PLANNER

For all that I rhapsodize here regarding spontaneity and freedom and GO and such, it seems that in reality, I am a PLANNER. I hate being a planner. I don't even like the word "goal," unless it is like the soccer announcer dude who goes "GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLL!!!!!!!' when his team scores. That is cool. No, I don't like organization, planning, detail, set-in-stone sorts of things, no sirree. But I have children, and randomness often does not help them. Children need order and consistency and predictability.

SNORE. Oh, let me whine. Sometimes I tire of being a large grey rock. A rock that manages an appointment calendar from Hell and cannot jet off to Monaco with Snidely Whiplash or some other slimy cad or pack the kids in the Partridge Family bus and go around the country singing for quarters and Big Bite bags of Cheetos.

Being a modern-day mother often seems to be some kind of scary administrative job. Children have schedules now. WHY, WHEN I WAS A CHILD, I think the only things my mom had to keep in mind were: 1. feed and water child; 2. enforce sleep on child; 3. take child once a year to doctor and twice a year to dentist; 4. enforce school on child (which meant just making sure I got on and off the schoolbus). That was it. I was expected to amuse and educate myself otherwise, and not get in trouble. Lucky My Mom.

But, as I need not elaborate on too much because you know what I am saying here, everything is different now. Openness and spontaneity and free time is measured and scheduled along with everything else, including:

-- playdates
-- doctor/dentist/orthodontist/haircuts/therapist/voodoo practitioner
-- lessons (music, sports, drama, art, debate, etiquette, even ETIQUETTE I tell you)
-- playing of sports and music and making of art and drama and such
-- endless endless endless homework
-- outside meals and entertainment
-- before and after school care
-- testing, prep for testing, going over test results, rolling eyes over testing
-- vacations and summer camps

Do I have to play? I guess I think I do. If I didn't do these things, my children would be socially isolated feral children, pasty and grunty, lunging at food items and belching in front of the elderly, and would confuse Florida with Kansas. The natural forum of doing is gone; there is no neighborhood scene, no having kids run around and meet others and learn games and and social skills from that. They need more than the sucking vortex that are video games and TV, they need to see and do other things in the world. And it is me and only me that makes it all happen for them. Sigh. Having to register for summer camp six months in advance BLOWS. Planning out everything makes me feel like my very LIFE FORCE is being pulled from my chest. But if I don't, opportunities pass, nothing is done, time passes by, and there we are.

Privileged and caged at the same time, we all are. I wish I knew a better way. Perhaps a move to a remote hamlet in the Alps would solve my dilemma. We'd all just eat sausage and drink bier and whittle and chat up the goat herder down the path. Provided we didn't have an internet connection, of course.