Driving Circles

Today I spent three hours driving children to and from various places when suddenly I realized I was just driving in a  bigger and bigger circle, getting further and further away from home. Every day the driving circle seems to expand, which really is counter productive since all the things I need to be doing, like making dinner and folding laundry and taking a nap, are at home. Even though Jane is old enough to have her license she doesn't (I'm sure my revealing this completely unrevealing fact is going to get me in trouble with Jane. Hi, Jane!), so I'm still the person left to drive the kids most places and I almost always say yes to taking them wherever they need/want to be. I was talking about this today with a friend. We are yes parents. Our kids appreciate this about us. I don't mean saying yes to them smoking crack, although given time I suppose I would back down on that one too, but yes to all the things I don't want them to miss out on, which hopefully will never ever include smoking crack.

I have my sister to thank for much of this. She has kids a few years older than mine and I would call her when her two oldest were in high school and she would mention in passing that she had spent approximately twenty two hours in the car that day. I wondered when she slept but she seemed happy enough so I left it alone. I would think, oh I guess this is normal; when you're a mom of teens who don't drive yet you take them everywhere. Having younger children does require plenty of driving time as well, but something about the teen years ramps everything up ( and not just the time spent driving). Anyhow, my sister did all of this driving stuff and she didn't make a stink out of it so I thought, hmm, she seems as though she likes being a parent, maybe I should like being a parent too. But her kids were older and so I decided to wait on liking being a parent until my kids were older too.

The time has come. My children are older now and I like being a parent, but the truth is as much as I'm enjoying it I really feel I can no longer write about it because teens require privacy. That's unfortunate as some of things I could discuss are wildly entertaining, although not nearly as entertaining as the expanding driving circles you all had the pleasure of reading about just now. This is what it's come down to - me making up ridiculous things to talk about because I can't talk too much about the real things.

So anyway, your kids will get older and with each year the driving circle will get bigger and if you are lucky like me and live in Central Florida than you can't complain too much because you have limited space with which to expand the circle. If you live someplace like Nebraska there's a good chance you'll spend  years and years expanding your driving circle until your husband calls you one day and asks if you are ever returning home, because the laundry is piling up. By then you'll be in Canada and you can tell him, dear, this is why you should have learned to do laundry years ago - don't you remember when I told you that wise woman from Florida warned us about the expanding driving circle?

Don't fret. I still have a child and a dog who have no idea how to get on my blog so I can write about them all I want. And if I beg and plead I may even convince the older kids to let me tell you a few amusing things about them too. Otherwise this here blog doesn't stand a chance. It would be nice if I was interesting enough that I could write about myself, but the truth is, it's not really fun to reveal things about yourself when you can reveal them about others.