Not a Wasted Word

In 34 hours the carnival will be over.

I so, so need it to be over.

It’s storming today but the forecast for tomorrow is hopeful.

Please send some sunny thought our way.

I really hope this event is at least mildly successful. We’ve put SO MUCH effort and time and planning and money into it. Our school community could really use a win right now.

But the most important thing is that in 34 hours it will be done. No matter what happens, or how it turns out, it will be over, and I can have my life back.

Just 34 hours.

I took the weekend off from all the shit I needed to do. Friday I didn’t go to work because my son’s preschool was closed for two days. My husband took Thursday, and our son to his TK-required physical which involved three shots and a blood draw (so glad to miss that!) and I took Friday. We just lounged around the house because my son wasn’t feel great after all those vaccinations. I mostly cleaned up the house in preparation for my daughter’s sleep over.

That night, while my son enjoyed special grandparent time, my daughter had three friends over. It was our first big spend the night and it went pretty well. Of course it was exhausting but they were all passed out by 10:30 and no one got up again until 7am. I will take it!

Their parents were here to pick them up by 10am and the rest of Saturday was very low key. The only stressful part was not realizing that Target would be a mad house the day before Easter (I went to grab non-Easter related things), but I survived. And now my husband can try out jar salads, which I’m thrilled about because he’s been buying lunch every day at work for the last year and I really wish he wouldn’t.

Sunday we spent a beautiful day at my parents’ house. The kids found their eggs and gleefully opened them. Then they stripped to their skivvies and played in the wading pool. After two weeks of gray and rain it got very warm last week, and the heat wave still isn’t over.

Of course the forecast calls for rain this Saturday and I’m trying hard not to freak out about it. So many hours have gone into planning for this carnival, the idea that rain could ruin it is more than I can bear.

But I have to accept what I cannot control and plan for inevitabilities. I spent 5 hours last night getting ready for the final publicity push and coordinating everyone else’s efforts. It was so nice to take the weekend off from work and carnival obligations; I do think I’m ready to push through and get this thing done.

In Buddhism there is a teaching about putting forth your best effort while having no expectations of the result, and accepting whatever happens. I always struggle mightily with that teaching, especially when I have put forth an immense amount of effort. But the reality is there is nothing more I can do to make people come, and less I can do to control the weather. So I will focus on what I can do. And try hard to be okay with whatever the outcome might be.

I’m struggling right now. Everything is carnival, carnival, carnival.

There are some other things too, but they aren’t great. I’m doing a shit job at work (and home, frankly) because I’m so distracted. My house is teeming with carnival supplies; towers of game and prize tickets, bag of prizes, boxes of supplies. There is a bucket dunk tank sitting on the back of my bike in the entry way. (My daughter’s school is shut down for spring break this week so I can’t move anything to their storage space.) I got some shitty news at work about next year. I’m just… tired.

It feels like I’m fighting all these uphill battles, and I wonder what is the point?

And then I think of how hopeless people with real problems must feel, people trying to claw their way out of generational poverty, people worried about ICE showing up at their door and tearing their family apart (my daughter’s school has had three information meetings about that this year – our school community is terrified), people worried about their children being shot by the people entrusted by our society to protect them.

I know my problems aren’t real. I need to put things in perspective, but mostly creating that “perspective” just makes me more depressed.

I’m just in a shitty place, mentally. I keep reminding myself that this too shall pass. I’m trying to adopt that mindset of doing my best work and accepting the outcome. But the thought of having gathered $5000 in raffle prizes when we’ll be lucky to sell $2500 in tickets is just depressing. I feel like I’m doing everything wrong. Like I’m missing something obvious. Like it’s my fault that we’ll fail.

I’m just done and there are still a lot of miles to run in this marathon. I hope I make it to the finish line.

I’ve been so tired lately. Even enough I’m getting pretty decent nights with 7 hours of sleep, I’m dragging like crazy at work. I think it might be the weather (our 2nd week of gray and rain), or the carnival (only two more weeks and and so much more to do).

But there has been good news this week. A lot of good news, actually.

On Monday I asked my 7th and 8th graders if anyone would be willing to come up to the city and volunteer at my carnival. I honestly didn’t expect much response–it’s a 30+ minute drive one way and it’s the first day of their spring break–but the response was truly overwhelming. Over half of each class took the information to talk to their parents, and I’ve had 14 kids commit to helping. I am so touched by their willingness to help me with this. It restored a little faith in… I don’t know… everything.

This week we also learned that our son got into the TK program we applied to. I was genuinely shocked. I had pretty much written off the chance of that happening, so much so that I almost forgot the letters were coming this week.

It’s not a perfect situation, and we’re still not 100% sure he’ll go, but the prospect off saving $15K in child care next year makes me giddy. I’ll be sad to lose Spanish Immersion, and I know he’ll miss his friends, but I do think TK will be a better fit for him than a 4th year at his preschool, where they aren’t well equipped for older kids who no longer nap. Also, did I mention saving $15K?!

There was also the OST (Out of School Time – basically after care program) to get into, and I’m not 100% sure that happened, but I’m pretty confident I turned my two massive packets in early enough to get a space.

Once I felt pretty sure the TK/OST program was a go, I bought my tickets to Nicaragua.

I have to admit, I am equal parts terrified and excited about it, I think mostly because I’m not sure yet of our itinerary. But the tickets were as cheap as I’d seen them in over a month of checking, and now that I know we can afford it, I pulled the trigger. My husband thinks I’m crazy–What if you decide you don’t want to go?!–but I know this is so important to me that it’s not so much about wanting to go, but needing to. Traveling to Spanish speaking countries has been part of “the plan” since before I had kids; it’s a reflection of my deepest desires and my most cherished goals and I need to start making it happen, even if it scares me.

Oh, and my daughter got into all the cool camps we wanted for the four weeks we are actually in town this summer.

So yeah, lots of good news this week.

And it’s Friday!

Any good news to share?

On the Note to Self advice episode from January, Manoush suggested that one way to combat information overload is to set an intention every time you go online, and stick to the intention. She says it’s not finding that recipe or checking your Instagram feed or buying that thing you need (or even want) that creates the feeling of overwhelm, but jumping back and forth between them without recognizing what your trying to get done. I have to agree.

I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately, trying to determine what my intention is when I open my phone. The reality is that most of the time I’m doing it out of habit; it’s a mindless exercise with no intention at all. I suppose I’m trying to distract myself, but even that is hard to determine. When I do think of what my intention might be, and can’t articulate it, I turn the phone off again. It’s a small gesture, and not particularly powerful, but it is getting me thinking about my phone use differently.

The idea is also extended into my blog reading. I’ve noticed a shift in my satisfaction with blog reading over the years. It used to be my favorite past time, but lately I feel… it’s hard to explain, all I know is that doesn’t feel as good as it used to.

As I try to set my blog reading intention (Why am I opening up my reader for the upteenth time today?) I realize that my reason for reading blogs used to be connection. I read the blogs of people I considered friends, commented in those places, and felt a part of community. The vast majority of those people have long since stopped writing–the community is all but gone–and yet I keep coming back looking for that sense of connection.

Instead I find impersonal blogs about productivity and minimalism and personal finance. Not only do I find no meaningful connection in these places, but many of them make me feel bad about myself and my many short comings.

It’s so obvious now that I see it, but for the longest time it was very distressing, my inability to identify and articulate why blog reading was no longer what it used to be. Now that I see the change for what it is, I feel more at peace. I’m deeply sad about it–I realize I lost something important and positive that I’ll likely never get back–but it’s easier to mourn and eventually accept a loss when I can see it for what it is.

Now that I realize my intention for reading blogs is not at all what is happening when I read them I have to make some changes. Either I adjust my intentions to keep reading, or I accept that reading now will never meet my original intention and stop.

What is your intention when you read blogs? Do you believe you meet that intention when you read them?

This March is a marathon, and it’s only just begun.

I’m trying hard to pace myself. To stay hydrated. To keep my head in the game. I’m trying hard not to think too far ahead, to stay focused on the mile I’m running.

I’ve run a marathon before. It was an intense experience to be sure, but the really hard part was the training. For weeks and weeks I put in so many miles. Alone, in the cold, sometimes in the rain, with only my carefully curated playlist, I logged hundreds of miles. The training was the hard part. The marathon was a mind game more than a test of strength or stamina.

I’m pretty good at those mind games. I’m pretty good at keeping going. I swam competitively for many years. I was never very good or very fast, but I logged the laps just like everyone else did. Back and forth with nothing but my thoughts and the black line below to keep me company. Swimming was a mind game too. That’s where I learned to play the mind-numbingly boring but muscle burning hard just keep going kind of mind game you need to play to finish any kind of long event. I used what I learned swimming to ride centuries on my road bike and then later to run a marathon. I hope I’m still as good at it as I remember.

But I can’t actually work out. I’m not sure how long it will be until I’m allowed to. The healing is not going well, so I don’t think I’ll be allowed back on the elliptical any time soon. I miss my workouts something fierce. I miss feeling good when I get off. I miss the endorphin rush of making my heart race.

It’s not a good time to not have my weekly opportunities to destress.

I don’t miss trying to find the time though. That would be hard right now, and I try to remind myself of that.

My husband leaves for SXSW on Tuesday morning. The rest of the week I have to get both kids ready and out of the house by 7:30am. If I think about it too much it makes me panic. This is the first time I’ve had to manage school mornings without my husband AND without my in-laws to help.

It doesn’t help that my son is exceedingly difficult these days. Oh my god has 4 been hard. So so so hard. I honestly don’t know if I can make him get ready in time. We’ll all have to wake up by 6am to even attempt it.

One mile at a time.

I wanted to thank everyone who left such supportive, and insightful, comments on my post last week. You were, of course, right that sending that letter would have been a mistake. And the alternatives you suggested were incredibly helpful.

I wrote that letter in a moment of anger and frustration. I honestly didn’t know how broken SFUSD was when we first decided to send our daughter to a school there. I had heard rumors, and read dozens of articles, about it, but I didn’t really KNOW. Now I do know, and it makes me so angry. I see these kids, who come from such difficult situations, and instead of school being a refuge, it’s just another place where they, and their futures, are disregarded. It’s not right.

But of course it’s never been right, and me and my white privilege was able to avoid experiencing the reality for way too long. I don’t want to sit back and do nothing anymore, but I don’t know what I can actually accomplish.

So I keep crossing thing off my to-do list, trying to get stuff done. It feels mundane and useless, but it’s all I got right now.

And there is so much to do. March is going to be a perfect storm of obligations. I will be drowning in action items. I don’t say that to brag about how busy I am — I consider my packed schedule a personal failing actually — but instead to warn others who contemplate taking on too much.

I keep reminding myself that when I agreed to take on the responsibilities of PTA president I didn’t know I’d be without the in-law help we’d grown so accustomed to, or even that I wouldn’t have my own classroom at school. I couldn’t possibly have known, so it wasn’t totally my fault for over committing.

And now I must finish my grades for the 2nd trimester, and organize this carnival, which is less than a month away, and manage the kids by myself for a week while my husband is away.

I’ve tabled getting the house ready to post on AirBnB and preparing myself for the reality that it might not happen. I still have four rooms to photograph and they are all disaster areas once again. I’m thinking of posting the place with the photos I have and seeing what happens – maybe if I make it a good deal people won’t mind waiting for more photos. I don’t need to make the most I possibly could on the place this 1st summer, I just want to offset the cost of traveling with the kids.

And maybe traveling with the kids won’t happen and that’s okay too. We can’t have everything, and there is always next summer.

Right now I’m just trying to get through this month.

I’m thinking of sending this out to the listserv of all the PTA presidents in San Francisco, but I wanted to get your take on it first. My readers always give me such thoughtful and insightful feedback; I know I’d be less nervous sending it if you all had read and responded first.

My name is (Noemi) and I am the PTA president at (daughter’s school) in Bernal Heights. We are a small PTA, with a board of only 6 people. We struggle every year to replace the officers that term out. Only 2-5 general members come to our meetings, and only very rarely are teachers or administrators able to attend.

(Daughter’s school) is a Tier 3 school. 75% of our student population qualifies for free or reduced lunch. The majority of our families speak English as a second language, if at all. Many of our students face generational poverty and/or other trauma at home. Some have significant behavioral challenges. Test scores confirm that our students are struggling significantly to perform at grade level, and that they need increased scaffolding and support to succeed. Teacher retention is also a very real challenge, as some leave because of student behavior issues and a perceived lack of support; there are currently multiple openings for full time teachers at our school. We’ve had three new administrations in the last three years.

As you can imagine, as a PTA we struggle to raise funds to support our teachers and students. While nearby schools with comparable student populations raise $25K or $75K, we haven’t raised $10K in either of the last two years.

I doubt anyone would argue that SFUSD’s public school system is broken. The city espouses equality of access and yet its school system provides the opposite. The affluent, well educated parents who do send their kids to SFUSD cluster at certain high demand schools, where they raise incredible amounts of money to provide enrichment programs that make their schools even more desirable, perpetuating the cycle.

When I was navigating the SFUSD lottery, Spanish Immersion programs were our focus. While I knew which SI schools were most popular, I didn’t know that the amount a school PTA raises every year is public knowledge and that families use that to rank their choices. I also didn’t realize that some schools in this district raise over $350K while others struggle to raise 1/100th of that amount.

I live in the city, but am a public school teacher at a affluent, highly desirable school district on the peninsula. I could have brought my daughter to a school in that district, but diversity is important to us, and we believe that well educated parents need to opt-in at SFUSD for real change to take place. We are being the change that we want to see, but it’s increasingly evident that the system is even more broken that we originally recognized.

The PTA is supposed to advocate for every student, but in San Francisco I can’t help be wonder if it’s actually helping perpetuate the cycle of haves and have not’s, deepening the discrepancies between the most desired schools, where affluent parents cluster, and the least desired schools, where minority students are left to languish. I wonder if it is helping create and maintain a system where those who have the resources to call for change are satisfied by the status quo and do not fight to affect change for those left at the schools where sufficient funds cannot be raised. Of course I recognize it’s not the intention of the PTA to maintain the considerable discrepancies between the most and least desired schools in the district, but if it is doing that, we need to recognize the reality and have some honest conversations about what it means.

I’m not writing this to call anyone out, but instead to start a conversation. It is not PTA’s job to fix the considerable failures of SFUSD, but if the PTA remains the only real way for parents to raise funds to support schools, and the amounts schools raise remain vastly different, we need to talk about what that means for ALL students. I look forward to hearing your perspective.

What do you think readers? Am I totally off here? Am I missing the mark? Obviously I don’t know what the solution is, but have I accurately identified a problem? How do you think other PTA presidents (some of whom are at the very schools I’m mentioning) will react?

Thank you all for making me feel less alone after yesterday’s post. I found myself nodding my head at each comment, because I have, or still do, feel all those things. I guess I just have to accept that growing up watching my mother lose babies, losing my own sister (even though I was young), having my own loss and then secondary infertility, and probably even dealing with these lingering physical issues after birth, are going to make the arrival of babies, even into the periphery of my life, complicated.

I’m sick right now with a brutal cold. Some years I skate by without getting much and other years I seem to get every major virus that makes the rounds. Unfortunately this year is turning out to the the latter. I just wish I had this awful virus last week when I had time to rest.

Having said that, I clearly didn’t rest enough because my healing is not going as hoped. I saw my doctor on Friday and she was frustrated to see that all my sutures, even the internal ones, had popped. I was not put on Colace quickly enough and, well, I think you can figure it out from there. She still thinks I will eventually heal and will “love my new vagina” but I am not as hopeful.

The Botox shots that were meant to relax my traumatized muscles, seem to have worsened my prolapse, which is now so advanced that my cervix basically rests on my newly forming scar tissues all day. My doctor didn’t realize this because when I lie down (like I do when she examines me) it pulls up an inch or so, and it took me a while to realize that was what was causing the incredible pressure and discomfort, especially after I went back to work and was on my feet more. The problem is that the way to alleviate the problem (putting in a pessary), will definitely hurt my hopefully healing scar tissue. Let’s just say it’s not healing as hoped, and now I may have to get another surgery I hoped to avoid.

Putting my house on AirBnB is, perhaps not surprisingly, a way more complicated process than I expected. We have to register with the city as a business and file special papers with the tax board. I’m not sure if I’m even supposed to list the place before I take these steps, and if I have to wait it may be too late to find someone for the lengths of time we were hoping to rent it. I have gotten pictures of half of the rooms, but the work I have to do to get a decent shot is making me very aware of how much more I need to do for the house to actually be ready for guests. I honestly might not be able to pull this off…

And the stress of trying to do everything is messing with my marriage. Blerg.

Things are not great right now. I know they will get better, but at the moment I’m feeling down and out. I wish I hadn’t gotten this surgery. I wish I weren’t so organizationally challenged. And I wish I weren’t such a complicated, emotional, mess.

I also wish I didn’t have this $#{%€ cold.