Focus

Jordon, Mark, and Oliver fascinated by Madden 07 on Jordon’s Playstation Portable.

Christmas Shopping

A couple of weeks ago Jordon and I sat down and we planned out our Christmas shopping.  We try to get everyone done by the last week of November and then we only have to worry about getting something for each other.

We were in London Drugs the other day and Jordon saw something for Mark.  He called me over and he said, “What would your response have been if your parents had gotten you this when you were 8 years old?”.  I just laughed and as Jordon distracted Mark with looking at big screen televisions, I picked it up for him.

Mark is at a fun but difficult age to buy for.  Even looking at some of the Amazon.com gift guides, he is a little too old for some of the stuff for boys but not old enough for the teen stuff.  I guess this is what life is like when you are a “tweener”.

For me, the biggest obstacle getting done is the “list”.  Once that is done, then I just have to budget and schedule out my Christmas shopping list with Jordon’s help.  Starting in September helps a lot as well.

This and that

I haven’t updated in a while but here is what is new in my life.

• Oliver is growing like a weed and is doing fine.
• We managed to get some of the problems with Mark’s school settled and he is happy to be there but for me I was a little shocked at how much effort it took to get some questions answered about my own kid.
• Jordon has a long post over at our cabin weblog summarizing the summer.
• We have been looking at upgrading our decade old 300 dpi poor quality scanner.  While at Future Shop they had an open box 4 in 1 unit for $19.96.  What it means that I can start scanning in some of the film photos that I have been taking with my SLR.  I also realized the other day that despite repeated requests over the years, my mother never has sent me the negatives of my wedding photos so if I lose the album, I lose the only record I have of our wedding.  While I can make some digital backups, I am quite disapointed that I wasn’t able to do any enlargements of my own wedding photos but at least I can ensure they are backed up.
• Being a mother again at 38 is a lot more tiring than being a mother at 30.  The fatigue for the first couple of months was incredible.  Finally Jordon had to step in and kind of take over the house and he made me sleep 8 hours a day, even if it was broken up a bit.  In reality I started sleeping 8 to 11 hours a day which was good for all of us and I stopped being so miserable to be around.  It also helped get the depression back under control and helped me make some better decisions around the house.
• I am reading Chris Czajkowski’s book Diary of a Wilderness Dweller (Jordon reviewed the book here) which has been a lot of fun.  I don’t know if I could wander out into the interior of British Columbia and make three cabins by hand but I do love reading about those that can.

Frustrated

I am going to leave this up here for now but I took the post down.  I talked to some friends of mine who are teachers who gave me some good advice on how to deal with the situation and we will leave it at that.  It was also pointed out that Jordon and mine expectations may be reasonable in a different school but we are a little out of context here.

Wishing the past away

There is someone in my life who has done and said some dumb things in the past.  They are pretty ugly to deal with instead of dealing with them, the solution becomes “we’ll just leave the past in the past” and cliches and tired phrases like that.  When Jordon or I have ever brought up the past, we are accused of being unforgiving and it’s now our fault.

It is annoying to listen to but is really kind of sad the more I think about it.  I think it comes from an inability to change or accept what happened.  By virtue of me talking with them they don’t see that I accept them warts and all and am willing to move forward in an imperfect world but it is really hard to move forward when I have to totally forget the past.  It is similar to how Mark plays a video game.  He moves forward, saves at a good point, and then when things go bad, he goes back to his saved place in the game and the last 20 minutes of video game carnage never happened. 

That is okay on a PS2 but really hard to do in a relationship.  How do you hit reset.  Even in the video game you hope you learn from your mistakes and avoid the things that got you frag’d.  (yeah, I can speak gamer).

The sad thing is that despite being a significant relationship in my life, I can’t refer to the past, define any boundaries, or say no to anything or else I get hit with “unforgiving label”.  The relationship became so narrow that somewhere along the line I got squeezed out.

I have listened to a couple of therapists and spiritual advisors say that evangelical Christians struggle with forgiveness so much because they have such unrealistic expectations as forgiveness means that everything is swept away and a person is given a clean slate.   Catholic praxis has penance as part of the reconciliation process while in some evangelical circles, grace is cheapened to the point where it is expected or even demanded.  Grace isn’t a gift but something that can be expected which seems to be a perversion of it.

On a more practical level it would be like kicking Maggi and then being upset at the dog when she cowered the next time I walked by.  That’s what I feel like some days.  Like a dog that has been kicked and it’s my fault for cowering.  It has taken me a while but I don’t need people around me like that.  Neither does the rest of the family.