Category Archives: rambling

Goodbye Grandma

Posted on 17 January 2012 by Teresa| 1 Comment

20120122-083312.jpgThere are few people who have affected my life as much as this lovely woman. I met Dijuan Coates in 1985, the year I met the teenage boy who would become my husband. He would visit her, his grandmother, amid travels and then he and I would hang out, tromping through the hazelnut orchard that surrounded her house at the outskirts of Newberg. He gave me a rose from her backyard once. Then his younger brother came along to eat off the bloom. It was in that yard that years later she showed Brian and I photos of her life, of Grandpa Coates, of her boys when they were young.

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Over the years, his grandma became my grandma. We divorced and have barely spoken, but Grandma Coates has been there for me and my kids the whole time, never wavering. She was kind and gentle, loving and compassionate. We rarely spoke about the divorce or her grandson. Instead she spent her time reminding me how much she loved me and the kids. How grateful that she was that I hadn’t ignored her post-divorce. What she never understood is how much I appreciated her not abandoning us.

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While we were in Vietnam back in 2007, she’d had surgery and her eyes were bad. I wanted to visit, but clearly distance was an issue. I emailed my mom to see if she’d visit in my stead and she did. I will always be grateful to both women for that visit. My mom spent a couple hours catching up with her, sharing stories of our travels with Grandma, sending our love.

In Summer 2010 we were able to take a road trip to California and visited Grandma at her new home in Gilroy. We got to share an evening with her, Uncle Dennis and Aunt Jackie. having dinner as a family. I brought her photos and the kids got to see her, tell her how much we loved her still. I’d hoped to go again this past summer, but with the unemployment the cost of a trip made it impossible.

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I knew Grandma for 27 years. She showed me how to love family, even when it isn’t easy. She lives on in my heart and the memories of my children who were lucky enough to know their great great-grandmother.

Grandma passed away on Monday, after a thankfully brief health crisis filled with a stroke, massive heart attack and a destructive skin infection. A memorial will be held soon.

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Working is Hard Work. Duh.

Posted on 25 August 2011 by Teresa| Comments Off

Three days in and I’m totally, completely exhausted from the inside out. Everything is tired–my muscles, my brain, my interest in doing anything at all. Really? Who knew it was this difficult to work eight hours a day?! Okay, so it’s not really the workday that is killing me, it’s the drive home, the errands afterward, the dinner and dishes and managing some time to watch a movie or TV show with the daughter so she doesn’t feel too neglected.

I’ve been going in early this week and will do so until school starts, but at that point, I’ll start going in a half hour later and coming home in even denser traffic. I’m certainly not thrilled with that, but it’s really the only negative the job has going against it.

Because the job itself rocks my world. I get to write blog posts, follow blogs, interview shop owners and fabric designers, try out new patterns and see the newest fabric lines before they hit the stores. Crazy awesome is what it is and I’m loving it.

Now, if my neck and shoulders could just get used to sitting at a desk all day and my body could get a full eight hours of nightmare-free sleep, I’d be without complaint.

But before hitting the hay, I have some reading to do for an article about apron collecting that I need to write tomorrow. Oh, new job, how I love you!

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Posted in rambling, ruckus time

Growing (up) pains

Posted on 17 August 2011 by Teresa| Comments Off

Despite the fact, that I celebrated my forty-first birthday this year, I have avoided some of the more grown-up expectations.

  • I don’t own a house and never plan to.
  • I don’t have a retirement account.
  • I have never hired a lawyer (or a mover, for that matter).
  • I don’t own my own car.
  • And except for a nine-month window after I divorced way back in 1999,
    I have never worked a 40-hour-a-week job.

Yeah, yeah, I know. It sounds totally ridiculous to be this old and never worked that much, though I was working full-time at the school, it was 35 hours per week and I had the benefit of driving with my kids both to and from work (since it was their school I was working at). I was a stay-at-home mom until the divorce. After, I got a full-time job and put my daughter in day care, a horrible experience for both of us. Since 2000, I have avoided having either kid in anyone else’s daily care. All the years I went to school, I dropped them off and picked them up from school. Then we left the country and they were with me except for the few hours a day when I taught and they stayed in our dorm room. We returned to the States and I got a job at their school. I saw both of them periodically throughout the day. And then this summer, I’ve been here (unemployed and penniless) with them.

But all of that is changing.

My son is coming back from California after the job fell through and will be attending community college at the campus just down the block.

My daughter will be on her own to get home, eat and work on homework every afternoon. I’ve always been here for that, always with her to help out when she’d let me, make her dinner. Now, I’ll have to trust that she learned the bus system well enough to get herself back home. I have to hope that she will get food for herself, a rarity for her since she frequently forgets to eat. I won’t be here to be the Mom I want to be and I have to trust that she’ll be okay with it all, but the guilt of leaving her like that is killing me.

Perhaps it will work with her brother back in the house, able to keep her company in the afternoons, someone to talk to and ask for homework help. But I am going to miss being with them both. It’s hard to let go of the 24/7 parenting that I’ve devoted myself to and it’s hard to admit that I don’t have control over everything.

My first day, an orientation of sorts, is tomorrow, then the real deal starts on Monday and I can already feel the time constraints. I just have to remind myself that millions of parents do this every day and that so many of them haven’t been as lucky as I to have spent so many mornings and afternoons with my kids. And, I have to remind myself, that it’s about time I grew up and got a ‘real’ job.

All you working mothers out there… is there something I can do to get past the guilt, the worry? Or is this just one of the joys of being a mom?

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(Of course, when I factor in the fact that I have a GuyFriend that I adore being with and will now rarely see along with all my other friends and hobbies and unfinished projects, I just want to run away crying. I can’t, though, so we’re just gonna have to give it a try and see what happens. At least it’s a job I wanted.)

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Posted in rambling, solo parenting

Job hunting is like dating.

Posted on 8 August 2011 by Teresa| Comments Off

I don’t like either one, in fact. I much prefer steady work and a committed relationship.

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The Best Day Ever.

Posted on 30 July 2011 by Teresa| Comments Off

This is my five-year-old nephew’s favorite line this week.

Cousins hamming it up at Washington Park

The first time Alex said it was last Friday as we left the Oregon Zoo. We’d spent four and a half hours roaming though the zoo, ogling the fruit bats as they devoured broccoli and bananas, meditated on the giraffe’s less-than-graceful gait, rumbled along the train tracks to and from Washington Park, and visited every wildcat, monkey, bird and insect cage we could. With all the cousins living far apart, it’s rare that they all get together. But my youngest sister had left her two here with family and we took full advantage of it, enjoying the zoo, the train, the park and a picnic lunch.

Alex wasn’t far off the mark–I might not argue for it being the best day, but it was, at the least, a very good day.

The next day we propped the tent on the back porch and watched old Spiderman cartoons on Netflix and had grilled cheese sandwiches for lunch. When he snuggled up to me long past dark, he told me again: “Today was the best day ever.”

“Better than the zoo?”

“That was the best day, too.”

It didn’t really matter what we did to him, as long as we were all together, it was a great day, a best day.

The simplicity is childlike and, I’m prone to think, slightly childish. How can every day be the best day? I know it can’t really be the best, but maybe there’s something I can take from his sweet declaration. These months of unemployment and lack of income have taken its toll on me and on my readiness to experience any real joy in the day to day drudgery. I am more prone to say it was the worst day ever, on those days when I get notice that my petition my was denied, that someone else got the position, that unemployment insurance doesn’t cover people like me.

The struggle continues but I’m going to try to remember what Alex said. I put his picture on my computer desktop, a big grin bending his face, his eyes into a happiness that is almost palpable. I put it there to remind me that it isn’t so much about what I have or don’t have or what exactly I’m doing, but it matters that I have family and love.

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Sexualizing the Wrong Crowd

Posted on 15 July 2011 by Teresa| 1 Comment

Is it just me or is Women’s Health using teenagers to promote an article on bringing the ‘sexy’ back into a relationship?

Really, how old are these two? 14? Maybe 16?

Seeing these two young’uns just makes me think of my kids, and while I know that’s where they came from, I don’t like thinking about sex and children at the same time. Especially, my children who are painfully close to looking the same age as these models.

Couldn’t they use a picture of a couple who are clearly old enough to have been in a relationship long enough for the sex to get a bit stale? These two probably met last week in English Comp class then hung out in the cafeteria for lunch. I’d much rather see a couple of actual adults–people whose frontal lobes have fully developed.

Please.

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What is the point?

Posted on 1 June 2011 by Teresa| Comments Off

Since losing most of my blog, it’s set me to thinking about the whole idea of blogging. What is the point?

I’ve been posting bits and baubles about my life, my family’s life, for more than five years (how could it be that long?!), sharing moments that range from our decision to volunteer in Vietnam to our first real road trip as a family to my son’s role as the Moon. And sometimes I pontificate about the more important stuff, like what it means to be a Westerner in a developing country.

But I don’t often write about the ups and downs, struggles and joys of parenting alone.

And so when my blog here disappeared last week, I wondered if there was reason enough to get upset, or to re-start the process. I’ve thought about it and I’ve decided that yes, there is. There are only a few of us blogging who have been solo parenting for more than a decade, but we do exist and it can be done. And I think that’s really my point: it can be done and you can all be happy. It doesn’t actually require two parents to have a happy family. I’m sure it would be nice to have someone to share this all with, but it isn’t a necessity. Really.

Parenting is hard. Mothering can be tiring and overwhelming. But in the end (and I’m painfully close to the quasi end with my son), it’s all worth it.

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Lost and Found

Posted on 28 May 2011 by Teresa| 2 Comments

I didn’t get it all back, but there are some still on the old version of the site when I was still hosting it on WordPress. A relief, though I’m sad to lose several of the essays I’d written. What I have is better than nothing though, and I’ve definitely learned to be more careful about keeping an back-up elsewhere. -sigh-

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Ersatz Remarks

Posted on 5 October 2010 by Teresa| 2 Comments

One of the benefits of being [cough] 40, is that I’ve been on the Internet for a long, long time now. I made my first website in 1994. Back before ‘bots trolled these parts. But now they are everywhere, with all sorts of supposedly tricky ways of getting their links out there. The ones I hate the most may be the comment litterers. Not the ones that are blatantly trying to get me to “click here,” but the sneaky ones that feign interest in the blog post. I get a boatload of these on our family travel blog. Here’s just a sample from this week…

On a post about hanging out with aunt and watching a kids’ movie, someone wrote:

“Hey Great post. This is a bit off topic but im making a site on gold pawn shop [link removed]. I was just wondering what theme you are currently using for your website .Thanks :) “

On a post where I talk about visiting the Peterson Rock Gardens near Bend, Oregon, I got three of ‘em:

Hi! Is it ok to use these information in my prject? thanks!

Your blog is awesome. Thank you so much for giving plenty of awesome content. I have bookmark your blog siteand will be without doubt coming back. Once again, I appreciate all your work and also providing a lot great tricks to the audience. [tricks?!]

Blasphemy! Hehe Just kidding! I’ve read similar things on other blogs. I’ll take your word for it. Stay solid! – your pal.

Don’t worry, chum, I’m solidly solid.

I wrote that I’d finished another chapter and put a little snippet of it in and got this response:

I am doing research for my university paper, thanks for your excellent points, now I am acting on a sudden impulse.

Excellent points like “I want to eat bun cha at the Thanh Hoa market. I want to sit on the porch breaking open red watermelon seeds with friends.” Yeah, I’m sure s/he’s using that for that sudden, impulsive research.

One of my favorites on a post with ZERO comments:

Took me time to read all the comments, but I really enjoyed the article. It proved to be Very helpful to me and I am sure to all the commenters here It’s always nice when you can not only be informed, but also entertained I’m sure you had fun writing this article.

I read them, I delete them, and more often than I’d like to admit, I see these same posts on other blogs. The same comments that I’ll receive a half-dozen times this week. Usually it makes me smile at the sheer idiocy of the Internet’s evolution.

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Posted in rambling