I quit.

Today I quit.

I quit as the HRP (Homeroom Parent) for my daughter's kindergarten class. Yes, I cried. I didn't want to quit. I wanted to plan fun class parties and enjoy the time watching my daughter grow up. I wanted to support her teacher and know her friends. I wanted to help with the Halloween Festival and serve cookies at the end of the year. But, unfortunately, that's not going to happen. At least not in the way I had hoped.

I signed up as a new-to-the-school parent hoping to get involved. I e-mailed the teacher and I went to the meeting. I agreed to work with another mom who wanted to be a Co-HRP, but said she didn't want to do it on her own. What actually happened is that the other mom instantly responded to all the e-mails taking full credit for everything and mentioning me as an afterthought. She even set up a playdate for the class - which she didn't attend. She showed up late to the HRP meeting and left early before we could actually talk. It's only a few weeks into the school year and I could see the writing on the wall . . . a whole year of her being very public about her role and me working behind the scenes.

Now if you know me, you know I'm generally a hard worker and don't mind being out of the spotlight. In fact, I usually prefer it. But for some reason this one rubbed me the wrong way. I think it was more the lack of communication than the work distribution.

Also, you probably know that I can get along with almost anyone if I need to. And that's what stopped me. I don't need to get along with this woman. I'm not required to work with her. I volunteered to work, for free, at my daughter's school because I want to help. And let's be honest - for fun! That's right. Over-involved moms who spend all day at the elementary school and doing it for their own enjoyment. (Don't bother playing martyr here . . . ) So this is not a job; I'm not being compensated, and I don't have to spend my time dealing with a person who frustrates me. In fact, I bet I frustrate her too!

I also volunteer to accompany the class to the library once a week, so I do get to meet my daughter's friends and hang out with the kids. And I love to read, so sharing books with them is awesome! And I volunteer on Thursdays to make copies for the kindergarten teachers, so I still get to support her awesome teacher, work with another cool mom, and be involved at school. While stepping down from the HRP role, I also ended up in contact with the silent auction coordinator for the Fall Festival, so I still get to help with that too!

So while I'm feeling a sense of loss and failure at 'quitting' the Co-HRP position, it's pretty clear that it wasn't right for me. Maybe next year I'll be a solo HRP. Maybe I'll just keep finding other ways to stay involved. Maybe my schedule will settle down and I'll want to invest the time/effort to try to partner with someone rather than just wanting to get it done efficiently. Who knows?

As I scrolled through facebook today, I saw this . . .

Well, I just got let go.It's amicable, role wasn't completely right for me and I probably knew it. Boss is great though, going to help me find another gig that I would be better suited to. I really do love the field, it's just that this particular job didn't work out. 

Posted by a friend, and it perfectly sums up how I feel.

Lost Days

Yesterday was my husband's birthday. I remember almost none of it. I spent the evening in a daze of blinding pain trying not to throw up or look sick in front of my family. This morning I woke to pick up the pieces: the pile of still wet swim clothes I don't remember where they came from, the disaster in our kitchen floor, the review I didn't write yesterday.

I met my husband and some coworkers for a nice lunch, then spent the afternoon doing carpool and music lessons with the kids before dinner. I could feel the headache building at lunch, but hoped to stave it off before things got too bad. After lunch, I returned home and did I don't know what. That's right, I spent several hours in my home with no idea what I did. Maybe I read, maybe I slept, maybe I sat and stared blankly. What I didn't do is the laundry, or the dishes, or work on the conference I'm planning, or anything else tangible.

I made it out of the house in time to be only slightly late to the first carpool line, but still early to the second. I bumbled through the kids' first music lessons at a new music school. (Note: a children's music school may top the list of terrible places to go with a migraine.) After dropping off my niece and nephew I drove home and the really, really bad part hit. The nausea threatened to overwhelm me and the blackness tugged at the corners of my vision. I fought back. For myself, and for my family.

At home my husband selected one of our favorite sushi places for his birthday dinner. He loaded the kids int he car and graciously allowed me a few moments alone in the restroom to get things under control. As we drove off, he even offered to take the kids and leave me home alone in the quiet. An offer I almost took him up on! But I wasn't going to miss his birthday dinner.

I was present in body anyway. I remember almost nothing of the meal except the overwhelming urge to put my head on the cold table, or better yet the counter with the fish in it. I'm not sure why putting my head on cold fish sounded so appealing . . . . but looking back, I'm not sure about a lot of last night. I'd like to think that I tried to be present and pleasant . . .

On the way home I got in the car, and woke up in our driveway. Woke up isn't the right word, but I don't know what is. Woke up seems to imply a restful sleep instead of a blind stupor. I don't know what happened; the time just vanishes. And then suddenly, it's later.

The pain hits in waves. Some with more nausea, some with more pounding, some with such overwhelming force that I just freeze into a zombie and don't remember. As each wave passes I get a break. A short time with sanity and memory and functionality. I try to capitalize on that.

I put my kids to bed quickly with lots of hugs and snuggles. During the reprieve I was able to be a good mother. Then I slumped into my rocking chair for I don't know how long to recover.

I tried to watch the game, but gave up and went to bed. This morning I was greeted with leftover chaos. I didn't sign my daughter's folder last night. I don't know if she did her homework. I have texts I didn't return, and messages, and e-mails.

I spend today trying to pick up the pieces. Sign the contract. Start the laundry. Return calls. At least I didn't forget my son had a doctor's appointment. The pain still shoots through my head and I rest frequently, but at least for today I'm functional.

Yesterday, I did the best I could. I made the coffee. I didn't miss the birthday dinner. I hugged my kids.

Yesterday. Yesterday is a lost day. At least mostly. I didn't do much and I don't remember much, but it was still a day. A day in my life. A day that I can never live again.

The Adventures of Nana, 5 preschoolers, and a 2000 mile road trip . . . Day 5

This morning's breakfast took place in what appeared to be a Mexican restaurant attached to our hotel. The generic hotel 'hot' breakfast did seem somehow classier in a restaurant. However, the promised 'we're making more bacon' never appeared leading to some disappointment among the adults. The kids were happy to load up when they heard that we'd be at grandma's house tonight!

After a couple of hours on the road, we stopped in Yakima for playtime and lunch. We enjoyed the Kiwanis Park and I even talked Nana into attempting a 'jumping picture.' (See results below . . . ) Then we braved a local restaurant and were delighted by delicious ribs at The Flying Pig.

The final leg of the trip was lengthened several times by road work and accidents, but we made it without incident, and without accident (of the potty variety).

We hope you've enjoyed following our journey to Seattle. You can see pictures now that we're here an facebook, and who knows . . . maybe I'll blog some more if the kids will ever let me get a full night's sleep.

The Adventures of Nana, 5 preschoolers, and a 2000 mile road trip . . . Day 4

Sorry for the uneventful blog post, but today we mostly just drove. Nana got 'ready to get there' and didn't want to stop at any touristy-things.

We made driving fun by opening scratch off art projects in the car and listening to all 3 Mrs. Piggle Wiggle CDs again. (In Mrs. Piggle Wiggle, each episode features a kid with an ailment like 'talker baker-ism' whose nitwit mother cannot figure out what to do. She calls her equally ridiculous friends whose children are named
Paraphernalia and Calliope but they are no help. She eventually calls Mrs. Piggle Wiggle who basically says to let the kids keep doing their terrible thing until they decide to stop on their own. This leads to scenes such as a kid locked in his room because he won't pick up his toys or a girl who won't bathe so her parents plant her with radishes. The obnoxiously overstated morals seem lost on the kids, who we surmise are listening for ideas on how to misbehave better in the future. The stories are read in a pedantic manner with everyone's full names used all the time. After several hours of these stories, I can quote most of them and I fully expect to hear them from my kids mouths again and again.)

We stopped in Baker City for gas, and in an oddly nostalgic turn of events, pulled into a gas station that Brian and I stopped at when he was moving to Texas. If it weren't for food allergies, we would have eaten at the same Pizza Hut too. The funny part for me is that I didn't realize it was the same city since we entered from a different direction, but something about the gas station jogged my memory.

We ended up eating lunch at Chick-fil-A and letting the kids play of the playground for a while. For dinner the leftover chicken nuggets made a reappearance, along with some peanuts, popcorn, and leftover bananas. Our dinner picnic took place at Candy Cane Park in La Grande, Oregon.

After dinner we continued on towards Kennewick, but since all the hotels were sold out, we ended up stopping a bit sooner in Hermiston. Our early arrival meant time for a pre-bedtime swim, followed by a quick bath, and sleeping soundly.

The Adventures of Nana, 5 preschoolers, and a 2000 mile road trip . . . Day 3

We seem to be falling into a routine already. The kids get up, get dressed, load their bags, and obediently march to the car. We load it up, then take the hotel's complimentary breakfast by storm. For added amusement today a group of businessmen were seated at the table behind us trying to have an important meeting in the breakfast room of the Residence Inn complete with suit jackets on and massive piles of spreadsheets. We, at the table next to them, had a full-on two year old tantrum because someone had been given the banana they requested, but then wanted to steal his sister's Fruit Loops. It culminated with him grabbing the bowl, her pulling it back, flying cereal, and him wailing in the floor. I tried to look graceful and in control while crawling under the table to retrieve him and drag him outside. He immediately calmed down and said, "Eat nannana." He then took my hand and calmly led me back to the table where he climbed into his oversized chair and asked the Fruit Loop eating sister to peel the banana for him. 

On the road we played the find 10 things that start with the letter game for C (car, clouds, cactus, etc.) for a bit, but held off on opening our first surprise until after an early bathroom stop. With a full tank of gas, we gave the kids "magic pen" books to color and set out for Wyoming. We stopped at the border to take a picture, and noted that we'd also taken a 15 minute detour. Thankfully it wasn't worse and we headed on our way.

After noting the dearth of options for lunch, we opted to stop in Laramie at 11am even though no one yet wanted food. We found a local playground and enjoyed some fun in the sun before dining at a local McAlister's. It's a good thing we did! Back on the road we observed that once again the scenery was unbroken by civilization for hundreds of miles. In fact, restrooms were scarce too . . . .

The kids enjoyed an afternoon of car bingo games and listening to books on tape. Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle proved to be a favorite - stories of children's bad habits and how this crazy lady corrects them, usually after their terrible mothers declare them incorrigible. Around 6pm we reached Evanston and had Subway for dinner. We used the time to scout hotels for the night and the kids enjoyed running around a bit. 

Nana drove for the last hour of the day while I completed the hotel reservations. I also worked on the blog and played an endless stream of Disney sing along songs on my phone. 

We reached the hotel in Ogden, UT with plenty of time for an evening swim. After a quick bath, we breezed through bedtime.

The best part of the day: hot water! And Nana sneaked down to the front desk to procure overpriced chocolate!

More adventures tomorrow . . . 

Today's bonus pictures:

The Adventures of Nana, 5 preschoolers, and a 2000 mile road trip . . . Day 2

We awoke this morning to the kids stirring and before long everyone had risen, dressed, and packed. Our hotel breakfast offered fruit, baked goods, cereal, and juice, so we ate our fill before loading up again. 

Our first stop was the Don Herrington Discovery Center in Amarillo, which proved to be an excellent free diversion. Like most children's science museums, it contained a variety of pseudo-educational, mostly functional, brightly colored activities such as a wall size lite-brite, a dance/theater stage, a room full of taxadermied birds of prey, a dog mating simulation, and pool table on the floor made of soccer balls. 

We enjoyed meeting a very fat tiger salamander, a great horned toad, and a shy hedgehog named Finn. After several hours we dragged the children out only because we needed to get on the road for a long day of driving.

We hopped into the car and hit the road, planning for an immediate stop for lunch and gas. However, we found ourselves instantly in the middle of nowhere. Yes, that's right the town immediately disappeared with nothing to be seen for miles around but grass, shrubs, rocks, fences, mountains and the occasional farmhouse. While we enjoyed the scenery the hungry children and the rapidly emptying gas tank began to make us nervous. In fact, we franticly searched the internet for the nearest gas station while calculating whether or not our gas would hold out. As we entered the first "town" the Google-proficied gas station failed to materialize. Our last hope, the next town, waited 13 miles down the road. Only 18 miles of gas remained. We turned off the the air conditioner and tried to avoid braking as we coasted into town. Luckily our salvation was right where Google maps indicated. We purchased 25.4 gallons of gas for our 26 gallon tank. 

With that crisis averted, we offered the kids mini-notebooks and mechanical pencils to placate them for twenty miles until a town with a decent selection of food. We survived lunch at Taco Bell and the afternoon's drive passed without incident.

"I have to go to the bathroom," and our thirst caused us to pull off the road in Trinidad, where we ran into their National Night Out celebration. We grabbed some happy hour Sonic drinks and they graciously shared hot dogs, chips, and cotton candy as our children enjoyed the playground and bounce house. We knew that we'd be pushing our time, but we let the kids play a while. 

We boarded the car happily, except for Troy who lost it over leaving the bounce house, and started the long push for Denver. We opted to get past the city at night to avoid morning traffic - a gambit for sure with the kids, the time change, and the sugar they ingested. We located a hotel in Loveland just north of Denver and set out. As we neared it, darkness set in, and we realized that the kids had eaten at 4pm and would need something to eat before bed. We formulated a plan to stop at a fast food place, pick up a snack, and eat it in the room before bed. To placate the troops in the back seat, we handed out glow bracelets. For the second time that day our luck held, Chick-fil-A was near the hotel and open, the kids ate happily, and this time everyone did go to bed nicely. The best part: hot water. (Confession: I spent forever in the shower washing my hair, shaving my legs, and savoring the hot water. That might be why I didn't write this last night.) 

Stay tuned for the next installment, coming whenever we have time to write . . . 

Bonus pictures: