Not Mine.

The other morning I dropped Jonah off at school, and like every other morning, he was in charge of putting his lunch box into the bin of lunch boxes. He looked in the bin and noticed a piece of plastic. He became concerned and leaned over to fish the plastic piece out of the bin.

I thought he was just being obsessed with a new shiny thing. He saw something cool and wanted to play with it. I was mistaken.

“It’s Zoe’s,” he told me. Prior to that I didn’t know why he cared about it. I tried to tell him to just leave it in there; to not bother with taking it anywhere because eventually the owner would figure it out and see it when they dropped their lunch in the bin. My crotchety reaction was that we shouldn’t touch it because whoever dropped it will look in the bin as one of the steps back in the retracing process. Locating its owner seemed too much like work. AND I could imagine the daycare workers looking at me trying to explain where I got this seemingly unimportant piece of plastic and thinking “well what do you want me to do with it?”

Because this is the crazy that goes on in my head. Every day. I have no idea where it comes from. But it got me thinking about my son, and where his irrational thoughts will take root. Have they already? Am I too late? Is it inevitable?

Sometimes when we’re at the playground I don’t want to let him play with the other kids. I know that he needs to learn to deal with different personalities and temperaments in life beyond the playground, but it’s hard to stand there and watch him interact with other kids. He has this light in his eye and it hurts me to think that he will ever want to withdraw; that he will ever feel shitty about who he is. I know that he will face disappointment. That his heart will break. That he will be sad and feel lonely. And I don’t know how to deal with that. The worst part? I know that there will be times when it will be me who lets him down.

Now that it was Zoe’s I understood. He wanted to make sure she got it. He was being sweet and considerate and wanted to return this little piece of plastic to its rightful owner. So we took it upstairs to his teacher and they left it in Zoe’s cubby. Problem solved.

Sometimes parenting is harder than math.

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A list of things I’d like.

A dog.
A positive attitude more of the time.
Yarn.
Faster knitting skills so I can get through projects quicker and move on to the next shiny thing.
Coffee.
The ability to be more direct. To ask for what I want. To be clear in my intentions.
#yearoflace
A daughter.
Apple pie with vanilla ice cream.
Enough income to build both savings AND vacation funds.
The ocean at my doorstep.
I’d settle for an annual visit to the coast. Any coast.
New tires.
To be a morning person.
A longer summer.
Enough money to snowboard every other weekend all winter.
A haircut.
A new body.
A natural understanding of where I should be on the track because I feel like I spend so much time dissecting plays *after* they happen. I hear this gets better, but right now it’s frustrating.
Pizza.
White nectarines year-round.
Fridays off (but not forced due to economy)

(Disclaimer: I don’t claim that any of these things are possible for me to attain, or that I would be a responsible person, were I to try to attain such things. It’s just a list of whimsy.)

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Find the Nail Clipper

Not sure why but I can’t seem to keep track of my nail clipper. Last time I saw it, Jonah was using it to “cut” his nails. Now I suspect it’s under the couch.

In the car is probably the best place for that thing.

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