The Talk

It is time to have The Talk with my 9 year old daughter.
For one thing, she is already developing. Thanks to hormones in meats and milk, I fear that puberty will be settling in early. God knows I already have a 9 year old teenager.
Then my mother in law tells me that the women in her family always seem to go into puberty at an early age anyway. We have, maybe, a year. Hopefully two, but I'm not betting on it.
For another thing, when I picked her up at school on Friday, she was talking nonstop. And talking nonstop about BOYS. Apparently there is a child in her class who feels like she must have a boyfriend. And then I hear these words from my daughter. "Every man she's been interested in has just walked away from her." Did I just hear the word, "man"? Oh, yeah. It's time.

You must understand that I am in new territory here. My mother did not give me "The Talk." She was way too embarrassed and shy to have done anything like that. In fact, I'm reasonably sure that both of my parents (God rest their souls) were convinced I was still a virgin when I announced that my husband and I were going to have a baby. As a teenager, most of my information came from a cousin: information which, by the way, was WRONG. I had to figure things out for myself. Thankfully I was one of the dreaded "good girls" and didn't have any issues. Then a couple of health courses and some women's studies courses in college straightened me out.

I don't want to risk my daughter having to wait until she's in college to figure this stuff out on her own. Now, she's way too young (IMHO) at the age of 9 for me to just hand her a copy of "Our Bodies, Our Selves." I'm thinking maybe of going more along the lines of the American Girl series of The Care and Keeping of You. There are some other books that I will flip through...but I have to decide how much to tell her.

When I informed my husband that we had reached the age in which we must give The Talk, this was his response. "Oh no. YOU have to give The Talk. My part of the talk is, "I will kill the first boy you bring home, as an example to any future boyfriends." Yeah, that's a dad for you.

Oh boy. Here we go.

School days....

And it's started again. The first day of school. I drove my daughter to school this morning instead of making her ride the bus, and I think that helped her first day jitters. The other thing that helped was blasting Skillet's 'Monster' all the way to school.

I remember the excitement. New clothes. New school supplies. I loved it, and I loved the idea of school, even though I was an outsider and pretty much bullied all throughout school. But, I did well, got through school, and I like to think that education from a small town school has served me well.

Caitlin, if I do say so myself, is a brilliant child. She's an old soul...she often says things that make you look at her and think, "wow." She makes leaps of logic that a child her age should not be able to make. I couldn't tell you if she's an Indigo child, Rainbow child, or Crystal child, because I'm not up on the timelines...but yeah, the kid is something.

She was nervous about school though. First day back. First day of 4th grade. First time with a male teacher. First time in AIG...lot of firsts. It's a lot for a kid to handle at once...but I'm sure she's going to come through with flying colors.

The Great Quest

Everyone needs a great quest, don't you think? Or several. One must have something to strive for.

My current great quest is Turning Yarn Into Stuff. Like most yarners, I have a Stash. It began several years ago when I was hospitalized for a severe bout of depression. While I could not, for obvious reasons, have knitting needles, I could have a crochet hook, and during the times when I wasn't in group therapy or some inane activity or another, I would sit in the dayroom and crochet. My stuff was kept by the nurses, and when I wanted it I just went to the nurses' desk to ask for it. They inventoried what was in it, let me take it to the dayroom (never to my room), and when it was returned they had to check the contents again. At first it was nothing but one skein of yarn and a crochet hook. Then a fellow hospital mate told me she had a lot of yarn that she never used any more, so the next time she went home on a weekend pass, she brought back a HUGE garbage bag full of yarn. I hadn't crocheted with any regularity in years at that time, so I was attempting to reacquaint myself with the art. The project that I started in that hospital ward was a granny square. I was not allowed scissors (again, for obvious reasons), so instead of getting up and going to the nurses' desk and having one of them to cut the yarn every time I finished a square, the square just got bigger, and bigger, and bigger. I wound up with a good sized blanket that was nothing but a giant granny square.

I've fine-tuned my skills since then. I've made many baby blankets, a few scrunchies, a couple of booties, some doll clothes...the list is endless. My favorite pattern is one that belonged to my husband's grandmother. It came to me when she suddenly couldn't remember how to turn it at the end of a row; I was asked to reverse-engineer it. His grandmother is not in the advanced stages of alzheimers, unable to crochet even a basic chain, but I have used the pattern a lot. It's the only one I use for baby gifts; it's my way of honoring her.

My skills have been honed. My stash is ever growing. My mother-in-law helped me do some cleaning and organizing recently and asked me, do you know how much yarn you have? Yes, yes I do. Perhaps it should have been a clue that I started my first big yarn stash while I was in a psychiatric hospital. I know my husband thinks so.

Memories As Such

I'm sitting here in my best friend Mel's house, housesitting while she and her family have a much needed vacation before the hurried first weeks of school. While cooking dinner on her stove, I decided to check email and Facebook, and lo and behold, her sister Charity invited me to follow her new blog. Lo and behold, it was on blogspot...and on a fluke I tried to log in...and there was a blog that I'd created in 2007 and had completely forgotten about.

I read back through the old entries; there were just a few before I apparently forgot about it. I was apparently taking the antiseizure medication Neurontin at the time, so that may have had a lot to do with that. Still, reading them took me back. It was a troubling time, yes, but a lot of life is. As someone told me once, "you're the only person I know who just goes from crisis to crisis laughing the entire way." Well, maybe not the ENTIRE way. But I do try to laugh, and laugh a lot. After all, what else is there to do?

When I started that blog in 2007, my daughter was 4, close to turning 5; Mel's son was 3, close to turning 4, and her daughter had not yet arrived. Her cocker spaniel Emerson, who was the best dog I've ever gotten attached to, was still around although he was slowing down some. My mother would still be alive for a few more months, and I'd have my father until 2011 (just this past March.).

What was going on in the world at the time? I couldn't tell you. The events happening within my family and circle of friends were everything to me; still are. Not to sound sappy, but the previous years have shown me, sometimes painfully, that all we really have is each other, and all we have is right now. We're told this often in our lives...but sometimes the universe has to hit us over the head until we realize it.

So, will it be another 5 years before I post here again? I hope not. But then again, who can tell?