Extemporaneous

I have talked to my friends about this… (Exercising and talking with them is so cleansing. My body and my mind feel so refreshed after we get together!) Actually, this was a topic discussed a couple of times this week…

Having it all…is it a career and family? Is it having a clean home? Is it having sex with your spouse AND that he still finds you sexy? Is it having friends? Is it having a hot body? Is it having happy and well behaved kids? Is it having activities that you enjoy and can do frequently? Is it being able to get out of the house? Is it having money? Is it having your family healthy?

I can say that except for the hot body, each these questions applies to me (although my husband will tell you my body is hot – but FYI, it is so not hot). So, do I have it all? Is there something I am missing?

I love my friends – for most of them, we became friends while at work. We are of similar age, our kids are of the same age and then we found that we can do things – like go out to dinner, or exercise, or hang out and that is great. There are other people that I work with, but they are not in the same boat as I with family and such, so we don’t seem to do much. I have other friends that I made because of hobbies – specifically – my scrapping buddies. We talk about such interesting things that I get so many good ideas and good advice from being with them. I just hope that they feel the same way about me.

There is one area in my life that I would like to see myself have more friends, in the community where I live. I live in Kohler. It is a “garden community” as I saw on a Kohler Village employee’s business card. It was designed to look a certain way. The Village of Kohler was incorporated in 1912 and developed by Walter J. Kohler. Frederick Law Olmsted was the designer of the community (he also is known for designing Central Park in New York. You can find more information and links about Kohler at the following link. http://www.kohlervillage.org/VillageHistory.html Now about Kohler – it is so beautiful to live here. I have friends in surrounding communities and they all have this perception about people who live in Kohler. They and I have heard the rumors like “there is an ordinance that you must cut your lawn each week so that the grass is never taller than 5 inches” or “you have to approve with the village any color changes to the exterior of your home” or even “all the moms are stay-at-home moms”. All this is NOT true. However, I will admit that people are very proud of their yards and DO take great care of them. I mean, if you saw the American Club lawn or the greens and fairways of the golf courses in the area – you’d feel a little pressure to make sure it looks good as well.

Anyway, I am going off on a tangent. I have had difficulty finding friends here. First, our street does not have many young families on it. Secondarily, I work (which proves that all moms in Kohler are not stay-at-home moms). However, I do have summers off. I still find it difficult to meet other moms. Many of the ones I see at the parks or the pool have their friends they are with all year, not just summers. So whose fault is it? Is it me being too shy to go up to someone? Why don’t these moms invite me/my kids to a play date or a card game or something? What I am beginning to see and feel is segregation between working and stay-at-home moms. This was made even more evident with a recent lunch I had with a former co-worker turned stay-at-home mom. I will admit that the friendship has not changed because of the change in her work status. She has, since we became friends, moved out of state, then moved back to the state, worked at a school 45+ minutes from her home and now just recently quit her job and moved (now more than an hour away from me). Past summers she made (and so did I) very good efforts for us to get together with or without our kids. This summer – I arranged a get together, but I have not felt the same efforts on her part. My mind begins to race and suddenly I jump to the working mom vs. stay-at-home mom. Are friendships between the clans difficult because of how each perceives how the other views them?

In the beginning...

We all have to start somewhere - sometime - somehow. Today is my day to begin. I chose this blog site because this is the one I learned about while taking a class on reading comprehension so I am more familiar here than some other place.

Now for the "why" of it all. I am a working mom and wife. What is so completely awesome about my job is that I teach. I chose a profession where my talents would be best utilized, where my day to day was never routine and when I work, my schedule would mirror the family I would hope to have someday. The career came before marriage and family. I met the awesome man that is my husband my first year teaching. We married three years later and it was just the two of us. It was that way for only two years when our family grew and our "girl-child" was born. We like to call her that because another two years later when our family grew again, we then had a "boy-child". So, with our girl-child and our boy-child my husband was completely happy and begged for us to stop with making of children (however, the art of practicing still occurs).

This brings me to where I am today. I've been teaching for 16 years. Our two kids are in school full time. My husband owns his own business and we both support each other with our chosen career paths. We both try our best to be actively involved with what our kids do - we try to make sure they are happy, have lots of friends, laugh, learn and just generally become "good people". So why do I have a title of "trying to have it all"?

As I write about myself, my family and my friends, I hope to decipher if that is the case in my life. Am I working for an unattainable goal? What is the "all" that I speak of?