What did you do for your birthday? I spent mine at an all-day soccer tournament.
This weekend marks another birthday for me, but there wasn’t any me time. Me time went away with the birth of our first child. So, now I spend my time running from tournaments to games to practices to meets. This is what we do as parents, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
However, it was nice to wake up to flowers and cards and cake before we rushed out in the morning hours to drive to activities. My husband went in one direction driving and I in another. We did manage to escape for the evening to see “Gravity” playing in the theater. That’s about as much me time as I got today. My eyes are closing as I type this, so I’d better call it a night. Happy Birthday.
How do you spend your Friday night?
I’m meeting next week with my co-leaders to help lay out the curricula for next year’s homeschool cooperative. We’ll spend hours on this. It’s a lot of work, but it’s work that is very exciting. To see what the students will be exposed to in their studies is motivating for a teacher. Somebody asked me tonight what I do that keeps me up so late on a Friday night. Planning out our educational map is one of them. How’s that for excitement?
My “conversation” with Tina Fey
Our family went into NYC today to celebrate our son’s birthday. As our kids get older, I’m wanting to travel more and take them to see different places so off we went. We took the Staten Island Ferry in-always a great people watching experience. Took the subway uptown (our kids love doing that). We had lunch at some local bar-type restaurant where hubby could watch a few b-ball games, then headed to the American Museum of Natural History. I’d love to share that our kids were enchanted with the various mammals and artifacts, but they weren’t. We’ve been to some great museums, so I think the experience was anti-climatic. Our oldest son just wanted to see anything to do with space, and they all just wanted to leave and go to the park. About the only thing they got excited about was the “Dum-Dum” statue (Easter Island, think “Night at the Museum”) and the snacks on the fourth floor cafe. Hopefully they’ll gain appreciation of museum findings as they mature.
So, eventually we headed to Central Park to find the playgrounds. We should have just spent the entire day there vs spending the money on the museum-oh well, lessons learned. On our journey to Diana Ross’s playground, our paths crossed with comedian/actress/writer Tina Fey. My husband said “hello” and that he enjoyed her shows as we passed. Once I realized who she was, I turned around to ask her politely if we could get our picture made with her. I don’t think I had the appearance of a crazy stalker. She told me “sorry, no” and gave me a quick somewhat-canned phrase that the bus was coming behind them so she needed to leave (she was getting into a car). I knew immediately she just wasn’t interested and was giving me the brush-off. I’m sure she’s lovely, but she just didn’t want to converse with me. Of course, the whole time my husband was hiding behind the trees from embarrassment at what I was doing. We laughed about it and went on to find the treasured playgrounds.
On the drive home, we discussed our day, the Tina Fey encounter, etc. Some things we talked about:
He asked me why I would approach Tina Fey like that, and my response was “Why not? What’s the worst that could happen? She doesn’t talk to me? Okay, I can live with that. She didn’t know me before, and she doesn’t know me now. Nothing changed, not a big deal”.
But what if something had changed? What if she had struck up a conversation with me that lead to us becoming friends or working together to find a cure for cancer or whatever. That’s the approach I’m now taking in my middle-age life. I do not want to look back upon my journey when I’m 90 and wonder why I never grabbed a hold of life and tried to reach for my dreamy dreams, make a difference, change an outcome for the better. So, I’m not afraid usually to take chances or even to potentially embarrass myself, especially when the negative results are really minimal. So, Tina Fey dissed me. So what. Those “negative results” were minimal compared to the potential for something good to come out of it.
Now I apply those same beliefs to our homeschooling journey. I put myself out there sometimes in conjunction with big aspirations for what we’re doing. Is it working? I’ll let you know in about 12 years…
Okay, I must go to sleep now, and odds are I’ll be changing this post tomorrow as I’m mildly delirious from fatigue. DST will not be good to me this time, and I need energy to make cupcakes tomorrow!
Ivy League Homeschooling 