CPRMom

The thoughts expressed here are solely my own.  I feel the need to state that up front.  I'm striving for neutrality and fairness. 3 days ago we voted.  As in any election, only one candidate can win.  Unlike past elections, the response has been quite different this time.  This whole election cycle has been different than most, a large part of this I feel belongs to Facebook, Twitter, and social media.  Another part of this is how we perceive everything we see on a screen as truth.  Whether that screen be in our living room, on a desk, or in our hand.  This was not a clean campaign on either side.  And many non-candidate groups ran their own negative ads or portrayed the candidates out of context.  I personally found it hard to judge the positive merits of the candidates while being overwhelmed with the negatives. More so in this campaign than in others I think we have made our decision and judgments based on the character we see of...

Last night I saw a linked post a friend posted. And I read it. And it was awesome. So of course, I reposted it. Since I'm not feeling original this morning I'm sharing what I posted: Honestly, I've discovered I love substitute teaching. However I will admit I would never would want to do it full time. Teachers put in hours of work outside of the school day. They leave me these detailed plans on how to run their classroom when they schedule a day off or are out sick. Could you imagine creating an entire plan for the day for someone to cover for you while you are ill? Teachers rock and they totally deserve our respect. http://mandacarpenter.com/a-public-letter-to-the-guys-i-overheard-talking-about-their-teacher-friend/

A few weeks ago I did something I've never done before, I went hiking alone.  I've always had my kids with me, or gone with a friend.  This time I went alone. It was the first day I was not scheduled to teach or work for someone.  I had a lot of work to do for my businesses, but I decided I really needed a mental health day.  I also had to be back to pick Jacob up from school to get him to New Heights, so I picked Pawtuckaway since it was close by. It was a great hike!  The top of the North Mountain does not have stunning views, in fact I walked around a bit before I realized I was at the top.  There are a lot of trees, and Pawtuckaway is not a tall mountain.  Parts of the trail were pretty steep and I had to climb rocks.  Not what I was expecting, but it was a great hike. Yes, I climbed up this.  And another slope that was all rock. The view from the top. I had a few reasons for trying solo hiking.  Mostly I nee...

I was having an email conversation with a friend who was cautioning me not to be persuaded to do something for someone.  And suddenly all I could think of was that I was at the bottom of a well.   I wrote: I feel like I’m at the bottom of a well and trying to climb up wet sides.  I keep slipping backwards and am not making quick progress. And honestly, that's what I feel like.   I feel guilty saying I'm behind because my mom died.  And it's not completely that, it's almost 2 weeks of driving to a hospital out of state every other day.  It's 2 1/2 months of driving weekly 2 states away to visit.  It's the guilt I was feeling for not driving down more frequently.  It's the time spent in the car, 4-6 hours each trip, plus the time spent visiting.  During all that driving and all that visiting I wasn't getting any work done on my business or volunteer work.  I wasn't getting projects and housework done at home. ...

Cancer is an evil thing.  I haven't posted regularly about it, but we've been driving to CT almost weekly to visit my mom.  She seemed to be holding her own.  And then a quick phone call the day before we were planning on driving down... 'can you come now, we don't think she is going to make it through the night'. In under 30 minutes we're all in the van headed south. Plans for the afternoon and evening forgotten. I don't think any of us realized what we were going to see when we got there.  She did so well to hide the pain and discomfort on our last visits. It was upsetting for the kids as this was not the way they remembered her.  This was the beginning of the end.  She was asleep due to the pain medications, but not completely pain-free.  She seemed so close to passing and leaving the pain behind. But then she lingered, and didn't seem to get better, but did not get worse.  So we drove home late that night. The next morning John and I w...

We've had a super busy summer.  Not the lounge around lazy days of summer type of summer, but a working, traveling type of summer. In early June I wrote a quick post about my mom.  She was hospitalized suddenly and the diagnosis was terminal cancer.  This began a summer of driving down to the hospital roughly every other day for about a week, and then weekly drives to a rehab hospital, and then to her home.  Each drive is 2 or more hours each way so I'm spending 4-5 hours in the car just driving one day each week. In between, we had summer camps and classes.  Almost every day had something scheduled.  On the days we were home we were busy with housework and paperwork.  There is a lot of administrative work in running a small business. Suddenly it's the middle of August.  And we've done very little as a family. This past week we took two day trips as a family.  We went to the Flume.  We took the Downeaster to Portland, ME. ...

This is turning into a very busy summer. We'll be driving to CT about once a week, 2 kids have camp, I'm working at a camp for 3 weeks, and we're trying to fit in some family fun before our oldest leaves for college this fall. This means my class schedule is reduced.  There is no Saturday Heartsaver course this month.  Too many conflicts means that I do not have an open Saturday to offer a weekend class.  The next Saturday course will be Saturday, August 6th.