"It's Not Rocket Science"

I get such a kick out of that phrase. Someone said it to me the other day and it made me smile.

You see, I was raised by a rocket scientist. My dad, a mechanical engineer, worked for a NASA contractor. He was the project manager and part of the team which designed one of the Apollo engines.

Whenever I hear that phrase I think, ". . . rocket science isn't such a big deal." It's not that my dad isn't smart. He is. But he always made me feel I was just as smart as he was. It's kind of one of the neatest things about my dad. And my dad didn't think he was the smartest man. There were always others (electrical engineers as a group, for instance) who he thought were smarter.

His humility about his own intelligence is one of the nicest things about my dad. His intellectual curiosity and kindness are what make him one of the smarted men I know.

Why Do I Do These Things?

I do my kids' taxes cuz a) I'm a nice mom. b) I'm nuts. c) I'm a control freak. d) I can't say no. e) all of the above.

I hate tax forms. They make me hyperventilate. I swore I would not do my son's again. He even asked me to ask our tax account to do his, but I dithered, didn't ask her til I thought it was too late, worried it would cost him a lot (she charges us an arm & a leg, but we think it's worth it), so here I am doing his taxes again.

They are done. His were pretty easy and my daughter's were form 1040EZ simple. The state forms aren't too bad and all this is just a rationalization for the reality that I should have my head examined.

Tomorrow I am spending the day in the city. My daughter is being inducted into her college's honor society. (Top 10% of seniors are invited). I will be attending, but this is another one of those multiple-guess answers (see options above), cuz she's not even going. She doesn't want to miss class, doesn't like fusses made over her, who knows why.

Part of my day tomorrow is not multiple choice. It's cuz I want to! I'm going to see The Runaways. I have long been a Joan Jett fan and who doesn't like a little kick-ass female rock & roll? Nobody I want to talk to tomorrow!

Happy Easter

If the kids were here, we would have had an Easter Egg Hunt. The last one was when our son was in 10th or 11th grade. He was new in school and I'm not sure his friends had ever met anyone as nutty as his mom -- planning an egg hunt for 16 year olds! We all had a blast.

As it was, my husband and I spent today like most other Sundays: church, lunch out, browsing at our fav bookstore (he gets coffee, I read magazines) and a leisurely drive home on the scenic route.

When we returned home one of B's friends had sent him a link to Peeps dioramas. Ya gotta check it out. We were in hysterics. Having read a lot of books to my kids, I was delighted to see their favorites featured: "Where The Wild Peeps Are" And "Goodnight Peep." We laughed and laughed and I had to share it. What will you make with Peeps next year?

Enjoy!!!

Passion

I tie myself in knots because I think I should be passionate about something productive. It's an attitude handed down by my engineer father and probably one I have handed down to my kids.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language gives "boundless enthusiasm" as one of the definitions of Passion.

I was thinking, as I was driving, that maybe I have lost a sense of passion, at least the kind that translates into doing something. The kind I remember having in college when we protested about everything -- the Viet Nam war, women's rights, relevancy in classes. We were a passionate generation, everything mattered. Maybe it was being 19, maybe it was the times. Maybe it was having the enormous freedom to go to college and not work full time. Whatever it was, my youth was not wasted on the young! And somehow those passions seemed productive. We were "doing" something -- ending a war, allowing women to keep their own names, reading Malcolm X and Eldridge Cleaver!

But these days I don't seem to have a passion for running a business or making art -- both things I say I would like to do. Those are productive things. But they are not the things that get me going each morning.

My boundless enthusiasm is the same as it was when I was eight years old. Reading and stories! I love stories, whether a novel, non-fiction work, or movie; any thing that sparks my interest and allows me to put myself into a place or learn about interesting characters. I really love to read. And finish a couple books each week. When my daughter was in kindergarten, the teacher asked her what I did. She replied, "My mom reads books." The teacher, who knew me, said, "Oh, is she a librarian?" My daughter answered yes, which I am. But the truth is, "My mom reads books," is probably the truest thing she could have said about me.

I don't read for a living (tho I did love that Robert Redford's character in Three Days of the Condor actually did get paid by a spy agency to read). I don't have a library job, by choice. So some days, like today, I feel just a bit stuck that the thing I do well, and a lot isn't a job or career and takes up a lot of time I think I should be doing something else.

I wish I had a good conclusion to this post. But that's all I've got. I just wanted to write it out.