After going from December 12, 2012 until March 6, 2013 without doing a posting, I decided that the only way the blog could get its due was if I posted at the same time each week. I chose Sunday mornings, which was consistently the quietest time of my week. I decided to commit to that until June 30^th to see how it went.  And more or less, it went pretty well.  Until, that is, June 9^th.

Around that time I was making plans to have my grandson (13) return home.  He began visiting each weekend and I had to drive him here on Fridays, and back on Sundays.  Each of those weekend days was a one hundred mile round trip.  And suddenly the “consistently quietest time of my week” disappeared.  When my grandson came home for good in mid-July, the only “consistently quietest time of my week” came when he was asleep.  And when that happened, I couldn’t stay awake much longer myself.

In September, I finalized his adoption, committing myself – though the judge never mentioned this – to noise, and interruptions for too many years; as well as to my grandsonson or is it my songrandson?  Certainly, the quiet Sunday mornings went away.  Four days before his adoption finalization, I became the new executive director of Family Focus.  With the combination of the two, it finally dawned upon me just how much of my work requires uninterrupted concentration. 

One of the advantages of working at FFAS is that so many of us are based in offices at home.  Yet, some years ago, one of my co-workers actually moved out of her home office and went out and rented an office in the next town over.  I don’t think I fully grasped the fullness of why she did that, until the past few months.  It’s not like I never had kids before, but as the years passed and they grew up and moved out, I unwittingly took on more and more work that requires concentration.  Uninterrupted concentration.  Consistently uninterrupted concentration. I am not a multi-tasker.

School up here starts ridiculously early.  The first class begins at 7am; the bus is at 6:25.  So from 6:25 until about 9 or 9:30, I do have a solid block of time during which I am both awake and able to concentrate.  I have used that time since school began (unusually late in September) to get caught up on much undone business. And as I did so, I began to get very happy: consistent uninterrupted time – for hours – each school morning.  The blog was on my list of things to do, although it wasn’t (obviously) at the top of that list.  But it was moving on up.

And then, my grandsonson – yeah, that’s an accurate description – got suspended from school for behavior that was once considered normal, although even back in the day one had to be called on it, and even punished for it. He brought a pocket knife to school. That is what boys do. As a kid, I did it myself – I used to whittle; and I was a Cub Scout.  Before Columbine, of course.

The suspension lasted for three weeks.  And that only because I hired a lawyer – you can imagine what that cost – to protect him from the 45 days – one quarter of the school year – that they were seeking.  What’s next? The death penalty?

This morning my grandsonson went back to school. Finally.

And I got back my uninterrupted time. Not as consistently as my Sundays once were – given all the normal days off from school, that’s now just history.  But the best I am going to get for far too many more years most likely.

So I am back.  

Still again.

Let’s try Tuesday mornings and see how that goes.  Maybe with some make-ups thrown in on some other days, huh?

Jack