Much Trepidation

I've obviously been remiss in keeping up with this blog.  Sigh.  I suppose the main reason for that is that I think we've hit our stride with this homeschooling thing.  We hit some speedbumps early on, but I've started to form a sort of daily routine and now that we've been at that for three weeks or so, it's been pretty smooth sailing.  Don't hear me saying it's been easy.  We still have days where Eva spends a good portion of the morning sitting on the toilet in the bathroom (My new favorite, isolated, time-out location.) contemplating cooperating with me while I blow off some steam folding laundry or putting dishes away.  But, for the most part, things have been going well. 

Her brothers are still in active-participation mode, especially when it comes time to sing the history sentence.  I'm encouraged that they find it so interesting, but it's a bit distracting to have Quinn climbing on my lap while singing a song about the Declaration of Independence.  Although, I should be used to the lap climbing by now.  During the opening exercises at CC on Thursdays, all three children take turns climbing on me and making me feel more claustrophobic than anyone ever should. 

Which brings me to my insecure moment of the day and venting about it.  I love Thursdays.  Eva loves Thursdays.  What I have come to not love so much about Thursdays are lunch time and the crazy, free-for-all recess after it.  For the first two weeks of CC, we sat and ate lunch with a lovely mother of four whose brood very closely matches the ages of mine.  But since those two weeks, we often sit by ourselves, the other family we shared such a nice time with off in another corner of the cafeteria.  I keep telling myself it's nothing personal and the two weeks between the last time we had lunch together and the week before last,  I was able to fend off the fear that I had slipped up and somehow offended her.  This past week, however, we got to the cafeteria super late because I had volunteered to help in the nursery.  The only table left was one against the wall in the far corner.  There were no chairs around it so I scrounged for some from between the moms who already knew each other and their chummy kids, until I found three.  I felt like the bad kid stuck in the corner, or worse, the kid no one wants to eat lunch with. 

I know, logically, this is all in my head.  Most of these moms knew each other for a year or more before this year, so it's natural that they would have formed friendships and habits and are sticking with what they know.  The voice in my head, though, keeps interjecting, "Eff that!  They should be making an effort to be friendly and include you!"  Then the OTHER voice in my head says, "Maybe nobody has these set habits you think they do.  Maybe they all just sit where they can because you know, as well as they do, that it's a zoo down here at lunch!  Every mama and brood for herself.  Stop being so sensitive!"  And yet, here I am, venting about it because I can't stop being sensitive, it's how I'm wired.  And also because I've experienced uncomfortable, painful, exclusion before in my life and so I'm prone to find it where it isn't and exaggerate its effects where it is. 

The mom who doesn't sit with us anymore still talks to me.  I don't sense any difference in our relationship except that we don't sit together at lunch anymore.  And, to be fair to her, it could have just been a fluke that we managed to sit together two weeks in a row.  I wouldn't have wanted to take her away from other friends every week.  I don't like being exclusionary any more than I like being excluded, but I am admittedly more timid about inviting people to join me or inserting myself into places I with which I am unfamiliar.

I suppose what I should take away from this...actually, I'm not at all sure what I should take away from this.  I truly feel like I'm back in junior high, floundering my way through the day.  I don't do well among my peers.  And by peers I mean women equal in age and social status to myself.  I have always been more comfortable with a group of guys.  (We can psychologize about that later, but I have my theories...)

It all comes back to me needing to feel secure, comfortable and resting in the knowledge that I am who I am supposed to be and where I am supposed to be by the sovereign will of God, who I truly believe ordains all things. If I trust that to be true, I can't let something as silly as sitting with just my children at lunch bother me.  I can't worry about what the other moms may or may not think of me.  And, truthfully, if they're half as busy as I am at lunchtime, the last thing they're concerned about are the feelings of the mom left to sit in the corner. 

Since the beginning of October, lots of other chaotic things have happened in the Perez household.  Theron's mom came to stay with us for a few months...wait...no, it ended up only being a week.  Then, while she was here, Theron's car died. (It was overdue for death.  It had over 200,000 miles on it and was built the year I graduated from high school.) We ended up car shopping at exactly one place and looking at exactly one car and got what, I guess, I can only view as the next size up from our minivan, and Theron's dream machine, a used Chevy Suburban.  I'm still wincing at the gas mileage.  Theron, however, can't stop reveling in driving the beast to work regularly.  I must say that the four-wheel drive did come in handy when that freak snow storm hit this past weekend.  Eva caught the cold the rest of us have been fighting and it went straight to her chest while the power was out.  In a panic, Theron took her in the 'burb to his office, which still had electricity, to give her a much needed nebulizer treatment.  But without the 'burb (as I've come to semi-lovingly refer to it), I would have been panicked about him driving in the snow and ice.  There is a strange element of safety accompanied by driving a domestic tank. 

This week has been more mundane, but I'm sure the weekend will hold more fun.  Theron's going squirrel hunting with my father.  Theron hasn't shot a thing in his life and he recently passed the hunter safety course just so he could go deer hunting with my dad this fall/winter.  This weekend is supposed to be his initiation into killing living things.  I wish I could say I'm happy about it, but I am, instead, filled with dread and trepidation.  I'm not against shooting animals, per se.  I'm more afraid of my husband toting a gun through the woods and pulling a Dick Cheney.  Prayers would be appreciated -- for us all.