who comes every single day, who misses her four year old friends dearly but adapts to whoever is here and plays with them at their level.

She has quietly adapted to the minor little changes around here and takes every little move as sign of becoming one of the "big kids". 

She was thrilled to be moved out of a room of her own and into our shared napping quarters with her two older friends. She actually started sleeping better when she was in a room that was not her own.

She was so happy to be "moved to the kitchen bench", just like her older friends. 

In her mind's eye, I think she believes she is just as old as them. Yet she plays with everyone else at their level. Just as long as her older friends are not around. When they are, she loses herself because she so much wants to be "them".

She is one of the few who doesn't have to contend with the idea of having a brand new baby move into her life. And it shows.

As much as she wants to be like her older friends at daycare, her life as she knows it has remained unchanged.

This is actually saying a lot because about a year ago, her parents split up and she is the only one of our little family who has had to deal with that changing dynamic. There may have been a few transitional behaviours I noticed but (I think) because her parents put her first and kept her world just as solid as it could be, she rolled right through that change like a champ.

I talked a little bit with her grandma and her grandma commented on how everyone pulled together to help raise this little girl. Grandparents on both sides and parents who kept her world as solid as it could be and changed as little as possible during a time of great transition for them, helped this little girl during her own personal time of transition. A transition no one really talked about at daycare (unlike how everyone seems to be talking about these new babies).

The more things change, the more we look to that which stays the same.

We all shuffle things around within our lives to make room for the new, allow for new growth and every now and again we have to say "good bye" to a part of our past.

As our "good byes" at daycare have been, it is nice to keep a foot in the door to honor that which we have adopted as a part of our lives. 

New babies come, but life at daycare remains (pretty much) the same and our older siblings have continued to be a part of our daycare world. Those who graduated into pre-school are still coming to daycare sporadically to nurture the friendships which have grown within these four walls.

It makes me smile, as three of our daycare family have recently celebrated their birthdays and each one of them has invited their daycare family into their homes and birthday parties. 

This is the world I had hoped to build for my borrowed children.

I am seventeen years into this daycare gig and I still have families telling me that their child or grandchild still speaks so fondly of their days at daycare. It isn't me they are talking about. It is the friends they made as they navigated their way through their pre-school and (eventually) school years. 

Life is full of transitions and we are very fortunate when we can keep one foot on solid ground as the world around us changes. I am so glad I can be a part of something "solid" within this changing world.

Wednesday is a Very Good Day to Conquer the World

I hate when little, pesky annoying things intrude upon a regular, ordinary day and make the day all about "pest control" instead of accomplishing great things. Or even just surviving the day and accomplishing one small item on the never ending to-do list of life.

As I walked innocently into the day yesterday, I received word that "I" had sent out some more annoying "phishing" types of emails to a group of family members. Again.

I contacted my email provider in the hope of finding a check list of what to do in a case of someone infiltrating your email account and I was sorely disappointed. "Google" provided a more comprehensive list of things to do and check.

So I devoted more time than was allotted to that task in the middle of a day where my sole purpose is supposed to be tending to children. I could have done the leg work and started changing passwords (again!) when my kids went down for their naps but I didn't. I went on strike instead.

I tuned out the "hackers" of the world and turned on an episode of Grey's Anatomy. Then I nodded off to sleep and slept lightly while I had time. "Life" would still be awaiting me at the end of my daycare day. It wasn't going anywhere.

"Life" weighs heavy on my mind when I can't deal with things as they come along. I hate putting things on hold. I prefer it when I can tie things up neatly with a bow and cast it aside.

There was far too much untended business to deal with at the day's end.

Like a typical procrastinator, I started with the thing that mattered the least. I vacuumed. Then cleaned cat litter. Then made supper. While supper was cooking, I took apart and cleaned out the cat's water fountain. Yup. I took care of all the hard stuff first.

After a supper and Grey's Anatomy break, I pulled up my socks (yes, I need socks now that the temperature has dipped and my sock stockpile is not large enough to get me through the week) and I tended to business.

First off (still procrastinating, but in a productive manner), I deleted all my ads off Kijiji and relisted them on an auction site. Is it possible that my friendly neighborhood hacker is one of the hundreds who has responded to a Kijiji ad??

And finally, finally, finally I changed all my passwords and double checked that which I had already checked right after I found out my email had been "compromised".

I woke up this morning with a relatively clean slate. As long as nothing unexpected comes along, this day should go pretty much as planned. I could very well tie a few things up with a bow and mail them off.

Tending to "big things" like paperwork and taxes and details isn't impossible. In fact, if I didn't have to deal with the little pesky "mosquitoes" hacking into innocent people's emails, those "big things" wouldn't feel so large.

As it is with life, it is the little stuff that weighs you down just as much or more than the big stuff.

I shall put on my "mosquito spray" and forge through the forest today. It is Wednesday. Wednesday is usually my break through day. The day where I have recovered from the work-weekend which has depleted me and I haven't geared up and gotten myself into a tizzy over the upcoming work-weekend.

Wednesday is a good day to conquer the world. And so I shall.

And so ends the post about nothing.

Cat Days

I woke up exhausted yesterday morning so I gave myself permission to ignore the short little to-do list on the desk. For an hour and a half. Just enough time to watch two episodes of Grey's Anatomy. Then I would get up and set the timer for fifteen minutes and trick myself into accomplishing something. 

Long story, short? It didn't work.

Instead, I nestled in and became "one" with the love seat. I grabbed a pillow, a blanket and had a little pillow to support the crook of my neck. I pulled the Little Tikes table out of the toy room and set myself up for the long haul.

I moved the computer onto my little makeshift desk, made myself a few cups of coffee and when I was sufficiently caffeinated, I sat back and enjoyed the view.

I barely moved off that spot for the duration of the day. I dozed off intermittently throughout the day. My crowning accomplishment of my cat day was the one load of laundry I threw in the washer before I started bonding with the love seat.

That spot on the couch looked so inviting that each time I got up, I found one of our cats lying in my little nest upon my return. There were sleeping cats everywhere. 

It was at that point that I officially declared Sunday, September 20th a Cat Day. 

Cats make napping look like a sport and I was ready to compete. 

In the old days, Andre (formerly known as Senior Cat, and still dearly missed) would jump up and "become one" with me whenever I had such a day. You just can't move when you have a cat snuggled up on or beside you. It goes against cat and human nature to disturb a sleeping cat. Andre and I savored many Cat Days together. 

These cats don't know the rules. They don't nestle into the contours of my resting body and make me lose myself in their purrs. They sleep separate and apart from me and each other. 

But this one moment made me believe they were starting to get into the Cat Day zone.

To our knowledge, this is the first time they have "snuggled" together and napped fur-to-fur.

They slept like this for a good, long while.

It was a very good day to be a cat. After cat napping all day and sleeping like a log until minutes before my alarm went off this morning, I feel ready to face the week ahead.

I'm counting down the days until my next official "Cat Day". There is really nothing quite like it.