Heartcrossings

This is J’s fifth year in elementary school and for the first time this year, I became a PTA member. As a single parent, I lacked the capacity to take on any volunteer responsibilities that took time away from my never-ending list of to-dos. I figured with DB in the picture, I might have more latitude and dove into the deep end of the pool when I announced my desire to take on some work to help as a PTA volunteer. I have to admit, I received a warm welcome as the PTA is always scrounging for volunteers. Back home, J and  DB were excited for me. My first assignment was to do the monthly newsletter. Seemed like a walk in the park – I would get inserts from about six sources, I could pick out a template and combine the material. Since there was no editing involved, I was toying with the idea of a Macro to pull the pieces and assemble the newsletter. The work would be a matter of few clicks I had a whole month to do this.  At the risk of getting ahead of myself, I w...

I served a spicy chicken curry with rice for dinner today and J commented " Eating this is like watching Bridge on the River Kwai - painful to watch but the kind of movie you remember. The blah kind of curry is like watching Cinderella" Over the years, I have heard a lot of interesting things said about the food I cook being that I can go from superlative to insipid effortlessly depending on my frame of mind. This movie analogy is however new in my experience. Since she finished eating her food fairly quickly, I am going to assume that the analogy was a favorable one. At any rate it left me chuckling to myself.  Since DB came to our lives, we have a TV in the household and the only thing that J finds interesting on it is the Food Channel which she watches every once in a while. So when I baked a streusel cake recently and asked her how she liked it, J was on the roll. "I'd give it an eight and half out of ten. There were far too many flavors colliding with each other...

The idea of driving as a hobby rather than a necessity is very appealing to me. I miss that one year I was car-less and used the Metro to go everywhere. As long as those commutes were, I enjoyed the luxury of being able to read and not worry about negotiating traffic. Can't wait for this technology to go mainstream. This is the best of both worlds - freedom from driving while being able to maintain autonomy over the route. There are many other appealing benefits as well - freedom from car insurance, not having to worry about your teenager driving recklessly and not having to chauffeur old or disabled family members to name a few. Along with all those benefits might come the come invasive technology that becomes prime target for marketeers and scammers alike.

Marriage to DB brought home a few painful realizations for me. After all (I think) I went through after my previous marriage came undone leaving with no option but to leave with a three month old baby, I mistakenly believed that my job (this time around) was done when I found the right man. As much as DB is the right man for me, it turns out that the relationship still takes a lot of work to nurture and keep healthy. I realize that I was not "owed" a low maintenance and zero effort marriage because of anything I suffered in the past. It took at least a few months to even come to this understanding though making peace with it is quite another matter. Then there was the question "What next ?". The most reasonable approach might seem to seek some counseling, try and resolve my resistance to the smallest change in my former way of life, my unreasonable phobia of confrontation and finally my tendency to take an all or nothing stance on things were a more modulated, mid...