GFLN Week 6 Oct 11th

Joining with Melanie at The Wine Dark Sea

FALL BREAK WEEK!!!  Since I am no longer allowed to bank my time off at work anymore, I thought I would take the week off with the girls just for the heck of it.

Sunday, Oct 5th

The big kids went camping with my parents at a state park about 30 minutes away. We drove over and spent the afternoon. We went on a short hike where we got down to the river's edge. Marian liked splashing in the water and the girls enjoyed picking mussel shells out of the water. Olivia was fearless in reaching into the water to grab those shells. They also found some hickory nuts that they cracked and picked open. We sprinkled them on our food for supper. Sam helped carry wood for the fire and generally liked being in the woods. I also got to roast marshmallows which was excellent.

Olivia searching with gusto!

The Loot

Roasting marshmallows for probably the first time in five years.

Monday, Oct 6th

The big kids are still gone, but Marian says lots of cute things. Her language acquisition is on fire right now.

The fallout from Sam's packing

Tuesday, Oct 7th

I retrieved the big kids from camp where they helped tear down and clean up. We kept everything low key in the evening because they were tired and dirty. At supper I asked what their favorite thing about camping was:

Grace--exploring and looking for shells
Olivia--exploring, looking for shells, and getting messy
Sam--hearing the train whistle in the distance

My father called the woods they were hiking in "The Enchanted Forest" which is so out-of-character for my father as to make you wonder who that man who looks like my father might be. The Granddaddy Effect. They were said to be extremely helpful so hopefully they learned a lot about camping.

Wednesday, Oct 8th

We set the alarm early for 4:50am to attempt to view the lunar eclipse. About an hour or so before the alarm, a big storm blew through so it was questionable whether or not we would see anything. We got out of bed and looked out and the sky was pretty clear. Overhead I heard children walking around because Grace had also set her alarm so as to not miss anything. We all tramped outside and looked. The partial eclipse was already underway, but there were also clouds blowing in from the west. The children were excited to see the partially eclipsed moon, but soon the clouds won before it was complete. We stood for a few minutes waiting and occasionally a glimpse could be seen which elicited a shout from some child and then we waited some more. It was soon apparent there were no more glimpses to be had. None of our pictures really turned out. We went back inside and fired up the NASA live broadcast on the computer and saw the eclipse in totality and listened to the NASA guy talk. The NASA guy was in Huntsville which is just a couple of hours down the road. I was glad of that because he always gave his local time first when discussing the timing of events and his time is our time. We all eventually went back to sleep in order to wake up less than an hour later to get ready for a dentist appointment. We were a tired bunch and cranky by the end of the day. Most conversations for the day revolved around talking about the eclipse, how it works, why it happens, why is it called lunar, why the moon turned red, what is a solar eclipse, and on. Lots of astrological excitement here. I learned that Grace already knew what refraction means. Also just announcing that the total solar eclipse in 2017 will pass right over my parents' house so anyone who wants to come see it is invited to the party.

Olivia was sick in the afternoon.

Thursday, Oct 9th

I was in a pretty poor mood on Thursday. I spent the day either cleaning or avoiding cleaning by staring at the Internet. The only thing of real note from Thursday is that Grace is reading a lot. She is reading to the point of being annoying. "No, you can't read at supper." "Grace, put the book down and come here!" "Grace, where did you go? Why haven't you come back in here?" "Just finish what I told you to do and then you can read."  She is reading a wide variety. I die a little death every time I see her engrossed in the Disney Princess storybook, but she is also reading Magic Kitten.  :P   Also Children of Noisy Village and St. George and the Dragon and a Boxcar Children book, The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and part of Prince Caspian. So yes, reading.

Olivia was sick all day.

Friday, Oct 10th

Olivia still sick and I am still cleaning. The highlight of the day was rearranging the bookshelf in the girls' room and reading to Grace out of the Barefoot Book of Classic Poems. It really is such a lovely book. After reading and discussing several of the poems, Grace asks, "Mommy, are you supposed to be cleaning?" And thus ended our poetry session because yes, I really needed to be cleaning.

I've read Sam several books over the course of the week, but I've not really kept up with what they were. He is also starting to sit and examine books on his own. He spent a lot of time looking at Noah's Ark and wanting to know why the town was on fire. He is obsessed with fires and firefighters right now.

Saturday, Oct 11th

Olivia is getting better but still sick and I am endlessly chasing Marian since her new favorite hobby is banging on the computer keyboard and clicking on the mouse.

Housekeeping

I intended to sit down and write a post about the ongoing 'sticks in a jar' chore experiment we have happening right now. I still intend to do that, but that's not what this post is about. Nope. This is about housekeeping and my inner demons.

My house is a wreck.

There's no nice way of saying it. We have junk everywhere. The couches are covered. The floors are covered. The countertops are covered. Every surface that could possibly have something piled on it has something piled on it. You know the saying everything has a place and everything in its place? Nothing has a place here or if it does, it's not likely to be in it.

I hate living like this. It drives me crazy. It's embarrassing.  And more than embarrassing, it makes me not want to spend extended time in my house. Don't misunderstand. I don't mean I don't like spending time with my family because I do. I don't like spending extended, unstructured time at my house. I am the type of person who needs order to feel relaxed. Clutter makes me anxious. I am surrounded by clutter. I am also the only person in the house afflicted in this particular way. No one else seems to notice we are drowning in junk.

Since I'm gone so much, I can spend a lot of time at home during the week with blinders on. I am busy and I can pretend not to notice as I kick a pathway of junk to traverse the living room. Over the weekend I am tired and feel entitled to relax a little. Feeling entitled is usually your first sign of a problem. I catch up on a bit of housework, but I rarely dive in to do what needs done to make the house enjoyable to me. I work hard to keep that area of my brain turned off because when I think about it, I usually get angry. I don't like getting angry about it but I do. I am resentful and bitter and angry.

A lot of my frustration goes back to when we moved in. I was pregnant and sick and I never got the house put away in the way I wanted. There are still packed boxes shoved in closets. I have felt perpetually behind ever since. This feeling of being behind ebbs and flows with any particular season of life. When I am pregnant, nothing gets done. I feel terrible for most of my pregnancies and so the little bit of pick-up I do day-to-day and week-to-week stops and the house slowly collapses on itself. After delivery, there are the demands of a newborn that usually squashes the majority of my dreams of getting stuff done while on maternity leave. Then I go back to work and for the first six months or so, the baby demands every moment of my free time after work since I abandoned her all day long. I don't mind giving my time to the baby but it does mean other stuff doesn't get done. After that intense newborn/infant period, I usually start digging the house out of the backlog until I get pregnant again and start the cycle all over again.

Even though Marian is 16 months old now, the truth is that our house has still not recovered from that pregnancy and, for whatever reason, my will to put the house back together has been lacking. There have been a few bright spots such as the victory over the paperwork pile of doom which was well documented on FB. Fun fact about that project: the two bags of paperwork that needed shredded are still sitting in the living room. The real problem is that the house is in such a state that each room is a muti-day project and if I can't complete the work, I'd rather not start. It is too demoralizing to work all day Saturday on something and have most of that work destroyed before the next Saturday. So I just don't do it. This is not an admirable attitude.

I feel like if I ever got the whole house completely in order at the same time, we wouldn't live in such squalor because I would be able to maintain it. It *is* easier to clean a clean house, but I've never had a clean house to start from. I spend two or three weeks working on one area and then spend two or three more weeks working on another. There are weekend activities and trips away interspersed among the work. By the time I get back around to the first area, it looks like I never touched it. Having seven days elapse between cleaning sessions when the house is lived in full time is not very productive.

My favorite analogy is mowing the grass. What if you could only mow an eighth or a sixteenth of your yard once a week? You first mow the area nearest the house. Then what do you do the next week? Do you mow by the house again or pick another spot? Whatever you do, by the end of the summer, large sections of your yard are going to be impassible. You live amongst chest-high weeds.

Since I've been off from work this week, I decided I wanted to get the girls' room in shape. I have been wanting to add their room maintenance to their daily jobs but knew I would need to dig them out of the hole first. I try to be efficient by separating into three bins: trash, stuff that should stay in the room and stuff that belongs in other rooms. It saves time to stay in one spot with the bins rather than get up and down constantly putting things away. After the whole room has been sorted, then I put away the bin items.

I have struggled. I still haven't finished sorting the room. I've made good progress, but I start and stop attempting to find the will to just get it done. I am annoyed and distracted. Even as I work on their room, I can't help but think of all the other areas of the house that aren't getting attention this week. It makes me angry and I feel defeated. I'm running out of time and I am starting to wonder if I am going to get it finished. There is just so much junk in there, but the real problem is that I am not working diligently enough at it. This is stupid. The girls have taken well to the stick experiment so I have a reasonable expectation that their room would be maintained and not fall back into chaos. It might finally be checked off the list. So why am I having so much trouble getting it done? I don't know.

Sometimes I wonder if I am being tested. Do I have to make peace with the chaos before being given the opportunity to correct it? If so, I'm failing the test badly. The disorder drives me mad. This is why I close my eyes to it and pretend it doesn't exist until I am here for an extended period of time and am forced to reckon with it.

The Value of a Vacation

I am taking this entire week off of work. The vacation policy at work has changed and, if I don't use the time before the end of the fiscal year, it's gone. This is an entirely different mode of being for me and for the first time since I started working, I am taking regular non-Christmas time off of work. I have spent years in maternity leave time hoarding mode where I would take a day or two off through the year, several days at Christmas, and then jealously bank the majority in a cyclical attempt to piece together paid maternity leaves for the pregnancy that was eventually coming. My number one priority in managing my time was to have as much time as possible with my newborn, even when that baby didn't even exist yet. And now I'm not allowed to do that and instead have regularly scheduled breaks throughout the fiscal year.

In July I took an entire week off of work in order to go on the first vacation for our family since 2009. Five years between getaways is a long time. In many ways it was just what I needed. I had such a sense of desperation to get away from work. I was ground down. It had been so long since I hadn't been at work, it was hard to remember what it was like to go out and have fun. To stretch my boundaries and break out of the routine. To breathe a sigh of relief. Our family really needed that time together and we all had such an enjoyable time. Even now, three months later, many family conversations revolve around what happened on our vacation and when we might go back to visit the cheetahs. It was so, so good for us.

At the same time, I noticed how little I thought about work. Isn't that odd? I spend the majority of my waking hours doing work that I rarely have a passing thought about while not at work. The few times work arrived in my consciousness, it was only to note how much time I had until I had to go back. I could honestly walk away from my job and never think about it again. I could just decline to go back and not blink. I don't necessarily think that is admirable.

The cliche about taking vacation is that you return to work revitalized and ready to tackle challenges with fresh energy. This did not happen to me. My return to work in July was horrible. All those feelings of freedom had to be stuffed back into the old routine. I despaired at what my life actually looked like instead of the neat picture in my mind of what could be. It took me the better part of two weeks to emotionally recover from the vacation. I knew that returning to the regular schedule would feel hard, but I did not anticipate how bleak it would look to me. In some ways it reminded me of returning to work after maternity leave: raw until the numbness takes over. So I was surprised at the extremity of my feelings and wondered if it was better to maintain my numbness in the routine rather than picking at the scab with the possibilities that free time allows you to ponder.

Now I am taking another week off. We aren't doing anything out of the ordinary this time. The girls have fall break, but I will probably just take the time to catch up on the housework that I am perpetually behind on. I am prepared to crash again next week when I return. Perhaps my own awareness of it will mitigate its effects.

Taking regular vacations from work is a privilege that I thought was just not mine to have, but here it is. Since it has only been three months since the last set of days off, I do not have that same feeling of desperation this time. Just an easy expectation of a light schedule and good company.

Is there value in breaking a routine and breaking through numbed emotions? I think there is. This precious time away is a reminder that I am not that job. I am not my schedule. There is a whole life out there that can be lived even if I can only glimpse it occasionally one week at a time.

GFLN Week 5 Oct 4th

Linking with Melanie again at The Wine-Dark Sea.

Sunday, Sept, 28th

I honestly don't remember what I did with the children yesterday because it has all been blotted out in my mind by an argument I had with a stranger on the Internet for most of the day. I don't recommend those and usually don't get sucked in. My bad.

Right after we got home from church, my brother called to tell us that Jack Hanna's Into the Wild was about cheetahs and we needed to turn it on and watch. We complied and brunch was delayed while we distractedly got food together and watched the TV. They had a king cheetah, which has stripes instead of spots, and Dave speculated that it was probably more like a breed of cheetah instead of a sub-species. He and Grace discussed the difference between breeds and species and Grace was skeptical until the cheetah expert on the TV said that they used to think that king cheetahs were a separate species until they studied them and determined it was a recessive gene trait. So there.

Olivia worked on handwriting a little and said her teacher said she wasn't allowed to work on cursive at home. I told her the teacher doesn't get to tell us what we are allowed to do at home.

Olivia's portrait of her cousins

Monday, Sept 29th

I arrived home to find Sam and Olivia with an elaborate pillow fort happening in the living room while Grace was upstairs buried in a book. Both Grace and Olivia had library at school. Grace checked out "Double Fudge" and Olivia checked out a book on swans.

At supper Grace said that she was going to have to do a PowerPoint project on a European explorer with a partner. The explorer is to be drawn at random out of a hat and the partner is to be drawn at random out of a hat. Everything about this project makes me want to hide: PowerPoint and group projects. Grace is pretty anxious about it. She has a whole list of people she doesn't want to work with because they don't do good work. And she is also self-conscious about her lack of ability in PowerPoint because her stupid parents don't think PowerPoint is very important in the elementary curriculum and don't let her practice.

We then talked about random European explorers and what they did. I think she is a little unclear on the concept of the continent of Europe because we would mention that so-and-so was Spanish and she would object saying the project was only on Europeans. Spain is in Europe, dear. I meant to get the globe out after supper but forgot. Memorable line of the night:

Dave: You could get Marco Polo.
Grace: Did he invent the game?

After supper, Marian was tired of being confined so I repaired upstairs with her so she could run free in the only minimally baby proof area of the house while Dave stayed down to wash dishes. What happened next I can only describe as the closest thing to feeling like a homeschooler without actually being a homeschooler.

Olivia announced she had homework that was due tomorrow. This was true enough. Actually we had completely ignored Olivia's monthly homework for the past three weeks and had mountains to make up. Since her homework requires an adult to sit with her and read through the instructions out loud, she came upstairs so I could help her. Grace wanted to work on her cheetah blog and Sam wanted me to read to him out of the nursery rhyme book while Marian ran all over. I would read Olivia an instruction on my left, turn to Sam on my right and read him a verse, randomly spell out words for Grace as she called them out, and tend to Marian as she crawled all over us, wanting to nurse, wanting down, wanting Sam's book, wanting Olivia's pencil. We kept this rhythm up for probably 45 minutes. Olivia and I powered through FIFTEEN pages of math homework! No page had more than six problems and a lot of the problems were just counting problems, but still, it was a lot of work for a six year old. I was mulitasking to the extreme and never got frustrated. Olivia got tired towards the end, but she, too, never got frustrated. The whole evening was glorious! I felt like a real mother doing real mother things.

Signed two agendas and Olivia's homework pack, read one newsletter, and learned that Wednesday is another Burger King night.

Tuesday, Sept 30th

The girls had cross country practice after school. They both had art class too. Olivia painted her sunflower from last time and Grace made a value chart. I had no idea what that might be so she explained it to us. Sounds like a color chart where you start with black and then the next spot is a little lighter and the next a little lighter until you get to gray and so on with all the colors. She was amazed to hear I have never taken an art class in school.

After supper, Sam and Olivia created an elaborate workshop out of a couple of big, cardboard boxes we had gotten that day. They had a room with windows and doors, a computer with a mouse, and a TV with remote. They set about to do their work and played this game most of the night. Grace was in and out of the game, doing whatever she was doing.

 Laptop. Note the mouse with the mouse pad.

Signed two agendas and ignored a stack of letters that came home for me to read.

Wednesday, Oct 1st

The girls had their final cross country race of the season. They both did well again. Both finished in the middle of the pack again. I hope we get their times soon.

While we were driving over to the race, Grace told us that instead of having her regular class in the afternoon, they had a big assembly on bullying. Whoopee! Olivia had the same assembly. I asked them if they learned anything new. Of course not. Guidance on steroids. Perhaps I fail in my duties as a parent, but my contempt for these exercises is not concealed so we all got a big laugh out of it. Then Grace said that the fourth graders had a separate assembly early in the week to talk about tobacco. Oh, lucky girl! Two assemblies in one week! Grace gave me a packet of information where parents were issued a challenge. Oh yay! We are supposed to discuss the information provided about the dangers of tobacco use with our child and practice saying no with them every day for a week. A week! Then sign the attached certificate stating we followed through and talked about tobacco and said no every day for a week. Um, we will not be doing this. Grace immediately said she didn't think we would and that she didn't want the bag anyway. The bag? Oh yes, if you return your certificate you get a bag. They even provide five helpful ways to say no. They are:

1. Say "no"
2. Say "no" again and again
3. Say "no" like you mean it
4. Say "no" and give a reason
5. Get up and leave

I wish that list was a joke, but no.  So I guess we did take the opportunity to discuss our views on tobacco use and how it is possible to not smoke even though people around you are smoking, but we are definitely not doing it every day for a week. Part of what annoys me about this is that they are taking away from instruction time or, worse, recess, for futile attempts at influencing future habits. Of course there are exceptions, but I am willing to bet that the vast majority of future smokers live in a house with a current smoker and all the assemblies in the world is not going to change the impact of the lived experience of a child. So I don't know. I understand why the schools feel the impulse to do these things, but it seems like a giant waste of time to me.

After the race was Burger King night! Hopefully there will only be one more of these coming up for awhile. After we got home, girls needed bathed and then the bustle of getting ready for bed, and then Grace announced she had homework. Tears as we said she just needed to go to bed.

Signed two agendas, got Olivia's school pictures, and saw some other piece of paperwork that I cannot call to mind right now.

Thursday, Oct 2nd

I had to leave a little earlier than normal (well it actually should be my normal leaving time, but that's neither here nor there) so I didn't go up to tell the girls good morning before I left. As I drove away, I saw a light on in the girls' room so I am presuming Grace woke up early to do her homework.

I don't remember much because I don't remember. Olivia had technology class and Grace had PE. When Olivia went to technology, Grace was in the computer lab working on typing out a story about cheetahs for her writing class. Grace is working on her blog again. In Grace's folder I found multiple drawings of a mermaid queen.

The funniest thing of the evening was when Olivia was "reading" Sam a book. She was full of commentary and inflection. It was hilarious, but as soon as she realized I had turned my attention to listening to her, she stopped. That's a bummer. Olivia has a very wry sense of humor but hates being the center of attention. I feel like I should spend more time with Olivia's reading, but it keeps not happening.

Signed 1 agenda since Dave had already signed one, got Grace's school pictures, and read several letters pertaining to the school fundraising festival which will happen the week they get back from Fall Break.

Friday, Oct 3rd

Not much conversation at supper. Grace had library where she checked out Andrew Clements "No Talking" which she had mostly finished by the end of the day. Olivia had PE. There was another school wide assembly for the official end of the magazine fundraiser. Oh will these fundraisers ever end?

After supper, I read Sam a couple of books, "Smokey the Fireman" again and "Mud Pie for Mother." Olivia took over and they looked through a "Tiger" book. Sam has really become interested in books and drawing recently. Sometime this week, he drew portraits of Marian and Olivia.

Olivia by Sam

Before bed Grace and I were talking about her book which was inspired by a silent protest of Gandhi's and applies the concept to an elementary school which, of course, pits the boys against the girls. It sounds like a strange book to me. Gandhi was protesting societal injustice and the principal in the book just wants the kids to shut up and proposes a no talking challenge, but problems arise when the students take it seriously and then won't respond to their teachers. So, um, what is the point of this book? I don't know, but it gives Grace something to think about.

She found out that her European explorer is Henry Hudson and I had tell her that, in fact, the Dutch are not French.

We also talked about 4 digit by 4 digit multiplication and how you have to add one more zero to each addition line for every digit and why that is true. I again emphasized the need to keep your columns straight and neat which I think she is starting to understand why I have stressed it. Her handwriting is messy so there is lots of room for improvement here.

Saturday, Oct 4th

Dave and Grace made pancakes this morning and Dave made her double the ingredients so some early morning math happening. Overheard quote by Dave while Grace was mixing ingredients that made me laugh: "The more you knock out of the bowl, the less that will be in the bowl." Yes. that's true.

Lots of screaming and whining here this morning for reasons I can't quite figure so they were all banished outside as soon as it was plausible. Even Marian was cranky, but she's currently passed out in the playpen.

The girls are on Fall Break next week so I'm not sure what will be going on around here. Grateful to not have to sign anything for a week.

Wait, I Thought You Were A Music Major? Part IV

Continuing from Part III

Once we moved to Knoxville, we launched ourselves into finding a way to survive. Dave searched for jobs.  He interviewed a few places and quickly found a job as a middle school band director/high school assistant. He was in the sweet spot for getting hired, a couple of years of experience, but not too much experience. The new job even paid more than the old job.

I applied for graduate school on campus and was quickly accepted. I was offered a graduate assistantship which would cover my tuition and pay a small stipend on top. Since almost none of my previous college credits were sufficient to prepare me for graduate level computer science courses, I had to register entirely for undergraduate work. But all was well. We had taken a blind leap and landed on our feet.

Over the next two years, I took almost the entirety of the computer science requirements for a bachelor's degree plus numerous math classes. I enjoyed the logic of the work and the coding, but our program was very systems focused and I wasn't terribly interested in systems. I wanted a career that was broadly applicable and didn't involve endless time as a code monkey. I took a class on database programming and was thoroughly intrigued. I thought a blend of computer science with business would be a great combination.

I looked at the graduate program in computer science for which I had been taking all the prerequisites and realized it would take me another three years to get through the program. I hadn't set out to become a professional student. At this point I was nearly 27 years old. We knew we wanted to start a family soon. I started looking around at what was available for me to finish up a program, move into the direction of database work and get on with our lives. The available coursework in databases was spread across three departments: computer science, business, and information sciences. Information sciences is the new-fangled name for library science. N.B. I don't know if every information sciences program has an extensive catalog available in database design and implementation, but one of the profs in this program had a special interest in the area.

After examining what was available on campus, I decided to change my major to information sciences. There was a two-fold reason. 1) I knew with all my previous CS coursework standing as electives, I could finish the program in a calendar year if I took a very full load. I could not finish either of the other two options within that time frame. 2) I knew there would be some opaqueness into an employer's understanding of what information sciences is.  If the degree was still called library science, I would not have made the switch. Since I knew that I had the foundational knowledge for what I wanted to do, the name of the degree was not that important to me, but I did not want to have a degree that employers would dismiss out of hand. Library science would be dismissed. Information Sciences sounds techy.

I secured another assistantship and launched into Information Science taking all the database classes that were available on campus. I also took the core requirements for the library portion so, technically, I am qualified to be a librarian as well. I got pregnant partway though my coursework, planned to the nth degree. The last few months of school were grueling because I was very sick. I graduated in May 2005 with a Master of Science in Information Sciences. I had Grace in August.

When Grace was born I was overwhelmed with motherhood. I was not quite as sold on our original plan as I thought I would be, but I was managing the household and myself about as well as the mother in Simcha Fisher's classic essay, which is to say not well. I still struggled with the feeling of not accomplishing anything, feeling like I was shirking my duties, and just generally feeling lazy.

In the meantime, Dave had become extremely disgruntled in his work. The schedule was insane, the pay was terrible, and some of the students were unbearable. We actually had to swear out a warrant once, but that's another story. He wanted out, badly. I started looking for employment.

Even though I had some misgivings, it looked like our plan really was the wisest course of action to take. In October 2006, I accepted a position as a database analyst working directly under the DBA. Even though my title has changed, I still have the same job today.

Wait, I Thought You Were A Music Major? Part III

Continuing from Part II

I settled into the routine of going to work at the bank everyday. There were aspects of the job I really enjoyed. I loved counting the money, the details of executing transactions, the pride in having a balanced drawer everyday.  As the summer arrived, I revisited the idea of finding a band job. I was on the lookout, but again there was nothing open within a reasonable driving distance and the impracticability of having two band directors in the family was driven home once more.

As we grappled with this employability conflict and the reality of a teaching salary, we had a fateful conversation in the car on a long trip. What if I quit looking for a band job? What if since Dave was already employed, I use this flexibility to find a career that would pay more than teaching? What if I went to graduate school? When I had more profitable credentials and we were ready to have children, what if Dave quit teaching school and stayed home? What if I was the one who went out and worked? He did most of the cooking anyway. Wouldn't this work out better?

In Dave's second year at the school, I set out to figure out what exactly it was I wanted to do that would meet our requirements. I enrolled in some business classes at the local community college because that's what you do when you don't know what you want to do. I took accounting, economics, and math. I rediscovered my long dormant love of math which had been frustrated out of me by terrible middle school math teachers. After spending a year in the odd world of community college where some of the easiest classes I have ever taken were treated like we were studying string theory, I decided I needed to make a move.

Although I enjoyed the business classes, I couldn't see myself becoming an accountant. I knew any viable career change would probably require graduate school. I started looking through college websites looking at what options were available. I settled on computer science. Why? I don't really know. I knew it was detail-oriented which I liked. I knew there should be plenty of job market growth in the field. And I knew it should pay well. I called the university, inquired, and was assured that I would not have trouble being accepted into the program and even get an assistantship. 

Dave and I discussed our options and plans. We decided that if we were ever going to do anything crazy and brash, now was the time before we were laden with responsibilities. In August 2002, we both submitted our resignations and moved to Knoxville with nothing waiting on us there. No employment, no income, no guarantees.


On to the Grand Finale!

Wait, I Thought You Were A Music Major? Part II

Continuing the story from Part I

After the attempted railroading, Dave quickly looked around and put out feelers and found a job as an assistant band director in a county about two hours away. It was a good job for someone just starting out or without much experience. It was essentially a team teaching position with a guy who had years of experience and could guide Dave through his first years of teaching instead of the sink or swim situation he had in Crazyville and it paid more money.

We moved and, after a short delay which would take another post to explain but I will spare you, Dave started working the new job immediately. I was at home unemployed. At first I looked around a bit, but since school had already started, there were slim pickings. This is when it first occurred to me that maybe having two band directors in the family might not be a good idea. After it was apparent there would be no positions open within a reasonable distance, I began looking for an hourly job in the town where we lived. To my surprise, I had trouble finding a job in this way as well. I was told over and over that I was overqualified. I was frustrated to say the least because I knew it would be at least nine or ten months for even the opportunity of another band job opening. Surely a good worker for most of a year would be good enough, but no, they expected you to make a career out of bagging groceries or they were not interested.

Dave's schedule was very hectic and I spent a lot of time at home alone. It generally takes me a long time to make friends and I was now a stranger in a cliquish, small town. I would head over to the band room and hang out, but the band parents at this school were strangely uninvolved. I tried to cook and keep house, but never felt like anything was good enough. Every task left undone at home was an indictment of my slacker freeriding. Daytime television, which I hate, sucked more of my time, but I really didn't know what to do with myself. I had plans but no drive to complete them. In retrospect, I was very lonely, but I didn't recognize it at the time.

Money was tight since rent took nearly 40% of our take home pay and I began to think about the future. It was very important to me that our potential children be raised directly by us at home and not go to daycare. I went to daycare for a time as a child and HATED IT! After I outgrew daycare, I was a latchkey kid after school and HATED IT! My mother was a school teacher so I was only home by myself for maybe an hour a day, but I felt abandoned, not that I could articulate that feeling at the time. I hated unlocking the door and being in the empty house by myself. My siblings were around but I hated the unmoored feeling of there being no adults home. I think this is why I had so much trouble functioning during this period of unemployment. I had no functional model of what to do all day. I also think unsupervised children and teenagers create more problems than would normally arise if there was an adult around to put the kibosh on it.  It was extremely important for us to be able to live on one income when the children came. Knowing what my future desires were, the reality of living on the single income of a teacher began to sink in. It wasn't that I wasn't willing to live frugally or go without extras, it was that we were spending almost every dime and just barely scraping by with basic necessities. I began to question the long term viability of our situation.

After six months, I was finally hired by a local bank as a teller and we could start putting money in the savings account again. Hurray! But the necessity of more income weighed on my mind.

On to Part III