Lemons

I don't make lemonade.

I sit there and suck on my lemons and complain about it.

You know exactly what I'm talking about.

And then, when the lemons are all gone, I talk about how I had to suck on these sour lemons that one time at every encounter for like the next four years. Yep. That's me.

I can't let go.

I also am way too tired (and also lazy, to be fair) to do anything about the fact that there are probably many solutions to all of these lemons in my life.

So, sit and revel in the sour, I must.

Recently, I've realized that not everyone wants to hear about my sour lemons.

There are parts of me that don't care. Like, when people ask about my mom, I'm not going to say she's fine.  Because she's not.  I know that everyone is, like, flustered, by hearing the truth, but I need to accept the truth and so does the rest of the world. So, I'll tell you that it's hard and that she's struggling.

And, sometimes, I get it. The majority of my problems are pretty first world.  We have to decide what public school to pick for our son that he might or might not get into.  We have to wrap our minds around the cold, hard fact, that it's not financially responsible for us to choose the really good schools that have private before and aftercare.  Big whoop.  That's still a pretty privileged problem to have.  Sure, we have friends who don't have that particular problem, but I'm sure they have their own lemons stacking up in the kitchen.

I can't promise I'll stop whining about that problem in the foreseeable future, since we are in the midst of it. I can at least acknowledge that not everyone cares.

Yeah, we had (have? It's sort of fixed...who knows #homeownership #AmIRight?) a plumbing issue.  And the printer broke. And...you know, stuff.

It's FAR too easy for me to get trapped in a spiral of little details that went wrong.

I could get lost in the fact that my kid, like, shut down, at track like he did at swimming way back when (ahem, June...that was in June...), despite the fact that when I signed him up for the class, he told me, "I know you signed me up for track because you know how much I love running" and that he has been talking about it literally everyday since August and asking, "Do I have track tomorrow?"  But...who's counting?

So far, the only answer I've come up with, the only solution to my negative spiral, is to place fewer expectations on myself and my days. And maybe not to look too closely at the big picture. Like with my mom. I can't look at that particular picture too closely. So, it's week by week.  Public school issues? Well, I can't fix equity in education before my kid starts kindergarten; so, we'll roll with what we've got and see what happens.  Plumbing? Eh, that's what savings accounts are for, yeah? And this whole track debacle has me fully confronting the fact that, maybe, just maybe, I should stop signing my kiddo up for city sports.  At least until he's like...ten (I'm kidding. Maybe.).

But really? What I need to do is focus on the other fruits in my life, even if it's the lemons that take up a lot of time.

Like?

The community of people budding up and telling me all of the things about our local schools and offering to sit down and parse through the nitty gritty details with me.

My beautiful team of teachers who listen every single day as I update them on the crazy in my life (mwah, love you girls!).

Dancing in the kitchen with my daughter holding my hands and my son bopping along saying, "She wants to hold my hand, too! She loves holding my hand!"

My sister-in-law putting together Halloween crafts while I stir up some pancakes.

My father-in-law chasing my daughter all around a school playground so I can wait with my son to get his face painted.

The sound of my son's laughter when he plays with either of his grandfathers.

Cuddles on the couch.

Pumpkins.

Mic drop.