Donning my black and going into mourning...

I go back to work tomorrow, after 5 too-short weeks of vacation. My summer is now dearly departed.

And I'm starting off with a bang, because I'm doing my rookie faciliation of the professional development model we brought in from North Carolina in February. I'm the "associate" facilitator, and the read I get is that if I do a good enough job, the organization will send me to their national facilitator development academy.

I'm really nervous. I've been nervous just doing the on-site coordination of the trainings the last two times, and this time I'm adding actual delivery to the coordination. I haven't eaten all day, and then darn AF showed up three days early just for kicks. Like I need anything else to worry about...sigh.

So I'm doing what any sensible working woman with no kids at home tonight would do. I'm going out for mexican and margaritas! But only a couple...gotta be sharp as a tack tomorrow morning, right?

I take it all back...

It was a delightful weekend and the party was lovely.

Last night, my stepsister looked so pretty, so happy, and her friends were a very nice bunch of singletons. It made me want to move the hell out of this dead little town and go somewhere that there are actually single people over 30 who have real jobs. Oh, and she changed her mind about the boys and they were allowed to stay for the party...not that we saw them the whole night because they holed up in Grandpa's study and played games on his computer...

One of her guests, a guy she dated for a short time and who now falls on her "just friends" list (don't get me started there, I'm getting clearer and clearer on what "just friends" really means when Crash says it...), turned out to be someone I knew when I was 17...and he remembered me more than I remembered him. We both worked at Kings Island...he was a security guard, which in the KI Employee Caste System was higher up the food chain than I believed I was ever worthy of. Anyway, we talked most of the night, I think he was even flirting a little bit, and my stepsister told me when I left to drive back to Nothing-Good-Ever-Happens-Here-Ville that she was going to be sure to talk up the fact that this town is only two hours from where he lives. I told her I appreciated the gesture, but the real benefit of having run into him is that I got the ego boost that I need to start ending the game with Crash once and for all. There really are some single men out there. Just not here. Maybe it's time to work on that issue too. That's another blog entry...

I realized last night how much of a blessing my stepmom and stepsiblings really are. They may be pushy and overbearing, but they do love me and my kids, and I love them too. It's good we don't all do things the same way, right?

I don't wanna gooooo....

Today the boys and I are packing up the TwoRingCircus and heading to my dad's house. We were supposed to leave last evening after piano lessons, but I was SO tired after running from one end of the state to the other being a DMB groupie that I just needed to rest last night.

Well, that's partly true. That's what I told my dad, at least.

The rest of the story is that I don't want to go to visit this weekend. My stepsister graduated from nursing school a couple of weeks ago and my stepmom is hosting a cocktail party for her tomorrow night. I don't want to go. I don't want to have to go. I want to stay home and enjoy my last two days of summer vacation, and I don't want to go have to be around all the beautiful people types that my stepmom and stepsister surround themselves with.

I live in a small town. I'm a mom. I work for a school district. I am divorced. I don't make tons of money. I don't know what exactly I'm supposed to wear for an event described as "country club casual" on the invitation. (The swim club we belong to here is upper crust for my small town and we wear shorts and tank tops to our get-togethers....I'm thinking that's not what I'm supposed to wear tomorrow night.)

My stepsister and I are the same age. It's taken her a bit longer to get to adult milestones than it did me...I've been married twice, she's never married, and she has no kids. She went to college but never used the degree in a professional sense, doing marketing and sales types of jobs instead, and then decided to go to nursing school. You would think she discovered a cure for the common cold or something for all the hoopla that my stepmother has made about this.

Do I sound bitter? Yeah...I own it...when I graduated with a master's degree four years ago, I was separated from my first husband (who refused to help pay for the degree while we were married) and I had a 3 yo and an 18 mo old. My dad and stepmother drove up for the afternoon, took me out to dinner, and left. They didn't even come to the ceremony. I had a prodigal son for a little brother growing up, and now I've got a prodigal stepsister as an adult. I don't want to know what's going to happen with my own kids!

The worst part of it is that the boys aren't allowed to be at the party. My stepsister SO did not want children to be there that she first of all told me to make their dad watch them, and when I explained to her that it doesn't work that way, and that I wanted to spend my last days off with them, she got my dad/stepmom's neighbor's son and daughter-in-law to come out to the house next door with their kids so I could dump mine off with them. Do you pay someone who watches your kids for something like this? It seems so presumptive...I'm embarrassed. I'm going to pick up a gift card for a restaurant, I guess....

So I should be leaving in 9 minutes and instead I'm still sitting here in front of my computer in my pajamas. I haven't packed. I don't want to go.

My simplest pleasure....

I just spent two nights in a row at Dave Matthews Band shows.

Riverbend/Cincinnati Set List

Blossom/Cleveland Set List

I don't know what it is about that band live, but I don't think I could ever get tired of seeing them perform. It makes me feel so good, I guess, watching these incredible musicians pull together all their talent into something so grand...it's so inspiring to realize that there are really people who find their bliss and truly love their livelihood...and can make other people feel it too!

Last night I took my 7 year old with me for the second time. The look of sheer amazement and awe he had when he watched Boyd Tinsley and Butch Carter in the jams made me want to cry...and when they started playing his absolute favorite song (Ants Marching, for those of you who know a few tunes), he was so swept away that he grabbed me around the neck and kissed me!

I think last night in Cleveland was probably the ceremonial end to my summer. I go back to work on Monday and back to trying to stay off of the hamster wheel. I think I need to figure out how to put a little more bliss into what I do...maybe I just stumbled upon my goal for this school year...