Steady As She Goes

Two years ago, when I was interviewing for my current role at work, my then-future manager told me that there were nine or ten weeks a year when the job becomes particularly intense. These weeks are clustered in three groups, dispersed throughout the year, and require focused attention with all hands on deck. Easy peasy, right?

As it turns out, life doesn't actually care about all hands on deck. No matter how much pre-planning in which I engage I've found that something is going to hit the fan every times time one of the events rolls around at the very moment when I am least able to comfortably deal with it.

A couple weeks ago, just days into the latest cluster, I hosted a meeting during which several people sat in the room with me and perhaps half a dozen more dialed in. At one point, my cell phone buzzed a tone letting me know that my son's school had just sent a text. A second tone alerted me to an e-mail. Since someone else was talking at the moment, I cast a furtive glance at the text and read only "lock down...911...shots fired".

It's amazing how fast one can assess a situation. This was "my" meeting, using my telecon and e-meeting details. Should I stop the discussion anyway? Hand my laptop to the nearest colleague and sprint to the door? Rush to my car to drive the 13ish miles to the school? Call to find out what's happening? No. I could change nothing at all about the incident in the 15 minutes left in the meeting and, although it was tempting to call, I knew that doing so would result in 1) no answer and/or 2) distracting people from executing whatever plan had been set in motion.

To spare you an even longer story, I'll just drop here that everything turned out fine. Although there was, in fact, shooting on campus there was no "active shooter" (God, what a horrible expression and even worse that I can just put it there and you know exactly what I mean) just two adults not connected with the school displaying colossally poor judgment. By the time I got back to my desk after the meeting, a second set of texts and e-mails arrived letting parents know that the episode was over and all were well.

Later I recalled how I'd almost felt the thoughts careening through my head, trying to figure out the best course of action. I'm surprised at how calm I remained in the time between the first and second texts, but I don't know what else I could have done that would have been productive. My son came home and he was full of stories about the lock down and what the announcement said and the rumors he heard throughout the rest of the day. To him, it was an adventure, a crazy thing that happened that broke up the day. "Were you scared?" he wanted to know.

File Under: Well, That Was Surprisingly Easy

When we bought our house two years ago (almost exactly - Hurricane Sandy blew in as the moving truck drove away) we knew there were changes we wanted to make. A slightly bigger family room and kitchen, for example, were - and are - top of the list. We've had plans drawn up, talked to builders, and...nothing. We just can't seem to pull the trigger. We'll get there.

While all the reno hemming and hawing has been going on I'd become increasingly irritated by the rug in the family room. We've known that the entire house had originally been outfitted with wall-to-wall carpet befitting it's mid-60s construction. Most of it had been removed by the prior owner (the daughter of the couple who built the place) before listing, with the exception of three rooms including the family room, which she actually replaced. We took care of two of the remaining rooms - I absolutely did not want sea-foam green shag in my bedroom - but didn't bother with the family room, believing that we'd be rebuilding the whole thing soon enough anyway. Both the agents involved in the transaction as well as the owner told us that underneath the ivory Sell Me Berber installed in the family room was nothing but plywood. So we'd decided to live with it until we could make the major changes we imagined we'd be making fairly soon.

Look what we found!

But the rug was becoming increasingly...unpleasant and really had to go. Two dogs, two kids, and a door leading directly outside will do that. The notion of putting something else in its place distressed me because I just am not a huge carpet fan plus there's the whole asthma and allergy thing we have going on, but what could I do? Plywood is plywood and has to be covered with something.

When my husband stuck the utility knife to begin the first cut I idly commented how lovely it would be if everyone had been wrong and we found wood. He looked up at me, exasperated to be having this conversation again, and then pulled back against the cut to reveal...wood. I may have squealed.  (Excitement isn't one of my more attractive emotions, but I'll never apologize.)

So instead of a several-hour episode of removal-and-replacement we executed a removal-and-go-to-lunch. Falafel and Sauvignon Blanc are waaaaaay better than whatever we would have put into a room we're hoping (planning?) to blow out sometime soon anyway.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Wonder, Wander, etc.

This weekend my husband and I attended our church’s quarterly Evensong. I adore Evensong, particularly the choral varieties (although the word song is part of the name, not every Evensong involves singing). The service is a perfect confluence of faith, history, and art that, in our circa-1728 church with its old organ and spectacular choir, does more than any other to instill in me a sense of the divine.

Because my family enjoys outings that explore history, my husband enjoys organ music, and I enjoy Evensong, I will go to great lengths to see to all of these interests on our vacations when time is more abundant than usual. Yes, I am that mom who gets everyone to church over spring break when it’s not even Palm Sunday, let alone Easter. Making this happen relies a little bit on narrative sleight of hand, and I am careful to emphasize things like George Washington Sat Here or Look! There’s a Queen Buried in the Floor. Before anyone knows what happened, they are (more or less) happily reciting the Lord’s Prayer in a satisfyingly old box-pew’d church.  As with many things, the challenge lies not with the doing but with the getting there.

We've Evensonged in a bunch of really amazing and awe-inspiring places over the years. Bruton Parish Church was notable for being the site of the first Evensong my husband and I ever attended together (on our honeymoon), and then revisited with our two kids 15 or so years later. Closer to home, Christ Church is another favorite that reinforces the notion that Philadelphia has a very special place in history. This year, we attended an Evensong at Westminster Abbey during spring break (which coincided with Holy Week).

The London trip came about after a lot of pondering on the topic of regret. It’s something I’d wanted to do for a very long time but couldn't find the perfect window of opportunity. And now, with a son who counts Churchill and Doctor Who among his favorite topics of discussion and a daughter whose fondest wish is to attend Hogwarts, it seemed like a great time in our family history, if not our family economy. Would we regret spending the money? Would we regret not spending the money? Where is our perfect information? (If you've seen it, please let me know soonest.)

Each of the four of us had points in the trip when we were overcome by a sense of rightness, that we were in the right place at the right time. For me, sitting in that space, at that time, hearing those ancient words song so beautifully, I was overcome by a wave of what I can only describe as a superlative calm. God? Confidence in my own decision to set aside the anxiety and doubts and just go? Jet leg?  I don’t know and I don’t really think it matters.  Evensong had done it again.

That Which We Have Done

These creatures know how to spend their time wisely.

A few years ago, I read an article – maybe it was in the New York Times, but I don’t remember - that told the story of a woman who had the idea to treat her children to an unforgettable, once-in-a-lifetime vacation.  She wanted the family to take a multi-week safari before the oldest left home, to solidify their memories of each other as a single unit moving through the world.  As I remember the tale, she had the financial resources to take the trip in the form of company stock grants and had no other particular plans for the (theoretical) money the grants represented. The expenditure would not result in economic hardship, nor would it have interfered with her financial responsibilities. Ultimately she decided against the extravagance and the family did not take the trip.  Shortly thereafter, the stock grants lost their value, the older son went off to college, and our heroine developed an enduring case of maternal regret.

More recently I came across research into the subject of why people, generally speaking, have more regrets about things they left undone as opposed to the things done.  It’s apparently totally likely that, say, a tequila-fueled spring break trip to Cabo with a newly elected judge’s middle son results in much less regret than not having gone at all. Research suggests that this is true even if the thing one has done was an objectively colossally bad idea. Somehow I recall that this idea is also tied into some other research that looked into why people do not redeem high-value gift cards.  Seems they wait for the perfect opportunity to use the “money” only to realize that the deadline has passed, the restaurant/store/yoga studio is out of business, the card was lost by being sent out with the recycling, or whatever.

Lesson:  drink the tequila, go to Cabo, spend the gift card.

Of course, I could save us all a lot of time by just pointing out that one can learn a lot from the plot synopses of Bucket  List and Dead Poet's Society. 

These ideas have been kicking around my head for a long time and only recently have I begun to question why they've stayed with me.  Maybe it’s age and my nicely organized and project-managed midlife crisis, I don’t know.  If I had a coat of arms, the motto would surely read non volito.  I do a lot of non volito around here.  I’ll get around to it eventually, you know.

So I've been thinking.  If I wanted to ditch the non and get to more volito, what would I do?  Travel?  Read? Visit family? Develop some hobbies (other than work and driving my kids around)?

Yes, please.

Here Not There

I used to blog there, now I blog here.  I'm going to keep the old place going, mostly because it's a documentation of my life for the past 13 years and I don't want to lose it. It's also a good reference for the canning recipes I've come to rely on year after year.

Escape velocity

Other than that, though, I've been solidly regarding that old place as archival in nature. The premise and narrative arc no longer work for me and I've struggled to keep a place for it in my life, which has changed tremendously since it began. There have been new houses, jobs, weddings, births, deaths, and the framework just couldn't take any more or meet me where I am emotionally and mentally.

That was all then.  This is now.