The story of how I'm accidentally rearing caffeine addicts, or Did you know caffeine is an inhale-able substance?

I have a pretty well thought out schedule with my kids at work.  After breakfast, unless my boss has something we have to do, they play in the gym while I drink my coffee.  The plan is they can burn energy while I wake up enough to have energy so that when we get to our classroom we're all at about the same level of awake. 
Well early last week four of my kids were playing near me and started talking to me...
"Is that your coffee Ms. Tina?" says the tiniest three year old you will ever meet.
"Yup." Ms. Tina has only had a few sips and is therefore slightly less conversant than she would like to admit.
"Is it yummy?" says the biggest three year old you will ever meet.
"Well I like it."  I've had another sip, so I'm waking up a bit.
"So does Ms. Debbie."  A third child adds.  "And Ms. Tina is cranky style without it.  It must be yummy." she adds.  The other children look at her and nod as if she's said something very wise and very profound.
"Me smell!" a fourth child starts pulling at my arm to bring my coffee cup down to his reach.
I think, "eh, the smell won't hurt anything and there's hardly anything left anyway".  So I let him smell my coffee.
"Yuck!" he exclaims and runs away, his attention now focused on something far more desirable than morning coffee- our "cool" ball with Spider-man printed on it.  The little girls still want a smell, so I give everyone a chance.  They all think it smells "weird" and go about their morning.  I nearly forget this ever happened.
Except the next morning all three little girls are at my side,
"Can I smell your coffee?" they ask, shyly for some reason.  So I let them.  What's it going to hurt, it's not like I'm letting them drink the coffee!  I'm not crazy.
But it happens again the next day.
And the next day.
Friday I drank my first cup at home, so I don't have any when they ask.  Everyone goes to play, and eventually I get another cup and survey the room.  I have one yawning under the climber, one whining about not having the cool ball (which is laying on the ground just out of her reach, but quicly attainable), and another one reaching out to smack another kid.  Everyone is cranky on Friday morning.  I sort out my little catastrophes, wake up the sleeper and finally take a drink of my coffee.  Suddenly I realize I have three tiny shadows looking up at me.  I let them have their sniff of coffee and everyone goes about their day.  Except ten minutes later I realize my sleeper is now wide awake playing a game of monster, my whiner is laughing her head off, and my smacker is giving out hugs to all her friends.
I think caffeine is inhale-able.  Should I have told their parents?

**I swear to you, this is a completely true story that happened to me this week.  In case you were wondering :-)

Black Chuckles taste like an afternoon running errands with my dad

When I was younger the only hardware store my dad ever went to was Ace Hardware.  It was close to our house, at least closer than the nearest box store, and my dad liked that it's locally owned instead of being an MNC like the box stores.  Except I think the thing he liked best was found in the checkout lane.  My dad loved black liquorice.  But his favorite was the black piece inside a package of Chuckles. 
So my dad would be at home and decide to work on whatever was broken.  He would come get me from wherever I was playing and he would ask if I wanted to go to Ace with him.  I always said yes, because Ace was the one store where I knew my dad would buy candy.  So we'd go to the store and I would be all antsy while my dad took his time.  At the time I thought he was babbling, talking to himself, about whatever it was we were there to buy.  Most of the time I didn't know most of the words he used.  Then would come the good part.  We'd get in line and I would start eyeing the candy.  Usually my dad would pretend that he didn't see the candy, or the fact that I was literally dancing around waiting for his permission to pick one.  Sometimes he would tell me right away,
"Hey grab me some chuckles okay?  And get yourself something too."  And I would pick two packages of Chuckles.  Sometimes he would wait until after the cashier had started ringing up whatever we were buying.  Once or twice he managed to surprise me, not saying anything, but when we got to the car he produced two packages of Chuckles out of the bag.  See, I always picked Chuckles too.  Because my dad loved them.  And even though I thought the black one tasted gross, I wanted to be like my dad, so I picked Chuckles.  And even though he would try and trade me his green one for my black one I usually refused the trade.  Because I wanted to be like my daddy.
So, after we got in the car my dad and I would have to eat our Chuckles before we got home because my mom would get cranky that my dad got me candy and didn't get candy for everyone (by which I think she meant her).  Or she'd complain about the liquorice (because she hated it) and steal the green ones (because they were her favorite).  We'd eat the Chuckles in the car on the way home and my dad would talk about whatever home repair thing needed done.  I usually tuned him out.  Because home repair.  But then when we got home he would usually tell me that he needed help with his project, and I would have to hand him tools, or be a third hand, or whatever he needed.  I never minded because, hey I got candy.
As a kid I just enjoyed hanging out with my dad and getting candy that no one else got.  Now that I'm an adult I realize that my dad assumed my brother would pick up how to use tools and take care of his business, but I'm a girl.  My dad wanted to make sure that I would be prepared to deal with life, and this was his way.  He wasn't talking to himself, he was talking to me.

So yesterday Leah and I ran errands and had to stop at Ace.  And Leah bought me a package of Chuckles.  And I enjoyed my black one most of all.

The past haunts me.  There are things I should have done differently, that I wish I had done differently.  How often I’ve thought to myself if only I could have back five minutes of my life.  Any five minutes.  The five minutes when I forgot to watch my drink at a party.  The five minutes where I didn’t tell my dad I loved him before he went to visit a friend the day he didn’t come back.  The five minutes where I could have...  Or the five minutes where I shouldn’t have… 

Some of my ghosts are more substantial than your average ghost, bold enough to try to talk to me even in the light of day.  Some of them are vague things that shouldn’t be able to bother me.  Things I barely remember, but that I can’t forget either.  Things that haunt me most late at night when I’m alone and trying to still my mind.  It’s been these that have weighed on my mind and burdened my heart the most lately. 

From the first call, months ago, that my uncle had only months left to live, I’ve been haunted more and more.  Nibbles at the back of my mind have grown into being almost all I think of.  Although I barely remember it, it’s enough to know that it happened.  I’ve thought before that it had no impact on my life.  That ultimately there were no consequences because I don’t remember it.  Now I wonder how true that is.  I don’t talk to my family.  I ruin everything I touch. 

And then I turn around and it’s almost disappeared.  So insubstantial as to be nearly nonexistent.  My life is flowers and hope.  I’m stronger for standing away from my family.  I have friends that more dear to me than anything else.  I’m not broken; I’m strong enough to stand.

Ultimately, I can't change the past.  Everything that has happened, is exactly that, something that has happened.  There's no magical way to have five minutes back, I can't pick and choose which parts of my life I want to keep.  It's all helped make me into who I am, so I have to learn to embrace it and carry on.  I might never be rid of those ghosts haunting my every step, but I can decide how much attention to pay them.  I might not be able to make them disappear or to change the past, but I can decide how much I let them impact today.  I can decide how much I let them influence tomorrow. 

Once upon a time

Once upon a time there was a girl wandering through life alone, buffeted along the way by the stresses of life, seeking shelter from the storm.

But there’s no fairy tale.  No girl met boy, no wicked step-mother to be defeated, no happily ever after.  Only, once upon a time.

For every Cinderella rescued by the prince, there’s a not-so-wicked step-sister.  Maybe she didn’t start out so bad, but it’s not her story and every story is better with a good villain.  Maybe she wanted to love her step-sister but circumstance and story-telling won’t let her.  Maybe the heroine always had those talking mice casting a spell around her that made everyone else look worse in comparison.  There’s no way to know the true story, too much time has passed since once upon a time, and the story looks away before the end.

For every happily ever after, there’s more to the story.  Maybe Prince Charming isn’t really charming.  Maybe he charms for a moment but gets easily distracted.  He’s a prince after all; he can have anything, why focus on what he already has?  Maybe happily ever after doesn’t really mean happy.  Or ever.

Once upon a time there was a girl wandering through life alone, buffeted along the way by the stresses of life, seeking shelter from the storm.  But this girl isn’t protected by a fairy god-mother.  Nature itself doesn’t bow down to her beauty.  So she wanders on, alone.  Surrounded by friends, yet all alone.

Fairy tales poison little girls’ minds.  We grow up expecting that someday the magic will just touch us.  That if we’re good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough, our life will erupt in song, everything will fall in place, and we’ll get our happily ever after.  But what happens to the girls who aren’t good enough, pretty enough, sweet enough?  What happens to the girls who bite back when life grows teeth? 

Fuck you Aurora, and Belle, and Cinderella.  Fuck you, you stupid princess trying to sleep on twenty mattresses, tossing and turning because of some damn pea.  For all the things you teach us to expect, and the lessons you don’t know to teach.  For all the little girls out there alone in the dangerous world, thinking there’s a prince in white waiting, who don’t know about the prince all in black.

Once upon a time there was a girl wandering through life alone, buffeted along the way by the stresses of life, seeking shelter from the storm.  She wandered through the vicious woods every fairy tale girl has to brave at some point.  But when she got to the other side she was still alone.  Pricked by thorns along the way, her clothes ragged and her hair styled by the wind and the rain and the journey.  She’s not so perfect as she’d been on the other side, and there are no birds fluttering around her head, fixing and cheering until she picks up her head and sweeps aside her hardship like so much dust on her hem.  But she’s stronger for her hardships.  She won’t bow down, won’t break just because it’s hard.  This would-be princess is too firm to be a pampered girl now. 

Once upon a time there was a girl set in her ways and knowing that she would have to be her own rescue and hope.  She couldn’t sit down and wait for magic to interfere in her life.  She wouldn't.  She knew if she wanted things done, she would have to do them herself.  So she relied on herself.  She protected herself as best as a girl in the world can.  She stopped wandering, she walked with purpose towards her goals. She set her shoulders, got her hands dirty, and made her own life.

I went to the funeral

"What do you do now?  Oh, you teach preschool?  Didn't you want to be a real teacher?"
or, looking pointedly at my sister-in-law beside me
"When will it be your turn Tina? When are you going to have your own kids?"
I ignore the first set of questions.  Or I answer them as civilly as possible, ignoring the judgemental overtones.  The second set of questions gets a very pointed answer I've honed well.  In my family most of the women have dropped out of high school to have children.  I'm not sure any of them went to college except me.  So I've faced this question in some form for the last fifteen years.  I know what to say and I can sell it pretty well by now.
"I don't want children." I lie to near strangers who think my reproductive choices are their business.  When they continue to press, as they always do, I give them my patented "You're an ass" smile, laugh just a bit, and say "Well I get plenty of cuddles at work and from my niece and nephews, so I don't miss that.  And when I get home after a rough day, I can enjoy a bottle of wine.  And go to the bathroom by myself."  Everyone laughs and I slip away to be attacked again by another well meaning family member hoping to entertain herself until the funeral service starts. 
Lather.  Rinse.  Repeat until the funeral service starts.

Presentation Matters Update

So I've finished six works days of arriving on time instead of a late.  Of putting some thought into what I wear to work.  Of wearing a little makeup and styling my hair.
My attitude has started to change for the better.   I don't struggle near as much to maintain my zen.  My kids are picking up on the difference, they comment on it and they react differently.  My parents are starting to treat me like a fellow adult instead of like an over size kid.  Even my boss noticed and is treating me differently.  I took a look around my class and decided a radical overhaul is in order because I want to be a better teacher.
So I guess the update is- it works.  At least for now, and I know all about things that work only in the short term, it works.  Awesome!

Lessons to learn

For a very long time I had very little interest in dating.  Sure I noticed guys, but I almost specifically and exclusively noticed guys that I would never have to seriously consider dating- my best friend’s little brother, a guy friend I only talk to once a month or so and who cycles through girls so fast it makes my head spin, the guy who teaches PE at my school…  Sure dating has its benefits, but it has its negatives too and as far as I was concerned the cons far outweighed the pros.  I got farther and farther away from even the slightest consideration of dating.

And then I met Dan.  And in one evening I went from completely uninterested in the whole idea of dating, to completely focused on the pros.  While it didn’t work out with him, I do have to appreciate him for helping me grow.  I learned important lessons-

1.  Dating doesn’t have to suck

2. There’s difference between men and boys

After I stopped seeing Dan I went a little crazy about wanting to date again, because hey that was fun and what if I could learn even more?  But given my past as a dating hater it was a poor fit for me.  And hanging out with a few of my guy friends has helped me remember who I am.  I’m less lost and more my own self, but without the hatred, even fear, that has held me back in the past.  And so I’ve learned one more lesson

3. Balance is key to everything