Single Tasking

I have always taken pride in my ability to multitask.  It's is a skill that I have listed  on my resume to attract employers and one that I use constantly as a mother.   I always thought it was a wonderful way to get more done in each moment, not doing just one thing, but many, within the same stretch of time.

Yet yesterday my daughter's teacher told me that she isn't very focused.  That she is possibly displaying one aspect of ADD.  At school, the children are expected to pay attention to the subject matter being presented.  They should not occupy their hands and eyes with something else while their ears are listening to the lesson.  

Unfortunately, when the teacher is talking, my daughter is often doing something else too.  Of course she is!

Her entire life she has watched me shift from one item to the next.   I find it very difficult and slightly boring to only do one thing, to keep on one topic.  I am usually reading several books at the same time, playing a game while I watch t.v. listening to a podcast while painting my house!

Doing several things the same time feels right to me.

Yet  I realize that I am frequently not in the moment.  I'm also over there in that moment.   Maybe I'm only half experiencing both things, rather than giving each it's fully deserved attention.  

So while I think that multitasking is still something to be proud of, maybe it also needs to be put aside from time to time.  Maybe single tasking, focusing on only one item, is also necessary.    Maybe if I single task more often, my children will learn to do it a little better too!

Who knows, maybe I'd be  a better cook if I focused on the meal and stop doing homework with the kids?  Then again, if I did that, the teacher would have a new set of  "issues" to discuss.

Wolves in the walls, ghost in the corners

My son is certain that when people die they become spirits for a while.   These real and scarcy spirits haunt the corners of his room, the darkness under his bed, the shadows down the hall.

Around the age of two, he became certain there were wolves living his his walls, scratching from within, staring at him in the darkness.

When we moved into a new house, just before his 5th birthday, the wolves went away.  The ghosts came instead.

I was the same when I was little.  I used to blame my dad, his dark sense of humor.  He would purposely jump at you from dark corners to hear you scream.   But I've never purposely scared my son and he is still afraid.

What is it in my son's  internal wiring, so like mine, that makes him sensitive and fearful.   And how will this effect the man he is to become?   Will puberty fill him with mind and body changing testosterone, replacing fear with confidence and strength or will he continue to struggle with the monsters of his imagination?

I cherish the imagination and uniqueness of my son, and want to encourage those traits, even as I feel the need for him to embrace courage and strength.   A balanced man, one in tune with his mind, heart and body could be a powerful thing.  But to create one, that is a challenge.

Slumber party

  When I was 6, I entered the world of slumber parties.  A night of dancing, laughing, truth or dare and one girl being tortured for falling asleep first.  Eventually the parents of the house started to loose their cool and grumble about us going to sleep.  Eventually we all did.

 Two weeks ago my daughter turned 6.  Like clockwork she asked for a slumber party birthday!  I groaned, but allowed it to happen.

They were wonderful little girls, who laughed, played games and chased after fireflies in the dusk of the night.  But like all girls before them, they too were told to go to sleep, many, many times.

When the last girl went home the next morning, my daughter and I looked and felt terrible.  We do not do well when we are short on sleep.  Yet I know my daughter will ask to have and go to many more slumber parties in her life....and I will allow it.

There is so much to be learned and experienced when spending countless hours with friends.  Conversations get to take their full course, relationships grow, feelings get hurt and mended.  And you learn about life, love and boys in the whispered darkness.  

Jenny McCarthy

Isn't it funny how once you start thinking about something or someone, it seems like they are everywhere?

A few weeks ago I was looking for something to watch on Hulu and stumbled across "Love in the Wild." It's a silly reality show where 12 men and 12 women try to get to know each other and find love, all the while doing difficult things in the wilds of the Dominican Republic.  I love the idea of adventure and love, and thought it was a fun, though not really romantic, show.  The host was Jenny McCarthy.

I couldn't remember what she had done. "MTV" my husband stated.

The next week I was looking through my library's audio files to find a book to listen to and I found the book "Love, lust and faking it, The naked truth about sex, lies and true romance."  Isn't that a great title!  It was by Jenny McCarthy.  I never read any of her other books, but people had mentioned they were funny, so I downloaded the book.

It has mixed reviews, but I liked it.  It was funny, but not hilarious.  But more than that, I could relate to it.  She is a woman of my age, trying to figure out how to be happy in this world.  How to love herself and feel satisfied.     Isn't that what we are all trying to do?

In listening to the book, I learned that while she might have done MTV, she got her start posing for playboy.  For some reason it makes me happy that my husband didn't know that fact.

I'll be happy when....

I'm always chasing my elusive happiness.

I'll be happy when...
I lose this extra weight.
I have more money.
I have a clean house.
I'm on vacation

Today I want to just be happy.  Stop running after it.  Just be it.

I am happy because...
I got to catch up with a friend.
I have a hot cup of coffee in front of me.
I can hug my kids when they get off the bus.
I will hold my husbands hand when I sleep.

It's a choice, the postponed joy or the one in front of us.