I'm Not Dead Yet!

In the words of Monty Python - "I'm not dead yet!"  I thought I was.  I felt like giving up on my blog and clearly I did give up.  It was a trend of early 2000s that I got sucked into.  All the other stay at home moms were doing it and I felt like I was part of a tribe or subculture.  We posted our thoughts, we read each other's thoughts and cheered each other on.

It became a sort of public version of a very cathartic journal.  All be it a journal you weren't so free with your thought in and definitely edited out the crap.  Maybe the crap shouldn't be edited out but then again, when venting on the petty stuff in life - when you read it later, when your hot head has cooled down - you realize how nice your life is if your worst problem is the curmudgeon coworker.

Will I be starting this little blog up again.  Yes, I think I will.

Painting by Jennifer Golden (September 2017)

I looked through my past posts and see all these memories, my thoughts at that moment...things I had forgotten and they are all nice (If not sometimes sour) memories.  2012...wow the last post was 2012.  Well, welcome to 5 years later - 2017.

During these past 5 years I worked for the CEO at PBS headquarters in Arlington, VA.  My last day there was October 2016 and I've spend the past  year working on my art.  I haven't produced as much as I thought I
would in that time but then again, I really had a blast taking advantage of the free time to be with family.  There's also the art I created and trashed - probably more trashed than kept and shown.  All the art is over at www.jennifergoldenart.com 

Author's sons ages 10 & 8

The boys, of course, have kept growing and are now ages 10 and 8.  We've moved from Washington, DC to the "suburbs" just over the DC border in Bethesda, MD.  I put suburbs in quotes because the roads and noise outside our house are just as bustling and noisy as they were in DC if not more so!
These boys amaze me every day and though sometimes it's tough it's mostly all good!  My husband and I had sworn we would raise our kids ourselves.  To which you'd shake your head and say "Of course you would".  What I mean is we swore there would be no nannies, no caregivers that took on the role of parent (ie. attended the games, matches, and events in our kids lives).  No nanny to pick them up from school or help them with their homework.  We wanted to be their parents.  THIS has been an incredible challenge.  We both work, my husband has a great, but very demanding job, I work as an assistant for CEOs - ever see the devil wears prada?  OK, OK, my bosses were never that bad but sometimes the jobs were that demanding with long/late hours and travel.  That's a real challenge when you've vowed that you will not have a "stranger" raiser your kids and both you and your husband have conflicting travel schedules.  This is by no means a judgement on those who hire nannies and sitters.  Frankly, if it hadn't been for my mother helping out we never would've gotten this far with our vow!  But she's now in South Carolina, the boys are getting older and my husband and I are advancing in our careers (ie - things are getting tougher on our schedules).  So it's time to start introducing some independence in the boys' lives and it scares the hell out of me.

I could keep going playing catch up and airing my fears and dream but I'm pretty sure this is only interesting to me and my family so I'll stop there.  I'll save up some stories of antics of our lives should they occur, though admittedly - nothing is as funny as the days when the boys were babies and I was sleep deprived and didn't function like a normal human - like this story.  I re-read that one today and laughed remember it all.  At the time ... well at the time I laughed then too because I was so sleep deprived I was a loopy silly mess.

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