Make A Date With Your Kid

Due to recent unforeseen and ridiculous circumstances, I am raising my 16-year old daughter by myself.

That is O.K. She is a very nice teenager and she is taking it very easy on me.

But we don't have the kind of relationship that some of the mothers and daughters in my favorite movies have.

You know, they are best friends and tell each other everything. The daughter does not forbid her mother to sing in the car or talk in front of her friends. The TV daughter does not "borrow" her mother's favorite sweaters and leave them in her locker at school.

Sometimes, when I am eavesdropping on conversations she is having with her dad, I get upset to hear her telling her all the details of her life that she never mentions to me.

A friend of mine watches T.V. every Thursday night with his three kids. Two of them are living on their own, but still they show up to watch their favorite sit-coms with their dad. Every Thursday I get a little bit jealous thinking about the three of them spending time with their parent voluntarily.

So, last week I decided to be a copy-cat and get some of my own one-on-one interaction with my teenager. Since it was clear she wasn't going to spend time with me voluntarily, I pulled the parent card.

I told her that every Thursday night from now on we were going to have dinner somewhere. She had to leave her cell phone in the car. We were not going to Dave's Cosmic Subs every Thursday. We were going to have long dinners at nice places. We were going to spend some quality time together.

So last Thursday we ate outside at a nice restaurant in town. Many nice things happened:

She learned how to put her napkin in her lap at the start of the meal and to not chew her ice.
She learned her mother was not annoying to everyone when a semi-attractive man sitting at the bar sent me a over a glass of wine.
She told a couple who stopped by the table her plans for college (who knew?)
I learned her favorite dessert was creme' brulee and she learned mine was chocolate mousse.
We both had fun.

I think I am really going to like Thursday nights.

You can do it!

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The Sweetness of Doing Nothing

I went to the movies this weekend. I hardly ever do that. It feels a little too luxurious to me, like I am wasting time.

I kind of have a problem with that. I wake up in the morning and I try to lie in bed and pet my cat and meet the morning, but in my head the giant list is already talking to me. It knows I have just an hour to:

Start the coffee
Make the kid a hot breakfast
Water the plants
Feed the cat
Pack a lunch
Make my bed
Get ready for work
Drop the kid at school

Even on a morning when I have the day off I am up-and-at-em:

Cleaning the workshop
Shopping for groceries
Doing the laundry
Paying the bills
Writing the blog

Sometimes when I am emptying the trash at the flower shop where I work, I see a couple across the street about my age sitting and talking in their chairs on the front porch. I wonder why they get to do that while I am working. When I get home, I see two women I know walking together through my neighborhood while I am pulling weeds by my mailbox. I am puzzled: Why aren't they pulling weeds at their houses?

But finally I have figured it out: They are resting because they choose to. They have given themselves permission to do something I haven't. And that is what my friend Jimmy calls Playing at Life.

In the movie I saw called Eat, Pray, Love, Julia Roberts goes to Italy to recover from a divorce. She meets a lot of Italians who eat too much pasta and sit around with their friends talking with their hands. She is accosted by an older Italian man who says that Americans work too much and can't appreciate il dolce far niente, which is Italian for The Sweetness of Doing Nothing.

I think he is right.

I worked really hard all of my life to get to an end that I won't get to have anyway. Looking back it seems like I probably should have let the weeds go and taken a few more moments to Play at Life.

It is late, but it is not too late for that.

Yesterday I watched Jeopardy while eating ice cream and walked a community garden just to look at the flowers.

Il dolce far niente I say with my hand in the air.

Can I Get a Smile Here?

I did something I never do today.

I quit a job on the first day.

I wasn't going to. I mean I hated my new job. All of the people there were so crabby. There was a shop cat and even he was crabby. He got yelled at for drinking out of the toilet and the water buckets.

I knew exactly how he felt. I got snapped at for far smaller sins all day.

I mean, is it so hard to just explain in a nice voice how you would like things done? I am a flexible chick, I can change the way I do things.

Still, I was going to go back tomorrow. It might get better, I thought. It is possible I can cheer the whole place up.

But then I started thinking: "Why is that my job all the time, to try to make everybody happy?"

It would be a nice change of pace if people were worried about making me happy.

Then my very good friend, who always makes me happy, suggested that I didn't HAVE to go back for more punishment tomorrow. He pointed out that I have not given notice at my other job. I could just go back to the job that isn't perfect, but where my boss treats me with kindness and sometimes buys me a fruit and yogurt cup from McDonalds just to be nice.

So that's what I have DECIDED to do. For now.

Decisions, Decisions

I didn't write much last week. Sorry about that. I was doing something very important. I was DECIDING.

The last year has been full of so much deciding.

Deciding to leave an unhealthy relationship. Deciding to close my flower shop. Deciding to move out and then back in to my house. Deciding to sell almost all of my possessions.

 Let me tell you something about deciding: Deciding is very exhausting.

If you are a careful person like me who likes to have a plan, deciding carries a huge amount of weight. Every decision seems like it has the ability to change your entire life.

I have the additional problem of being a people-pleaser, so any decision that hurts or disappoints another person has added difficulty.

Today I start a new job and this afternoon, if all goes well at the new flower shop, I have to tell my old boss, who is also my friend, that I am leaving.

The pay is better and there are benefits. It is the best decision for me and my kids.

Still, all last week I worried it might be the wrong decision. What if it was too hard? What if my boss was mean? What if leaving my old job was a big mistake?

I told my teenager about my worries.

"Just do it mom," She said. "If it doesn't work out, it's O.K. God will give you something else."

O.K. Here goes another new beginning. Wish me luck.

Welcome Aboard to my old high school buddy Chris Hughes.

First Things First

Today should be a good day because my youngest child turned 16 today, the sun is shining, I don't have to go to work and try to make beautiful arrangements with half-dead flowers and I can now fit my car into the garage.

But you know something? That wall of worry that I try to look over is very tall today.

On the table are bills that need to be paid.

On my phone is a gloomy message from my divorce lawyer.

Upstairs are baskets of clothes that need to be taken to The Wash Tub to be cleaned and folded.

And in the basement lots and lots of crap that I didn't accumulate but still I have to get rid of.

But there is a coconut cupcake waiting for me at my friend Angela's house and there is a birthday girl waiting to be picked up this afternoon to buy a new birthday phone.

So I have to go. There is a wall that needs climbing.

Thank you to my newest follower Jim Ras. Thanks Jimmy. My goal is 100 by Christmas.

Thank you to my newest follower who is not related to me and is reading voluntarily: Patty Burley

Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

It has been a year of big losses for me: Marriage, financial security, dignity and dog. And here comes another one that for me is the worst of all: I have to break up with my house.

Worse that a marriage breaking up you say? She cares more about a house than a relationship?

Well . . . .  yes.

Because I am still in love with my house.

Not really my house exactly. After all, It is just a bunch of siding and nails and the source of huge electric bills.

I am in love with what my house holds. It keeps the memories of four wonderful children who were raised here. It keeps countless birthday parties and magical Christmas mornings and brand new kittens and a loyal dog.

It keeps the story of the mysterious end along with the wonderful beginning.

Every room tells me a hundred stories. In the garden are a thousand smiles. Three of my children are gone, but here I still see them every day.

Really I can hardly imagine life without my house.

But here I go because I have to.

It is hard to think there might be another home I might love someday, but I am hoping for that.

And hope is something I plan to always have.

It's all in the attitude

I went to my first professional baseball game the other day. I think the Cleveland Indians lost, as they usually do, but I didn't really care.

The best part of the whole game was the entertainment.

First of all, some crazy talented five year old, who still had a little problem pronouncing her Rs, belted out the Star Spangled without missing a word or a note.

I thought about how much confidence she had to have to stand up in front of so many people and sing like that. But maybe it's easy to have a good attitude when you are a beautiful little girl with a beautiful singing voice and a beautiful future.

For someone like The Hot Dog Man, a good attitude is something that is a challenge every day.

The Hot Dog Man is a vendor at the game. He walks up and down the aisles sweating and wiping his forehead and maybe thinking that this isn't quite the job he imagined himself having. Maybe he was laid off from his desk job and took the job selling hot dogs as a way to pay the bills.

Probably when he is getting dressed in his red and white shirt for work every day he thinks of the life he was supposed to have and wonders why it worked out for other people, but not for him.

But then he does something I really admire. He shows up at the job that he is too smart for and puts all the other vendors to shame. He puts on a crazy show for all of the folks who are tired of watching their team drop the ball.

"You want a HOT DOG!," he yells to a row.

"Seventh inning! Buy a HOT DOG!" he demands.

And then he sees me and my companion.

"YOU'RE HUNGRY!" he tells me.

BUY HER A HOT DOG! he screams at my date. "SHE WANTS A HOT DOG!"

I don't want a hot dog. But I want the attitude of The Hot Dog Man.