Columbus | this woman's work

Looking ahead with hope? Terror?

Jun 212010

I figured out what my schedule should be this fall. I need to get it approved by my advisor but at least I have a rough idea. There’s gonna be a whole lot of schooling happening up in here! I have no idea how much work it’s all going to be for me and that is making me nervous. I figure though that it’s only two years and while two years seemed like a lifetime when I was in my twenties, now I feel like two years of ANYTHING is do-able. And two years seems so so so short to get trained to be someone who will guide people through crisis.

Yesterday we (the family) sat around talking about what we want our lives to look like in five years and we were talking about “When Mommy has her therapy practice” and how we would like that to work. Brett is already going to be my billing guy and appointment handler because I am weak in the organizational department and Brett has been laid off from several fine insurance companies handling their billing (he keeps getting outsourced). He can rattle off medical codes like you wouldn’t believe although it isn’t as much fun at parties as you think it’d be. Anyway, he’ll be the one to figure out how to bill this insurance or that insurance, which is incredibly awesome since this is an issue for many fine and talented counselors who hate paperwork. (At this point I want my own practice — I don’t want to work for a clinic. But this might change after my internship when I will be working for a clinic; I might find out that I love it.) Noah will be about 15 when I graduate and unless his dream job at the used video game store is available, he’s willing to work for Brett working for me. Madison will be 8 and she already has her sights set on the waiting room. She said, “I think you should have a room at your office, a room like with a couch and magazines and things that you could have people wait like a waiting room.” She has offered to keep this clean if I pay her. I would also like to have a bit of childcare available for clients who need to bring their kids since this was sometimes an issue for me back in the day. My kids could lend a hand there and when they aren’t available, I could hire some other homeschooler.

Counselors don’t make a whole helluva lot of money but I am thinking I can piece together several jobs (I’ll keep writing, I would like to do some freelancing counseling for organizations, etc.) and make more than enough. But it’s a competitive field, too, and I’m sure Columbus is overrun with counselors because it is overrun with everything else. Because Ohio State is here as well as a bunch of other colleges and universities, there is more than our fair share of over-educated professionals.

Also if Brett likes handling the paperwork of my practice, he might offer that as a service to other therapists. He knows someone who used to do this and loved it but then needed a job because she got a divorce and needed benefits. Since we’re already old hands at being a freelancing family off and on, we don’t feel all that daunted by the logistics — it’ll just be a matter of smart budgeting. And isn’t our whole life just a matter of smart budgeting?

These may all be pipe dreams but they are fun pipe dreams. We have other pipe dreams, too, but this is the one we were playing with this weekend.

The kids are trashing the joint

The Story of My Life 1 Response »

Jun 052010

We’ve been having some serious storming in Columbus this week and the kids have been inside more than usual because of it. One of their most favoritest things to do is run wild in the rain but if there’s any lightening around then they have to stay under cover. What this means is that they are CRAZY and LOUD today because they are stuck inside and excited about an event we had this morning (summer reading kick off at the main library downtown) and one we have later today (birthday!). Plus we moved my office out of the basement because we need a dehumidifier down there to clear out the mustiness, which has put my office right in the middle of kid central. I’m sitting here typing at the desk in the kitchen and the kids are next to me wrestling and beating on each other with plastic carrots. (They’re pretending to use each other as drums.)

There are plus sides to being up here mainly that it’s much easier to keep an eye on them and then there are obvious downsides like it’s hard to focus on what I’m doing here with this much happy rough housing happening within arm’s reach. (I just yelled at Noah for hitting Madison too hard with the carrots and she said, and I quote, “Mommy, quit doting on me!” I think I need earplugs but then how would I hear the phone ring when Brett calls for his ride home? Decisions decisions!)

Sometimes our life feels alarmingly make-shift. On my good days I think about how clever we are MacGyvering it all like this and on bad days I wonder when someone is going to come and save us from ourselves. Like because the desk upstairs isn’t erognomically sound and because spending two days on it this week made it impossible for me to use my right arm to raise my coffee mug to my lips this morning, I had Brett fix the creaking top drawer so that I could pull it out and set the keyboard on it to bring it down slightly lower. We found this desk on the curb and took it home because we fell in love with its midcentury drawer pulls and formica top. It is pretty, definitely, but it’s hell for someone who makes her living banging on her keyboard. And I think, who does this? How could my body be falling apart this badly when I’m still piecing things together and making do just to get through the day? I mean, if I’m going to have to get old, couldn’t I at least have all the stuff I expected to get as a grown up? Like financial security and a house that’s big enough to get away from these dang noisy kids and an office with a working desk and a door?

I am in a permanent state of wry amusement, honest to goodness. We are just ridiculous.

But the kids are happy and healthy and after an hour of careful stretching I can type AND drink coffee with my right arm, which is a treat, let me tell you. Which is to say, I’m grateful for the smallness of things like the smooth formica top on our pretty desk and Madison’s vocabulary and Noah’s slapstick sense of humor and thunderstorms in the spring that water the garden so I don’t have to.

Reconsider Columbus Day

Race 3 Responses »

Oct 112009

Actually my kids are pretty civilized

Homeschooling 10 Responses »

Aug 312009

Maryanne (in the comment to the post previous) said:

In reading a little about homeschooling, I’ve gotten the (probably skewed) impression that most homeschoolers are Christian Fundamentalists, which you are not. Do you have to deal with these people and materials in the homeschooling world or are you totally on your own and make up your curriculum? You say your kids are “wild animals”. What if you had a kid who was not interested in books or learning at all?

Yes, lots of homeschoolers are fundamentalist Christians and there is indeed a large fundamentalist community here in Columbus. I don’t really have to deal with their beliefs although my kids are sometimes in classes or activities with children who are being homeschooled for religious reasons because those activities aren’t centered around religion. But Noah’s had some fundamentalist Christian friends and acquaintances and I just see that as a good opportunity to talk about belief systems.

It’s easy to avoid the resources created for families with a Christian worldview because there is so much out there for secular homeschoolers. I hear this is more difficult for folks in other communities but here in Central Ohio, our homeschool peers tend to reflect our values and those whose values are different, they still tend to complement ours (i.e., there aren’t a ton of Reform Jews but we get along nicely with our UU friends).

Also, we don’t use a curriculum other than math.

I don’t know what I’d do if I had a kid who wasn’t interested in “books or learning at all” because it looks like I don’t have one of those kids. I still can’t tell if Madison will be a reader with the passion (and insatiable hunger) that Noah has but she does like books and she’s got a wide-ranging, questioning mind. I’ve heard tell of kids who don’t want to learn but I have yet to meet one although I do know that there are kids in our group who drift in and out of concentrated academic-type work.

We tend to be moderate in our kid-control. We’re more strict than other unschoolers who don’t limit screen time or much of anything else but we’re a far cry from school-at-home folks, too, who replicate the classroom experience. Meeting my kids’ emotional and educational needs is an on-going process of checking in, making plans, backing off and checking in again. What they need one month isn’t what they need another and what works for one doesn’t necessarily work for the other.

Als0, if I had a kid who wasn’t interested in reading (because every kid is interested in learning although what they want to learn might not be what’s on someone else’s list), it’d be an even bigger reason not to send him/her to school and instead keep them home to find other ways to teach them. At least for me. Because I’m a homeschooler.

Julia said:

I have spoken to many homeschoolers…and not all are like you – the ones who think that it’s all about what is right for a family…kind of like the breastfeeding and work at home/stay at home war. Why is that?

My take? People can be jerks and those jerky people include homeschoolers. I’ve certainly been confronted by random folks in the grocery store, at the synagogue, on my kids’ sports team, etc. who want to weigh in on my educational choices ‘cuz jerkiness abounds however we choose to educate our kids. Although it’s been my experience (and this is a gross generalization and your mileage may vary, etc. etc.) that the most evangelical people tend to be either 1) the least secure (and so the most defensive) or 2) the most close-minded and who wants to hang with THAT anyway however they’re schooling?

Girls Rock

Parenting 4 Responses »

Dec 042008

We’re seeing a bunch of movies playing at the Wexner Center family film festival. Four of them we’re seeing as part of an in-school (for us, homeschool) program but tonight Kristen got us member tickets to Girls Rock. It was fab. I cried off and on through it and I’m sending Madison straight to Rock Camp when she’s eight (quick note: Susie Simpson, local camp founder, was also a HighBall Volunteer and works at Stonewall Columbus –obviously she rocks, too).

Besides making me think of my own growing up and my ex-boyfriend who is apparently dating a founding member of Bikini Kill, (which makes me wonder how he’s changed since he was no feminist back when I knew him), and about Madison’s future especially given her small tantrum before we left because none of her dresses have BOWS and she likes her dresses to be FANCY and have BOWS, it also made me think about Noah.

See, it’s not just girls who get screwed by gender roles and even though boys have the power and the privilege, as the mother of a boy I have to worry about the cost for my son who is currently sweet and kind and gentle (like his father). After all, I’ve seen the hits his dad has taken and my own brother and even that jerk of a boyfriend who may or may not be a nice guy now.

I wish there was a camp for boys that would be less about learning to be loud and take up space (since boys don’t need to be told they can do that) and more about having feelings and owning feelings (since that gets kicked right out of them.) Although I think there’s more leeway for boys to be who they are (and not diet, pluck, shape or cinch themselves into something else), I do think they get wedged into other roles that can feel if not as dangerous certainly stultifying.

I feel an urgency for both my kids. This stuff is pretty easy when they’re little but as the teen years loom, I can sense how much trickier it gets to be. But the movie made me feel hopeful. I feel like there’s a lot we can do as parents if we keep our eyes (and our minds) open.