Mixed Emotions

Autumn (or Fall as I prefer to call it) has always been my favourite time of the year.

The change in the colour of the leaves. The bright sunshine with a break from the stifling heat of summer. What's not to like?

The first few years after the girls started school, I found that I was happy to come back come September. Enough of their bickering and fighting. And demanding to be entertained. Time to put some structure and routine back in their lives. And mine.

But as they grew older (and as I accumulated more experience with the very "special" parent/school interaction inherent in having a child or two in school with special needs), I started to see it a different way. Having them over the summer really wasn't that bad.

'No more school, no more books, no more teachers' dirty looks' took on a whole new meaning. After all, let's not forget ... no more meetings, no more phone calls and communication scribblers, no more crying over homework...

And no more 3,000 extracurricular activities to eat up your evenings. There are many times I would swear that that Christmas and summer holidays were only created so parents would not go completely off the deep end. To give us that much-needed break to catch our collectives breath.

So it is that this year, I look upon the season with mixed emotions.

I know that New Year's Day is suppose to be that time of taking stock and making resolutions. Somehow that has never much worked for me. For the past 11 years my calendar has revolved around the school year. It ends in June. And starts again in September.

And this year, it feels tinged with sadness. Although I am not entirely sure why.

I blinked. And missed summer. I think I was so focused on our trip out West last month, alternately waiting for and dreading the time and trying to get all done that needed to be before we went, that for me, summer started with that trip. And, apparently, ended shortly thereafter.

Another winter is coming. That I could live without. Sucks it does.

Then again (and perhaps what is really bothering me), there remains the matter of my work. Work, I have. Just not the kind of work I want. And yet if only it were as "simple" as going out and finding the job I want. I need to "create" the job I want, you see, not just find it.

When Mom was so sick last year, I knew she really needed me. In truth, I was pretty well running full-out. And yet, true as that was, it also gave me a ready made excuse to not do anything about my work situation. After all, Mom needed me. I had no time to go job-hunting, let alone job-creating. That would wait for 'later'.

Guess what? 'Later' has arrived. And so far, I haven't done much of anything in that regard. Yeah, me thinks that might just account for a significant amount of my melancholy at the moment.

That and the fact that back to school means that we will very soon be back to the school grind.

It couldn't be that I am just getting older. Nah, couldn't be that at all.