I'm Peeved

The Dancer's teacher insists on holding the every-other-year dance recitals on Father's Day. That pretty much guarantees that a good bit of our family and none of our friends can attend. Plus I don't really think it's fair to the fathers of the dancers. The day should be about *them*, not about their progeny. I'm tempted to boycott, especially since we'd save the big bucks that get spent on costumes. On the other hand, the studio buzzes about the recital for the most of the year, and the Dancer really enjoyed the last recital. She'd probably hate to miss it and it seems unfair for her to be left out of all the excitement. Maybe we'll just have to put up with this one and think about something else for 2012.

It Worked Out

I was nervous last week about the very first parent-teacher conference I'd gone to in years. This one was for the Dancer, and as her only teacher for so long, it would truly be a reflection on me. Her teacher did say that the Dancer had a little bit of trouble in the early days, with math facts and with keeping up while writing answers in class. I'd tried to drill the Dancer as much as possible in her multiplication facts, but I had a hard time memorizing them as a child also. So while I felt a little guilty about that issue, I *had* worked with her on them. As a matter of fact, she's still working on them at home. As far as the notes, the Dancer's handwriting has never been copperplate, but I suppose the biggest issue is just that she had never learned to write things down as quickly as you need to in a classroom setting.

The good news is that her teacher says she is a good student and a hard worker, and that she is now completely integrated into the classroom. She also told me that I did a good job. That's great news for me. I didn't ruin her by all the years of homeschooling! I'm very proud of her and glad we had our time together.

Looking Ahead?

The Equestrienne was sharing some of her humorous hopes and dreams with us the other day. She asked me what my hopes and dreams were, and expressed surprise that they all seemed to be related to her and her sister's futures. I realized that this was true and started thinking if I have any hopes and dreams that are not related to my children. For so many years my life has revolved so much around taking care of my children. From making sure they had adequate nourishment and dry diapers and the necessary attention, to making sure they are receiving useful educations and learning to know them as people and helping them develop into capable, intelligent Lutheran women, there is a lot to think about and do. My work with my daughters is not complete, but as we settle into our new home, I seem to have more time to create more of a life for myself.

In many ways, I am in a place of satisfied contentment. From my youngest days, I wanted to be a homemaker and have a husband and children. So you could say I am "living the dream." But I still have quite a bit of my life ahead of me. Is it normal not to have a lot of plans and dreams for one's life for the future? I don't know. Perhaps some of this is related to my bipolar issues. When I was at my lowest point I had little hope for my life at all and saw the future as something to be avoided. To avoid spiraling again into a negative, destructive mentality, I have put most of my focus on the present. And to be honest, I have no way of knowing what could happen in the future. I know that my parents-in-law had plans and dreams for their life together until my father-in-law died a year before my husband and I married. In the same way, any plans I make for my future could be changed in an instant by something over which I have no control. Perhaps then I am afraid to make plans, knowing as a mature adult that "bad things" can happen to anybody at anytime. Perhaps also so much of what I want seems so far in the future. For example, I would like to travel with Mr. BTEG when our children are grown. But our youngest reaching her majority is still over seven years away. A great many things can happen in these next seven years, and anyway any dreams for that far in the future do not provide much sustenance for life in the here and now.

It may seem silly to some, but most of my current wishes for own life involve things in the creative realm. Sewing more, learning to knit better and make more things. Maybe learning to crochet, to draw or paint. Perhaps selling some of my creative endeavors. I would still like to do very amateur ballet, if I can find a studio that takes grown women with no figure for serious dance and little experience. (grin) That will likely have to wait until next year, as I missed getting into a current dance season. I also have a few ideas in the world of writing, although I am not as attached to these ideas. So while conquering the world may not happen just yet, I suppose my life is not completely devoid of things for which to plan and look forward to. And that makes life interesting!

Sidetracked

I have a long and thoughtful post rolling around in my head, but in my head is where it is going to have to stay until tomorrow at least. Spent most of the day at doctors' offices with Mr. BTEG dealing with issues related to his many auto-immune disorders (four to five or so.) Our bodies are indeed fickle things. I'm glad there is so much out there that can help him, though.

Germs

I suppose it's due to the girls being in public school that we seem to be sick more often this fall. Although I think Gino was the one who brought the H1N1 virus home, the Dancer is the one who first developed the current germ going around the family. I don't have her cough but I spent most of the afternoon dozing which is definitely not normal. On the other hand, there has been lots of coughing going on during her dance classes. One girl was especially sick a couple of weeks ago and her grandmother was urging her to go out and dance. I couldn't see why the grandmother brought her in the first place. The dance teacher thinks the grandmother comes from the tough-it-out school. It's very annoying to me when people knowingly expose my child and myself to illness, especially for something as nonessential as a dance class. I won't go as far though as one mom who pulled her 3-year-old out of dance class and preschool until H1N1 is over. Germs and sicknesses will be floating around all winter! Hope we are not fighting off illness until March!

Twenty Years On

Hard to believe that it was twenty years ago that I woke up to the news on the radio that the Berlin Wall had fallen. Not only was it fantastic news, but it was personally thrilling for me because Mr. BTEG and I would be in Berlin a month later. I hope we still have what is necessary to take on communism and win.

Nanny-State Nonsense

This story breaks my heart. A newborn baby in Great Britain taken away from her parents, along with six other children, because of "concerns" about their weight. The precedent this sets scares me, but what scares me just as much is most of the comments at the end of the story. Most of these people are cold and judgmental and have no idea about weight gain or loss. I say this because there is a girl in one of the Dancer's classes who is, frankly, obese. She takes three dance classes a week, and I believe she assists for at least one other class of younger students. She has been taking dance for years. Her conditioning is good; she is never out of breath or even sweating hard after a dance class. Yet some of the commenters at the original article think sticking the kids in the story in some sort of activity like dance class for the *three month* probation period would have magically cured their weight problems. Now, I don't know. Maybe this girl from dance goes home and stuffs herself with Twinkies in front of the television when she's not dancing or at school, like so many people insist fat people must do. It seems more likely to me that, just as there are people who need to have a 3,000 calorie diet to even maintain their slender figures, there are other people who have the opposite problem and will struggle with overweight all their lives, just as the comment at the top from the article pointed out. The prejudice upsets me and the fact that these kids' lives will probably be completely ruined for nothing is a sad commentary on what happens when we let the state control our lives.

And as NRO's The Corner points out, a little state control can easily lead to a lot. The current administration is against gun-owning, Bible-believing Christians like us. When will they come to take our kids away to keep them "safe"? Will those who look down their noses at this poor family find the government coming for their kids next?