Finally, the Post About Graduation

There was never any doubt that we’d get here but it feels like it happened in the blink of an eye.

I so clearly remember riding in a car driven by Tom down a side street in Huntington, Indiana. I was about halfway through my pregnancy with Alyssa. I was just starting to show and you could finally see her moving.

I’d had a miscarriage before I got pregnant with Alyssa. As we drove down that street, my breath hitched when I realized that it could still happen again. Tom gave me an odd look and asked what was wrong. I asked him, “What if I lose this baby too?”

He tried to console me by saying if that happened, we’d try again.

I shook my head, “But I want this baby. I don’t want any other baby, just this one.”

That baby graduated from high school last week. The baby I cried for and wanted so desperately before she was even born is eighteen years old and heading off to college in the fall.

There were some REALLY long days interspersed through these past eighteen years but those years? They flew.

I am so proud of who she is. I’m so proud of how hard she works and how much she cares and how kind she is. She’s so smart and confident and funny. I am so lucky to be a part of her life, so have brought her into this world and to be able to watch her do amazing things.

She was the baby I wanted even though I didn’t even know her as I cried over the thought of losing her. She is magical and mystical and she surprises me all the time as she continues to find herself. I hope the confidence she’s cultivated through her high school years continues and grows during her years in college. I hope she makes more amazing friends and continues to hone her strengths and talents.

But most of all, I hope she’s happy. I hope she finds her people and her way and does the things that make her the happiest.

Fly high, sweet girl. Be the best you you can be.

Your Nerd Is Showing

I work at a place that has an IT team. This is so very different from my previous job where we had an IT guy, and he worked in a different office, which was a full hour drive away from our facility.

Here, we have six members of the IT team, two of which work at another plant, which is less than a mile away. The other four work about fifty steps from my desk.

These guys pass my desk multiple times a day.

One afternoon, one of the IT guys happened to stop for a minute for a quick chat. He mentioned his cats. He said he has a few that live in his garage and one that lives in his house.

He explained that the house cat used to be his neighbor’s cat but said neighbor didn’t take care of kitty and so kitty became IT guy’s cat. Kitty lives in the house because IT guy doesn’t want neighbor to get any ideas about taking kitty back.

I told him he was a hero for taking kitty out of a bad situation.

Then he told me that kitty’s name is Bat Man.

I immediately asked, “Do you sometimes call him Bruce?”

IT guy’s eyes lit up and he smiled, as if thrilled that someone had actually asked that question. Still smiling, he answered, “Yes, yes, I do.”

We shared a nerdy laugh and the conversation ended.

There’s no point to this story whatsoever except to point out that sometimes you’re surprised to find fellow nerds and sometimes, you get to surprise fellow nerds with your own nerdiness.

That day I let my nerd flag fly.

Sleep: Part 6570

But seriously, when you have a 14 year old and an 18 year old, you don’t think those delightful offspring of yours will be contributing to your sleep, or lack of. Right?

Wrong.

So, so wrong.

My children are beasts. I’ve said that from the start, way back when I was blogging on March of Dimes Share Your Story. My complaints about my children’s sleep habits are legendary in some circles.

In fact, once I met some of the women from MOD SYS they ‘joked’ that I needed our yearly conferences just so I could sleep through the night with a bed all to myself.

You know what’s not funny anymore?

Being woken up several times a night for many nights in a row by my children.

These children, need I remind you, are TEENAGERS.

And still they wake me up through the night.

Summer has wrought havoc on O’s sleep schedule.

Tom lets her sleep until 11:30 or noon each day, which means when I’m heading to bed at 9:30 or 10 (let’s remember, I’m not on summer break, so I still get up no later than 6 each morning) she’s nowhere near ready to go to sleep.

I don’t want to drug her (aka, give her Tylenol PM) each night to make her ‘sleepy’ when I go to bed. That’s not fair or right.

But I also don’t want to make her go to bed when I do so that she can toss and turn for HOURS, flashing her freaking book light (she sleeps with a book light instead of a teddy bear) across the ceiling, into the hall, down the street, into the attic, everywhere that will annoy me and keep me from sleeping well.

Have I mentioned before that I really like it to be DARK when I sleep? As in, please don’t shine your book light into my eyes and ask me if I’m awake.

Sigh.

So that’s the younger beast.

The older beast, the ADULT beast, has been working four days a week since the week after her graduation party (so, like two weeks…) She works 4pm to midnight. Which sounds great, right?

Except in the two weeks she’s worked this schedule, she has texted me no earlier than 9:45 on several nights to say she’s going to come home at midnight, shower and then go to a friend’s house. The friend is either Tessa or N. So that’s fun.

I don’t actually care that she’s going to friends’ houses, I just wish she’d make this decision before 9:30 each night so that I’m not jolted out of my falling asleep routine and made to make decisions, replies, what have you, past the point where I can function as a decent human being.

The most recent event, the one that broke the jumping sheep’s back, was a night when I’d declared to Olivia that I was going to bed at 9:30 and she was going to stay up with her dad until she was decently tired enough to JUST GO TO SLEEP. Ahem. Yes.

So I went up, Olivia followed me long enough to get her teeth brushed and her orthodontic rubber bands put in and then she bolted back to her tablet. Lucky me, I settled in and fell asleep before 10:30, which is a freaking record these days.

12:15: Alyssa came in. “Mom?” she whispered. “They let us go a half hour early. N’s home for four days. Can I go to Twyla’s house and see her?”

I mumbled that that was fine, but was she coming home or spending the night with N?

She said, “I don’t know yet. I’ll text you.”

“No,” I insisted. “I either won’t get it until morning or it will wake me up (I didn’t say AGAIN, but I thought it.) Decide now and leave your dad a note so he doesn’t come up at 3am to tell me you’re not home and demand to know if I know where you are.”

She agreed to these terms and off she went. Ten minutes later, I heard Olivia making her way upstairs.

A half hour after that, I woke up again to Alyssa whispering to me. “Mom? They movie they were watching at Tyla’s was just finishing when I got there so I came home brought N with me.”

I struggled to wake up AGAIN and asked, “Did you leave your dad a note about N being here?”

She told me she did.

At that point, I realized that bathroom light was on and asked her what the hell Olivia was doing in there.

She said that Liv was sitting on the toilet.

I pulled my tired ass out of bed and went to the bathroom to whine at O. She grudgingly made her way to her bed where I insisted that she either turn off that damned book light or place it somewhere (under her pillow, for example) it wouldn’t shine across the entire room.

At that point, I think everyone went to sleep and I didn’t wake up again until my alarm went off at 5:10. So…I got about 4 hours of uninterrupted sleep. Must be a record.

Honestly, it hasn’t been this bad since Olivia was 8 years old.