Too Much Living
Years ago, I heard a story on NPR about a man who was obsessed with writing about his life. Every day he spent hours upon hours documenting every detail of his days on a manual typewriter. A wanna-be writer myself, I was jealous of the man's discipline. That is, until the reporter read some of the writer's work. Detailed descriptions of breakfast, chosen socks, and the man's dog left me far more bored than jealous. While the ol' guy had discipline, he didn't have anything interesting to say. Writing about his life, it seemed, had inhibited his ability to actually live it.
You may (or may not, as the case may be) have noticed that I haven't been blogging lately. I have a good reason for that. I have been living. I have been living my life to the absolute fullest. In fact, it so full, if it gets any fuller, I'm going to have to start using meth just to get through it.
I knew life would be busy and full when my school and practicum work started this fall. What I didn't know was that I would one day, while in class, receive a call from my children's teachers announcing they were walking out the following morning to protest the school's Board of Directors.
Aside from sudafed, what other ingredients are necessary for making meth?
As I sat home, trying to figure out what the hell to do with my kids the next day since I was unsure as to whether or not anyone would even be at the school, I received no call, no email, no nothing from the Head of School or the Board -- the Board whose seats are occupied by mommies from one campus of the school, which is not the campus my children attend, and which campus was NOT affected by the walkout. Unable to maintain the suspense any longer, I finally broke down and called the President of the Mommies, I mean, the Board.
"Hi. You don't know me, but my children attend the River campus. Did you know the teachers are staging a walk-out tomorrow?"
"[chuckle, chuckle] Oh, yeah. I heard about that."
"Well, what do you plan to do about it?"
"Do?"
Need I say more? Clearly, you can see where this is going.
In any case, without boring you with the convoluted and mind-numbing details of a long-standing conflict between the Board and the founders of the school, one of whom is a teacher, I had to take the bull by horns or, rather, the bitch by tits, and get our alleged leaders of this piss-ant school to do something about this conflict. Needless to say, I am not very popular among the Heathers who reside on the Board, but then I've never been popular with Heathers, and by the looks of them, I have a feeling they weren't popular with the Heathers either when they were in high school. I'll be damned if I'm going to let a bunch of social-climbing nitwits who are too busy trying to make up for their odd-girl-outness in high school to effectively run a Board and make a mess of the school my kids love.
Bitches.
That's not to say, of course, that only the Board is at fault and the founders/staff are not. There are always two sides to every story. But see, the Board is in a position of power to actually do something about this conflict (as is the Head of School, but that's a whole other story), something other than sitting around a t the coffee house on Friday mornings, gossiping.
Fortunately, my revolution has been somewhat successful. The President Heather stepped down, and the other Heathers will be replaced by the end of the year with people who have actual expertise to bring to the Board, expertise that goes far beyond that of a yoga instructor or an acupuncturist. The bad news is that my revolution has made me President of the School's Family Association, which essentially means I'm a PTA mother. Next thing you know I'll be driving a minivan and wearing Keds. (My apologies in advance to those of you who own both, but if you knew me personally, you'd know why that was funny.)
In addition to all of that and my school work and my usual practicum hours and raising my kids and trying not to ignore my marriage, I've had several clients, who after only 1 or 2 sessions, have provided endless hours of drama. For whatever reason, while my cohort at the agency seems only to be assigned to clients with encopresis, the clients I'm assigned to are being abandoned by their parents at the school (as in, "that child is not allowed to return home ever again, so you find a home for him") or are being 5150'd. The accolades from my supervisor for my handling of these situations has been nice (yes, I'm patting myself on the back -- sometimes a person needs to do that, especially when that person was totally unsure if she was handling the situation correctly whilst in it), but at this point I'm praying I get a client whose worst issue is that he has a little poop in his pants. I gots lots of experience with poop.
So, that's the story of why I haven't been blogging. I haven't been blogging because I've been living -- perhaps a little too much.
The saddest part about not blogging, however, means I also haven't had time to check in with all of you. I miss you. How are you?
