When Mom Goes on Strike

This is not my first strike.

When my almost-20-year-old was young, I went on my first Mom Strike. At the time, I was a stay-at-home Mom with one 5-year-old son. One morning at breakfast, he apparently thought I was moving a little slowly.

"Mom, what's taking the eggs so long?"

"They have to cook."

"When Popo [his grandmother] makes eggs it doesn't take so long."

Strike one.

School Daze (The Exciting Conclusion...)

Notice this starts with Fourth Truth. Truths One, Two, and Three are covered 

in School Daze (Part 1). Please read it now. We will wait.

[insert humming and drumming fingers]

You're back? Great! Let's move on.

Fourth Truth: We found an option that would allow us to fix these problems. But God would have to show up in a big way.

The small, private, Christian school that both boys attended in the suburbs has a sister school on the other side of Atlanta. The principal there was the lower-elementary principal at their old school, so I reached out to her in desperation. I had spent countless hours researching options and many sleepless nights worrying over my boys' schooling. Their struggles were different, but they both had social and academic issues to address. 

She invited us to visit her school, and it felt like old home week. A familiar face greeted us. The small classes of students were well-behaved — even when the teacher walked out of the room. They were reading good books and discussing the French Revolution and — *gasp* — they talked about and loved Jesus openly. In some ways it felt like slipping into a favorite sweater after two years of scratchy sackcloth. I sat in her office and cried.

The boys visited and loved it. They begged to go. They hounded us every day to get their applications in. They were interviewed. They took placement tests. The only thing standing between them and admission is the parent interview, scheduled for today.

Oh, yes. And money.

School Daze (Part 1)

Ask me sometime what keeps me up at night when I think about our life in Avoid.

You'd probably expect me to say the unnerving frequency of the sound of gunfire.
Or the numbers of robberies in the neighborhood.
Or the prostitutes on the corner.
Or the trap houses a few blocks away.

But you'd be wrong.

What keeps me up at night is a question.

Where in the heck are my kids going to go to school?

Putting My Toes in the Water ... Again

I hate cold water.

And I don't just mean frigid water. I classify anything you wouldn't take a bath in as cold. Over Memorial Day weekend, we went to the Waterski Masters tournament at Callaway Gardens which takes place on Robin Lake. It's a great, fun time because you can get in the lake and watch the skiiers go by. How cool is that? Very cool. Very ... cold, actually.

Scores of people were happily frolicking in the water, yet I sat on the sand in my lawn chair, warm and dry. Until the kids had enough and resorted to shaming.

Dad, will you get in with us? You know Mom won't.

OK. FINE. I'll get in.

An inch at a time.

One stinking, frigid inch at a time.