Dear Courage Journal
Weight: up 4 pounds. I'l never make my target by the end of summer!!!
Mood: Depressed, but I feel a manic stage looming.

Today I was brave because: I saw that cheesecake in the fridge and I said "No thank you!"
Today I was not brave because: I ate 3/4 of a box of Chips Ahoy to fight the cheesecake craving. Begin shame spiral.


No, seriously people, I started writing something and I got annoyed with myself. It was very Up With People and completely unworthy of your time, unlike this which will no doubt be gripping and fantastic.

The central issue--what had initially set me off into Cheeseball Sobville--is that my nephew started kindergarten yesterday. Not that big a deal, only it drove home the point that my oldest boy will be starting kindergarten four weeks from yesterday.

It will be the end of an era at the Pops household.

Sure, there's the usual anxiety about sending my poor, helpless boy out there amongst the sharks of grade school; the general discomfort one feels in any change in behavior and routine; the sadness inherent in the passing of one era of our lives into another.

Mostly what's bothering me though--now that I've had time to think about it--is now I'll be getting much less sleep. I will probably have to go out and buy... it hurts just to think it... an alarm clock.

The last day I worked outside the house was the day before he was born in May of 1999. Since then I've been roused by the sound of baby voices, crying or otherwise, over a speaker-monitor.

Not everyone realizes this, but speaker-monitors can be turned off if you aren't ready to get up quite yet. And kids, especially small ones in cribs, will keep. It's when they're not crying that you have to worry.

And also, I don't feel quite like I'm done with him yet. These last 5+ years have been the salad days. The leafy greens of development tossed with the sliced tomato of child-like wonder, the croutons of... something. It's not much of a metaphor.

But really, these are the years where I have had a chance to really sow the seeds that will bloom eventually into teenage resentment. I'm hoping we've maximized our potential for success in this areas since I've been home with him the whole time. I've gotten lots of good, quality time in to implant within him a feeling of the general unfairness of the world and my looming, smothering, primary role in it. I'm hoping this will blossom into disdainful looks and slammed doors as he gets older, then (God willing) a period of several years where he refuses even to talk to me.

That's the sign of good parenting. Of course you don't want to go so far as to keep them away even if I were on my deathbed, but having him go through several years of therapy as an adult until he makes a "breakthrough" and realizes Daddy loves him, well, that's all a parent can ask for.

We're sending him to Catholic school. He starts on the 30th. So for now all I can do is hold him close and try not to squeeze too hard when I realize how much tuition and uniforms are going to cost me.

My kids are all just about exactly two years apart, so this is the time, were we to have a fourth--which we are most definitely not--that Mrs. Pops we get herself all knocked up and junk, hopefully by me. It would be time to start the cycle all over again.

That sound you just heard is me high-fiving myself.

Four more years and we'll ship the youngest one off to school too and I'll have this dump all to myself.


This post on the Narcissus Scale: 7.15


Pops
- posted by Pops @ 12:44 PM