What my Mom wanted for Mother's Day

Dear Mom,

Here's the letter that you asked for. You know what they say about being careful what you ask for....

I called the city yesterday to make sure that our property taxes had been paid out of our escrow account. Does that make me a grown up?

I am thinking of taking a second job so that I can put more money into our savings and my IRA account. Does that make me a grown up?

I listened to my actresses talk about how none of them see marriage as an exciting goal, and I thought, Thank God I’m not that young anymore. Does that make me a grown up?

Every day, my priorities are becoming more refined. The more time I spend away from Adam and our house, the more I feel that I am being cheated out of something. Perhaps it’s simply because this current production has been unrewarding. Perhaps it’s because we haven’t made the desired progress on house projects. Perhaps I’m just tired. Or perhaps it’s because my real priority all along, my whole life, was home making.

Whatever the reason, the decision has been made: I’m officially taking a break from theatre. Three shows last year, and two already this year, have added up to even less patience than I normally have, mostly because the two directors I’ve worked for this year have been less than inspiring. Partly, too, because I finally have a job which I’d like to put more energy into, and feel is personally rewarding. Summer promises to a time when I can really develop some projects at work and at home, and that is what keeps me optimistic right now. I want time to clean the house and the garage. I want time to have a yard sale. I want time to plan yard improvements for next year. I want time to fix the bathroom tile, and time to repair the mudroom roof. And when that starts sounding more exciting than rehearsing a play, it’s time to take a break from the theatre.

That break might be a long one. With my mind turning more and more to home and family, I am feeling impatient to do house projects and improvements. I have been thinking of adding perennial flower beds against the front fence line. I think that we could have a lovely bunch of color there, which would be pretty and welcoming and would keep the grass from growing up through the fence. On the south fence line, I’d like to plant some easy generic little bushes. I’d like to cut the tree down and transplant those tiger lilies to the northwest corner, which is ugly and bare right now. That tree does nothing but aggravate me. It drops little seedy pods, it isn’t pretty, and it’s a poor excuse for a shade tree. I haven’t decided what should go there instead—we’ve even talked about putting in a rain garden and routing all of our gutters into it. Or we might simply plant a little pine tree. I had the thought that a lilac bush might be nice, too. We’ll have to see about that later. Adam wants to buy a little outdoor fireplace of some kind. I figure we could just cut the tree up and use it as firewood. I also have plans to make us a little doggy doody septic tank. We’ll be using an old waste basket and creating a top for it from some scrap plywood. I have hopes that this will inspire more doody picking up.

The garage and the basement are both in need of a good clearing out already, and we’ve only lived here 9 months. I think that part of the problem was that we weren’t sure exactly where we were going to store things, and where we wanted to leave space. It’s also hard to keep things exactly organized since the garage isn’t attached. Things like hand tools tend to wander back and forth with little rhyme or reason, and end up on the basement stairs for 3 months. It’s pretty sad when the first place you look for a screwdriver is on the basement stairs! Hopefully, too, I’ll be able to put together some yard sale fun, and we’ll get rid of some of the stuff that has been hanging around since our apartment days. Then some shelves in the basement need to go away, and then we’ll be able to use the Bowflex without kicking the dryer. (It will be good to start using the Bowflex again—I’m feeling a little wussy these days.)

Work at the museum continues to be interesting and challenging. We are about to lose one of our hourly part-time employees to his semester of student teaching, so that will make some small changes. Summer is the slow time here, with school out, so my goal is to redo our retail cases, and develop new tours around some of the other MN state standards. I’m going to try to write some economics lessons, and some geography lessons. The retail promises to be less fun, but it’s slowly coming under control. This was the first week that all of our inventory counting matched with no fudging. I’ve started taking inventory every week, so that it’s easier to reconcile. For a few months it was “garbage in, garbage out,” as we moved from no rigor at all to whatever discipline I can bring in. It’s rather a shame that Historical Services as a department doesn’t have a more standardized way of dealing with retail and inventory, but we’re working on it. My boss, Megan, tends to be supportive of my initiatives, which is a welcome change from the corporate strangulation at Ameriprise. It’s been pleasant to come to a job where I can make a noticeable difference every single day, even if it’s just writing the weekly sales report. So far today, I’ve exchanged a small flour sack for a large one, called to confirm tour requirements for a group next week, put together the materials to get mailed to the folks who volunteered for History Day 2006, complained (again) about Kinko’s, continued to read a book that I'm supposed to write a study guide for, and reviewed a memo from Megan on visitor interaction. Guess what’s not on that list: data entry.

I have to find the information to roll over my 401k from Ameriprise into my 401k here. Does that make me a grown up?

Someone asked what makes you a grown up, and I can’t get it out of my head. My answer at the time was that I feel like a grown up when I realize how much growing I have yet to do. I counsel others to patience more often than I succeed in being patient myself, and when I realize that this show will take me away from everything else important to me until June, I am more than a little irritated with my choice. Which is one reason why I didn’t want to write this letter last week. So, there it is. A stream of conciousness from me to you, with lots of love included.