My Neck Injury

When I was in college, I overextended a muscle in my neck. I was doing something so foolish, so extreme, that I deserved the vicious pain that followed.

I was getting out of bed.

More specifically, my loft. Getting out of a loft bed is much more strenuous than getting out of a normal bed, just so you know. It involves turning over with exact precision so as not to fall on the floor from six feet up, finding a ladder with only your feet because it's too dark and you can't turn on the light to wake up your roommates, and then positioning your body accurately over the ladder, again so as not to fall from your six-foot-tall bed.

I know, I know. You can't believe I endured such a wretched situation. But I lived to tell about it.

That one particular day, I turned over and got ready to hoist myself out of bed and toward the ladder when I felt a snap in my neck. The next thing I knew, I couldn't move my neck or head without excruciating pain. So I made my way, very carefully, down the ladder and called the campus health clinic. I canceled my morning classes and made my way to the clinic.

My car was parked in the dreaded F-lot. If you lived in any of the south campus dorms, you know that F-lot was where all cars went to die, or at least hibernate for all of the semester, because it was much easier to walk anywhere, including Detroit, than to retrieve your car from F-lot. Even if I had been able to retrieve my car, I would have had no place to park, since MSU has about 27 total parking spaces for a campus that serves 50,000 students.

In short, I walked many, many miles that day, with my head held high, and not because I felt proud. I just couldn't move. I arrived only to have the doctor tell me that I had pulled a muscle. He gave me a soft cervical collar, and probably some heavy-duty pain meds and sent me on my way.

The most embarrassing part of all this was that, during dinner in my dorm's dining hall, I was swarmed by concerned friends all asking, “What happened? Did you get in a car accident?” Imagine my embarrassment if I had told them I had sustained the injury by getting out of bed. So my response was, “Yes, it was horrible. Ambulances and fire trucks everywhere. My car was totaled.” At least I didn't have to worry about them discovering that my car was, in fact, still intact.

It was still parked in F-lot.

Beauty Wars

A long time ago, in a hospital not too far away....

Three young maidens were born within three years of one another, maidens of unsurpassed beauty:  two with golden curls and blueberry eyes, one with chestnut locks and orbs the color of cocoa.

During their young lives, they drew the admiration of nearly everyone who knew them. They wore frilly frocks of pink, yellow, and purple, with ribbons in their hair and sparkly shoes adorning their feet.

However, as with all fair young maidens, they had been relentlessly pursued by a force so evil, so insidious, that none had ever escaped its power.

The enchanting young maidens slowly and painfully succumbed to the power of....adolescence.

The sweet innocence of childhood has been replaced by moodiness and rebellion. Flaxen hair once content with a mere brushing is now subject to the heat of curling and straightening and the suffocation of a multitude of hair care products.

Cherubs who once carried the sweet scent of babyhood now battle the funk of body odor.

The home of the young maidens is now drenched in estrogen.

Where once lay fair skin, now there is acne.

The young maidens have waged war against their mother, the one who once had sole access to the beauty products in the home. The girls regularly plunder their mother's wealth of cosmetics, leaving the poor woman to her own devices. It is now a common occurrence for their mother to resort to using men's deodorant in the absence of her own feminine antiperspirant. Not only that, but she must use dried out lipstick, her husband's boar bristle hair brush, and a skin-colored crayon to finish out her look for the day.

Adolescence is a frightening time for all. Pursued by her daughter's insatiable hunger for beauty, the mother races against time to find a way to protect her own beloved skin from the ravages of age. Will she emerge victorious?

Please stay tuned for the next episode of “Beauty Wars.”

(I'm just kidding. There is no next episode. I'm going to bed. I hope I can find the toothpaste.)

Tales from the Girls' Bathroom

The other day, while visiting the luxurious girls' bathroom at school (which is equipped with high-sensitivity automatic hand dryers that freak me out by turning on every time I walk by them), my 3rd-grade daughter had this encounter. 

A tiny little kindergarten student approached my daughter and said, "Can you help me wash my hands?"  So, my sweet daughter hoisted up the little girl so she could wash her hands. 

Once her hands were washed and dried, she turned to my daughter and asked, "Can I have a quarter?"  I'm not sure why my daughter had a quarter in her pocket, but she is very generous, so she gave it to little Miss K, who proceeded to ask my daughter if she would help her get something from the mysterious machine in the bathroom. 

My daughter wasn't quite sure what was in the machine either, so the girls put the coin in the slot and turned the handle.  Little Miss K turned out to be a good reader, because when she pulled the box out of the machine, she said, "What the heck is this?  It's a napkin."  The little girl then tried to shove the box back into the machine, probably wondering why on earth there were napkins in the bathroom.  She asked my daughter if she had another quarter so she could try the other slot, but my daughter decided it was time to get back to class.

When my daughter told me this story, we were driving home from school, and could barely see the road through my tears of laughter.  I thought I may just need a similar product for bladder control.

I have other fond memories of children discovering the joys of femine products.  When another of my daughters was two, she went through a stage where she would climb out of bed after we said goodnight, and she would "explore" the upstairs.  One night, Al and I heard some rustling around in the upstairs bathroom.  I went up to investigate, told the quizzical two-year-old to go back to bed, and then subdued my immense laughter while I called for my husband to come upstairs.

Lying on the toilet were about 10 of those adhesive strip covers used for feminine napkins, in nice neat little lines.  When Al joined me in the bathroom, I asked him, "What do you think she did with the pads?"  I envisioned having to scoop soggy, saturated napkins out of the toilet. 

But I looked around the bathroom and slowly realized that my creative little daughter had "redecorated" the bathroom.  There was a pad wrapped neatly around each of the many handles of our cabinets, and an artistic array of pads arranged on the wall under the towel bar.  I could just imagine her fascination as she embellished the bathroom::  "Mom never told me we have STICKERS in the bathroom!"

By the time I finished surveying the bathroom, I was laughing so hard that I couldn't even catch my breath.  I tapped Al's shoulder - he was still staring at the toilet - and pointed to the dainty decorations placed around our bathroom.  We both burst into further rounds of gasping laughter.  Meanwhile the two-year-old was yelling from her room, "What's so funny???"

I wholeheartedly oppose the TV commercials showing femine products - it's always so embarrassing when in mixed company. (Besides that, we all know that women never wear white during that time, no matter how good your protection is.)  Everyone either stares at the TV in discomfort, starts picking bellybutton lint, or tells a ridiculous joke to try to draw attention away from the disturbing content coming from the TV.


But in this context, feminine products make for wonderful storytelling and maniacal laughter.

I Love My Hubby, But Sometimes I Want to Kick His Butt

I love my husband dearly. And most people who know me can attest to the fact that I don't bash my husband. I'm not into men-bashing of any kind, but especially not of my beloved hubby. He's too good to me, and I love him too much to speak badly of him. Of course he has his flaws, but *NEWS FLASH* so do I.

That being said, I'm going to poke a little fun at him in this post. I told him I was going to, and he laughed, so it's all in good fun.

Here is the scenario. I've wanted to buy a lawn edger for a long time, because I really like a neatly manicured lawn. We've never had one, (a neatly manicured lawn, that is) but by gosh, I decided this was the year I was going to make it happen, so I started by purchasing a manual edger and some "weed & feed".

I started using my edger on Mother's Day - what can I say? I was in the mood for gardening I guess. I managed to make it down one side of the front sidewalk and then practically collapsed in agony. I've also been nursing a sore shoulder for a few years now and that little gardening spree made it worse.

I mentioned to my husband that I needed his upper body strength to get the job done - yes, I used a little shameless flattery, but he is indeed quite strong in the upper body department, while my muscles resemble a limp rubber band.

One morning, I went off to a meeting and I came back to find this. I seriously thought that some neighborhood dog, or perhaps a rodent, had dug up our yard. Then it dawned on me. My husband had tried to do some edging. However, I made the natural assumption that he actually knew how to do it. I had made the mistake of thinking he had noticed many other nicely edged lawns, and was salivating to have his very own neatly trimmed yard. But I was wrong. I was so wrong.



I went inside and tried to casually ask my husband how the lawn had come to look this way. In my mind, I was wanting to yell, "What the hell did you do???" But I managed to maintain control and simply asked what was going on in the front yard. He flatly answered, "I started the edging". OK. . . .So, I waited for the rest of the explanation, perhaps something along the lines of, "but then aliens came and started to control me with their mind powers so that I ended up flinging dirt every which way". I would have understood then, but there was no further explanation. And he clearly expected some gratitude.

I responded, "Uh, thanks, honey. Do you want me to help you pick up the clumps of dirt lying all over the yard?" His response, "Nah, I'll just leave them there and let the mower chop them up when I mow the lawn again."

Naturally, I thought he was kidding, but when I asked him again (a little more impatiently, I might add), to pick up the dirt clumps when he went to mow the lawn the next day, he asked, "Why? The mower will get them." That's when I lost my temper, furiously went outside and picked up the stupid clumps myself, and ended up saying something a little snippy to him about how I know a little more about yard management and gardening than he does, so he should just do what I ask him to do.

Sadly, so sadly, those very words came back to haunt me. After the declumping and the mowing, I set out to apply the weed & feed. I carefully set the spreader according to the directions. However, I guess I didn't realize that I wasn't supposed to go back and forth over the same area 3 or 4 times. (I'm going to blame that on my 5-year-old helper, who really did insist on going over the same spots time and time again.)

Two weeks later, I have a nicely mown, nicely edged lawn, with nice big patches of burned, brown and dead grass. I was going to take a picture of that, too, but you get the idea. No reason to humiliate anyone else in our family.

Fragrant Memories

You know how the sense of smell triggers memories? I've been thinking a lot about this lately. For some reason, this became pungently clear when the chicken I was cooking smelled like raw chicken. For most people this would mean one thing: the chicken needs to be cooked longer. No big, right? But my brain took the whole "raw" thing one step further that day.

raw = dead

So, when I opened the oven to season the chicken and smelled "dead" chicken, I was just a little grossed out. How do I know what dead chicken smells like? It goes back to when I was maybe about 3 years old and we lived on a farm in Pulaski, Wisconsin. Our neighbors owned the farm and we rented a big old house from them. That's where the smell of dead chicken comes from: the neighbors' teenage sons were killing and gutting chickens and I was helping. I, in my little golden blond ponytails and frilly pinafore, was reaching down inside the necks of dead, headless chickens and pulling out their insides.

Isn't that a pleasant childhood memory?

But the memories didn't stop there. I started thinking about other things. Like the smells of cow manure and diesel exhaust. Believe it or not, I actually like those smells. Because, when I left the farm in Pulaski - after a brief stint in Krakow (are you sensing a Polish theme here?) - we moved back to my dad's hometown and his family farm. So, I grew up playing on tractors and making mud pies with "not mud" (ha ha, I'm just kidding. . . .sort of). And yes, I genuinely enjoy the smell of diesel exhaust.

Unleaded exhaust, however, brings back rather unpleasant memories of when my family had an old beat-up blue van with no rear seats. My grandpa had used it when he was doing carpentry work, so it was "functional". Not for carrying children, of course, but for carrying nails and 2x4's. This didn't stop my parents from forcing us to occasionally ride on the cold, unpadded metal floor of the old blue van, which had some kind of exhaust-disposal issue which resulted in the death of many, many brain cells, I'm sure. I remember one incident very clearly: we were on our way to go camping, and since Blue Bessie was the only vehicle that could tow our trailer, my little sister and I were forced to ride in the back with the exhaust. We stopped at a small store and my sister and I staggered from the van, gasping for air. As we walked into the store, my sister said, "Mom, I don't feel good. My ears are ringing." My mom hardly batted an eyelash and said to me, "Pick her up, she's going to faint." Um, so I did, and I brought her outside until she regained consciousness. Then we got back into the exhaust-infested van and continued on our merry way. I guess it's all part and parcel of owning a hand-me-down vehicle.

But that isn't even the worst story about that van. It always seemed to have exhaust issues, as I mentioned, and one particular time, we had been riding around town for weeks with the muffler hanging by a thread. So, then, not only were the fumes making us hallucinate, but the ensuing headaches were exacerbated by the roar of the unmuffled engine. One afternoon, on the way home from town, the muffler just fell off. Right in the middle of the highway. And what did my mother do? She told ME to go and get it. She was too embarrassed to be seen driving the van, let alone chasing spare parts down Highway 41. What she forgot to mention was that the muffler would be hot, and after I found out the hard way, I kicked the muffler to the side of the road. My mom had backed the van up by then and we both just sat there and waited until it cooled off so that we could hoist it into the back of the van and make a quick getaway.

Ahhh, the memories.

I have so many more to share, but alas, it's bedtime and I will share more scent-inspired memories in another post. Until then, fragrant dreams!

Stupid Things That Moms Do

Disclaimer: I am not admitting to doing any of the following things, but if I had done them, then they would have been really stupid.

1. Assume that your children will do what you have asked them to do, the very first time you asked.

2. Clean the house. And fall into the delusion that "this time, kids, we're going to keep it clean!"


3. Smell the underwear lying on the floor to find out whether it's clean or dirty. (I mean, come on! One more pair of underwear in the washer is not going to destroy the planet. I have come to the conclusion that it's not worth it.)


4. Tell your kids not to use your entire bottle of shampoo as bubble bath and expect that they will obey.


5. Smell the blankets on your kids' bed to see if they need to get washed along with the sheets after your kid wet the bed. (OK, so blankets take up a whole washing machine and I would rather not have to wash them unless absolutely necessary.)

6. Make brownies "for your kids" and eat the whole pan, and then tell your kids that the brownies got burned so you had to throw them down the garbage disposal. (Don't say it's in the trash, because they will look there.)

7. Try to camouflage mashed cauliflower as mashed potatoes because you will not fool your kids. And your house will stink like cauliflower, which you personally hate, as well.

8. Accidentally reveal to your kids where you hid your private stash of chocolate.

9. Forget to lock your bedroom door at night.

10. Start the day without coffee.

Starstruck

So, what do you do when you see someone famous out in public? OK, so maybe "famous" is a little exaggerated - let's just go with "local celebrity". I was picking out my favorite coffee at Horrocks Farm Market -"Jamaican Me Crazy" (sorry, Highlander Grogg, I have a new love) - when I noticed Sheri Jones, a news anchor from WLNS. As I violently shook the container to get every possible bean into my bag and still be able to close it, she asked me, "Is that your favorite coffee?" I thought she was just making polite conversation, but in retrospect, she might have been trying to calm the savage beast who was attacking the coffee canister in the middle of Horrocks. She may have been thinking to herself, "Wow, this lady really does not need any more coffee." Maybe she was about to recommend that I start drinking decaf when I blurted out, "Yes, yes it is my favorite coffee! It's my absolute favorite in the whole entire universe! I think everybody should drink it!" (Maybe I'm exaggerating, maybe I'm not. . . .) She said it's her favorite, too.

How about that? Sheri Jones and I have the same favorite coffee! If you know anything about me, you know that I have a passionate love affair with coffee, and anyone who enjoys coffee as much as I do is a kindred spirit.

OK, now back to my original question. (I admit that I have strayed a bit from my original topic, but that's because I'm working on my 3rd cup of Jamaican Me Crazy in my favorite oversized mug.)


How do you act when you see someone who is very recognizable? Do you a) pretend that you don't see them or that you don't know who they are? b) go over and excitedly say, "hi, I know who you are and you are so cool. Will you autograph my shopping list?" or c) Faint?

And then I wonder, do these people like to be recognized out in public? Do they just want to fade into the crowd and go about their business without being bothered, or do they like that people know who they are?

I wouldn't know. The closest I ever came to being a celebrity was when I did some campus ministry in several universities in the Philippines - I gave some talks and sang a few songs, but that's about it. And then, I think people mostly recognized me because I was white - kind of hard to miss that Michigan pallor amidst an equatorial people.

I told my husband about my interchange with Sheri Jones at Horrocks. He wasn't impressed. He wants to run into Lauren Thompson, the cute brunette anchor.

Oral Fixation

I don't ordinarily give much credence to Sigmund Freud's philosophies. But I have to wonder about the oral stage and "oral fixation". I nursed all of my children, and the girls didn't wean until they were about 18 months old. My son was the one who weaned himself at around one year. (Yeah, it was the boy who lost interest in breasts the earliest, go figure.) I was reading, according to Freud's theory of the oral stage of development, babies derive the most pleasure from their mouths in the first 21 months of life. So, maybe I weaned the girls too early. There may be a lot of people out there who think I nursed too long, but hey, give me some credit - I did manage to get them to knock it off before they were able to sit down next to me and say, "Mother, dear, I'd like to have a sip, if that's OK with you."

The reason I'm wondering about this? My girls all seem to have some kind of "oral fixation." One wants to eat all the time. One chews on wads of paper or anything else she can get her mouth on. One maims Barbie dolls and other toys because of her oral habit.

Exhibit A: Normal Barbie

Exhibit B: Maimed Barbie

And while we're talking about rendering dolls quadriplegics, let's talk about other cruelty to toys, as we see in this example. Poor Buzz. He was minding his own business, when all of a sudden, he finds himself swaddled in a giant diaper. Can you imagine his shame?

Exhibit C: Humiliated Buzz Lightyear

I've found Polly Pockets tied up to bed posts, lain across railroad tracks, and even dismembered.

Maybe I should get my kids into therapy.

Licking The Furniture

Yesterday's post got me thinking a bit more. Not only did I live in the mold capital of the world, I also went to high school in a building that was condemned by the fire marshal. Maybe you think I'm joking, but I am 100% serious. Just weeks before I started my senior year, we were informed that we would no longer be attending high school in a high school building. We had to share time with the elementary school kids - I went to school from 7 AM to 12 NOON, and my baby sister went from 12:30-5 or some crazy thing thing like that. It made a good set-up for an after school job, and I was fortunate enough to be able to work for my aunt who was a bank manager. It was a definite step up over waiting tables or milking cows.

But, here's my point: I spent many days of my life in that high school, which was later deemed to be unfit for human inhabitance. Makes me wonder what was inside the walls, eating away at the structure of the building. And it was definitely built during the asbestos glory days.

Remember these disturbing facts about dust? Think about the dust made from the decaying matter of a century-old building, not to mention walls dripping with teenage hormones, and formaldehyde-soaked frogs. Even more scary is the fact that I sat in an elementary school desk in an elementary school classroom where little kids wipe their boogers and pee their pants. And in my afternoon job, I was surrounded by dirty, filthy money.

I'm beginning to think I will never think about dust the same way again. I think I may become a bona-fide amathopobiac (Amathophobia: An abnormal and persistent fear of dust. Sufferers experience anxiety even though they realize dust poses no threat.) But that would mean that either I would live in terror in my own home OR I would become obsessed with cleaning, and that ain't gonna happen. So, I guess I'll just embrace my surroundings and maybe I'll build up a tolerance to the gunk in which I live.

I think I'll go lick an end table.

Allergies and Depression

I grew up in a house with a Michigan basement. If you don't know what a Michigan basement is, here is a photo:The definition of a Michigan basement is: a scarier-than-hell hole in the ground, right underneath your house, into which parents send their young children to retrieve firewood or dead rodents, a reason for which those children - now adults - need ongoing therapy. There is only a stone wall separating said hole from the rest of the underground world and it doesn't do much for keeping out various organisms, such as mice, rats, spiders, and mold. I have to admit the basement in my parents' house is slightly more civilized than the one in the picture: there is paneling on the walls of the stairwell.

As you may have read the other day, I'm not kidding about the therapy. However, it's probably not due to those descents into the basement of terror. It may be due, in part, to this: Yes, my new research has led me to believe that mold causes depression. Well, not directly. But I do think that allergies may have played a part in creating the basket-case that I am today. Thinking back to the days I lived in that house (the house my parents still reside in and I dearly love and if they ever sell it, I will cry myself to sleep every night for the rest of my life), I had frequent headaches and a chronic stuffy nose. Of course, that is pretty much true for my entire life, but I have to wonder if it started there. And I've never lived in a new-ish house so as to be able to test my theory. The house we live in now, as well as most of my other dwellings until now, have been built in the 1920's and no longer have Michigan basements, but their basement-building technology wasn't nearly what it is today, and many of the aforementioned creatures - including mold - still live and breed in these basements.

I am also allergic to:

AND

Sadly, all 3 of these things - mold, dust, and pet dander - reside in an ongoing way in our house. We've tried to get rid of the mold, but it just won't stay away for long. We are too in love with our feline children to get rid of them, so we have to make a few changes to help me not to suffer as much from their presence - like keeping my bedroom cat-free (which I haven't done yet) and having someone else scoop the litter box (YES!!!) And dust? Ha! Like dust will ever be gone from our house.

I read a Yahoo article recently, which stated, "But nearly everywhere, dust consists of some combination of shed bits of human skin, animal fur, decomposing insects, food debris, lint and organic fibers from clothes, bedding and other fabrics, tracked-in soil, soot, particulate matter from smoking and cooking, and, disturbingly, lead, arsenic and even DDT." Um, no wonder I'm sick.

But still, what the heck do allergies have to do with depression? Well, my allergic reaction to any of these 3 things is usually a stuffy nose or a headache, or both. (I have actually developed a rash after coming into contact with vinegar and other mold-containing elements, but that's not too much of a concern, since I'm not in the habit of rolling around naked in mold-infested places.) And for me, stuffy nose and headache usually equals tiredness. Fatigue. Wanting to sleep until someone drills out the inside of my sinuses.

I've spent much of my life feeling like I didn't have enough energy. Even in high school, when I should have been able to pull an all-nighter with no noticeable consequences whatsoever, I was the cheerleader who would take a few spoonfuls of instant iced-tea powder and chase it with a can of Mountain Dew right before a game so that I would have enough energy just to stand and possibly be as peppy as cheerleaders should.

S-o-o-o-o, it's a stretch, but let's see: ongoing headaches and that feeling sinus cotton-itis equals fatigue equals me not being able to do as much as I'd like to do. Ever. I think that, over time, this has worn me down.

Current research also suggests that there is a definite correlation - if not a causal relationship - between allergies and fatigue and depression.

I wish I had known that 20 years ago.

Pride Goes Before the Fall

My friend Essie, The Accidental Mommy just posted about her "best" parenting ideas from her life before children. And then she invited readers to do the same. So, here goes.

I ALWAYS wanted to be a Mom, and I ALWAYS wanted gobs and gobs of kids. I was the town babysitter for almost all of Daggett and Stephenson, thriving metropolises of the UP. I taught preschool for 9 years before actually becoming a mom. I attended - and even facilitated - teacher and parent training sessions. I had plenty of experience in how to handle children.

So, with all that under my belt, of course I had all the skills necessary to get my own children to obey me. I had perfected the use of the "I" message: "Jimmy, I feel concerned when you use that flame-thrower in school." I could identify the "goals of misbehavior": attention-seeking, revenge, struggle for power, feelings of helplessness, and the 5th, less-well-known goal, which is simply to be a PITA.

And as you would guess, all that training and experience came crashing down the first time my first child defied me. I had not a clue what to do. Hence, I have succeeded in getting my children to throw tantrums in public, to speak in an obscenely disprespectful manner to me, and to leave major portions of our home in a maelstrom.

However, I do believe I have discovered a way to actually speak to my children and direct them in such a way that they will obey! Please try some of these in your own home and give me your feedback. I'm considering writing a book on this revolutionary method.

First, a few things to remember: You must give children clear and comprehensible direction. You must also make sure that what you are asking of them is well within their capabilities.

Here are some examples, which I believe you can modify and use in your own parenting endeavors:

"Timmy, I would feel very happy if you would jump rope in the living room. And please do it as close as possible to the lamp, because picking up the broken shards of glass will make me even more happy."

"Sally, please go outside, without any clothes on, in the rain, and paste mud over your entire body. When you have done that, please come back inside and crawl upstairs to the bathtub and please make sure that you grind some globs of mud into the carpet."

"Ronny, would you please eat a whole bag of cheetos, 7 chocolate chip cookies, and 2 1/2 bags of Skittles before dinner? And if you throw up, would you please try to make it to the toilet?"

You see, what we really need to do is set our children up for success by asking them to do what we know they are fully able to do.

How hard is that?

A Thumbnail Sketch of Our Family

Let me walk you through the various disorders plaguing my family. This household contains Depression, ADHD, mild Oppositional Defiant Disorder, Insomnia, probable Adult ADHD, Hypothyroidism, Hypoglycemia, Obesity, Herpes Type 1 (That IS the cold sore virus, just so you know!), Adrenal Fatigue (or so says one borderline-quack-chiropractor), Perimenopause, Sciatica, Athlete's Foot, Hyper-emotionalism, Flatulence, Male Pattern Baldness, Overgrown Toenail Syndrome, Stretch Marks, and Overall Laziness.

You would think we would all be sitting around in straight jackets.

It's got to be a sign of the times. I mean, I'm sure the early settlers weren't suffering from all these maladies, right? They worked hard all day, grew their own organic food, enjoyed life's simple pleasures and lived off the land. Look at Caroline Ingalls - she was happy all the time, except for one episode, I think.

Sometimes I yearn for simplicity of life. Wouldn't it be glorious to grow all my own food, have a cow and a chicken for milk and eggs, have my husband go hunting for our meat, and have a small simple house that required only a daily sweeping? However, I don't think I could survive without the internet.

If I grew and ate all unprocessed, organic, homegrown food, I'm sure I wouldn't have health problems like a gall bladder with a low ejection fraction. If I worked / walked the equivalent of 15 miles each day, I would be the picture of fitness without annoying issues like plantar fasciitis. If I didn't have the dizzying array of responsibilities and distractions of modern times, I'm certain I wouldn't be suffering from Advanced Delusionary Schizophrenia with Involuntary Narcissistic Rage. (I stole that last one from "Me, Myself and Irene", a movie that has quite a funny premise but is disgustingly vulgar. If you haven't seen it, please wait until the non-vulgar edition comes out - it should be about 12 minutes long.)

All I'm saying is that I don't think God intended life to be this complicated, and I'm quite sure it's a product of modern times. And I have no intention of sitting back and letting it best me.

OK, well that's it for now - gotta go take my meds.

I'm in my bed again

How can I be a productive human being? It's raining outside and I've been coldcocked by Daylight Savings Time. And my bed is so warm and cozy (we've covered this before). I should take a picture and post it here so you can see for yourself why I just can't stay away.

I really have to start exercising. But I'm always too tired. The experts say it is supposed to energize me, but they haven't met ME. I might be the ONE person in the known universe that defies the law of "exercising-gives-you-energy". I tried this once, not too long ago - I managed to get some exercise every day for 5 days, and then I had to sleep the entire weekend because I was so exhausted. And I did the 30 minute brisk-walk or 20-minute continuous swim each day. I should have felt better, right? That was about 5 months ago, and I haven't tried it again since.

But I really should get back to it. I know it. I have a little weight to lose (a little, ha! My spare tire is more like a stack of Michelins - heck, I just look like the Michelin man!) And exercising is good for my heart. And it definitely helps with depression.

I just wish Mother Nature weren't so cruel in making these cold, rainy days that make me want to hibernate again. And I wish Americans weren't so arrogant as to use Daylight Savings Time to control a natural phenomenon - sunrise, sunset, just get used to it, people!

Anyway, I have enjoyed this little rant during my mid-day bed-time break. It's time to get up and be productive again. The kids need educating and the house needs cleaning, etc. etc. etc.

Time for a pot of coffee.

Domestic Fantasy

You've heard of Romantic Fantasy. You know, every little girl's idea that one day she will grow up and marry Prince Charming and live Happily Ever After. Well, before I got married and started a family, I suffered from a delusion called "Domestic Fantasy."

I imagined that I would be the Caroline Ingalls of the 21st Century. I would stay at home with my children, of course. I would plant the garden with a baby on my hip while the older children cheerfully helped with the hoeing. I would make simple yet wonderful meals from scratch, and they would be the best meals my husband and children would ever eat. NEVER would I stoop to cooking from a box! I would make most of my children's clothing with my trusty sewing machine. My children would always be well-groomed, polite and obedient.

Forgive me for rolling on the floor laughing.

It's not that I didn't want to do those things for my family. I have actually attempted several times to be Super Mom.

I DO plant a garden in the spring. And I usually enjoy the hard work of gardening until the cute little sprouts shoot up. The kids usually find it enjoyable up until this point too. "Oh, look at the cute little pea plant. It's so sweet, so tiny, so fragile. Let's water it very carefully so we don't hurt it." A month later, out of the very same mouths, comes "Why do I have to water the stupid peas? I hate peas! No one ever eats peas!" That last part of the tantrum - the part about no one ever eating the peas - is usually true because, after several days of the whining, I give up asking them to water the peas. Then I myself begin to forget to water the peas. So, by the time they are ripe, I usually harvest about 13 peas, all of which I eat by myself as I pull them off the plant. I do have to wonder if it's worth the time and effort when, for the price of a pack of seeds, I can buy a 1/2 lb. of sugar snap peas at the grocery store.

Beans are another story. I can go without watering them for 5 weeks and they are still growing up over the roof of the house and creeping into the neighbor's yard and under their deck, even occasionally entwining their cats who sneak under the deck to find some respite from the summer heat. But the problem with beans is that I don't usually notice them until they've become the size of a zucchini. At that point the only thing I can do is to let them rot into the ground and hope that they will make next year's soil more fertile.

So what if gardening wasn't my forte? I've always been a good cook. I learned to cook when I was 9 years old and I learned from the best - my mom.

I had tons of great recipes and I couldn't wait to use them for my family. The only problem was that my husband is the pickiest eater on earth. When he was single, he could do his weekly grocery shopping and check out in the express lane. I had to drastically revise my recipe repertoire.
But when the kids came along, I knew I would have a brood to cook for. However, I ran out of time, energy and desire by the time my first child was 3 days old. Hamburger Helper was starting to look pretty good. A meal that takes 20-30 minutes, start to finish, with only about 3 minutes of actual human involvement - sounds like a dream to any tired mom.

Now that my kids are older and I have a little bit of energy back, I'm once again attempting to make more healthy, "from scratch" meals. Occasionally I will come across a cooking show on TV and I will stop to see if I can get any new and useful tips. Usually the cook is deeply involved in a complex process sounding something like a doctoral dissertation, all the while saying helpful things like "This is SUCH an easy recipe and you can make it with ingredients you have in your pantry." This is provided you even have a pantry, which I don't, and if you have things like expeller-pressed grapeseed oil on hand.

I'm grateful that as my children grow up, they are becoming more adventurous eaters, so I can try out new recipes or old favorites on them. My husband, on the other hand - the guy who insists that pickles qualify as a vegetable - will probably never change.

When I had my picture of domestic bliss all planned out, sewing was by far the most preposterous idea I had.

I once sewed an outfit from scratch. I was about 10 and it was a 4-H project. I could choose any pattern and fabric I wanted and my 4H leader would teach me how to create an outfit I could actually wear. I chose a shorts outfit and bright green terry cloth - very fashionable for 1980. I have to say I did quite well, cutting the pattern to my size, pinning the fabric together, and sewing it into a creation that I was proud to wear for about 3 1/2 summers. After that, the charm wore off. I haven't enjoyed sewing since. Maybe I'm still scarred by the fact that my mother had to hide the beloved shorts outfit from me and smuggle it out to the burning barrel to get me to stop wearing it, based on the fact that it fit me more like a bathing suit - an obscene bathing suit - than shorts and a top. Perhaps I have a deep-seated fear that if I ever make anything again and have any affinity for it, my mother - even though she lives 400 miles away - will sneak into my closet and torch it.

I think a more realistic explanation is that I just hate sewing. When my husband and I were first married, he bought me a really nice sewing machine (at my request - it wasn't one of those bone-headed I-wanted-diamond-earrings-and-he-gave-me-a-sewing-machine gifts). I used it a few times. I bought a book illustrating how to create your own home décor - curtains, pillows, etc. It turned out to be much too detailed for my tastes - meaning the instructions were more complicated than "Go to your nearest Kohls store and purchase matching curtains and throw pillows." So I eventually gave the book away as a gift to some other unsuspecting newlywed. As far as making clothes, I really had been quite delusional, because after I started actually having children, I lacked the alertness to complete a simple task such as getting my own clothes on, let alone working a contraption with parts that move faster than a moving car and are sharp enough to be used for brain surgery.

Mending, of course, is essential in any home that contains children. So, I do have a mending basket, and anything that needs to be mended is put into the basket until I can get to it. My procedure for dealing with the mending basket is this: I put a piece of clothing into it until the owner of the clothing either forgets about it or outgrows it. Problem solved. If it happens to be something I paid a lot of money for (which doesn't happen often as I do most of my shopping at thrift stores, yard sales, and the occasional hidden dumpster), I may attempt a more complicated approach, using heat 'N' bond or sometimes even staples.

Duct tape has merit too.

OUCH!

I'm walking gingerly today, but I'm not nearly as bad as yesterday. I was hobbling through the house, barely able to do so without yelling, "OW!" with every step. Getting up and down the stairs required me to cling for dear life to the railing, like a frail old lady. My back hurt, my shins hurt, my butt hurt, and my thighs. . . .Oh my goodness, they were painful to the touch.

So, what on earth caused this agony? My ridiculous decision to start running. Yes, me! A runner. The idea seems ludicrous, even to me, but I've been contemplating it for a while now. Actually, craving is a better word. I've had this inexplicable desire to run for quite some time, and it only took me a year and a half to work up the courage to start.

Of course, I had to find a way to ease into it without injuring myself. (This, for the woman who, in college, ended up in a cervical collar from an injury sustained while getting out of bed - seriously!) So I did a search on the web and came across a site called Cool Running (http://www.coolrunning.com/), and found their beginner's workout, called "The Couch to 5K Running Plan" (http://www.coolrunning.com/engine/2/2_3/181.shtml).

It's a very reasonable workout designed to help you gradually build up your strength and endurance over 8 weeks (or more if you need to take it more slowly). I began with 2 children at my side - partly because they really wanted to come and I KNEW they could keep up with me, and partly because I would feel less embarrassed with kids accompanying me. That way, if I had a really hard time, I could just call out to the kids, in a voice loud enough for the neighbors to hear, "OK, honey, if you're too tired, we can stop!" It turns out, 15 minutes into the 20-minute workout, I went staggering back into the house, with the kids yelling after me, "Mom, why are you quitting?" So much for saving face.

So, I think I got one of the best workouts of my life, as evidenced by a kind of soreness I haven't felt since I pushed a baby out of my body.

I can only pray and hope I will have the physical AND mental fortitude to continue on this journey I've begun. I HAVE to - mainly so my children won't humiliate me.

I guess I'm boring

I'm still trying to figure out how to write a blog. So I was searching the web for tips and came across this article by Brian Ford at Newsvine, entitled "How to Write a Blog that People Actually Want to Read: http://brianford.newsvine.com/_news/2008/03/11/1358974-how-to-write-a-blog-that-people-actually-want-to-read#comments.

I'm a Mom, so I guess that rules out interestingness right away. OK, so that's not what he's saying. He even make s a nice little note at the bottom saying that he wasn't necessarily picking on Moms. He asks if all Moms could possibly be this boring and arrives at the conclusion that we probably aren't.

Find a niche, he says. Be interesting, he says. Ignite controversy, he says. Piss people off, he says.

All right, so I'm brainstorming. . . . ways to be interesting


ways to be "controversial"


ways to be "edgy"


OMG, I barely have the brain power to type. But I AM writing a blog, so I guess I'd better work a little harder.


Let's start with, "I'm a Christian." That should be enough to piss of a pretty huge segment of liberal-dom. Or better yet, "I'm a Roman Catholic." Where are the scathing comments? And, while I'm at it, "Yes, I am pro-life." And even, "Why, yes, I do think premarital sex is sin and that ANYONE WHO EVER DOES IT WILL BE DAMNED TO HELL!" LOL, I just embellished that last part. Because if that was the Truth, I would be damned to hell. (I didn't embellish the part about it being sin, which it is, if you believe in the Judeo-Christian God and the words He inspired to be written in the Holy Bible. However, I know that the damned to hell part isn't true, because there is a way out of any sin - His Name is JESUS!)


Obviously, I'm still kind of working on the random part. It's the way my robbed-of-brain-cells-by-multiple-pregnancies mind works. I'll try to rein it in so my reader (I'm hoping to make that plural soon) might have some idea of what she is in for when I create a new post. I'll try to stick to the main focus of this blog. . . as soon as I figure out what it is.


So, yeah, I'm a Mom, and I think I'm pretty interesting. So does my husband when he's had a few beers. (If you know my husband, you should be rolling on the floor laughing right now.)


In all honesty, I do appreciate Mr. Brian Ford's article. My sarcasm throughout this post has been due to the fact that I am feeling quite humbled by the task before me - to create a blog that people will actually want to READ! That, and I forgot to take my meds today.