Frazzled Reflections

Theoretically, it should have been easy. I never stopped working, which means that for the last five years my little girl has been attending some kind daycare situation. We had a wonderful first three months together (thanks to my perfectly timed April delivery which extended my maternity leave into the summer months) and then she was off to a wonderful in-home daycare. Because of moves and circumstances beyond our control, she has moved around some, but for the last two years (her preschool years) she has been attending the same daycare as her little brother. I have dropped her off in the morning for a day of learning, snacks, and play. And then during the summer months she has been at home with me. Everything changed today. Today my baby girl started Kindergarten. I remember when I started Kindergarten 30 years ago. That was back when a half day of school was the standard. I started school with a couple of my preschool classmates and my childhood best friend was a little girl who I...

I am a wife, a mother, and a teacher. They are three vocations (not jobs) that I relish. They make me who I am, and without one of those vocations I don't feel complete. But this is the time of year when those three vocations collide in uncomfortable ways: the beginning of the school year. As usual, this summer has been fantastic, and as I noted last year , the older my kids get, the more enjoyable that summer time is. And this summer was packed. We camped, both kids had swimming lessons, my daughter went to two day camps, and I spent the majority of the summer purging and selling a much as I could through Facebook garage sale groups. We went to the park, to the drive-in, and hung out. It was a good summer for all of us. During one weekend camping trip my daughter asked my husband why he couldn't be a teacher. She wanted to camp for longer and knew that if Daddy also had the summer off she wouldn't have to go home yet. We laughed at the idea of my computer nerd of a husba...

In our third year of marriage,  my husband suggested that we go out to Yellowstone for a summer vacation. I felt like the suggestion came out of nowhere. As a well-traveled girl who spent five years living in Wyoming I scoffed at the idea that we would be able to just up and travel to Yellowstone without months of advance planning. After all, it is one of the most popular national parks in the US. I remembered visiting once, when I was 11, and the crowds were sizable, especially considering that our family visited shortly after the wildfires that nearly destroyed the Old Faithful Lodge. But we did quick research, discovered campsites along the way that were still available, and made plans and quick reservations. In a matter of weeks we were packing up our little four-door Focus with all the camping equipment that would fit and we headed out west. It turned out to be the most amazing vacation of our married life, at least before we had kids. We stopped at Wall Drug, drove through ...

My family lived in Wyoming between my 6th grade year and junior year of high school. Those five years were a learning experience for me in many areas of my life, but one of the surprising areas was in a new perspective on race in America. I was a Midwestern girl who had spent eight of her earliest formative years in Detroit, a city where I was surrounded by race issues related to black/white. One of my best friends was an African American girl who lived next door and my Lutheran elementary school had a healthy racial mix. When we moved to Wyoming I was suddenly surrounded by a sea of white. There are exceptions, which was true in our town, but for the most part the Wyoming population is very white. That is until one visits the reservation, or the "rez." While exposure to other races had never been lacking in my upbringing, exposure to real, live Indians was a new experience for me. And as I get older and learn more, the minimal exposure to Native Americans that I experienc...

Picture of me in Florence, Italy - September 1999 - I was a pretty cute 20 year old. I spent the fall semester of 1999 studying in London. That semester included a trip to the continent (France, Italy, Switzerland, and Germany), a long weekend trip to Scotland, a week long trip to Ireland, and trips all over London. I took many rolls of film with me, tried to heed the warnings about what x-ray machines would do to my film when going through customs, and when I finally returned to the States I eagerly waited with bated breath for the store to finish developing over 300 (that's right, THREE HUNDRED) pictures. By contrast I took nearly 400 pictures on digital devices during a single week long family vacation to Florida. I love taking pictures. I love looking at pictures. Photographs are a time capsule; they capture a moment, an emotion, a memory. And they help us share those moments, emotions, and memories with those who cannot be there in person. I was so excited when I got...

Several years ago we saw Ishmael Beah give an interview on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart . As frequently happens when we see Jon Stewart give an interview with the author of a newly released book, our interest was piqued. And again, as frequently happens when a book piques our interest, my husband read the book and I didn't. When I made my goals for 2014 I publicly promised myself I would read more for fun, or at least for personal gain, in an attempt to get away from my terrible habit of just reading for professional and academic purposes. And while A Long Way Gone is a title on my extensive AP reading list, it is also a book that I wanted to read. So when my reading for the 2013-2014 school year was complete, I finally picked it off of the shelf and began reading. Beah's book recounts his experiences growing up during the war in Sierra Leone, including the couple of years that he served in the government army as a child soldier. His heartbreaking account of separatio...

My first trip to a Disney park was before I was even born. My parents lived in southern California at the time, and while they only lived there a short time, they took advantage of the experience. They took me, in utero, to Disneyland. When I was six months old my parents took me back to Disneyland with my paternal grandparents and my two youngest aunts. I've been told I rode "it's a small world" with my grandparents over and over again to great delight. I do not remember the experience, but it's nice to know that I had the experience as an infant. When I was nine, I traveled back to California with my parents and two younger sisters. We stayed with friends of  my parents and got to experience a lot of southern California, including Disneyland. I loved Disneyland. We did everything we could at the park. I wasn't brave enough to try "Space Mountain" and I freaked out when my mom tried to take us on the Snow White ride (even at nine I was still reeli...