Category Archives: Life

Coping

High School, Life Leave a comment

Since my last post, a lot of things have happened. Some for the good, others not.

Just seven short days after my last post, MM lost a classmate. It was a freak accident and completely unexpected. It shook our small school family to the core. While MM was not friends with the young man, she knew him and had shared classes with him over the past four years. On top of that, just three months ago, MM’s cousin was killed. Our family is healing and trying to come to grips with our loss. Needless to say, my nephew, was on my mind every time I thought about what the boy’s poor parents and brother must be going through, dealing with this unexpected loss. It was a rough couple of weeks for us, and I think MM summed up her thoughts very nicely in her Instagram post:

WalkerHowever hard it is, we must move on and find a way to cope with both of these losses. That is what we are doing.

In the meantime, we are still trying to navigate through MM’s junior year, college searches, scholarships, work, and life. I had planned to discuss all of these things in this post, but I don’t think I will. It can wait. Until then:

 

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Time to Regroup

College, High School, Life Leave a comment

Thinking about writing this post there were several quotes that came to mind. One, that has always stuck with me for some reason, is from Dances with Wolves. I believe it’s when Kevin Costner’s character is first going to his new post. He and his driver, Robert Pastorelli, come across a skeleton and Pastorelli says, “I’ll bet someone back east is going, ‘Now why don’t he write?'” Kind of morbid, I know, but the point is, someone out there might have been wondering why I haven’t written. Well….

I honestly had very legitimate reasons for putting the blog down last fall. Work, school, and life got to be a bit overwhelming for the both of us and there just weren’t enough hours in the day nor days in the week. My last post was about just how busy we were at the time. In addition to work and MM’s activities, I had to manage ticket sales for the school musical and, oh yeah: MM turned 16! What started out as just another birthday and no party to mark the occasion turned into a full blown affair. Next thing I know, it’s Christmas and we’re off to London for the holiday, only to be stranded overseas for an extra week.  This also canceled our trip to California to visit UCLA. 😦 Then we came back and…well…

I would say we fell off the wagon, but it’s more like the horses went crazy and we were violently thrown off the wagon. I’ve learned a lot of times, things just don’t go how we planned.

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,

Gang aft agley

“To a Mouse” by Robert Burns

So, here we are. MM’s junior year starts Monday and today I had a mini panic attack as I realized not only do we have to get back on track with the scholarships, but I also only have two short years to teach MM as much as I can to prepare her to go off and be on her own in the world. No, I’m not abandoning her, but who knows where she will land. She may be on the other side of the country and I can’t just pop over to show her how to sauté vegetables or balance her checking account. Even if I could, is that what she needs? No, she needs the basic tools to be able to do these things on her own. Or, if not, how to figure it out when she can’t immediately turn to me for the answers.

Now, not that this year will be any easier. My fall is just as busy at work this year and my other obligations are still there. MM is not in band anymore, but that’s been replaced by yearbook. In addition, both of us have new things that are only adding to our schedule. If anything, it will be even harder this year. You know, because, why do things when they’re easy? But, this time we can’t mess around and put things off because

just-got-real

~Mom