Lost in the Details

Know how I spent my birthday?

Making a box for a PTA raffle.

Same crap, different day.

Thirty’s going to be nice. See? I’m starting the year off in a positive way.

Now look.

There’s something to be said for husbands who are creative and capable of purchasing the most awesomely fabulous birthday gifts ever known to God or man – WITH NO OUTSIDE ASSISTANCE.

As in, ALL ON THEIR VERY OWN.

No one behind the scenes saying, “If you want to get laid, here’s what you have to buy for her…”

Do you know what that is? What’s that? There’s a glare? Oh, I’m sorry – here’s one without the flash:

Now do you recognize it? Of course you do. IT’S A BRAND-FREAKIN’-NEW-SEWING-MACHINE. There are stitches on that machine that I’ve never even SEEN before. Now I have to go learn how to USE them! Do you have any idea how exciting this is?!?

Some of you who have been around for a bit are thinking, “What the hell? Didn’t she just get a sewing machine for her birthday last year?” And the answer is yes. Yes, I did, in fact, receive a sewing machine for my birthday last year. It was the most basic sewing machine known to mankind, which is fabulous for someone who hasn’t the faintest idea how to use one, right?

But that sewing machine and I – we have been through some hard times. I have asked that little sewing machine to do things that no basic sewing machine has dreamed of. Sew through three layers of corduroy? No problem! Satin appliques with a heavy-duty needle? I got this, yo.

And you know, after a year of that crap, my sewing machine is tired. I don’t blame it. I have coddled it, babied it, begged – please, little sewing machine, just a few more stitches and this bag will be finished, please don’t fail me now – and I have cleaned it, oiled it, adjusted things that I shouldn’t know about adjusting, just to get those last few stitches in. I have never heard a single squeal of protest.

But I am certain that I heard, from its position of honor in the back of the minivan, a sigh of relief when my husband wandered through the front door carrying this baby today. My grandmother said, “Can the old one retire to my house?” and like most dogs, cats and other small furry animals, my sewing machine put its hand in the air and said, “Oh! Pick me! Pick me!”

Tomorrow it will be on its way to green pastures in my grandmother’s guest bedroom, and tonight the new, heavy-duty model will be making sweet, sweet – er, creations – with me.

Right after I make some sweet, sweet – er, creations – with my husband. Because he is a rockstar.

Also – and equally fabulous – was my “combined present” from Mike and Zion:

YEAH, BABY. I am a huge, huge fan of pearls. I have no idea why. I love them. They make me feel like a natural woman. Wait – did you need another look?

There ya go. Sit back and absorb the awesomeness that is Mike, and the luckiness that is me.

Ok, so that didn’t make a whole crap-ton of sense, but you get the idea.

Know what he got from me? A video game. I am not nearly as awesome as he is. No rockstar points for me. It wasn’t even a particularly great video game. Know what I got for Christmas?

Yep. Moonstones. And a matching necklace and earring set. They’re not currently photographing well.

Know what he got?

Underwear. Not kidding. I got him underwear for Christmas.

I suck at this game.

I have never, in my life, encountered something that I was unable to conquer.

Ok, actually, I am still unable to conquer the act of knitting or crochet, but I haven’t quite given up on either. I’m just delaying the final report there…

But really, I have always been one of those people that looked around and said, “I think I’d like to do _______.” A year later, I have become the world’s foremost expert on _______, and moved on to become the world’s foremost expert on something else – usually leaving death, destruction and chaos in my wake.

Because when I’m done, I’m done. It’s actually not possible for me to pick it up again.

Most people exist in a comfort zone, and my methods are madness to them. Why would she expend this much time, effort and energy to ultimately walk away from it? I could go way, way into this, but the short version is that my brain – as a person with ADHD – requires constant stimulation.

Do you have any idea what constant stimulation means? It means that each morning, as I’m brushing my teeth, I am trying to come up with creative and exciting ways to brush my teeth. My brain is pushed into overdrive as I am thinking about the tedium of making a pot of coffee – will it be better {read: more stimulating} if I add a teaspoon of cinnamon to the coffee grounds, or will that simply result in a broken coffee pot?

The trip home from work is made into an adventure as I purposely lose myself in the worst neighborhoods in the city, causing my husband to have panic attacks.

“You’re where?” he asks.

“Sixth and Prospect.”

“What the hell, Sara?!? You work in Lees Summit, which is south of here, for crying out loud. How did you end up 7 miles north of here on your way home from work?!?”

“I was trying to figure out a new way home.”

“WHY? Why do you need a new way home? We live a block off a major highway, and you work a block off a major highway. GET ON THE DAMNED HIGHWAY AND COME HOME.”

He’s much more understanding, now, about the way my brain processes things. He has a special guide {he Googles “adult ADHD” way more than he’d like to admit…}. Recently, I made a comment about losing my mind. He said, “Don’t worry, honey, eventually you come to terms with – well, you – and then you resign yourself to the fact that you’re just never going to understand what the hell is going on inside your brain.”

There are good sides and bad sides to this. The good side begins with, once you have me, you have me. If I have committed myself to something, I have committed myself completely. There is no room for anything else.

The bad side to this is that when I am finished, I am completely finished. There is no picking it back up – it is agonizingly painful for me to remain in a task that no longer stimulates my brain. We’re not talking about, “I’m bored now;” we’re talking about, “I would rather fight a team of bloodthirsty mercenaries than decorate another cupcake.”

And it sounds like an exaggeration, but that’s actually an accurate assessment.

Two years in therapy taught me how to pick up the pieces when the stimulation is gone – otherwise known as “following through on your commitments.” Therapy taught me how to remove myself from the situation without leaving death, destruction and chaos in my wake. And most importantly, it forced me to recognize the situations to stay away from completely – the things that would always, no matter how hard I tried to affect them, end in disaster for me and the people around me.

Today I find myself in another one of those situations.

I am trying not to flog myself. I am trying not to scream and rail at the ridiculousness of the reality that I put myself here, even though I knew better. No one pushed or pulled – it was all me.

And I am trying to figure out how to remove myself without leaving death, destruction and chaos in my wake. I am trying to figure out the moral path that benefits the most people. I am trying so hard to rise above my frustration and ignore the need for stimulation – trying to put myself on autopilot in order to make this problem work to someone’s advantage.

And mostly I’m tired. I’m exhausted and I don’t feel like getting out of bed.

Several months ago, my blogger friend Robyne invited Mike and me to have to breakfast with her and her BFF Airick Leonard West, a KCMSD school board member. We had a lovely time; I was concerned, however, that the most memorable portion of our breakfast conversation involved my son and a certain past-time he has adopted which I will not be discussing on my blog in case he ever decides on a career in politics.

Over the last few months, I have crossed paths several times with ALW in various KCMSD forums, meetings, and events and actively managed to not draw attention to myself in each situation for fear that he would say, “Why do I know her? THAT’S RIGHT! She’s the one with the kid that does that thing…”

(seriously, Zion – don’t worry – not putting it in print unless they advance me several thousand dollars for my best-selling book)

Sooooo fast-forward to Thursday at noon. Our school advisory chairperson emails me and says, “Hey, remember that training thing we talked about a month or so ago and you said it sounded interesting? It’s tomorrow and Saturday. Wanna go?”

And somehow we managed to shift the time-space continuum and my work schedule and I found myself driving to Union Station to this leadership training thingie. Seriously – I didn’t even for sure know where it was, let alone what it was.

What I did know, however, was that ALW would be facilitating it.

“Please, God,” I prayed. “Let there be 3,000 people there so I can get lost in the crowd.”

I didn’t have to worry. I can’t imagine how many people that man meets in a single day, but thankfully, his face didn’t register anything even remotely close to, “Oh yeah.. she’s the one with the kid who enjoys….”

I breathed a sigh of relief and took my seat amidst the 35 or so other parents and community members and settled in to be trained. For leadership. Or something.

And this is where things got interesting. And disappointing. Slightly depressing. Not as hopeful as I’d hoped.

But really, there were good parts. There was a large focus in this meeting on being present in each moment, being the facilitators of our lives. This is something I’ve been focusing on lately, and it was interesting to apply it in terms of parental involvement at the school and district level.

We were challenged to look at the world in a new way every single day, to assess patterns that were holding us back from recognizing our potential.

ALW wisely told us, “You don’t want to pull into the driveway of your life and realize you don’t know how you got here.”

More importantly, when we are unable to affect change in failing or under-performing schools, we have failed our children on the most basic of levels.

It was inspiring and informative and I almost - almost - got out of there with a sense of hope. But here in the really real world, we know that’s not actually allowed because just as that glimmer of hope started to appear, he said, “Let’s break up into groups.”

Oh my god.

Groups?!? Seriously?!? Group work is the reason I almost dropped out of high school. No groups, please. Can I just do this by myself and you guys can critique when I’m not around to cry about it? Pleeeeeease?

No such luck.

So I sat, and I tried to listen, and then I tried to be actively engaged ~ and present ~ and then I failed miserably and I felt horrible for being a deterrent to people who were trying really hard to discuss solutions to the problems our children face.

I don’t play well with others.

I don’t. I’ve known this for years. Give me a project with specifics – figure out how to do this, Sara, and present your findings to the board – and oh my god, you know you’re going to get a book.

Ask me to work with people with whom I have nothing in common and form a cohesive unit to advocate for change?

I’m sorry. Did I mention that I’m good with recognizing my limitations?

This was not my favorite experience. At all.

Zion stayed with my grandparents last night, and when I got home from work Mike and I had a rare moment of… well, I’m not going there on my blog, but I’m sure you get the idea.

We’re laying in bed and I’m flipping channels when I see some Star Wars documentary – the philosophy, religion, and background of Star Wars films or something. I turn to this channel and Frank Oz is describing how they arrived at the current incarnation of Yoda.

Mike and I are being cuddly and romantic; he has his arm wrapped around my waist.

We watch for a few minutes when they begin talking about the snowy weather conditions during filming.

I say, “Which one had snow in it? All I remember is desert.”

Mike explains, “The Empire Strikes Back had a lot of snow.. remember? It was the one where all those giant machine things were trudging around in the snow, stomping people and stuff.”

“Was that the one with the Ewoks?” I ask. “I remember Ewoks.”

“No, that was Return of the Jedi.”

“Oh,” I say, “I don’t think I ever saw The Empire Strikes Back.”

The room is strangely silent.

Then I feel his hand on my waist, pulling slowly away until he is no longer touching me.

I turn to look at him; his eyes are wide with disbelief.

“You’ve.. never.. seen.. The Empire Strikes Back?” he asks slowly.

“Really?” I say. “You’re gonna be that guy?”

“Well Sara, this is kind of a problem for me,” he gravely informs me.

So today I am sitting through approximately 12 hours of a mind-numbing Star Wars refresher course, starting with The Phantom Menace and going all the way through The Return of the Jedi.

Because surely there aren’t more important things happening in the world.

When my son gets married, I plan to print this story out and put it in their “Congratulations on Getting Married” card as a demonstration of compromise. “To Zion and my as-yet-unnamed-daughter-in-law: This is what it means to compromise. Good luck on the marriage thing. Love, Mom.”

Really, really busy and emotional week. I keep trying to write something – about anything – and nothing is coming out. There’s just too much to sort through in my head.

I’m spending the weekend sewing, gluing, playing with paper and ribbon, and doing mindless, repetitive tasks. I’m considering a photography project, but wondering if my heart can handle it; especially wondering if I’m able to see anything through to its completion right now.

I keep looking over my shoulder and jumping at sudden noises. Wishing my brain would calm down.

There is nothing specifically negative happening – just a weird sense of… weirdness.

I would love to figure the whole thing out.

It’s a fairly emotionally charged environment around here lately, and I came home from the PTA meeting tonight looking for a fight.

{I just re-read that sentence and thought, “Really? Has it actually come to this? You’ve got ‘PTA’ and ‘looking for a fight’ in the same sentence – you’re gonna be that mom?” But you know I’m already there…}

Mike is doing his best to find ways to relieve the tension, and he’s cracking jokes about preparing my left-hook for the community forum, hostile take-overs of the PTA and SAC – his usual. I’m glued to the 10:00 news as they’re interviewing parents and community organizations, getting their opinions about Dr. Covington’s proposal.

Then he says, from the kitchen, as serious as a heart attack, “You know, I was in agreement with them about closing the Afrikan-Centered Education Collegiate Campus School. You said they had good test scores and all, and I thought, ‘They should leave that school alone, then!’ But then I drove by the sign on my way home and realized hell, they can’t even spell ‘Afrikan’ right. They put a ‘k’ instead of a ‘c’.”

I start laughing, and I’m thinking about the militant Black Muslims who would twitch at this conversation my husband is having with his white wife.

“Seriously, baby,” he continues, “I just can’t get behind this. These are the people who are educating our children?”

We didn’t do Valentines Day nearly as well as I would have liked, mostly because I was busy freaking the hell out about school closures.

Today we’re launching into the Chinese New Year {which for some reason I feel the need to celebrate with my family}, and tomorrow we’ll have our big Fat Tuesday feast.

Zion and I were working on, “Gung Hay Fat Choy,” and I hadn’t even made it to any Fat Tuesday/Mardi Gras explanations, so I thought it extremely appropriate when he said, “Hey Mom, what’s the one about the fat joy?”

Exactly, I thought. Bring on the fortune cookies.

Proof that love happens in the strangest of places.

I spent the afternoon holding my breath, hitting the refresh button on my computer over and over and over again as I waited for the Kansas City school district to unveil its “Right Sizing Plan.”

I would have liked to have been at the meeting, but my work schedule wouldn’t permit it, so here I sat – refresh, refresh, refresh.

The result? Zion’s school is not – as of today – on the chopping block. I thought I would jump, dance, sing, do the hokey pokey upon hearing this news.

But as I flipped through the news sites, I caught user comments:

Are you jealous that you can’t go to a nice high school? Those who are able to go to that school and in that district have worked hard, pay their way and have the ability to live wherever they want. They aren’t taking food stamps, welfare or anything else just to get by.

I assume this was a response to something – I can’t find the original comment.

Since Lincoln and Paseo have very specific criteria for admission, where are you going to stuff all the high school students from Westport, Northeast, Central and Southeast? 30 to 40 kids in a classroom???????

This was addressed in several meetings.

They manner in which the Kansas City School district has been operated and the poor quality of educational service provided justifies the closing of these schools. They are the eyesore and disgrace of an otherwise fine and growing city. CLOSE THEM NOW . CLOSE.

This person should know about poor education, since they can’t seem to spell anything right. The capital letters are an especially lovely touch. And where is the fine and growing city they’re referring to? I love my city, but “fine” and “growing” are definitely not words I would use to describe its current status. This was certainly a helpful comment, though, full of great ideas.

GREAT! That means their going tobe busing them into, what USED to be, the better schools.

Huh? Didn’t they all “used to be better schools”? Isn’t that kind of the point? I can’t figure out what this comment even means…

My child is not going to school with high school students. I geuss I will be leaving the district. Dr. Covington needs to go back to where he came from or he can cut some of his staff. I am sure that will save at least a million dollars.

Once again, if this person had attempted to be involved in her child’s school district, she would know that Dr. Covington has cut a huge amount of staff from the district level. HUGE. I’m guessing she’s mad at Obama too.

I think the athletic programs need to go first. These serve a select few and do not yield any useful results.

Uhm, thank you, commenter from Overland Park {for real – that’s what it said}. We certainly appreciate your input.

After reading through these comments, I wonder if anyone in the world has any interest in doing anything that can be considered even slightly productive?

I wonder if any of these people who are upset now made an attempt to attend a single School Advisory Committee meeting – each school has them.

I wonder if any of these people who are upset now made an attempt to attend a single District Advisory Committee meeting – they’re held once each month and open to the public.

I wonder if any of these people bothered to attend a Title I meeting – they’re also open to the public.

Did they try to call or write to a school board representative and make their opinions known?

Did they meet with the staff at their child’s school and say, “Excuse me, I have a full-time job, two other children and not much time, but is there any way I can help out here that doesn’t involve a huge time committment?”

Did they take the time to read a book, or learn about conflict resolution? Turn off “American Idol” and go to the library to research the problems that urban school districts encounter and proven ways to get past them? Maybe spend their Saturday afternoon participating in a community effort to prevent violence in schools?

Maybe this is judgmental, but something tells me they didn’t do any of these things – not. a single. one.

Wouldn’t it be lovely if each of these anonymous commenters devoted themselves to one project – low commitment level – to help make the district a better place for the children they’re concerned about? I think it would be a very different place.