Hi there. Today is October 30, 2023. I am coming back here to June 4, 2021 to try and recreate a little bit, at least, of a post that I had here. I made this post in 2021 after Corey and I were talking at Hyrum's graduation (at Rio Tinto Stadium) about all the things we need to do and how we were kind of failing at a lot of them and how we felt sorry that our kids were not striving academically and it was our fault. It was a pretty good post of me trying to advise myself on what to do, but I found out several months ago (spring 2023 I think) that Wesley got DELETED it, cause he was embarrassed by it. And Wes I don't mean to throw you under the bus by recreating this post, but this was an important part in our story as a family and in your story too. AND it wasn't just about you - our family was dysfunctional on many levels. For example - on this same day, we were trying to figure out why the new lawn mower wasn't working... Abi had been mowing the lawn the week before, it started blowing smoke, we took it back in, the people at Home Depot/Lowe's said it was weird and that they had never had something like that happen before... They allowed Corey to exchange. We take another new lawn mower home, and it starts acting all weird again too! That was when we came to find out, it wasn't the lawn mover. Turns out Abi was putting gas in the gas take AND gas in the oil! Here we are dumping out the gas from the oil onto the driveway (prob not good for the gutter/environment) and teaching her what to do to help a lawnmower function properly, and hoping the lawnmower can be revived.
So Wes, it's not just you, or just Abi, it's all of us together - learning but getting it wrong a lot on the way - It just felt like we were a mess! A pen that Wes got from his counselor summed up what we needed nicely: GET SOME HELP!
So my iphone didn't have the pictures back to 2021, but google photos did, so I was able to find these pictures from that day. So Wes deleted this post originally because was embarrassed (and all this is from rusty memory now...) but I THINK he was embarrassed cause I talked about taking him to school at the end of the year in a last ditch effort to help his very poor grades. His pottery teacher was not sympathetic and didn't let him turn in his assignment late and gave him a lecture. But his history teacher was miraculously there and said Wesley's grade was bad for several reasons, but allowed him to take/retake a test that could help his score.
And for another quiz or something, she offered to let him do it orally with her right then and there, cause anything would get him up to passing. Doing the oral quiz -
You can tell by his posture that he was not feeling like a champ. Wes was embarrassed and crying, but she helped him and he got enough to pass the class. Then we went to see if his math teacher was there and his counsellor. He was just dying inside at his situation in school and how it got to this point. I had been super frustrated before, but found myself feeling compassion for him and trying to comfort him.
Ok, so back to Hyrum's graduation. We went out to eat on Friday night with Hyrum for date night, with Corey's parents, before Hyrum headed back out to Philadelphia.
While we had been at the stadium the night before, talking about our kids and the reasons we seemed to currently be struggling on several levels, and Corey was like "We just need to do it!" Which made me want to scream, cause that was not advice that was going to help me. I wanted to get into some of the specifics and talk about the obstacles and why it was hard and complicated, and Corey was like "just do it" and I was like "HOW?!?! I honestly don't know how..." I recognize there is a lot that we need to do, but I need a PLAN in place, and a system of ORGANIZATION to help me function as I try to do all the things!!! And then I looked around at the stadium that Hyrum's graduation was in. And sure, a manager or owner could say "Just do it - make and run a sports stadium" but there are a million things that go into that! Building it first of all would be huge, and then the maintenance too - you've got lights, painting the field, mowing the field (or is it turf? grass? water?) you've got people to clean the stadium, sweep up, trash to empty, bathrooms, power, security, parking, welcoming teams, banners, the jumbo tron, like there are a hundred big things, and a million little things behind all of those. I felt like it helped me gain evidence for myself that it wasn't just a matter of doing it or not, there really were a lot of things we needed to figure out. And this seems to be a recurring theme for life - just trying to figure out how to do all the things. So just fyi, here I am in October 2023, and still wondering the same thing. We need to hire an experienced stadium manager, or with some help, hopefully I can still become one.
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