Dancing, Driving, and Daughters

Dancing:

As you have read in earlier posts this week, I had the pleasure of taking my youngest to her first college dance auditions this week.  FSU on Wednesday, USF today.  The jury is still out on whether or not she will make the programs, but the experience was worth it (my words, not hers).  She didn't like the program at FSU, not the college, just the program.  Her personality doesn't seem like it would be a good fit for what they portray dancers to be in their program.  It was more about who you know, which is always a hard lesson for our kids, but a lesson, nonetheless.  It is a shame because she really wanted to go to FSU, but it doesn't look like she will choose their program if she is in fact chosen.  USF, not a contender, until today.  She loved it, go figure.  They actually let us watch the group auditions, so I was in dance mom heaven.  She felt at home (I hate that phrase, I want her at my home, forever) and I guess that is what we want for our babies, to feel at home when they are not home... Oh, I don't know, that sounds stupid, but it's a fact.  Home away from home.  We still have more auditions to go, so let's see where God places her.

Driving:

I drove, the whole time, listening to ONE DIRECTION.  What is a 17 year old doing obsessing over a boy band for goodness sakes?  I now know all the words to every single one of their songs and I think she thinks she is marrying Niall, but we haven't told him yet.  If that's the case, she should let him know, maybe he can drive her to the next round of auditions.  Maybe she won't have to go to college, he will just pay for her to dance on stage while he sings.  He might even be able to get her to learn how to drive and get her license so I can hang up my taxi sign forever.

Daughters:

I loved spending this week with her, it was amazing.  We laughed, we cried, we fought (of course we fought, it wouldn't be a mother/daughter trip without a good fight) and she told me some of her secrets.  She thinks they were secrets, so we will just go with that... We spent time with Big Miss on Sunday before we journeyed to auditions so I had a double dose of daughters this week, it was a good week.  I also got to see my goddaughter for the first time in 5 years, she was auditioning at both schools too and we didn't even know!  They had a great time with each other and are already planning to be roommates should they choose the same school.

This was a great week, I hope our drive home tomorrow is quick.  At least I will have One Direction to keep me company!

                 

Driving Through Town and Fighting for Freedom

Yesterday Little Miss and I started our road trip by stopping in Orlando for the night.  We met Big Miss for dinner to celebrate her 20th birthday, met her boyfriend (CUTE), and just hang out.  All was perfect and then Big Miss got home to her apartment with the roommates from hell.  This is going to be a doozie, so please hang in there.

Big Miss has two roommates who started off being her friend and then as the rule of three goes, she was thrown to the curb.  She is very mature for her age and doesn't feed into drama like most girls do, so that becomes a problem with other girls.  They try to get her to gossip and fight and all that other crap, but she doesn't do it.  She has already lived on her own for a year, these girls stayed home their first 2 years and moved out for their junior/senior years.  That being said, they still live as if mommy and daddy are home with them and try to parent my child, often.

Imagine coming home to post-it notes on the AC because you have lowered it when you had a fever the night before, but the post-it note states in order to save electricity you can't do this.  Or.... you press a sandwich in the George Forman grill and don't clean it to someone else's expectations, so a post-it note states you need to do a better job (then the grill is removed from the kitchen and hidden so you can't use it).  Then you don't place the sponge in the sponge holder and someone tells you that it HAS to go back into the holder because that is the way it was done in their house. You get the point.

Last night after dinner, she comes home to one of the mother of one of them who drove all the way here to make sure her daughter gets some rest because my daughter is keeping them up all night with the her study groups, her boyfriend, flushing the toilet, brushing her hair, and breathing.  This woman screamed at my daughter at 1 a.m. and followed her around the apartment while my daughter was trying to escape.  She didn't call me because she was afraid I would leave my hotel and start a fight.  I can tell you that she was right! So, my daughter slept downstairs in her boyfriend's apartment (some battles are not the point right now, lol).  Well, she didn't sleep, she cried all night and then went to work at 6 this morning.

Needless to say, I spoke to said mother and she wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise, so I ended up losing my cool and yelled and then called her a name and then told her that the apple didn't fall far from the tree and she should be proud of raising a (same name) and then I hung up on her.  I was wrong, but it felt so good.  I also told her that my daughter will be moving out, along with the 4th girl that they treat like crap, so good luck and good riddance.  This news scared the lady because I also said I hope the 2 new roommates aren't serial killers.  She said that wasn't necessary, she didn't want anyone to move.  Oh, well too little too late.

So that is my awful story about the beginning of what is supposed to be a perfect dancing audition trip.  What would you do?

Auditions Are Here

How has all of this time gone by?  I haven't posted since September!  What a bad blogger (busy is more like it).  

I am sitting in the first of our hotels this week, as I am driving my youngest across Florida for her dance auditions at 2 colleges.  The timing of the auditions fall at opposite ends of this week, so we had to take the whole week off (can you hear my sadness) from school.  My principal is awesome and sent me off with her blessing and said "family first, Janine!".  So our journey began this morning and we stopped in Orlando.  We get to meet the "boy" who has stolen my oldest daughter's heart tonight, so that should make for a sweet dinner.  We will also be celebrating an early 20th birthday (not mine, hers, but I know you were thinking I was a child bride), which is bittersweet, to say the least.

Tomorrow we are off to Tally for audition number one on Tuesday and then off to Tampa for audition number two on Friday.  So please keep us in your prayers and I will try to post throughout the week as it might be the only way for me to keep the tears at bay.  My babies are moving on and I am standing still at the side of the road watching them.  It is not easy now, it won't be easy later, it may never be easy again.

It's Official

Throughout the years as a mom, I have heard the phrase "it's official" for many different reasons.  From being chosen for the part in the school play to graduating with top honors and everything in between.  The only time that phrase tears at my heart and makes me worry for days on end is when my beautiful daughters say "it's official, I have a boyfriend".  Now, my youngest has never said this, even though she is 17, because she doesn't give her heart away very easily.  My oldest, however, has...more than once...and this time she is away at college living in an apartment and has made it official with the boy man downstairs.

I tried, I really tried to sound enthusiastic, but she heard it in my voice.  She heard the worry and the not so sure feeling of mom in a panic.  So she texted me and asked if I was happy for her.  Well, that hit me where it hurts because I am happy, of course I relish in the happiness of my children.  I assured her that I was happy and then went on the mom rant of be safe, school and work come first, make sure he respects your decisions, etc. etc. etc.  When what I really wanted to say was "DO NOT HAVE SEX".  Yes that is the gist of it, I can't even fathom, nor do I want to.

I know you understand, I know you feel my pain.  I want my 3 year old ballerina back, now.  Long gone are the days of worrying about scraped knees and mean girls.  Worrying about sex and all the crap that comes along with it, I'm not ready.  If I'm not ready, is she?

Grandma, Can You Hear Me?

Old. 3 letters, big impact.  I use to think people my age were old and now I know better, 44 is not old.  My grandma is 92, that's old.  My mother is 68, slightly old.  (Oh, they would be pissed if they knew I posted their ages for all to see, lol).  

My grandma is fading away, she won't admit it, but we can see it.  Her day to day is not what it use to be, she just sits and waits.  In my heart of hearts I know what she is waiting for, but we don't discuss it.  She is still the woman full of pride and would never admit defeat.  She is so filled with pride that she refuses to get a hearing aid, so we have to talk scream loudly when we need to tell her something.  This ends up in an argument because she gets mad when we yell.  If we use our indoor voices, she says what, what, WHAT??? By that time, what we needed to say has lost all meaning, so we make something else up just to make her think we didn't lose interest in talking to her.  We laugh a lot, not at her, just at the situation.  She gets mad, thinking we are making fun of her.  We talk about the hearing aid again, she pounds her fists and yells telling us she can hear.  Ok, grandma, whatever you say... She says, "what?".

This past week paramedics visited grandma who was dangerously close to a diabetic coma, she thinks she is fine.  We know she isn't.  My mother thinks she is getting better everyday, we know she is not.  The rest of us are watching the two matriarchs of our family live in a world that doesn't exist.  The world where everyone else is wrong.  We fight, a lot.  My sister fights more than I do, we feel guilty for not helping.  They won't let us.  They win the fights, so we don't call and we don't visit.

Old.  Something we will become one day.  Don't stop your family from loving you, don't keep them away, and accept help when you can no longer help yourself.  Are you listening?  Can you hear me?

Grandma's 91st Birthday July 2011 (she wouldn't let us take pictures this year).

College Moving...Take Two, I Mean Three

Can you believe that it has been a year since Big Miss went away to college?  I can't, I really can't.  This past weekend we once again moved her into her new digs, the digs that I said she could never, ever, ever live in.  The end of her freshman year brought her out of dorm life and into a sub-lease on her friend's apartment for the summer.  My big girl lived ALL BY HERSELF this summer and I died a little every single day!  She moved out of her dorm and into this apartment by herself, who knew that she knew how to do such a thing.

As life would have it, her roommates did not "mature" as quickly as she did, so they decided that they would all live with other people for their sophomore year.  My big miss found 2 new roommates (she happened to know them from high school, but they are a year older than she is) and she made the decision to move into off campus apartment housing.  I say she made the decision because her father and I really had nothing to do with it.  I vaguely remember this deal I made with her when she wanted to go away for college and it went something like this (disregard the grammatically incorrect dialogue):  

"Mom, I want to go away for college" "What???? Um, no I don't think that is going to happen in my lifetime" "Why not?  I am #5 in my class and have worked hard my whole life, I deserve this" (here is where I had no answer and we spent that summer traveling to colleges) "Mom, I got in to NYU" "Are you insane, NYU!  I can't move to New York" "Mother, you are not moving, I am." "Oh, I forgot.  Still we can't afford it, so whoever gives us the most money wins" (thank you UCF) "OK, you can go to UCF, but you must live on campus, ALWAYS" and that my friends, is history in the making.  

She originally didn't need me to help her move this third time and then asked me to come up on Saturday, which I did, very quickly, LOL.  Little Miss and I cleaned, sorted, unpacked, and cleaned.  I built my first bookshelf ever, moved furniture, and got her bathroom set up.  Walmart and Target hate me now, I think I overstayed my welcome in these fine establishments.  I even got to sleep in her bed with her the very first night in her new place.  We left her there on Sunday and it feels like a year never passed and my big girl has left home for the first time, again.  I cry as I type, again.  I miss her more than ever, again.  I want my 3 year old ballerina, again.  Is this what I have to look forward to, again and again and again...

A year doesn't make a difference, it makes it harder.  I don't want to do this again next year when I have to say goodbye to Big Miss again and goodbye to Little Miss for the very first time.  A year made a difference for my big girl, she moved from the comfort of her home with us, to a dorm with crazies all around, to an apartment all by herself, and finally to the place she will most likely call home for the rest of her college days.  

Home, her home, not mine, not ours.  I am crying, again.

Playing Catch Up

It has been exactly 4 weeks since I visited my little blog, I have missed her so...  Life just keeps getting busier and busier and I don't see an end in sight.  I also have had some life altering, heart shattering, stuff going on.  Let's see if I can remember.


Big Miss surprised us on 4th of July with a visit from college.  I was so happy, but then panicked because she drove here, ALONE.  I know, she is a big girl, but I only see my little pink tutued dancer.  


I have taken on way too much and this summer has been brain overload for me.  I said yes about 20 times too many and now I am stuck doing stuff I no longer desire to get done.  I will get it all done, at the expense of spending time with my family and not sleeping for the rest of the summer, but lesson learned.  This is the last time I stop taking care of me!


BFF has torn my heart to shreds when I found out that something has been kept from me.  It happened this week, BFF is away, so it hasn't been resolved.  I go out of town tomorrow, so it won't be resolved this week, if it will ever be resolved.  I know forgiveness is key, but it's the forgetting that is so hard.  My heart hurts and I don't know how to get back to the place we were in just a week ago.  Dishonesty is usually a deal breaker for me, but this is my BFF...


I am going through Menopause, it is official.  Aren't you so jealous of me?  I hate it, people around me hate me because they hate it, and I am HOT all of the time.  I sweat drying myself after my shower, it is ridiculous.  I was told because I started young this could take 5-6 years.  I won't make it another 5-6 minutes.  I hope my husband loves me as much as I think he does because when little miss leaves to college in exactly one year, he is in for the menopausal ride of his life, HAHA!


That's about it, I think.  Well, these are the things that stand out, if I think of something else, I will let you know.


3 more weeks till school starts... I hope the AC is set to 50 below or my firsties or going to run for the hills.