busy! please try again later. thanks.

Definition of Busy: adjective,
1. occupied by some activity; at work; not idle
2. full of activity, characterized by much action or motion

The last couple of weeks have been filled with busyness, emotion & a severe lack of time.  My head has been everywhere and no where.  I should be used to this feeling because this has been the typical month of September since Bryan started to walk.  It seems that no matter how much I prepare for it, the month of September NEVER gets to be any easier.

When Bryan was smaller it was filled with birthday party planning and soccer.  Bryan's love for soccer grew to a passion and fall became the time of year for multiple practices a week & all weekend, every weekend games.  Bryan's dad, being a life long soccer player himself, coached every one of Bryan's teams; both were like fish in water.  Enter, the rest of the September fun.

As Bryan got older there came more 'things' to add to our already busy weekly schedule.  Back to School nights, class mom duties, homework, dinner-time (which was always a little piece of hell in my house)...oh yea, working full time and keeping a house.  Let's not forget the little things that drive us all crazy at the beginning of the school year, just picture day can get one frazzled; "I'd like you wear this..." and then the fight erupts.  Every single mom was going through the same thing; why did they seem so much more graceful?  Why did they seem to have everything under control?  Husbands; that was the difference between those moms & myself.  The women who seemed to have it all together had a partner.  Dan was & is my partner in raising Bryan, but we didn't always have the solidarity that we have now; so, yea, I was missing the one factor that I envied in every other graceful, put-together mom.  Help.

These weeks have felt the same, yet completely different then every other year.  It feels the same because we are just was busy as every other September sans soccer; different because at Back to School night my ex-husband and I spoke to Bryan's counselor about the college process.  This was our final Back to School night; a night that I always looked at as an inconvenience is now a part of our history.
Bryan also has passed his driver's license test.  Surprisingly I am not nervous, he has had his permit for nearly a year and has had more then enough time on the road.  Hopefully, he'll stay smart.

The 2nd job is a whole other story.  I am exhausted & working two jobs is taking valuable time away from my YMCA people who I miss tons.  You don't know what a stress reliever the gym is until you can't get there.  Those people hold my sanity in the palms of their hands. 

All these new shenanigans are stressful and yes, time consuming, but this time Dan and I are aligned in the parenting department, so I don't feel as hopelessly sloppy as I did years ago.  YaY me!!

Will Septembers ever get easier?  Sure.  Bryan will eventually graduate from college.  It is then that I will miss the chaos of school nights and the craziness that it invites into everyone's household.  Here's to another four years of living life for my kid and doing the only job I was truly born to do; being Bryan's (not-so) graceful mom and doing it with a smile on my face and a glass of wine in my hand.

A Good Day!

“You're thought about more often than you probably can guess, and thoughts of you just naturally bring smiles of happiness.” - Anonymous

Today is a good day, the best day of the year in my estimation; today is the day that my son was born.  Today he turns 17 years old.  Now, this is huge because truthfully I cannot keep a plant alive no matter how hard I try, but I somehow managed to to raise a pretty fantastic young man; to say that I have been truly blessed is an understatement.
Today is equally important to his father, I am sure.  Now, I cannot speak for him, but I am pretty sure he is counting the days until is 18th birthday and his years of child support are history.  Lately, Dan has been much more generous and supportive then any amount of money could buy and I am so appreciative.

Seventeen was one of my favorite years and it is blowing my mind that Bryan is there right now.  Remember back to 17?  No bills, every extra minute spent with friends, nothing to worry about but homework and where the next party was or where everyone was hanging out & only a part-time job was necessary to pay mom & dad for car insurance.  Bryan is living that right now.  I hope he appreciates every second of being 17 years old.  I also hope & pray that he makes good smart decisions and thinks about the consequences before doing anything stupid.

This year is Bryan's Senior year of high school, and there is no doubt that it will be a busy, stressful year.  Here's to getting through it so he lives to see his 18th. 

You're my Golden Girl

I have always considered myself a good friend, I'm not trying to be arrogant, but I am.  I am a good friend because I surround myself with good, positive people.  It is easy to want to do things and be there for others when they are doing good things and being there for you.  So, yea, I am a good friend.

It is not a secret that I love everyone in my life, I have told you a million-and-one times, but to me it is worth repeating.  Last night, it was another late night and I received a text message on my cell phone.  (Weird, I thought nearly the whole world would have been sleeping.)  The text said "I just thought of you, it was the theme song from The Golden Girls that made me want to say hi.  Just glad that you're my friend...You're my Golden Girl."  How could your heart not be filled with love from that compliment.

Granted, she went on to say that I was Blanche ;) & a bunch of other silliness, but the moral of the story is, MY HEART IS TRUE, I AM A PAL AND A CONFIDANT!

Rest assured that my loyalty to the people that I love is boundless & you've got me in your lives, for better or worse.

Remembering...

September is the month to celebrate.  It always has been since the very day that I was born, then at 19 years old I had more reason to celebrate because I had been blessed with the reason that I wake up everyday, my son Bryan.  He was born just 6 days after my birthday making him the best birthday present ever.
Those 6 days that fall in between our birthdays used to be filled with anticipation for Bryan when he was younger, because he knew that his was so so close.  It was filled with anticipation for me because I love to give my favorite person presents and I never wanted to wait to see his precious little face light up when he finally opens them.

Now, those days that fill the time between our birthdays are filled with thoughts of one day in September, 2001.  In fact, as it nears September, I being to feel my heart get a little bit heavier.  This year marks the 10th anniversary of that horrific event, just 90 miles up the street.  On September 11, 2001, the United States of America was attacked by terrorists in New York City, Pennsylvania and Washington DC.  On that day lives were changed forever.

On September 11, 2001, I was a young mom, in my mid-twenties, divorced a couple of years, working in retail as a department manager.  Most of my friends still had not had an children, but everything that I did was for mine or with him in mind.  When a managers meeting was just getting ready to start and our Human Resources manager came running in to tell us that a plane hit the World Trade Center, I couldn't fully comprehend UNTIL we all went into the break room and watched on the TV what the news would end up repeating over-and-over and what every American will never be able to erase from their brains.  I remember my heart feeling like it was physically breaking, the heaviness in my chest (the same heaviness that I get every September now) was making me weak in the knees; the sadness was over-whelming, but I didn't cry.  I watched.  I watched and was scared, boy, was I scared.  Was I that naive that I thought that this would or could never happen to us?!?  I needed to find out how Bryan was; I called this school.  He was in second grade and was about to turn 7 that year.  The administration had told me that they announced what had happened, but wanted to keep things as normal as possible, but I was allowed to pick him up if I wanted to.  I opted not to, but I had to think about how I was going to handle this once I had picked him up from after-school care.  I was so young and didn't exactly have any answers myself.

I asked Bryan the other night, 'What do you remember about 9/11?'.  He went on to tell me exactly where he was sitting and what was being taught, but then he said, I remember not really caring when I heard.  A very honest answer and in reality, I am sure that he didn't, then he saw the TV footage and had a million questions just like the rest of us.
I am always very real with Bryan, so I didn't sugar coat.  I wasn't going to hide that there are bad people out there, I wasn't going to say that this wasn't going to happen again, but I was going to make sure that Bryan knew that you still had to treat people the way you would want to be treated.  Just because there are absolutely rotten people out there, let's not pretend that there aren't, we have to be bigger, more united and stronger then they are.  There are people who are always going to be jealous; jealous of what Americans have and represent, but if we stand together then we will over-come.
September 12, 2001 there was a thunder & lightning storm.  Bryan woke up screaming.  He thought we were being bombed.  It broke my heart.  The sleeplessness didn't last long, but I'll never forget.

Since then, New York has become one of my favorite places to visit.  It really reminds a person how very small one is in the big scheme of things; something I think everyone need to be reminded once-and-a-while. 
We have gone to Ground Zero, the name that has been given to the site where The Twin Towers once stood.  We have paid our condolences to those lives that were lost and changed forever.  We have mourned the American soldiers lost in battle defending us.  We prayed and still do for the soldiers to come home safely to their families. 

I hope that the family and friends of victims and all those who had to endure the pain of September 11, 2001 have grown from this tragedy and become stronger people.  This year is only the 10th anniversary, you will never be forgotten and are all considered heroes in my eyes.

Working Over-time.

Yesterday was my first day off in 9 days, it also just happened to be Labor Day; however there were no Bar-B-Q's to speak of for me, I would be visiting my father at the Hospital of The University of Pennsylvania. The last four months Pop has been receiving aggressive Chemotherapy at his home away from home.  I have to admit that on this visit I was a little bitter.  Bitter because in the hospital bed lie a man, who worked 50+ years for General Motors, many of those days were 12-14 hour days.  My dad NEVER said no to over-time or hard work; some way to spend a holiday built for people like just like him.
I called him the night before and asked when the best time to come visit would be, we planned for after lunch.  When I arrived the nurse came in and took his blood pressure, it was high, 150/some other big number.  The nurse was concerned, but she would be in multiple times because Pop was in the middle of getting a blood transfusion and they check vital signs every 15-30 minutes.  We chatted and laughed, he told stories that I have heard a million times and I listened enthralled as always, normal Pop & Sarah stuff. Finally, Pop had had enough of your truly and pretty much started kicked me out by throwing out hints of "Sarah, you don't want to miss the train", when the train wasn't coming for 45 minutes.  I waited until the nurse came one final time, when the first unit of blood was done.  His blood pressure was now 121/some other not so big number.  Now, I am no medical expert and some may say it was the blood transfusion that lowered his pressure, but Pop and I are sticking to the story that it was my visit that lowered those digits.
After seeing Pop's ruddy complexion and lifted spirits I wasn't so bitter, the man worked so hard all those years to make us happy, not himself.  He said yesterday, that sometimes when he thinks he's had it, he keeps fighting for the people who love him, the people who are praying for him.
He is still the hard working man I remember; just right now he is working hard, over-time, in his battle with Multiple Myeloma.