college orientation: a slight rant

Just got home from attending a college orientation. Without going into personal detail, let me just say this: it sucked.

When did college orientation turn into such canned, fun and games on social media programming? When did it become okay to actively circumvent engaged parents and family? Where are the academics in academia?

How about this:

Model genuine sensitivity and diversity awareness. Ditch the canned check-boxing of "issues" and pushing students to overshare. Just treat the students with respect and model sensitivity. There's a fair amount of research that this works best.

Talk to parents about remaining engaged and supportive as their young people launch into the larger world. I can't believe what was said about pushing kids out and forcing them to solve their own problems. 18-year olds all the way up to 22-year olds need our guidance. They need our support. Administration: how about looking up the rate of suicides among college students? Look at sexual violence on campuses. Look at success among students whose families remain involved. If you ask me, it's the university administrators who need to get kicked out of the house. 

Where did academics go in all this? University level study is not about scavenger hunts and posting "selfies" on Facebook. Bring back time with professors and useful how-to information about campus resources and library resources and research. Forget social media. 

For that matter, just forget the cutesy names for everything. Drop the marketing 101 stuff someone learned in some stupid workshop and took seriously. Substance, not silly names.

Skip the canned team-building exercises that involve making strangers touch each other. If you're serious about diversity awareness and sensitivity, you know that this kind of stuff needs to be prefaced with some talk about the fact that it's optional and that it's perfectly okay to opt out. Better yet: just don't do it. You risk triggering the 1 out of 3-4 who have been sexually abused. What about students with small personal space bubbles? Having students write and paint and create and not having to share every personal thought with one another is equally powerful. And no one gets put on the spot. 

If you're in the business of teaching college students you need to not only be serious, but have actual knowledge and expertise in managing their behaviors and issues.

Asking students to share their sexual orientations and gender/pronoun preferences as a rote exercise? Too much information. Invite sharing. Don't require it. 

Instead of talking about campus safety, how about actually facilitating it? Puttting orientation students in the most remote dorm with no staffing during optional evening social activities on the other side of campus? Ridiculous.

Get rid of stalkerish staff people. I am not kidding. Especially when they're directors of things. 

Back to regularly scheduled blog posts on Tuesday, I swear. 

my new list of "things to do"

Somehow the list didn't show up, so here it is:

1. Do one thing at a time.

2. Do it slowly and deliberately.

3. Do it completely.

4. Do less.

5. Put space between things.

6. Develop rituals.

7. Designate time for certain things.

8. Devote time to sitting.

9. Smile and serve others.

10. Make cleaning and cooking become meditation.

11. Think about what is necessary.

12. Live simply.

This came from Sara Walpert Foster's blog and I wanted to share it here because I love it so much. She found it someplace else so I'm not sure who to credit for the list and the artwork. Thank you! to the person who made this image! Go check out Sara's blog to read more. I only read the one post so far but am looking forward to digging in over there.

I'm so overwhelmed with things to do right now. Most of them are good things, or there to be done for good reasons, so I'm not complaining. But the sheer number makes me seize up when I think about the list, which is broken down into smaller lists in an effort to reduce my stress.

I've been telling myself that I really only have to do one thing. The next thing. And I can do it slowly, carefully, completely. I can immerse myself in that one thing. I can let all the rest go.

It works.

Today I had a long list of errands in town, on this, the hottest day of this year thus far. My daughter and I went together and did them, and we lingered. We meandered. We did not rush or fret. By the time I got to the Habitat Restore I was feeling the rhythm of the one next thing. Inside I found a big Ziploc bag full of Michael Lloyd flatware. It's not exactly like the wedding flatware (my husband and I just celebrated our 21st wedding anniversary) but it's in the same family and I loved it. There wasn't a price on the bag so I took it to the register and the volunteer said "Is $2.00 too much?" With today's 20% off that came to $1.72 for about 40 pieces. I think going slowly might just have its own magic.

We made a list this morning of barn chores and we took turns doing a few every hour or so. Amazing how much easier the day was when all I had to do was go out and do the next thing and maybe the next and then come in for a glass of water and some cool air. The barn was a mess by the end of the day. Keeping the herd hydrated and comfortable was the priority. Going slowly made it so much easier. 

Notice that one thing on the list above.

Do less.

That's my new mantra until this heat breaks. 

summer barn routine

With temps this weekend going into the mid-90s and then up to 97 by mid-week, I'm into the full-bore summer barn routine. 

I'm  always pretty meticulous about the water tubs and troughs but I notch that up during summer heat. I don't want any of them having any excuse not to drink! Keil Bay notches this up from his end too - he uses the troughs to self-cool by sticking a hoof in and splashing wildly. His herd gathers around him, soaking up the cool water while he splashes.

The millipedes this time of year also make daily water trough cleaning a must. 

I try to get the waters done first and then move on to making sure the barn is closed up on the sunny side, that stalls and aisles and back covered area are tidy, and then it's on to tick checks.

We're finding fewer ticks at this point than we did in May, and even at the worst this has been a pretty light year in that regard, thankfully.

Every few days I put tea tree gel in horses' armpits and groin areas and along the mid-line of their bellies. Then I massage it in, hose them off, and all the itchy parts are soothed. It seems they get less ticks and less gnats when I do this, so while it takes extra time, it's worth it.

They all get a quick brushing and fly spray, and this week the fly masks came out of their bin. 

They come in and hang out in the barn with hay and fans usually from 10-11 a.m. until 7 p.m. - that's when the biting flies go to bed. And with this herd of easy keepers, it keeps them off the grass during the peak sugar time!

I try to do de-webbing inside the barn a little bit each day. I mix a bucket of Dr. Bronner's peppermint soap and water and go around the stalls with a micro-fiber mop head that fits the telescoping light bulb changer. The metal stall guards and ledges I do with a cloth by hand. It smells heavenly. 

By the time I get back inside, it's time for a shower and lunch! And it looks like we'll be entering 2-shower days with this heat wave. On days when it goes above 90 I go out in the afternoon and offer cold hosing. For horses, pony, and ME. :)

mini retreat

At a friend's lovely apartment for a weekend writing retreat where we are working on book three in the Little Shoppe of Colors series. We spent this morning on the beach and the combination of surf and sand makes me feel like I just had a massage. Good friend, good food, good writing, good location. 

Can't wait to get this book out there. It's going to be good. 

motherhood and time travel

For the past few weeks I've been shopping thrift stores and keeping my eyes open for things my son might need. A rising junior in college, he's officially moved into his first apartment. I spotted a set of Denby dinnerware at the local Habitat store, thought of buying it outright, then pulled back and decided to check in with him before I made the purchase. Days passed, the set remained, and finally I got photos and messaged him, then ran an errand across town while waiting to hear back.

Yes, he texted, get the set. So I headed back to Habitat, not 20 minutes later, and found it had just been purchased and taken away!

At week's end I made another thrift store run. A truckload of bedroom furniture was going his way on Saturday so I had one last day to shop. He had asked me previously to find a blender and I'd broken the news to him that I had never seen a blender in all my years of thrift-store perusing. On Friday I walked into the PTA thrift store and as I walked down the home aisle, spotted not only a blender, but a Waring blender, that was definitely old but looked like it had never been used. It was $4. and when I plugged it in, it worked!

My 25-year old Waring blender wasn't a thrift store find, but it was a steal. I was living in Hollywood and working as the in-house proofreader for a Beverly Hills court reporting firm when I got a call (not on my cell phone because there was no such thing at that time!) from my best friend. Someone was at William-Sonoma and there was a crazy sale on Waring blenders. They had over-ordered and were clearing them out. I had a choice of colors or classic chrome. I chose the chrome. We made every kind of frozen cocktail imaginable over the next month or two and that blender is still used on a weekly basis in my kitchen. 

I messaged my son that I had found a blender and several very nice pieces of cookware and headed over to Habitat. 

There was a lovely set of Franciscan dinnerware marked to half-price. I called son, told him to watch for photos, and he quickly approved the purchase. It took two boxes and a lot of paper to hold all those dishes, bowls, cups, and extras!

I picked up more cookware and called it a day.

All my excitement faded on Saturday morning as I helped my husband load the truck. The dresser in my son's room was going, and as I removed the drawers I burst into tears. This was the same dresser I had found in a thrift store the year he was born, as I was setting up the nursery. It was the dresser I stood in front of 20 years ago and folded onesies and other tiny pieces of clothing into the same drawers. It seemed unimaginable that the dresser was going now to a 20-year old's first apartment.

Surely, I thought, this is some kind of Dr. Who episode, and I am in a parallel universe seeing the future.  The dresser must be still in that nursery, filled with onesies and cloth diapers. 

Motherhood is its own form of time travel. We go forward and back in our minds on a dailly basis, remembering our own childhood memories, those with our children, through the years forward and back again. It can be bittersweet and sometimes sad, but it's also a gift that brings joy.

If we're women who love horses we remember our first rides, the names of the ponies, the names of the horses, not only for ourselves but for our children as well. There is a place somewhere, a magical barn, where all those equines live, and if you're like me you walk down that barn aisle from time to time and visit.

I have a daughter who is heading off to college this fall and yesterday while I was out at the barn checking an antsy QH for ticks in the nether regions, with her help, I thought wildly, There is no way I can manage all this without her. My mind spun forward, trying to fathom being here without either of them, son and daughter, and then of course my mind had nowhere else to go but backward, to the time when I was a single woman who didn't yet have children. But there were no horses then either, so I had to travel all the way back to my own girlhood to the summers when I was dropped off at the boarding barn to spend the day taking care of my horse, and riding, and helping out with the other horses. 

More time travel. I could spend entire days traveling the years back and forward and back again.

I think sometimes we focus too much on child development. It's fascinating, I studied it in great detail during my undergraduate and graduate years in college. Somehow we imagine that we grow up and all that development stops and we're fully-formed adults going about our days with nothing to learn. Just things to do.

Clearly as mothers we live it all again, watching and nurturing children through their own early years, then as they launch forth, we have to learn how to let them go, what to do with our own thoughts and feelings, our older selves.

The time travel is part of that. I'm thinking of it as my PhD, this wild cosmic ride through time. 

And as Joni Mitchell sings it, And the seasons, they go round and round, and the painted ponies go up and down...

http://youtu.be/V9VoLCO-d6U