Month: May 2018

For many, the school year is ending in the next couple of weeks.  I hear many parents on the playground talk about how wonderful it will be to have the kids home, not make lunches, and other dreams of vacation bliss.  I, on the other hand, am a bit freaked out.

I am a fan of the school year schedule.  Knowing what is happening with my child from day to day.  As I am still working on various projects and not in your typical 8-5 type job, I also enjoy knowing that we have a schedule down.  The summertime presents the need for camps which includes spending more money.  That would be fine but you discover when you have children that camps can be one day, half a day, halftime for a week, full time for 4 out of 5 weekdays, etc.  School is 8-3, generally with on-site aftercare when needed.  Camp, well you don’t want your kid to look back on summertime and say, “that was the year my parent’s abandoned me in that horrid summer program”. Parents want their kid to be happy but would prefer not going completely broke in the process.

This summer we have come up with a variety of options.  We have our week away scheduled, we have the majority of time covered.  A few half-day camps, most full day camps with a smattering of dance camps (i.e. one-hour classes scheduled twice a week for a month). If you work, as many parents do, and you want this sort of variety, you hopefully have a flexible employer who perhaps allows you to work from home.  Otherwise, you might need a chauffeur for the underaged child to get from activity to activity.  Fortunately, parents, mostly Mom’s, have created a network to share this challenge.

It would be wonderful to find a way to quantify these skills in the real world.  For example, “coordinated multiple and conflicting events for the client (child) including budgeting, transport, and meals.”  This is something I did when working in film but that sounded much more interesting than the role I have now.

Meanwhile, I applied to use some of my mindfulness training of recent years managing two elder-care and one child, to a real-world application.  Luminosity is looking for someone to do a guided meditation.  Ultimately it will come down to whether someone likes my actual voice and pacing.  I’m hoping my audition actually gets heard.  I mean how novel to use tools I’ve learned in life and actually get paid for passing them along.

Like writing though, I won’t hold my breath.  But if anyone out there has an in, let me know.  Meanwhile, as the school year winds down, listen to the soothing gyration of the washing machine.  The water twisting back and forth, like waves, lapping on the shore of the beach.  Your breathing in time with the lapping, tapping the keyboard. You find mindfulness where you can sometimes.

I can be a little overly empathetic to a fault.  I’ll see a look in someone’s eye and think something may be a bit off.  I also have a bad habit of wanting to be a bit of a people pleaser.  This, of course, can be problematic sometimes.  For example, I recently went to a class where the instructor asked me if it had been overly difficult.  I said no as compared to other classes it wasn’t.  She, of course, was having a conversation with another classmate, also a friend, who was explaining how sometimes a break was needed from these classes.  Here I was in a full-on people pleasing, empathetic quandry.  I wanted to be honest but keep both individuals happy.  In my defense, it was early, for a Friday, and I hadn’t had my coffee yet.  In the end, I probably failed to be helpful and felt crappy for it.  But this is the circle I roll in.  I like being polite and having people be happy.  Most of the time I’m around others who feel this way as well, but on occasion, I find myself in a unique situation.  Take for instance a recent ride on BART.

For those not familiar with the Bay Area, BART stands for Bay Area Rapid Transit.  It is the way those of us in the East Bay get into San Francisco when we don’t want to drive.  On the occasion of this particular ride, my husband and I had gone into the city for a show.  It was late-ish, and the train was somewhat crowded.

When faced with such a situation, you look for the open seats.  BART in the evenings, and sometimes in the daytime, can come with a variety of individuals.  Most people are commuting for jobs, some are going into or coming from the city for entertainment as we were that evening.  There were a few seats open so my husband and I grabbed a pair.

Now, I try to be as openminded as I can in the liberal bastion that is the Bay Area, but I will freely admit to not wanting to sit next to someone who smells or may look like they want to be left alone.  On this evening, there was a pair of gentlemen who were in the set of four seats that face each other.  They were sitting diagonally across from each other so there were two other seats available.  I did not sit near them because, well, they had facial tattoos.  Now I don’t care what race you are, but if you have facial tattoos, I’m probably going to not sit near you.  Does this reflect poorly on my character?  Perhaps, but personally, I find those who have facial tattoos as individuals who maybe had some issues in their past.  I’m not anti-tattoo.  But face tattoos kinda cry “hi, I’m a gang member with a record who may or may not have anger issues”.  So yeah, we didn’t sit near these guys.  Others on the train stood or found seats elsewhere until we made it to one stop where a younger woman, got on and asked one of these individuals to remove their feet so she could sit in the seat across from him.  He did and she sat, but I guess felt that he was… looking at her funny?  She begins screaming at him about his face tattoos and they start yelling “bitch” back and forth to each other.  My husband and I are relatively close by.  The four women across from this threesome are looking at each other anxiously.  I think we were all waiting for weapons to come out.  As it continued though, something happened.  I actually was feeling bad for the face tattoo guy.  This woman was just yelling like she owned the place.  We finally came to a stop and what apparently was a third friend, gets off the train.  We hold at this station for a minute or two and the two other guys end up getting off as well.  Now we are left with the woman who starts telling us how she normally isn’t like that.  We all nod.  Sure…

I was happy to get off the train that night and happy that no weapons showed up, but seriously, if this had gone to court, I think I would be on face tattoo guys side.