Date Night. Plus Some Whining. Which You Can Totally Skip, Okay?

Did you hear that a week from Saturday there will be an AweSomely Adult Prom?  I read about it on the All Over Albany blog.  I was briefly deeply excited because it’s actually on our wedding anniversary.  17 years, baby!   I do love me some dancin’.  But on second thought, I think that this is really something that you need to recruit a whole mess of friends to truly enjoy.   Sigh. . . looks like dinner for us.   Unless, anyone have some good date ideas?

Anyway, as the anniversary approaches, I can’t help but be thankful that my love life has been a delightful constant in my life for lo these last two decades or so.  (This is where I segue into whining–don’t say I didn’t warn you!)

Next week is our last week of nursery school for J. Which means the last week of nursery school for the entire family, after 5 years straight (two successive sisters plus a kindergarten “red shirt” year).  I feel a little bit sad about it.  It’s not because my little baby is growing up.  I love to watch the kids evolve–I spend very little time mourning the loss of my babies and toddlers, because these big kids are wonderful.  And I’m not worried about her starting kindergarten.  She’s ready.  Excited, even.

Nope, I’m just sad for me.  My nursery school experience  has evolved.  I started out intimidated by the people running it and frustrated by M’s sobbing, thigh-clutching separations each morning.  Then I knew many people and over-volunteered.  For years.  This year I’ve already pulled away–I had a very small job, and I don’t know most of the newer parents who come on my “off” day.  But it’s still like a second home, a comfortable fit for me, full of people I know and care about and enjoy seeing several times a week.  It’s the kind of place where you can show up in the morning in your pajama bottoms and burst into tears and you’ll instantly have someone holding your baby for you while another leads your big kid into the classroom and someone else fishes a candy bar out of her bag.  And then dinner appears on your front porch.  Not like that has happened to me.  It’s, you know, hypothetical.

But the truth is, just like J, I am ready to move on.  Because I don’t go out in pajamas anymore (just sweaty workout clothes these days), and I hardly ever spontaneously burst into tears in public anymore.   But I know what I’m losing.  J’s classmates will go to several different elementary schools, and I already know how rarely I see the folks from previous years.  And that doesn’t even take into account the moms’ group friends whom I still miss, even though I stopped doing that two years ago now.  Just coordinating a cup of coffee is a freakin’ logic problem.

I’ve barely gotten acclimated to the elementary school scene, which is, frankly, decidedly less warm & fuzzy than my cuddly ol’ moms’ group and nursery school.  I’m working on that–bringing some more warm-fuzzies in.  But meanwhile, the scariest transition yet is looming.  Soon, I’ve got to come up with a paying job.   I actually thought that this blog could help me to forge a new plan–to see if I could manage to write consistently (along with, of course, helping people find some fun).  But even though I like capitaldistrictfun, it’s not satisfying enough, really, and it sure as heck isn’t going to pay for the new bathroom I want, much less the dang roof.  So if I was operating under the optimistic delusion that this experiment would lead to some sort of Oprah Aha moment that would light my path to the future. . . umm, well, it hasn’t.

I think that I’d just like to stop evolving for a little while.  I know:  that would be death.  Could you stop being a smartass, please, and just feel my thirst already?

Or, you know, you don’t have to just feel my thirst, if you happen to have a glass full of fabulous lucrative career that’s  tremendously satisfying  in what my father likes to call “an asshole-free” environment that gets me out of the house while still allowing me plenty of family time, then I am absolutely open to your input.