Category parenting

Coming Home

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

Not only was it Monday.

But a Monday after a holiday.

During a winter storm.

And I don’t have proper winter shoes.

I’m in a new position at work, one I’ve held for three months, in an area where I have no experience. I’m trying to learn everything I can, but sometimes, or most of the time, I’m at a rodeo holding onto the bull and sometimes I’m getting my teeth knocked out.

I came home today with a pile of file folders in case the weather gets worse.

My teen daughter had painted more of the living room, did a bunch of chores of the variety I know she doesn’t like, and then, knowing my spirits were crushed, she made me dinner.

And asked her father to bring me a bottle of whiskey.

We had Pillsbury cinnamon buns and Jim Beam Honey for dessert.

I felt like it was 1952 and I was coming home from my fancy career. My daughter was my cute little 1950s housewife pouring me a drink.

Of course if I were keeping up with the analogy, we’d need two kids, a picket fence and a dog.

If you know my daughter, you know the thing she wants most in the world is a dog.

She’s so close and yet so far.

The Christmas Season has launched

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

So today has been a rather surreal day, culminating in a unexpectedly joyous moment where my daughter is curled up in my bed beside me reading Ted Morgan’s memoir My Battle of Algiers, a favorite of mine, with the neighbor’s dog at her feet.

Today Easton hosted small business Saturday and my daughter had to work at her very part-time gig downtown. Amid various entertainment, a sale at Book and Puppet Company, and horse-drawn carriage rides, I ran into an old friend.

The Grinch and I toured the downtown. A horse snotted on him. Everyone asked for photos–including my old friend Marishka who tells me every time I see her that I keep getting more beautiful.

After our visit to Easton Public Market, Grinch and I met up with my daughter. We had coffee at Dunkin where several people commented on my “G” Alphabooks journal. A very small child even stole it.

Next, my teen and I went to retrieve her euphonium from the car. She had registered to participate in Tuba Christmas. She had heard about the event in school and as a low brass player (with a mom who loves Christmas carols) how could we resist the chance to play in a band of only euphoniums, baritones, tubas and sousaphones?

Tuba Christmas

The group met for the first time about 90 minutes before the performance. They practiced at the Sigal Museum, filling the entire building with bold horn music.

I ran into another old colleague there who couldn’t quite figure out why I was there, especially since I didn’t have an instrument. Apparently he hadn’t seen my daughter since she was a preschooler.

In many ways, returning to professional life has felt like emerging from hibernation. I have lived in the same house the entire time I worked retail, but it is mind-boggling how I feel like I have been more absent from life than I realized.

Now, how do I say what I want to say next? Ummm… let’s just say the act before Tuba Christmas included “Dominic the Donkey” and his ability to impersonate a donkey was amusing but perhaps not in a good way.

After an hour outside in frigid weather, and seeing an elf on stilts:

The teen and I jacked the heat up in the car and stopped at Dunkin, again. This time for hot drinks.

And that is how I say hello to the holiday season!

Scenes from the paint store

Angel Ackerman 2 Comments

My daughter is taking a non-credit interior design certificate program at the local community college. I think that’s a fun and practical thing for a high schooler to do.

I’ve suggested from the get-go that she keep our house in mind.

A few months ago, I switched the living room and the dining room. It was something I always wanted to do, because the bright space by the windows seemed better for hanging out at the table. And the glare from the windows didn’t impact the television in the middle room.

I finally got rid of our 25 year old wicker furniture on the sun porch (an enclosed room facing south) and put our couch out there. The couch is too big to be in the “new” living room. And since my husband and I split up, I feel my house seems more and more like a 20-year-old’s first apartment.

I’ve been watching various retailers for reasonable furniture and I’m partial to Target.com because with the RedCard I can get free shipping and good deals. I asked my daughter if I could take advantage of the Black Friday online only furniture sale to buy an emerald green Chesterfield love seat.

She said I could ONLY if we painted.

So today we first went to Home Depot, but the store was very crowded and the shoppers were a tad obnoxious. Then we tried the Gleco Paint Store nearby. I start picking all the bold colors. She starts pulling me toward the pastels. I’m not fond of pastels.

She folds all the paint chips so I can’t see the bold colors.

We find a compromise.

She’s right that I shouldn’t put a bold color in that room because it doesn’t get enough light.

I’m excited to see how it looks.

Not so Whole30

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

It’s hard to believe that in two more weeks I will be celebrating my six-month anniversary in my new job in the development office at ProJeCt of Easton.

Three months in, my husband and I separated. Four months in my boss gave notice. Almost five months in, I received a promotion. Last week, I asked my agency to hire an old acquaintance as a temporary event planner. Our signature fundraiser is six weeks away!

This summer I have written four grants, worked on two collaborative grants, and wrote a letter of interest for a grant. I have three more grants due in the next three weeks.

But in the midst of everything, I’ve had some amazing work adventures but I’ve noticed my natural energy and trips to the gym and being replaced by doughnuts and coffee.

It’s also Marching Band Season with my teenager in her third year in low brass. She’s struggling with a hectic schedule, her fitness waning and her old ear infections coming back. She has a raging one now according to the doctor at Patient First.

She has an appointment with her ENT practice on Thursday. I think she needs tubes. She had them about eight years ago. She needs them again.

My daughter and I both love carbohydrates. I have been weight training now for almost six years consistently and the only thing that keeps me from looking like a totally ripped badass is my weakness for sugar.

I consider myself a lazy bodybuilding princess. I don’t have the hard core discipline to work out daily, but I like to lift. I like results. I like to be strong. But I also like to be lazy.

So food plays into that too.

When my daughter was little, I heavily restricted her dairy hoping it would help clear her head of fluid.

Maybe I need to do that again.

My friend Bill Prystauk (of Crash Palace Productions, author of Bloodletting and Punishment) recommended the Whole30 for my daughter.

I can’t stop thinking about it so I bought the book.

But can we do it?

More to come…

Ends and beginnings

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I’ve struggled for quite some time about what to say in this space about my personal life.

For a long time, my husband and I were the couple everyone thought would last forever.

Well, a few years ago, we started facing some challenges. And we tried for three years to work on our relationship.

But, despite the fact that we had a long history and our family, we split.

This past week marked the end of our first month apart.

Reality is still sinking in, still forming.

Her week of vegetarianism

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

My daughter is a lifelong carnivore. Recently, she’s shown an interest in going vegetarian for a week. She wants to see if she can do it.

Of course she can do it.

Especially since I was a vegetarian for eight years before she was born.

We started with lunch today.

I made peanut butter and jelly sandwiches with carrots. Not only vegetarian but vegan, too.

Dinner was a stir-fry. I made a sauce of Chinese cooking wine, low sodium soy sauce, extra virgin olive oil, sesame oil, garlic, ginger, fresh lemon juice and tahini.

I toasted some sesame seeds in my cast iron skillet.

Cooked some potatoes and Brussel sprouts in the sauce and then added grated radish, carrot and cabbage.

Served with saffron rice.

It was tasty. She enjoyed it.

So we’ll see how the week goes.

I’m already meal planning in my head:

  1. Ravioli
  2. Baked beans and corn muffins
  3. Vegetarian burgers
  4. Breakfast for dinner
  5. Scalloped potatoes and vegetable casserole
  6. Falafel
  7. Homemade pizza
  8. Zucchini cakes
  9. Mexican
  10. African chick pea stew
  11. Salad

Better honed ideas when I get to the kitchen.

My compost heap makes me happy

Angel Ackerman 1 Comment

When my teen daughter still attended elementary school, I liked to garden. I have a small yard in an urban setting but it was enough to hold some herbs & a few vegetables.

I noticed quickly that my soil was mostly clay. To rectify this, I started composting.

I turned the area under my deck into my pile of decomposing refuse. I took a plastic coffee can with a lid and collected the compostables from our kitchen.

Now that plastic bucket gets stinky. But nothing a session with the hose can’t rectify.

The soil that this makes is so rich and dark.

It’s satisfying.

But it’s the “turning” that makes me happy. That’s when you periodically dig holes and bury your freshest fruit-and-vegetable bits to the bottom of the pile.

I have my own shovel and I love to dig and rearrange and mix all the different stages of compost.

It makes me happy.

Road trip to Washington DC

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

So, while my daughter was on Spring Break, I experienced something I hadn’t experienced in a long time.

A paid holiday.

A long weekend.

We spent Easter in Washington, DC, with my traveling companion, M. and his Indian housemates.

Washington, DC, is approximately 3.5 hours from my house by car. I say approximately because traffic can fluctuate.

We left at 8ish Friday morning, stopping at our local Target for band-aids, nail polish remover and bagels. We always run into people we know and give lots of hugs so we didn’t get going until 9.

We stopped around 11:30 in York, Pa., to use the gym. We certainly are getting our money’s worth from our Planet Fitness membership.

And then… after a hearty upper body workout and slaying the crunches… there was a Five Guys outside.

We had the man who waited on us cracking up.

Follow me on Instagram for more photos

We arrived in DC at 3.

We hung around the house and had some amazing paneer for dinner. Then we went to Harris Teeter for groceries. This jelly bean addict was offended to see that they only carried Brach’s or Starburst jelly beans. No Just Born?!?!

In the morning, I took our Indian host to the gym in Silver Springs.

In the afternoon, we visited the Frederick Douglass house. That Victorian home is in tact. His books. His desk. His ice box. His dumbbells. His chair. His trunks. His rug beater.

Took my breath away.

Then we went to National Harbor. To the Peep store. Where, even though I am from the Lehigh Valley where Just Born makes my jelly beans and Peeps, I purchased a big batch of candy.

And fed my Indian host his first Peep.

See that here:

https://youtu.be/TgBQ2T4j_Nw

I just met her… but I think Sarah wants me dead

Angel Ackerman Leave a comment

I am currently sitting in the Planet Fitness lounge waiting for my daughter to finish her workout.

Every muscle in my body hurts and I just had a hydro massage so I’m also very relaxed.

How did I get here?

I have been a black card member of Planet Fitness for 4 days. And I have spent a lot of time in the gym since then.

You see, I am on vacation. I am between jobs, my new professional non-profit development and marketing position starts Monday and I worked my last long shift in retail food service last Saturday. I will still keep my Target gig on Saturdays for a while, I’ve got a lot of vacation to use and I do love my “Target family.”

But that is another story.

This is a story about getting my daughter access to the gym she needs, and it turns out maybe the gym I need, too.

We visited and toured Planet Fitness on Tuesday afternoon because their $21.99/month no contract Black Card membership allows my teen to work out with me. Or a friend. Every single time. I joined. Because we have no contract, I really couldn’t lose.

The teen insists all she needs to lose the weight her doctor wants to see her shed is the right gym.

So we played around on Tuesday and signed up for design your own program on Wednesday. Or was it Monday and Tuesday? Sarah, the trainer, customized a program for me, the member, but also one for my daughter, a guest.

We didn’t get through all of it so we returned to finish the next day. The teen seems to be enthusiastic.

Meanwhile, I’ve also been taking two 30 minute classes a day with Sarah, not because I’m a masochistic (though I suppose I am) but because I want to learn as much as I can about this gym while I have the time.

That said, I think Sarah wants me dead. Just kidding. She’s a trainer. She’s supposed to push you hard.

I’ve taken back and triceps, PF 360 strength, core (twice) and the 30-minute circuit. Sadly, she took Thursday off as part of the hiring process for a new job so I wasn’t able to take classes with her Thursday. And she’ll be leaving very soon.

But I’ve noticed as she’s learned what I am capable of, she’s expected more of me. And even though I haven’t done any of her bicep classes, my arms are killing me. And I haven’t done any of her cardio classes, but I sweat until my hair is drenched as soon as she enters the vicinity.

Yup. She will be missed.