Springtime snow

Well, I think I said last week that we had an interesting week ahead of us, and we did. The big things were probably Teen B's band trip, the funeral I attended, and the snow.  

But the week began with my online appointment with the Colorado Sleep Institute. The PA who interviewed me was nice, but he said it sounded as though there was enough evidence to justify a sleep study, and I had to agree. So a week from tomorrow I will go to their office in Boulder and pick up the equipment to do a sleep study at home. Since then I have vacillated between thinking that I probably do have sleep apnea and getting fixed up with a CPAP will change my life -- I'll have more energy, I'll lose weight, I won't be so foggy-headed all the time -- and thinking that I probably don't have sleep apnea, in which case what's my problem, Alzheimer's?

I would rather have a fixable problem than an unfixable problem, so CPAP here we come. I hope.

I shouldn't write too much about Teen B's trip since I've been making a conscious effort to have this blog be about me now, not the kids (making it so much less interesting, but there you are). I'll just say that I stressed out about it nonstop until I dropped him off at school Wednesday morning, and then stressed out about it nonstop until I picked him up at school around 11 pm Thursday night. 

Also, he didn't wear the black dress shoes I'd gotten him. He wore sneakers instead and no one cared. I think I should probably just return the dress shoes to Target. They seem unharmed.

I had hoped that Teen A and I would have some quality time together while Teen B was gone, but he was rather hostile most of the time. I think -- but am not sure -- that it would have been different if Teen A had been the one to go away and Teen B had been the one to stay home.

It's hard to have your kids grow up after holding them so close to you for so long. The pandemic exacerbated that. How am I going to let them go for real? How are they going to feel strong enough to go? (And where will they go, with housing so expensive?)

The kids had Friday off (and will have Monday off too -- conference exchange days, even though there were no conferences, due to the fake shooting). They both slept late -- I'm not sure Teen B was even up by the time I left, around 10:40. But I had this funeral to go to, so I had to get up.

The funeral was for the 93-year-old mother of an old friend of Rocket Boy's. I saw it in the paper and told RB I would go to it, "representing" him, as people sometimes do in Barbara Pym novels (An Academic Question, A Few Green Leaves). As I prepared to go, I of course began to feel nervous. For one thing, I don't have good funeral clothes. I don't have good clothes, period -- I spend the least amount of money possible on my clothes. It occurred to me, as it has before, that I should buy something that could be worn at a funeral. But there are different types of funerals: serious religious ones, like this one, and more cheerful memorial services where they often request that people not wear black, and then of course there are funerals in both winter and summer. I'd have to have a whole wardrobe of funeral clothes.

In the end, I wore black capri pants, sandals (because it's APRIL, I don't care if it's going to snow tonight), a black and white print shirt that fits over my large belly, and a black sweater. Nobody is going to be looking at you, I told myself.

I drove to the church successfully, parked, and followed some other older women into a part of the church that wasn't the sanctuary, some sort of meeting room. I saw people who I vaguely remembered as being family members, and one of them spotted me. Her eyes widened, her arms went out: "I know you," she said enthusiastically. But of course I didn't know her. "Jennifer?" I tried. "Jessica," she corrected me. "Oh yes," I said, nodding, wondering who the heck Jessica was. It took my brain a while, but eventually it found the storage area where it keeps information about this family and I remembered who Jessica was. It helped that I spotted her very distinctive husband whose hair had turned snow white. I'm pretty sure the last time I saw them was at some family party in the summer of 2007, when I was pregnant with the twins and feeling nauseated. So, you know, a long time ago. The brain needed some help.

It turned out that several people at the funeral remembered me and wanted to talk to me (and wanted to hear about Rocket Boy). So, in fact, it probably did matter what I was wearing, and maybe I should invest in a funeral wardrobe. 

Or maybe it doesn't matter. The world does not expect me to be well dressed. Or maybe there's a compromise I could come up with. Anyway, whatever.

It was a nice funeral -- not my style at all, too formal and religious, but the pastor clearly had known the deceased and could talk about her intelligently. There weren't very many people there besides family and almost no one sang the hymns -- I tried to help out. I much prefer memorial services where people sit around and talk about the person who's just died, but I'm sure this was RB's friend's mom's choice, so it was right. I suppose most of her old friends had already died, but it was clear that her extended family was very fond of her and would miss her intensely.

I told Rocket Boy all about it that night and we spent a good 30-40 minutes remembering people. He said (not understanding what sort of funeral it was) that if he had been there he would have told a story about his old friend's father-in-law and a skunk. He told me the story -- it was amusing, but it had absolutely nothing to do with his old friend's mother, i.e., the deceased. I pointed this out. He felt it wasn't important. I thought it was for the best that he hadn't been there. But maybe that was mean of me. Rocket Boy's old friends know what he's like and don't mind.

Attending a funeral probably inevitably leads to thoughts of one's own demise, and also the value of one's life, whether or not one is doing what one should do on earth, that sort of thing. "Brief life is here our portion" and all that.

I spent some time today thinking about all the ways in which I haven't "achieved my potential." When I was 14, I won the English award for my junior high school (at graduation they gave out awards to the 9th graders who were best in science, math, English, the various foreign languages, music, I'm not sure what else). I also won the Latin award, but that was nonsense. Winning one of these awards meant that your photograph was displayed in the main hallway for the whole next year. Ever since 7th grade I had been looking at those photos and hoping I would win the English award at the end of 9th grade. And then I did. It was magic. I remember walking down the grassy amphitheater toward the stage to get my award, feeling like I'd won the Nobel Prize.

It's been pretty much all downhill since then. For example,

• In 10th grade I took English with a student teacher. At the end of the year she gave me a copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations which I still have. On the flyleaf she wrote "I hope I'll be seeing your name on title pages in the future." If she's still alive, I hope she's not still waiting. (I looked her up: she's alive and kicking, on Twitter, a retired English teacher now, married with twin girls, a cat lover, Trump hater. We'd probably get along famously, other than the fact that I've disappointed her.)
  
• In 11th grade I tried to drop out of honors English, second semester, because I hated writing essays. To keep me in the class, my teacher said I could do some creative writing in place of each essay assignment. Thus I did not learn how to write an essay.
• In 12th grade, faced with having to write essays, I dropped out of honors English after the first week and took Film Study instead ("intended for those who don't read well").
• My high school didn't give out an English award, but obviously I wouldn't have won it if it had.
  
• I was a National Merit Scholar (based on my test scores -- I've always been a good test-taker), but didn't win any scholarships.
  
• I didn't get into the college of my choice and had to go to my safety school (UC Davis) instead.
  
• I got a C in chemistry my freshman year and dropped out of science classes forever.
  
• I transferred to UC Berkeley and decided to major in Rhetoric. To do this, I had to take the intro courses, Rhetoric 1A and Rhetoric 1B. 1A was OK, but I was seriously lost in 1B. I didn't understand the discussions, I didn't know how to write the papers. I had never learned how to write an essay (see above). I remember telling the grad student who taught 1B that I planned to major in Rhetoric. He looked displeased. I got a C in the class.
• I made it through the major, but I didn't understand the discussions in most of my classes. I almost never got A's, it was all A- or B+. In other words, I did the work, but I didn't really know what I was doing. I spent most of my free time reading novels (I was the only person I knew at Cal who had a Berkeley PUBLIC library card).
  
• I had wanted to do an honors project, but my grades were just slightly too low to qualify (they changed the requirements right before my senior year).
• I graduated without any plans: no job, no internship, no acceptance to graduate school, no marriage proposal or live-in boyfriend, no nothing.
• I lived at home for the next few years.
• Eventually I decided to go to graduate school in linguistics. As noted above, I've always been a good test-taker, so my stellar scores got me into some schools and I went to Michigan because they offered me a great fellowship (all based on my test scores).
• I was not, however, a stellar grad student. 

Well, I could go on and on. The point is, it's been all "potential" and very few results. I feel as though I've spent my life trying to move on from that junior high school English award -- either live up to it or forget about it. I've done neither.

Which is OK. I've had a fairly enjoyable life, the usual ups and downs, but mostly good. I know if someone were to write my obituary they could spin it so it sounded impressive. But the truth is that I've mostly just done a lot of reading. Is that a bad life -- a life of reading? I know I was supposed to do a lot of wonderful writing instead, but it hasn't worked out that way.

On the other hand, I still think about writing all the time, and it isn't just because of feeling like a failure. It's still what I want to do with my life, despite my total failure to write all those novels I was supposed to write and generally become a professional writer. Actually, I should clarify that: I have figured out over the years that I don't want to be a "professional writer." I just want to write. That's what the blog is, that's what all my writing is.

I've failed entirely at doing what I was supposed to do with my life, but I love to read and write. That's me in a nutshell. That's what it could say in my obituary, though I'm sure it won't.

It's now Sunday, April 23rd. April has just whizzed by.  As you can see from the photos, we got more snow: 3.5 inches, according to weather.gov, but that was a reading taken at 7 am Saturday morning, and it kept on snowing most of the day. Very very light snow, though, with breaks, so maybe another half inch or so, 4 inches total perhaps?

And it's almost all gone already -- it's in the 50s today. I wore sandals when Teen B and I made our Starbucks run.

It's supposed to rain on Tuesday, with possibly a little snow thrown in, and again next weekend, again with possibly a little snow. Next Sunday is the last day of April, so I HOPE the weather remembers that and does not continue to snow on Monday, May 1st. Snow in April (in Colorado) is to be expected; snow in May is just not OK (though not unusual).

Realizing that it is late April has reminded me that -- eek -- it's only a month until school gets out. That means I need to think hard about how I want to spend my time over the next four-and-a-bit weeks. 

When the kids are out of school, there are some things I can still do, like cleaning and reading, and other things that it becomes very hard to do, like working on the files (because the file cabinets are inches away from where they sit to play video games) and writing (because my desk is in the same room with them, and it's hard for me to write with two teenagers sitting a few feet away from me, fighting).

Therefore, over the next month I should prioritize the files, not just work on them for half an hour twice a week, as I've been doing. I also should try to finish the first draft of my novel, so that I can print it out and work on editing it by hand over the summer, away from the room with the quarreling twins in it. I'm close to the end -- maybe one or two more chapters to go.

I also came to the realization that despite my good intentions to earn money on Mechanical Turk, I've mostly failed on that and it's a huge waste of my time. I've never figured out how to get beyond filling out surveys, and it takes me an hour to earn even $1 from those surveys. I've been spending two or three hours a day on Mechanical Turk in order to earn 2 or 3 dollars. That's just silly. I need to set MT aside and do work that means something, even if it doesn't earn money.

So, my schedule for the last month of the school year is going to look something like this:

• Morning: get kids off to school, do FlyLady cleaning stuff, work on my writing
• Afternoon: do errands, work on the files, work in the yard
  

I wish that had been my schedule for the past month, but I guess I had to figure this out first. Also, it's just starting to be pleasant enough to work in the yard (and there will be lots of days when it still won't be, especially this coming week).

Here we go with the last week of April.