Some days are like that, even in America

excerpt:

"When I went to bed Nick took back the pillow he said I could keep and the Mickey Mouse night light burned out and I bit my tongue.  The cat wants to sleep with Anthony, not with me.  It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

My mom says some days are like that.  Even in Australia.





Abby's version:

"When the kids go to bed, they have nightmares, and the loud cricket hiding in the waste basket in the bathroom starts chirping at four am, and Mark killed another bloody mosquito in our net this morning.  Steven said 6 rats have jumped to their death from our roof due to the poison we put up in the attic last week.  And our new neighbors had all their valuables stolen from their place last weekend.  And our intern also was robbed losing in her Ipad and her laptop.

It has been a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad week.

My mom says some days are like that.  Even in America.

Study skills=Life skills

In my Psych 101 text book (intended for eager 18 year olds), the first chapter includes a section on "study skills".  

I had a slight ah-ha moment in reading the three main points: a. a schedule for study; b. a place to study where you can concentrate; 3. reward your study.  I realized that these are good points for study, but also good points for how to manage one's busy life.  We all have many commitments, decisions, plans, relationships, and tasks to complete in a day.  These three simple points are sort of relevant to managing and "succeeding" in of our responsibilities (workplace, parenting, community responsibilities, etc)

1. Mark needs #1=Schedule and Abby needs #2=place and rewards

Place: 
This summer I was with a friend who was a new mother and was also trying to figure out how to keep a work project that currently occupied a part of her home.  In talking with her, she and I both agreed that our physical spaces (especially home once you have relational duties that bind you to home), are a big part of our effectiveness and/or depression. :)

Ah, a little well-appointed home for them all!

In our shift to having a tutor, my primary fixation was "where are they going to do school from"? While I need a space, I find Mark can work pretty much anywhere and has supernatural abilities to "tune" things out--noise, temperature, hunger...

I would say via various "mommy" blogs, etc, that I wonder if this fits some gender stereotypes; seems that many mothers do fixate a bit on their homes, or their home organization, or their home being ready for various occupations within the house, etc.

Schedule:
Mark, however, is totally at odds until there is a "schedule" in place or an excel spreadsheet of when/how/who is going to accomplish various aspects of his duties.  I can't tell if it is by nature, or by the nature of my role as a mother of young children, but I find it very hard to nail things down too far in advance not knowing how the circumstances/happiness of important people will be at the time of the things that Mark would like to plan.  Either by personality or role, I basically want to set up a general framework/schedule but then adapt it in the moment according to the realities that are happening in the present.  At which point, Mark throws in the towel and feels totally defeated.

One example of where this difference comes up is when we are doing summer planning... He gets sort of OCD (in my opinion) about the schedule, especially months in advance when no one involved is even ready to commit to things.  And I get differently-OCD or stressed to spend two months without my own "place" that I can control, predict, order, clean, manage, etc...  Mothers and mothers-in-law, this is no reflection on you but it more a discovery that my source of control comes more from place than schedule and Mark's preferred area of control is schedule and plans.

Despite all my Myers-Briggs interest, I don't have all the personality terminology to predict/accommodate these differences. :)

2. Rewards
Needless to say, this is probably a more American version of study skills/life that we "deserve" and can expect "rewards" for every portion of work that we commit to.  But, that aside, I do rewards/pacing/boundaries/self-care (whatever you want to call it) can be an important part of making a sustainable life.

The other day we were driving and watching women washing clothes, cooking food, carrying wood, etc and Daniel said, "if you had a contest between Ugandans and Americans for who works hardest, Ugandans would definitely win."  The reaction of another child in the car seemed doubtful at which point I decided to chime in.  On physical, endurance, nitty-gritty level of daily life for the average Ugandan, it is true that Ugandans are physically stronger and tougher than the equivalent American.

But there is a mental toll to the educated classes (America, Uganda and elsewhere) that also requires us to respect the toll of our modern consciousness and the effect of so many choices and responsibilities that come with our opportunity.   This is not to really compare the two types of work, but to say that "rewards" for any kind of work do help make life more meaningful and sustainable.  

Arrangements

As one of my friends said, sometimes the whole is better than the sum of its parts... here are some visual  collections that have caught my eye in the last month or so:

Play kitchen things and play sand box toys; an abundance of color and plastic and representative imagination

A collection of letters and plans; Mary's list for the day (translation: ponies, babies, swinging, art, trampoline, walk, chief participants Mary and Rachel)

Thirty eggs; a local way of packing them in dried banana tree leaves

Flowers, children, butterflies... a world of color and beauty in one corner of the house

Fruits, we're lucky to have so many local, yummy fruits

A market scene, the green bananas are the staple food here--Matoooke, cooked as a steamed starch that is flavored with soup from vegetables or meat or my favorite, ground-nut sauce

Back to school

So, we're all back to school.... Daniel is making major reading progress; aided by his daily assignment of "sustained silent reading"-- interestingly, we often hear Daniel doing his reading (not quite "silent")

Mary is officially ready for school.  She does UCU Kidscare Center (daycare through kindergarten) M-W-F and she does preschool with our tutor on Tuesday and Thursday.

Rachel and Mary are a package at this point; so Rachel does the same schooling as Mary.  So far, no real issues with this but obviously could get old for one of them at some point.

Mark's has returned to school; but in the role of the teacher.  He is currently teaching The Primal Vision which is a sort of trademark book that students associate with Mark as their leader/guide in Uganda.  I thought of summarizing but then thought this review was succinct and and gives a brief overview of the book for interested readers; http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/68119169

Abby is back to school--I'm trying an online Psych. 101 class.  I love it.  I can't believe all my ideas are written down in someone else's textbook.  But seriously, I think it the right sort of "growth" thing for me as antidote to some of my tendencies to feel stagnant or trapped.  

Warning: This blog includes explicit vomit content!

Despite my best intents of blogging, lots of throwing up going on here this week

"Now I know in part"...  What I don't know about throwing up:
1.  How much is too much
2.  Exact protocol on cleaning it up (remember in elementary school, they'd cover vomit with some brightly colored substance--probably disenfectant?)
3. Why my kids keep asking for milk when they are sick (Mark does the same)--the result is not pretty.
4. What time span is most contagious and what one can do to stop the spreading
5. Why Daniel prefers throwing up to diarrhea... I hate throwing up
6. How my many friends with months and months of morning sickness ever manage to have a second child. :)
7. Best means of doing laundry after vomit; let it all soak awhile in a bathtub?, then put it through machine--hot wash?

Okay, so this is my defence on why I've not yet blogged on Rwanda--and why I've not done a number of things this week.  But seriously, to my mom and mother-in-law and any other willing friend, I'd love a bit more advice on the "rules of engagement" regarding stomach woes and their clean-up.

And Lord willing, next week will afford me some time to return to "Abby's schedule" a much anticipated event of the last 5 months! :)

An invester and some good news!

Dear Reader and dear Me,

I've just officially researched a piece of information that will keep me in the ballgame of blogging... but let me start at the beginning.

Last year, when I began blogging, it was part of a funny sort of Mukono-group-narrative... there was a woman (now friend) who was going to move to Uganda and she was a daily blogger recounting all the preparations and realities of leaving the US with her family and settling in Mukono as a missionary family.   There was an English woman (my good friend) who was leaving Mukono after 8 years of being here (and another decade or so of being in Africa); she was moving "back home" with her family and began a blog about being a "returnee" in the motherland. :)  And my other friend was spending her last year in Mukono, preparing for her move back to the US and wanted to document the "comings and goings", what it is like to be part of two worlds.

Enter Abby: By personality, every day of life involves the question "what's the meaning of life for me today, personally and in the cosmic sense?"  And while, I would love to know the writing on the wall as to what is home and what the plan is for us, I have seen the "blog" as a place to begin to record what life is like as a mother, as a woman who is away from home culture, as a woman who is raising her family in what they consider their "homeland", as a friend who has many friends coming and going, as a Christian who is accepting that life is more pilgrimage than destination, as a melancholy who will always have some angst about decisions, about values, and living it out and accepting limitations, and wanting to always learn and be open to the mysteries...

Enter Pragmatic Abby:  Who is my audience?  Though i like facebook for briefer greetings, photos, articles, etc, I liked the idea of blogging to get a bit more content about life out to my family and friends.   It's still not as personal as an email, but it does give a chance for me to share slices of our life.  But, today, i discovered what I assumed was true and adds a whole new dimension--- I can publish the blog.   Now, this is not for anyone else's sake but it is a bit like "journaling", record-keeping, photo-albuming, etc... This definitely adds a final straw to my motivation and discipline in regards to this blogging project.

I'm including this blog entry because I do think some of my other blogging co-hort :), might also be interested in the idea of publishing the record-keeping of the last year.  I'm thinking I might just do it once a year and have a sort of collection of them.

This brings me to a moment of thanksgiving-- to my mother and mother-in-law and to technology. :)
This summer when we were home, Mark's mom gave him an album of the first 18 years of his life--a project that I'm sure took hours and hours of culling, decision-making, crafting and commitment.  And I remember those bookshelves in our house growing up where my mom had leather albums of all our years growing up, our trip west, etc, etc.  And I remember the years of mom's love of the "panoramic" camera and "photo depot" trips and albums full.  My mom has always had little albums stacked up around our house and our life--markers of time and relationships and journeys.

I feel remiss that the computer and digital age has sort of given us so much that we don't always publish it and the kids don't always get to see all that we've collected.  But now, I feel that this "publishing" and  also the printing of photo albums is technology's compensation for the ridiculous amount of photos we have stored on our computers, etc.

So, there you have it-- for this soul who is always counting her energy/time in terms of "investment"--I think the blog has officially entered into the "its worth it" category.

Play ball!

Just in case you worried that Mark was gender-biased, some shots from "spring training"...