Have you ever wondered if you just plain suck? I wonder this about… ummmm… I don’t know… five times a day. Six, maybe. The first time usually happens around five in the morning when I get up to go to the bathroom and can’t get back to sleep. In the dark, I lie in bed counting my flaws and saying… today is the day. Today is the first day of my new life NOT sucking. Today will be different. Somehow, magically, all the sucky cooties that surround me with miraculously lift off, and I’ll be infinitely less sucky. Then, I usually fall asleep for three minutes before the alarm goes off at six. Then I’ll wake up and start moving and feeling better, convincing myself that I don’t suck. That, in fact, I’m pretty awesome. That I can do anything.

I won’t have my second downer moment until about 9 or 10. It will last until around 11, at which point I’ll get a second wind and feel awesome, again. This will last until around 1 when I start to suck, again. Then I’ll feel good until I pick my son up from school, and then after we’ve been home for an hour or so, I’ll start feeling sucky.

You see where I’m going with this.

My question. How can you get rid of sucking for good? Is it a self esteem problem, or do I, in fact, truly suck. Does someone make a suck-o-meter that can measure true suck against perceived suck?

It would be nice, wouldn’t it?

I wonder if I can get a patent on that.

For the most part, I don’t worry about sharks when I’m in a swimming pool.

I grew up in a seaside town, and when I was far too young, I watched JAWS on network television. Censored and sanitized for prime time, but jarring to my wee mind none-the-less. However, for some strange reason, I never affiliated JAWS with the ocean. Swimming in South Carolina, the water is murky, so it was only when I was in a swimming pool and I could see under the water that my heart would race. I’d dive down and open my eyes and see some shadow move at the end of the pool. My mind would begin spinning the notes…. DUH NUH… DUH NUH… DuhNuhDuhNuhDuhNuhduhnuhduhnuhduhnuh… and the next thing you know, my butt was up out of the water, wrapped safely in a beach towel. This went on for years, and even today, it’s the reason why I don’t wear goggles in a swimming pool. I do laps with my head sticking out of the water. Like a nut.

Mornings at the gym, I am usually, at some point or another, sharing the pool with an elderly Chinese woman who floats on a blue noodle kicking her legs and singing. Badly.

At first I liked her. She gave a Twin Peak’s vibe to the morning with her off-key humming. I learned early never to smile at her because then she looks at you like you are the crazy one.

I used to like her, until her hums stopped sounding like ancient rhymes and more like the poorly-produced soundtrack of some  B horror movie involving, umm, I don’t know…. SHARKS. I’ve tried to get my mind off of it, but everytime she comes in the pool and begins her vocal-stylings, here come the sharks. JAWS I, II and III. The Deep, Open Water. The trailer for Shark Night 3-D.

Now, I secretly loathe her.

This morning, a grumpy older gentleman jumped into the pool and when he saw her, he yelled, NO SINGING. She stared at him for a second and seemed to ask “WHAT?” with her eyes, and he lifted his two index fingers up, crossed them and held them up to his face and again snorted NO SINGING. With that, the woman sang even louder, then took her noodle and proceeded to throw it at him. Then still singing… she swam over to the side of the pool and left.

The guy was kinda a jerk, but at the same time, he got her to leave.

And with her went the sharks.

But she left behind the woman from that 70s horror film who is swimming in that indoor pool, and when she comes up for air, the top of the pool is glassed over. Drowning her.

What’s the name of that movie?

Crap.

Enjoying the rare morning when the Bub sleeps in. Been up since 5. Did my laps at the pool by 6:30. Now, on the couch drinking coffee and talking to strangers on Twitter, feels almost civilized in a weird 2000 and eleven kinda way. I don’t know about you, but I love the autonomy of the internet.

So, here I sit…

Awaiting the letter that will tell us who the Bub will spend the school year with.

Awaiting next week when I’ll have a whole 7 hours a weekday to call my own.

Thinking about all the wonderful things that I’ll have to say and do with my time.

Hoping I won’t waste a second of it.

Every moment is essential when you’re already dying, right?

The year before I turn 40 is gonna be when all the really awesome stuff happens.

I’m banking on it.

I am writing this morning because I actually got a comment today, and then felt guilty for always spending my time over there and even attempting to pretend I have a blog over here. But, alas. School begins in one week and having my mornings and early afternoons to myself again will right that wrong, I’m sure.

Though it seems as if we’ve hung the moon and more this summer, I feel hornswoggled as to where all the time went. Only seven more days until first grade. We better make them great.

Summer’s blasting by so fast, I’m already wondering where the time’s gone. Only so many minutes in the day to get everything done. Maybe I need to make a check list so the rest of the summer doesn’t sneak past…

Hmmm.

More importantly, I’m less than a week away from turning 39.

Sigh.

And in the super-mature fashion of my adolescent ancestors, I’ll be screening the last Harry Potter movie in celebration. Beginning the year-long party that will be the end of my 30s.

They were good years.

They were the best years.

I hope I’ll always be able to say that about the years that have just been.

Here’s to that, no?

Something amazing happens when you travel. You get out of your old everyday and start sniffing the world around. Even if you’re returning to places you’ve been before, they look different. Kicking up old feelings, they feel new again when seen with aged eyes. It was nice to be in the south again. But even better to be home.

Nothing beats putting all that new perspective to good use.

Note: I decided that just because I don’t want to blog about my son anymore, doesn’t mean I can’t talk about how I feel in relation to him, right?

As I drove the Bub to school this morning, I had this horrible feeling of wishing that time would stop. That if I put the car into park and refused to drive any further, the world would quit spinning and time would no longer propel forward.

As we moved closer and closer. I wondered what would happen if I just didn’t take him to school. If I had let him sleep in and refused to bathe him or comb his hair or feed him breakfast.

Like the Grinch, I pondered how to keep the last day of kindergarten from coming.

Once we arrived, I made a grand gesture of getting out of the car. I wanted to hug him on the curb. To look him right in the eye and tell him everything.

How proud I was of him.

How deep my love is.

That he’ll always be my baby.

But he was having none of that, already so preoccupied that the other children were headed past him, focused on their destiny… making it to the classroom before the late bell rang.

He ran off, without looking back.

So it came.

The last day of kinder, without hugs or tears or sweet congrats on the curb.

Unstoppable.

After 1:50 PM today, my son will never ever EVER be a kindergartener again.

As for me, I’ll still be a mother, trying to save time in a bottle.

I’m working on a book. Actually, several. And I’m transitioning into trying not to write about my son anymore, and blog about all the things that happen to me, instead. But that’s difficult, see, as 99% of the things that happen to me during the day aren’t really about me.

Sure, there’s the ongoing internal struggle that forever wages war inside, and I’m sure we’ll settle into that, here, again. But, honestly, most of my brain is consumed by the bub in one way or another, so much so, that everything around me often fades into the background.

Like, you know when you’re with someone more than a decade and you have a child and every once in a while you are laying in bed and your skin brushes against theirs in the right way and you’re like, oh, there you are.

Like you knew someone was beside you, but for a few months minutes or so, you forgot who was beside you.

It’s the same way with me. Sometimes I pass by the mirror and do a double-take and think… Who the fuck is that?

What am I driving at, exactly?

Well, my backyard is separated into two portions. The front portion with the grass and the flowers and the fun. And the back portion where our garden and our two big goldens live. It’s rough and dirt-covered, as you would expect from a place that houses two large dogs who love to wrestle. Our neighbor has a mess of bird feeders in her backyard, which brings a ton of doves into our backyard and doves love sunflower seeds and then said doves love to poop out the seeds. In our yard.

The back area where the dogs live is covered in sunflowers. Which is kinda cool, but kinda also looks like an abandoned lot that’s been overrun with weeds. They get on my husband’s nerves, but he knows I love to bring the flowers inside, so he humors me nicely and brings them in and vases them, without mentioning it.

He’s great like that, but anywho…

So, I’m sitting here this morning… Knowing I need to write something, anything, other than that today is the bub’s goodbye party at kindergarten. Today, his teacher will wave a magical wand and officially turn him into a first grader.

And I’ll cry.

But I won’t write about it here.

No.

I’ll write about the eight foot tall sunflowers, which are flourishing and, this morning, covered in gold finches.

Apropos.

We have four more days left of kindergarten in this house, and I, for one, am totally psyched. Being a stay-at-home parent means you get to live vicariously through your child round-the-clock. Meaning, when they are on summer vacation, you are on summer vacation.

I don’t know why when I look at the months ahead instead of seeing all the additional laundry and meals and playtime and driving around that I’ll be doing, I’m seeing the summer as I saw it when I was a child. Summer means the pool and sleeping in and having no schedule. Even though it ultimately means more work for me to have the bub home 24/7, it also means that the days will be largely unstructured which is almost better than having freetime to take care of business.

Granted, my ability to write and work freelance and go to the gym will be severely limited having the bub home with me,  but it does mean hours of fun together and weeks of irresponsibility.

I fully recognize how extremely lucky this makes me. Granted, while we are not a rich family, the only reason I am able to do this at all is because my husband is awesome and very smart with money. He makes a reasonable living and we don’t spend a lot of money on material things… most of the money I make freelance goes right back into music lessons for the bub or toys or vacations….

If you haven’t noticed me around San Antonio, I am the one sporting the $15 haircut, wearing the torn stretch pants from Target that are three years old.

My big splurge? Twice a year I have my toes done.

Still, I’m lucky.

I am lucky because I can stay home with my child.

I am lucky because my house didn’t get exploded by a tornado.

I am lucky because my family is reasonably healthy.

I am lucky because I have a brain that works pretty good.

Part of being lucky is trying everyday not to take it for granted.

So, yeah, summer looks pretty awesome from where I sit, even if there is a hole in the seat of my pants.

Do things ever stop being possible? I’m mean, really, is there ever truly a point when something is too late?

Terrifying to think about, no?

I suppose there is a point when, yes, as a woman, it is too late to have more children. Or once you’ve blown both of your knees out, uh huh, it is too late to run the New York City Marathon. Or that if at 1:45 you decide you want to see the 1:30 movie at 1:30, then yeah, too late for you.

But in the big picture, is it ever really too late to make something, anything, happen?

As a child, I always felt that excitement in my gut. That something was waiting, right around the corner for me.

Was that something I was born with? Was it a gift my mother gave to me?

Who knows.

I do know as the years go on, that feeling of possibility gets watered down, and becomes ho hum and day to day.

Sometimes I look at my son and wonder if he will have that same feeling inside his gut? And will some day, when he gets older, will he, too, begin to feel it slipping away.

Now, as soon as that feeling begins to wain, and I settle in for the long haul toward nothing, I usually feel an urge to do something. To try something or say something, and all that possibility will come rushing back in, like it never left in the first place.

Does the world ever stop being our oyster? Or do we just turn our backs on the world?

(Insert show tune, here please and thank you very much.)