Coordinating Chaos

You know how people always say the pain of childbirth is the kind of pain you forget?  The same goes for the length of a full workday.  It is easy to forget how exhausting it can be to work a full day, focus on homework, domestic chores, as well as fulfill your duties as “personal assistant” to all of the people that you love.   I decided if I am ever rich the personal assistant needs her own personal assistant.  This week I felt more like the coordinator of chaos, but it’s winding down now and the light at the end of the tunnel that we know as the weekend is just over the horizon. 

I attended a trial this week in Appleton.  My Civil Litigation class requires students to attend a civil trial and complete an assignment regarding that trial.  I feel fortunate to be employed by a law firm with such wonderful attorneys who are always willing to do what they can for me, teach me, and help me succeed when it comes to my education.  One of the attorneys at our firm was representing a client who had a jury trial this week.  I was able not only to observe the trial, but also assist in some note taking during the jury panel selection process, known as voir dire, and do some timekeeping regarding the details of the trial.  However, the most beneficial part of attending the trial was that the attorney litigating used to be a paralegal, and took the time to explain the process; answer questions, and asked me my thoughts as the trial progressed.  I just didn’t realize how exhausting a full day in court would be. I remember the days when I worked 8am until 5pm each day, but I didn’t seem to be quite as tired at the end of those days.  I realized that my current lifestyle requires me to do these personal assistant duties, but also provides me with a change of scenery every few hours.  On a normal day, I am constantly moving from place to place, never stopping. I just gogogogogo all day long!  I realize now that I have forgotten what the routine of the workday is about and how much self discipline it requires.  Yet of course, I look forward to my career in the legal field. 

As the weekend approaches, I can’t help but feel blessed with the diversity that my life has afforded me.  And also how it has made me so much more adaptable in all aspects of my life. I am able to appreciate the structure of a full workday, as well as the chaos of being a kind of sort of stay at home mom.  I have friends that fall into either end of the spectrum, and I have so much respect for all of them; those who are structured into a workweek routine, and those who sometimes feel like they spend more hours than they would prefer to sitting in a driveway, parking lot, outside of school honking the horn of their SUV yelling “cab’s here!”, yet they are coordinating the chaos so well that it’s seamless to the children and the spouses.  No matter what category they fall into, they make it look EASY!  From personal experience, I know it’s not.  So this weekend, give an extra hug or thank you to the coordinator of chaos in your own life. Surprise that person with something to show your genuine appreciation.  Do something to make them laugh so hard they cry.  Whether it is a mother, a sister, a daughter, a cousin, an aunt, a dear friend or a husband, father, brother, uncle.   She (or he) will appreciate it more than you know.  

Change is Good

Tomorrow is officially Fall Registration day for continuing students at NWTC.  For me, this means registering for the last few classes for my program.  By the end of December I will officially hold an Associate’s Degree in Paralegal Studies.  Looking at the Fall class schedule yesterday to choose my classes I realized that I really don’t have much “choice” as far as classes go.  I have to take the few remaining courses left to obtain my degree in my program.  It’s hard to believe that time passed so quickly, and suddenly here I am wondering how I will fill my free time without homework.  Wondering if my conversational skills will become weak without all of those classes to stimulate my mind.  Not only the legal courses, which help me to often analyze life situations, TV shows and news programs, but also those general education classes which improved my communication skills, helped me to understand the economy and form my own opinions on economic policy, and of course taught me to translate math “story problems” about things like gears and pulleys.  (I honestly should use the strike out feature through my comments about math.  I still cannot decipher a story problem to save my life.  I sure wish those books would use life examples I could relate to – maybe ask me to calculate a 35% discount off of a $69 pair of shoes and I would understand!)

Lately I find myself having to hold back from thinking too far ahead into the future.  This semester is not even over and I still have piles of homework to do and final exams to take. And let’s not forget that before I graduate, I have to focus on my twin sons who will be graduating from high school in less than two months!  This week has been a particularly rough one for me emotionally and it’s only Tuesday?!! Yesterday started out booking a hotel room for Cody’s “accepted student visit day” at Milwaukee School of Engineering this weekend. Despite all of the life skills I have in addition to my academic smarts, I still find myself with some form of adult attention deficit disorder when it comes to booking hotel rooms.  I blame it on the internet. I have always said if you give people too many choices, they will always have a hard time making a choice.  A standard Google search for Milwaukee hotels seems to bring up about 584 results, which you can narrow down by location and price.  I am still second guessing myself for booking a hotel that was further away from downtown but with a more reasonable price!  My husband’s voice must have been in my head when I was doing this telling me if we are paying $200 per night... we are only staying one night OR we are JUST NOT paying $200 per night! My husband, who was not even going to go along, but decided at the last minute that maybe we should all go. The more I thought about it, the more I had to agree, though when he expressed “concern” about how expensive this was going to be, I reminded him of what he said when he decided to go.  This might just be the last time all five of us spend an entire weekend together – just the five of us (without friends, significant others and into the future – spouses, grandchildren).

Then last night was an appointment with another recruiter for Mack.  I believe he has finally decided on the Air Force.  In the recruiting office was a girl who actually went to high school with the boys and graduated last year.  She just finished up boot camp and tech school and was home on leave.  It was really good to talk to someone who had just gone through it and had the experience fresh in their mind.  As a mother, it gave me reassurance.  Though I found tears rolling down my eyes with the realization that I won’t have contact with my son for that time, something I cannot imagine considering the longest separation I have ever had with any of my children was my recent vacation, but then I was able to message them everyday on Facebook. I asked the recruiter if I could write letters to him while he was there, and he said “everyday if you like.”  I told Mack I would write him a personal blog every single day, and I intend to. 

Remembering when the boys were little, I recall sometimes thinking I would not be sad when they grew up and went away.  Not because I wanted to get rid of them, but because when you are a parent of young children, you often look into the future and think you will be proud of them, and strong enough and ready to let them go.  Now I know that is a myth.  As a mother, you probably never will be ready to let them go.  

Look Into the Crystal Ball and Imagine What the Future Holds...

Last night I was watching “How I Met Your Mother”, one of my all time favorite shows.  Despite the fact that it is a sitcom, it seems each episode either includes a lesson/moral of the story OR better yet, makes you reflect on your own life.  In the episode, Ted, Marshall and Barney are getting together for a viewing of the Star Wars Trilogy, which they have done every three years since college.  Each time they watch it, they imagine how their lives will be three years into the future, when they watch it again.  And every three years their lives somehow didn’t turn out quite the way they planned.  I think most of us can relate to this, and it made me reflect on my own life, what I thought would be and how wrong I was, and about what I envision three years into the future, which I may not be right about.  Three years ago, I was working a corporate job, which I have to admit, I did not care for very much.  However, at that point, the money was good and I imagined it would get better.  I had wild dreams that the company I was working for might upgrade their computer operating systems to something invented in this century.  I imagined, all of the inefficient processes would be streamlined and I, of course being the hero of the story, would be the one to save the day and implement this whole process.  In my 2009 “head”, I would be running the whole company by 2012 and receiving large bonuses and pats on the back. My family would be living in a half million dollar house on the Bay and our summer home would be at some swanky resort in Door County.  I would travel to Europe on a yearly basis, during the five week vacation the company awarded me with because I was so darn good!!

As you all know, that did not happen.  And I am glad it didn’t.  When God closes a door, he opens a window.  I lost that job.  I am still not sure why.  I was told the department was being “re-organized”, and I was hurt; because I thought did my job well.  But maybe those who made the decision to eliminate my position could see my unhappiness with my job there.  Maybe I was that transparent.  Maybe I wasn’t that good at putting on the face of the happy employee, thinking I was hiding my disillusionment with my job with the skills of a Ninja. So here I am three years later, more than halfway done with my Associate’s Degree in the Paralegal Program.  Working as much as I can in a law office, which is the BEST job I have ever had.  I don’t have that half million dollar home, nor do I go on trips to Europe. Yet, I spend a lot more time with my kids, being a mom and wife, cooking and cleaning and playing taxi driver.  And when I wake up each morning, I look forward to the day ahead of me.

Three years from now, I imagine I will be working full-time, perhaps long hours in (hopefully) this same law office.  One of my sons will be almost finished with college, and the other following a path that may yet to be determined, but possibly in the Military.  My daughter will be in High School, straight A student of course.  Three years from now, I will also still be writing, maybe even publish a book.  (Ok it might just be a cute little book called “My Facebook Memoirs”, but it will be funny and you will all want to read it!)  Though I am pretty sure I won’t be traveling to Europe, realistically I may be just traveling the United States in an RV, camping at National Parks on vacation.  Though I will be done with school, I will still be in contact with my instructors and classmates from NWTC.  I am trying to be a bit more realistic when looking into the future this time!  

Last week, I sat in a friend’s living room with her and two other friends (all of us students at NWTC, though a variety of ages and program choices) and talked and laughed.  The four of us haven’t always been friends, but something brought us together, though if you had told me two months ago those four people would be spending time together, I probably never would have believed it.  The truth is, you never know what is going to happen in the future, and when you find yourself there, you may be pleasantly surprised. 

Look Into the Crystal Ball and Imagine What the Future Holds

Last night I was watching “How I Met Your Mother”, one of my all time favorite shows.  Despite the fact that it is a sitcom, it seems each episode either includes a lesson/moral of the story OR better yet, makes you reflect on your own life.  In the episode, Ted, Marshall and Barney are getting together for a viewing of the Star Wars Trilogy, which they have done every three years since college.  Each time they watch it, they imagine how their lives will be three years into the future, when they watch it again.  And every three years their lives somehow didn’t turn out quite the way they planned.  I think most of us can relate to this, and it made me reflect on my own life, what I thought would be and how wrong I was, and about what I envision three years into the future, which I may not be right about.  Three years ago, I was working a corporate job, which I have to admit, I did not care for very much.  However, at that point, the money was good and I imagined it would get better.  I had wild dreams that the company I was working for might upgrade their computer operating systems to something invented in this century.  I imagined, all of the inefficient processes would be streamlined and I, of course being the hero of the story, would be the one to save the day and implement this whole process.  In my 2009 “head”, I would be running the whole company by 2012 and receiving large bonuses and pats on the back. My family would be living in a half million dollar house on the Bay and our summer home would be at some swanky resort in Door County.  I would travel to Europe on a yearly basis, during the five week vacation the company awarded me with because I was so darn good!!

As you all know, that did not happen.  And I am glad it didn’t.  When God closes a door, he opens a window.  I lost that job.  I am still not sure why.  I was told the department was being “re-organized”, and I was hurt; because I thought did my job well.  But maybe those who made the decision to eliminate my position could see my unhappiness with my job there.  Maybe I was that transparent.  Maybe I wasn’t that good at putting on the face of the happy employee, thinking I was hiding my disillusionment with my job with the skills of a Ninja. So here I am three years later, more than halfway done with my Associate’s Degree in the Paralegal Program.  Working as much as I can in a law office, which is the BEST job I have ever had.  I don’t have that half million dollar home, nor do I go on trips to Europe. Yet, I spend a lot more time with my kids, being a mom and wife, cooking and cleaning and playing taxi driver.  And when I wake up each morning, I look forward to the day ahead of me.

Three years from now, I imagine I will be working full-time, perhaps long hours in (hopefully) this same law office.  One of my sons will be almost finished with college, and the other following a path that may yet to be determined, but possibly in the Military.  My daughter will be in High School, straight A student of course.  Three years from now, I will also still be writing, maybe even publish a book.  (Ok it might just be a cute little book called “My Facebook Memoirs”, but it will be funny and you will all want to read it!)  Though I am pretty sure I won’t be traveling to Europe, realistically I may be just traveling the United States in an RV, camping at National Parks on vacation.  Though I will be done with school, I will still be in contact with my instructors and classmates from NWTC.  I am trying to be a bit more realistic when looking into the future this time!  

Last week, I sat in a friend’s living room with her and two other friends (all of us students at NWTC, though a variety of ages and program choices) and talked and laughed.  The four of us haven’t always been friends, but something brought us together, though if you had told me two months ago those four people would be spending time together, I probably never would have believed it.  The truth is, you never know what is going to happen in the future, and when you find yourself there, you may be pleasantly surprised. 

And They Didn't Even Card Me!!!

Yesterday, April 3, 2012 brought us the Primary Election for Wisconsin.  Not only did I have to adjust to a new “polling place” (this changed from a school to a church. I find it ironic that we are voting in a church considering the whole “separation of church and state.”), but I also had three 18 year old young men with me.  One of my sons was anxious to become a registered voter. My other son “declined” to get involved, yet decided to joke around with people in the parking lot asking them who they voted for, which I told him he COULDN’T do, no matter how charming he thought he was.  Then there was my nephew, who also really wanted to register to vote. As a side note right here I have to say I found turning 18 rather anti-climatic, yet these kids find simple joy in the fact that they can legally purchase lottery tickets, get a checking account, and vote. 

Back to my nephew though…. I told him he was welcome to ride along, but since he did not live in our neighborhood, and in fact not even the City of Green Bay, it was doubtful they would let him register to vote at our polling venue.  Still, I have to hand it to him, he tried. He almost pulled a fast one, as the nice elderly woman who was helping the boys was asking about his address.  Of course he handed her a check stub of his with his address on it (his main concern being she would know how much he made, rather than the fact that he wasn’t in the appropriate place to register).  And finally she noticed it, saying “Oh, you can’t register here!  You live in Suamico!”  He did that “Awww seriously! Darn it!” thing that teenagers do when she told him. Of course the worker called many different places to give him the information about where he SHOULD go.  As she was doing this, Zak, my nephew was taking cookies off of the “snack table.” (Wow, I am kind of liking this voting at a church, because you get a small meal while you are there!)  I walked up to him and said “I told you that you couldn’t vote here because you don’t live here.”  I asked him if he knew where to go in Suamico to vote. He said “Yea, but it doesn’t matter, I am not driving ALL THE WAY to Suamico just to vote.”  With a perplexed look on my face I said, “Um yea, but Zak, you LIVE in Suamico.  Eventually you have to go home.”  He said, “Well I just want to hang out with my cuz’s right now instead.” It’s a shame that the voter registration workers didn’t buy into the “home is where the heart is or where your cousins live” theory.

Myself, I did get to vote, and they didn’t even check my I.D. to verify I was who I said I was.  But you know what, if they had asked me for it, I wouldn’t have minded at all. After all, I have to show I.D. to check out a library book, buy a bottle of wine, and make changes to my mobile phone plan at the Verizon store, so I would gladly show my I.D. to vote.  After all, I wouldn’t want just any person walking in and pretending to be me and take away my freedom to have my say about who is elected!

You Know What It Is!

Green and Yellow! Green and Yellow!  That is what the bartender was shouting most of the evening our first night on vacation in Punta Cana, Dominican Republic. My brother-in-law was wearing a Packer hat, which helped us to not only be tagged as Green Bay Packer fans, but also became a magnet to our fellow Wisconsinites staying at the same resort as us on vacation. Seven days in paradise surrounded by white sand beaches, palm trees, and “pretty blue water” (as my husband calls it).

View of Now Larimar Resort taken from the beach

My husband, Jason and me on in front of the "pretty blue" Caribbean Sea on beach of our resort

Just a few tips for any travelers contemplating a vacation to the Dominican:

Dress for tropical weather even if you are flying out of Wisconsin.  The Punta Cana airport is an open-air concept (as are most of the buildings in the Dominican.)  You will be standing in line for a long time in the heat to go through the very inefficient process of obtaining a tourist card.  First you will wait in a long line to get to a booth where you pay $10 per person to obtain a “tourist card.”  That person will hand you a receipt. You will then go to another line and hand that receipt to another person, who will hand you another sort of ticket.  Then you will go up to a booth and show your passport and that ticket (and some paperwork the airline crew won’t quite be sure about how you should fill out – no worries, the person at the booth barely looks at it).  Then they will give you the ticket thing and your passport back.  You can probably toss that ticket in the garbage at that point, because despite it being so important that you had to go through all those steps to get it, no one will ever look at it again. 

Don’t expect the food to be what you are used to at home.  We always assume hot food will be hot and cold food will be cold.  Not really the case there.  Remember they are catering to people not only from the U.S., but also from France, Russia, Canada, Poland, Germany, etc. etc.  The buffet is scattered with foods that you won’t understand and you won’t really know what goes with what. The longer you are there, the better it will get, though it is probably just the fact that you are getting used to it. The Dominican people are SO nice, but they really want you to get service with class, which means they want you to have it the way THEY want you to have it, which is not necessarily the way YOU want it!  You aren’t at Burger King, so quit whining about it, and appreciate the fact that you are eating your lunch surrounded by palm trees in paradise.  Order the cocktail of the day and EVERYTHING will taste better!  Men, BRING closed toe shoes, because the dinner restaurants will not let you in without them.  Although our newfound friend from Appleton found a way around that by wearing slippers from the room… AND he got in, no problem.  The beer will be a local beer.  Our resort featured Presidente, which was not exactly “excellentay,”  but again you get used to it and the scenery doesn’t hurt.

Get to know the entertainment committee at your resort. These guys are non-stop FUN.  They work from sun-up until the wee hours of the morning and make you laugh the entire time. On our first morning at the resort, we were approached by Fabio Star (pretty sure that is not his real name) who asked us to go to a special lunch at the Japanese restaurant.  Of course, being suspicious Americans, we wondered what the catch was?  We were convinced he was trying to rope us into buying a condo.  Fortunately, we were wrong, it was simply a way to get a diverse group of guests together to have a lunch and also get to know the entertainment committee. By the end of our stay we were fast friends with the whole crew.  Our mornings spent watching Smiley run around the beach, teach Zumba, convince people to join a volleyball game, the whole time singing and yelling, “I love my job!”  Poor Smiley even roped the boys into a game of water polo, which resulted in one of my brother-in-law Larry’s “near death experiences”, possibly caused by using muscles he didn’t know he had, or maybe it was all of the Bailey’s on ice he drank earlier that day!

My brother-in-law Larry coerced into a St. Patty's day beer drinking contest by Fabio Star (we are still convinced the guy sitting next to him was Dale Earnhardt, Jr.)

Go on excursions!!! We took a 2-hour bus ride to get on a Catamaran to drink and dance for another 30 minutes until we landed on a beautiful island just south of the main island.  Saona Island is a National Park in the Dominican, where some scenes from the 80’s movie “Blue Lagoon” were filmed.  The only people who live on the island are those who work for the Park.  It is on a coral reef, so you have to be careful when you step off of the beach into the water; however, you can see beautiful tropical fish everywhere.  We were served a barbeque lunch and as I was eating, I started crying because I felt so blessed to be there. Raymond, our tour guide on the bus, was so entertaining that the bus ride did not even seem that long.  He pointed out many things along the way, including the fact that the car washes all have a bar attached to them, which we found interesting.  One of the things I wish I had gotten a photo of was a farm field full of cows, which looked like it could be in Wisconsin, except that there was a PALM TREE in the middle of the field.  We also took a snorkeling excursion to swim with nurse sharks and hold stingrays in a penned in area.  The crew on the boat was a blast, although at one point I was worried that Jason, my husband, who is an avid swimmer and lover of marine life, was never going to return to the boat!

Larry, my sister Kim, Jason and me on the Catamaran that took us to Saona Island.

The sun shining through the top of a palm tree - Saona Island

Jason and me getting ready to get on the boat for our snorkeling adventure.

Oh look! Here is a photo of my husband and me. You see me, now if you look right underneath my left armpit, you can see a glimpse of him still snorkeling.  I thought the boat would leave him behind!

Get up early and watch the sunrise over the beach.  It is a beautiful sight, and will set the tone of your mood for the day.  My dear sister, who was stressing about the sale of her home back home and where her family would live until their new house was built, asked my husband and I one morning at breakfast how we could always be in such and upbeat cheery mood every morning.  I just said, “Look at where you are.  Remember on that long bus ride when we were traveling through poorer parts of the country and Raymond told us that some of the poorest people lived there, but they were some of the happiest people you’d ever meet? Take a look around you and you will figure out why.”

Dear Old Navy

My dear friend Joey and I decided to move our Wednesday lunch to a Monday at the mall today.  (The Wednesday lunch has not been happening lately anyhow, something about her gig as The Nanny that is really putting a damper on pitching our Real Housewives of Green Bay do Wednesday Lunch to the networks!)  After receiving a text message (read “cry for help”) notifying me that Target is clearly incorrectly sizing their clothing and something that made her sound like she was starving like a Survivor contestant who does not know how to use that fishing spear thingy, I asked if she wanted to go to lunch.  Of course she did… I had to go to the mall, to Old Navy, to buy a dress for my trip.  I informed her that Old Navy was much kinder with their sizing.  In fact my typical size 9 or 11 shrinks down to a size 3 or 5 in the Old Navy world.  This makes me feel wonderful when I try on my “normal” size clothing and find that miraculously I have shed pounds without even trying and I even went down TWO DRESS SIZES… overnight! (Ok lest you think I am delusional, obviously I know this is not the case, but a girl can dream, can’t she?)

When I walked in, Joey had already scoured the sales rack, but still had not yet found the coveted item of the day…. White pants.  Some might call these “sailor pants.”  It was like looking for a ruby in a mountain of rocks, search as we may, high and low, there seemed not to be one pair of SAILOR pants in a store whose name includes the word Navy.  Now call me crazy, but if you name your store after a maritime division of the military, you would imagine you would stock your shelves with all sorts of clothing that Jackie O. might wear for a day on the yacht, or that Joey M. might wear strolling in the sand, pants rolled up, on the beaches of San Francisco.  I am picturing one of the photos from the Newport News catalog, a little outfit that used to send real printed catalogs and flyers to my home via U.S. Postal Service, showing an abundance of rail thin, modelesque women in these type of sailor pants. Joey would fit right in, as she is slim and probably close to 7 feet tall! Definitely Top Model Worthy…. with a personality.   It was either that or the thought of her in Popeye hat and one of those white and blue striped blouses with the “bib type” collar.  Of course, over lunch she debriefed me regarding the conversation earlier that day when she told her husband that she was looking for a pair of white pants – sailor pants – and he asked her why.  She indicated that since they were going to San Francisco, there would be beaches, leading her to believe there would be sailors or sailboats or the like.  I am not sure what he made of the fact that she envisioned herself hanging out on the beach with sailors, but being the kind of husband anyone would love to have, he went with it, of course after telling her she really had a way of justifying her need for these sailor pants. 

I originally thought of starting a petition to bring the sailor pants to Old Navy.  Or maybe we could start a new store called New Navy – our motto could be “FOR THE SAILOR IN ALL OF US!”  We could give discounts when customers brought in cans of spinach, just like Popeye.  Our mannequins could all be modeled after Olive Oyl.  But then I decided to leave Old Navy alone.  Despite the fact that they do not have sailor pants, they do have friendly salespeople, who humored us enough to remove a dress from a mannequin as I could not find the correct size on the rack, because the only one in that size was clothing a headless mannequin.  And the poor guy sure did struggle with this task, but kept a smile on his face the whole time!