On this day, 16 years ago...

I was completely miserable.

I was 17 and 42 weeks pregnant.

I was in labor for about 18 hours.

But then he finally arrived, just in time for Christmas.

My NINE pound baby boy.

Happy 16th birthday Brent!



(I haven't been on flickr all that long, and he is very camera shy. So this is just a small look at Brent over the last few months.)

Shameless self-promotion

I am not one of those shining people who are effortlessly amazing at everything.

There are many things I cannot do.

I am miserable at mopping.
I could never make nice ponytails for my daughters.
My crocheting is all function and no fashion.

But there is something I seem to do pretty well.

I am good at being a college student.

My grades are in.

Straight A's baby! (That apostrophe is correct.)

The last time I got a B was in 2004. (Macroeconomics. OMG it was awful.)

Will this success translate well into the real world of real jobs?

Who knows.

It has begun

Tomorrow is my last obligation of the semester.

Grades have started to trickle in.

Remember my anxiety over this class?

I rocked an A and only cried once.

I remember it vividly. It was about three weeks into the class. I was quickly falling behind in my writing assignments. I was curled up into a ball of nerves on the end of our sofa. The tears started to roll.

Me to Kevin:

"But I'm NOT a reporter! I can't BE a reporter!"

Christmas concert

I drove to Iola, Kan., last night to watch Charley's high school band concert. These treks are physically and emotionally exhausting.

It is about 120 miles, one way. It is a relatively small town, so the turnout is always big. This means I have to arrive at least 20 minutes early. When the kids were little, I missed the mark several times and ended up standing in the isle for two hours.

My dad used to go with me. He didn't love the drive either and said as much. He also said he did it because it was the right thing to do.

He was right.

I drive 240 miles to watch Charley play for 20 minutes because it is the right thing to do. It isn't her fault we live apart. She should enjoy having her parents in the audience just like every other kid.

However, all of those hours alone in a car can be dangerous for someone like me. On a normal day, I operate from deep within my head. When I am left alone for this amount of time, I tend to think, a lot.

I was listening to Bonnie Raitt's Road Tested. What a great CD for a road trip. She sings about love, heartache, smoking, sex, family, etc. It is all there. She even covers Talking Heads' Burning Down the House, which DMB also did this summer. That was a highlight of the trip.

I was also sad part of the time. I thought about how old the kids are and how much time has passed. I've been making these drives for more than 11 years. Even though I have made many, many trips, I haven't seen everything. That would be impossible.

I missed Charley's solo as Mrs. Claus when I had a final in an evening class.
I haven't seen Allie play a basketball game because they were all in the afternoon.
I missed Brent singing Green Day in a school talent show because I was at Allie's elementary school graduation. Even when I was there, I couldn't be EVERYwhere.

I missed my dad terribly. I put blankets in the car and filled my gas tank just like he always told me to do. But halfway home I realized I may not have had a working flashlight in the car. He would have been appalled.

But it was all worth it.

I could see Charley really well because she is a percussionist. She was standing in the back, and I could see her mouthing the counts of the tune. She is meticulous and didn't want to mess up. Her head was bobbing, and she looked like she really enjoyed it.

We had plans to meet in the lobby afterward. We talked about the show, her shoes, her nail polish, her hair, her everything. She hugged, kissed and thanked me several times for coming to her show.

She is near perfection.



And on the way home, there was this jerk in a Cadillac that pulled out in front of me. I was the last one in a row of cars, but he couldn't wait. He slowed me down considerably. When we got to the next town, I was behind him at a stoplight. He had a bumper sticker that read "Drill Here, Drill Now, Pay Less."

Of course he did.

Monday is going to be a most-glorious day

Yesterday, I received this e-mail from my close personal friends, the Dave Matthews Band.



Do you see it? Do you see the awesomeness??



That's right. On Monday, I am going to learn how many times I get see Dave and where I am going to go to do it.

I can't accurately describe how much I love tour-date day. They usually aren't announced until March, in honor of my birthday. So I'm not sure what this is going to mean for all of us.

Is the tour going to start earlier? Is it going to run longer? Are the venues going to be different?

It will all be clear on Monday.

The new masthead is bittersweet.



I love the way Dave looks like he was under the covers 10 minutes ago, but he still looks like he is ready to rock it for me all summer long. The other boys look nice, too.

But the absence of LeRoi Moore is stark. The band that was five, is now four. I can only imagine what it is like for them to move forward without him.

However, I am very happy to see they are.

Feeling anxious/nervous

My heart rate is slightly elevated, and I'm not sure why. I'm feeling uneasy about something, but I don't know what.

Gritch.

The following is just me working through my stuff, so please feel free to bail in search of something less neurotic.

Possible reasons I feel wonky:

1. No class this morning = drank way more coffee
2. No class this morning = unfamiliar use of the clock
3. Book buyback started this morning, and I didn't go
4. Allie has a dance on Friday, which means weekend plans will need to be altered
5. Christmas shopping is barely underway
6. We are dangerously low on toilet paper
7. My chin is severely broken out due to writing long paper over the weekend
8. I'm going to a popular lecture this afternoon; already concerned about seating

Hmmm...it might be one of those, or none of those.

But I think I feel a little better now.

Nice and green and local

I like it when Kansas is more than a red state full of tornadoes and wizards.


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The bottom of a better ladder

In April 1992, I found out I was pregnant with Brent. I was 17 and a junior at Goddard High School. 

The first item on my to-do list was to drop out of school. 

I'm not sure why I thought that. There were only two months of classes left, and it was still early in my pregnancy. But I was already living with my boyfriend, the father, and I was ready to get my "real life" started. 

Over the summer, I spent some time with my friends, two of which were also pregnant. We were all due in December. As a group, we decided to finish our senior year. I enrolled and went to my first day of school five months pregnant and in maternity clothes.

The other students never mocked me or treated me bad. The pregnancy was more of a novelty than anything else. I don't know what people were saying behind my back. But to my face, everyone was curious and nice.

My due date was Dec. 11. I believe it was a Friday. I remember sitting in my government class when someone asked me when I was due. 

I said, "Today."

I got a wide-eyed reaction. That is when I realized I didn't want to known as the girl who gave birth during second period.

Even though Brent refused to come for another two weeks, I decided I was ready for my maternity leave.

Brent was born Dec. 25, 1992. 

When the new semester began in January, I took advantage of the six-week tutoring provided by the school so I could stay home with my new baby. It went well and my grades looked great. However, when the personal tutoring ended, and "real life" went into full effect, life got much more difficult.

Brent's dad, my husband at this point, worked second-shift. So I went to high school during the day and took care of Brent by myself at night. 

Homework? Not really.

I don't know how long I kept this schedule, but soon I dropped out of high school AGAIN.

A year later, Charley was born.

A year and half later, Allie was born.

A year later, we were headed to a divorce.

That is how I had three children and no college degree at 20 years old.

I went in and out of the workforce several times.

As an adult and mother, I have been:

a cashier for one of Davis-Moore's service departments

a Pizza Hut cook and shift supervisor

a factory worker making automobile pinstripes

a donut maker and deliverer

a photo printer

a high school secretary

I know it sounds glamorous, but trust me it wasn't.

During my time as a secretary, I went back to school to work on my degree. I took one or two classes at a time. I was making progress, but it was slow progress.

Three years ago, I quit my job to be a full-time student. I took heavy loads, sometimes 18 or 19 hours at a time, to try get done as soon as possible. I had a significant setback in January 2007. My dad died on the second day of the spring semester. I couldn't do it. I couldn't handle it so soon, so I took the semester off.

But now I have the graduation stage in my sights. I will be done in two semesters, which finally gets me to my point.

My byline

I understand how small this byline is in our giant world of bylines.

I'm not a new Wichita Eagle employee. I'm not even the new part-time employee. I'm an intern, a nobody, a nothing. I wear a visitor tag and park in customer parking.

But on the other hand, this is huge. I've worked really hard for it.

I recently interviewed a man from Africa who is in Wichita to attend graduate school at WSU. He has overcome far more difficult obstacles than teenage pregnancy. But I can relate to something he said.

"The temptation to give up and just go and sleep was strong," he said.

I didn't give up, and I didn't go to sleep.

Now I am at the bottom of a tall and unfamiliar ladder. But it is the nicest ladder I have ever seen.

Jack Black is bigger than Jesus

No, wait. Jack Black is Jesus.

See more Jack Black videos at Funny or Die

One less creditor

I paid off a pretty big debt this weekend.

My beautiful daughter, Charley.

For years, whenever the kids would get money for Christmas, birthdays or report cards, I would deposit the money into our account and credit them for the deposit.

This worked really well for awhile. The kids saved more money than they spent, especially Charley.

Charley didn't spend, at all.

If all the kids were buying gum, she would refrain and just wait for a piece to be offered to her. If all the kids were buying sodas, she would pass and wait for a sip.

She didn't buy impulse jewelry, make-up or clothes.

She just didn't buy, period. Her credits grew and grew.

Less than a year ago, she had more than $400 on the books.

I was nervous.

Of course, over the years her money mingled and merged with my money. I didn't have more than $400 set aside to give to her.

Thankfully, she became a teenager. (Has a parent ever written those words before?)

Charley started to spend. 

She splurged on some back-to-school make-up. She would fork over the extra dollars to get just the right kind of mechanical pencils. She caved to the cute Aeropostale sweater on the mannequin.

Then she got a fabulous haircut and wanted to buy a flat iron. Charley might spend some money these days, but she will not spend it on inferior merchandise. She plunked down nearly $100 to buy a nice flat iron.

Her credit was shrinking. 

Then this weekend I did it. I moved all her remaining money to her own separate account. I presented her with her own debit card. 

She was thrilled to see her name imprinted in plastic, and I was thrilled to avoid collections.