Lazy weekend
I had all sorts of good intentions about this weekend, mostly involving cleaning up the yard and the house. But the heat and humidity has sapped away all of my forward momentum, and I don't think I'm going to do any of it. I've really had difficulty the past couple days. We don't have central air, and Rob hasn't put the window air conditioner into our bedroom window yet. I'm having difficulty breathing, and I get dizzy standing up. I had real trouble standing up for the hymns in church today. There is a pollution/ozone warning in Minneapolis right now, so maybe that's it. It's truly inhuman in Fiona's room (my old office), the hottest room in the house. Rob and I have decided to get her a window air conditioner. Fiona's been having trouble sleeping, and her appetite has all but disappeared. Which is not good, as her appetite is small anyway.
I've had some wonderful talks with Fiona over the past couple of days. We went to a coffee shop to escape the heat for a couple house and talked, and then came home and talked some more. She really has grown up enormously in the past year and discovered a lot of things about herself. We've talked about all sorts of things: money, her plan of study at school, her hopes to take a semester abroad, ideas for majors, fanfiction, alcohol use among her peers, writing and anxiety, her friendships, our family dynamics, politics, personal ethics, self discovery, her memories of growing up, and our family traditions she wants to carry on to her own family some day, and more. I'm so very proud of her. She's quite worried about the future (starting with the immediate future, as in, OMG, will I find a job this summer??) I'm trying to be as sympathetic as I can without increasing her stress by pressuring her; that would be absolutely unhelpful. But she's suffering a lot of anxiety about student debt, and I can't blame her. God, it would terrify me, too. I wish I could do more to help; I wish we had saved more for college. But we really couldn't do any more than we did. I still feel damn guilty, though. I've been sending her links to some of the Occupy Student movement, which is doing a lot of political work on student debt. I've been checking in with her regarding how she's handling the transition home. She says that we've drawn a good balance on treating her more like an adult (some of her friends are actually jealous, as they've had rougher transitions going home for the summer); I've said she's made it easy because she really is a good kid about checking in, keeping up apprised of her plans. She's been suffering friend withdrawal.
Delia is doing pretty well at the moment. School's out for the summer, and she has a week before she starts her summer job. She went out garage saling with the new boyfriend of the moment yesterday, and then spent some time at the local lake beach. She had a new friend sleep over last night that she met at this local teenage program she's just got involved with, Treehouse. They cut and dyed her hair last night. The cut is a sort of artsy angled cut (a little ragged since her friend did it, but she's pleased with it). She chose not a wild color, as I would have assumed she would, but a sort of chestnut brown, quite like my hair color actually. I approve. I figure that Delia's essential inner restlessness will drive her to experiment with a lot of different identities, and as an experiment, hair dye is a pretty mild one! (There was one unfortunate incident: a streak of dye that landed on some wood paneling in the bathroom which they didn't spot it and clean it up quickly before it set. Oh well. It's been our house for twenty years, and of course there is going to be occasional collateral damage.)
This entry was originally posted at http://pegkerr.dreamwidth.org/1604449.html. There are
comments on the post.
I've had some wonderful talks with Fiona over the past couple of days. We went to a coffee shop to escape the heat for a couple house and talked, and then came home and talked some more. She really has grown up enormously in the past year and discovered a lot of things about herself. We've talked about all sorts of things: money, her plan of study at school, her hopes to take a semester abroad, ideas for majors, fanfiction, alcohol use among her peers, writing and anxiety, her friendships, our family dynamics, politics, personal ethics, self discovery, her memories of growing up, and our family traditions she wants to carry on to her own family some day, and more. I'm so very proud of her. She's quite worried about the future (starting with the immediate future, as in, OMG, will I find a job this summer??) I'm trying to be as sympathetic as I can without increasing her stress by pressuring her; that would be absolutely unhelpful. But she's suffering a lot of anxiety about student debt, and I can't blame her. God, it would terrify me, too. I wish I could do more to help; I wish we had saved more for college. But we really couldn't do any more than we did. I still feel damn guilty, though. I've been sending her links to some of the Occupy Student movement, which is doing a lot of political work on student debt. I've been checking in with her regarding how she's handling the transition home. She says that we've drawn a good balance on treating her more like an adult (some of her friends are actually jealous, as they've had rougher transitions going home for the summer); I've said she's made it easy because she really is a good kid about checking in, keeping up apprised of her plans. She's been suffering friend withdrawal.
Delia is doing pretty well at the moment. School's out for the summer, and she has a week before she starts her summer job. She went out garage saling with the new boyfriend of the moment yesterday, and then spent some time at the local lake beach. She had a new friend sleep over last night that she met at this local teenage program she's just got involved with, Treehouse. They cut and dyed her hair last night. The cut is a sort of artsy angled cut (a little ragged since her friend did it, but she's pleased with it). She chose not a wild color, as I would have assumed she would, but a sort of chestnut brown, quite like my hair color actually. I approve. I figure that Delia's essential inner restlessness will drive her to experiment with a lot of different identities, and as an experiment, hair dye is a pretty mild one! (There was one unfortunate incident: a streak of dye that landed on some wood paneling in the bathroom which they didn't spot it and clean it up quickly before it set. Oh well. It's been our house for twenty years, and of course there is going to be occasional collateral damage.)
This entry was originally posted at http://pegkerr.dreamwidth.org/1604449.html. There are
comments on the post.