That Body In the Mirror

My brother at eighteen years old has been battling bulimia for the last year and a half.  We recently delivered him to a treatment center to begin the process of recovery.  Really it is not just his recovery that has begun, but our whole families recovery.  A counselor at the beginning of this journey told my mother “this is not about you or your family at all, it’s all about him.”  That statement is the biggest bunch of nonsense I’ve ever heard.  She did not ever speak to the family, only to him.  I am so thankful that he is now in a place that is including not just my brother, but our family in the process as well.

When this began I was so upset with him.  I kept my mouth shut, but the bottom line was in my mind he was making a choice.  Now I realize we are all making a choice.  He filled an empty and hurting spot with bulimia, just as we all fill those empty spots with something.  He is lucky to be entering treatment at a stage when he is still moderately healthy and expected to progress quickly through the program.  Some of the teens and adults there are not that lucky. 

My mother walked into the facility with him and will be forever haunted by the scene.  Here in this beautiful spa like setting were kids in oxygen masks and wheelchairs looking like they had just left a concentration camp.  How can we put our whole self into our body image?  How can we raise our children to believe that their exterior self is really the most important thing? 

I am no longer upset with my brother, I am upset each of us.  We support media that air brushes men and women to perfection.  We watch shows that only show beautiful people, and if there are less attractive people on these shows they are the butt of jokes and ridicule.  Our children hear us comment on the weight and looks of others in a derogatory and judgemental manner.  How can we look at a person who loves and hurts and laughs and cries and assume that they are nothing but the shell they are wearing?  It is so disgusting. 

This whole experience is a continual education for me.  I hope that my whole family walks away with the ability to help others going down this difficult path.  It is not a single persons journey, but a journey that family and friends must make together.  Look in the mirror with your children and talk about how amazing they are in the body they are in.  Then teach them good health and nutrition.  Show them healthy exercise by example not by scaring and demeaning them. 

If you have never checked it out share Dove’s campaign for real beauty videos with your son or daughter.  I found it to be an eye opener that was easy to share with my teen and he was stunned by a couple of the videos.

http://www.dove.ca/en/default.aspx#/cfrb/

http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=2217

For Catherine

This post is in honor of a woman I do not know and will very likely never meet or speak to.  This woman lies in a hospital bed in Oklahoma fighting for her life and the life of the child within her.  Many of you have read about Catherine, you know her five-year old daughter lies in the same hospital.  You know that her fifteen month old and her three-year old sons were ripped away from her by a tornado.  Tragedy happens to so many parents and we never hear about it.  I cannot however stop thinking about Catherine and the pain she is going through which I cannot even begin to fathom. 

Catherine, this is for you.

My son will graduate from the eighth grade tomorrow.  It seems like only yesterday I was chasing after him on the playground, or watching him make spaghetti sculptures on his sippy cup.  Now he is a good two inches taller than me and growing.  Yesterday he gave me a good long hug and my toddler squished herself in between us to hug him too.  My heart nearly broke from the joy of this single moment.  We, as parents are so blessed to have these moments. 

We all have ideas about what a perfect parent should look like.  Most feel that two parents is the best way to raise children and are quick to quote the studies filled with proof.  Some of us feel it must be a man and a woman, or it must be a parent with religious background, or it must be a parent with a college education.  It must be all or one or some of these things to raise a really great child.  I’d like to say we’re missing the big picture in a big way. 

Great adults have been raised by all kinds of families.  I think the real key is not in the who or the how, but in the love.  As parents isn’t it more important to realize at some point everyday how incredibly lucky we are to be the caretakers of these young ones’ lives?  Our children are going to grow up and become their own person.  Most will not do exactly what their parents envision for them, but does that really matter?  My goal for my children is education completed to the best of their ability, employed, decent moral standards, faith and most importantly contentment and peace even when things are tough. 

I cannot even imagine the pain associated with the loss of a child at any age.  Even in that pain though, I know a part of me would still acknowledge the privilege of being able to be a part of that child’s life.  What an amazing, awful, wonderful, tragic thing to have known that beautiful person’s entire life story from start to finish.

At any moment our whole lives can slip away.  Perhaps the most important thing we can do is take the time to hug our children tightly and remind them that they are so amazing exactly as they are every chance we get.

Have I Lost My Mind?

 

Full-time job, two kids at home, one income, one parent, and applying for grants to go back to college in my ….ummm….spare time.  Have I completely lost my mind?

My boss, who I truly enjoyed working for, retired a little over a year ago.  Our office has been chaos and dismay ever since.  No one is happy, and it is wearing me down.  The community I live in has an astronomical unemployment rate and new jobs are just scarce here.  So what should I do?  Sit here and be miserable in hopes that the job market will pick up or be proactive?  I’m choosing proactive and I’m scared to death.

I have registered with the local college, I have applied for the grants, I am hunting down scholarships, and getting my ducks in a row.  The courses I want to take are all available as e-courses except for a couple of labs, so my goals can be achieved almost exclusively from home.   Perfect, right?  So then why am I scared to death?

My sleep has been taken over by a wandering mind.  What if I don’t get the grants?  What if I can’t find a single scholarship that I can get approved for?  What if I get everything I need and lose my mind from trying to squeeze in parenting, full-time job and college?  What if I simply fail?  Okay, breath, relax, pray, breath.  A lot of women do this right? I’m intelligent and I work well under pressure.  I can do this, right?  So then why do I feel like Dorothy swirling around in a hurricane?  Aunty Em, Aunty Em, Helllllllllp!

This Must Be Love!

 

It’s been awhile since my last post.  Sometimes you get so busy that life seems to pass in a blur and when it finally slows down you realize a month has passed.  Life has been filled with the first of the ’back to school’ colds, sinus infections, football practice, soccer practice, game days, homework, work, and a toddler who is filled with more spunk than I ever thought possible.  But it is fall!!! Hooray!!!

This week it actually began to feel like autumn here in disgustingly sunny California.  Crisp cool days, a wonderful rain storm, pumpkins on porches and kids in light jackets.  I adore fall! Where some people fade with the summer, I come alive.  The leaves turn to fiery colors, the sky turns gray and I am overcome with pleasure as I watch the season saunter in. 

I know its odd; at times my love of gray skies and cold months has resulted in me being compared with Wednesday Adams.   I’m okay with that.  One of my favorite movie quotes of all times is a reference to ‘bouquets of sharpened pencils’.  Just those words make me want to go for a walk to look at the changing leaves and then come home to sip cocoa and tell my son stories that start with ‘when I was a kid….’.  

Soon turkeys or tofurkeys (whatever you’d like to imagine) will adorn tables, and families will come together to laugh, play, argue and drive each other mad.  Football will be on TV, as fans shout at refs for the first half of the game and snore through the second half, their stuffed bellies taking control of their eyelids.  It is simply beautiful. 

Remember to fill a belly that would otherwise be empty this fall.  These are cold months when you don’t have a roof and four walls.

Did The Feminist Kill The Gentleman?

There exists in this world a generation of men who open doors for a lady, they offer to help unload grocery bags from their carts, they offer to lift heavy objects if they are physically able.  These men all seem to be over the age of sixty-five.  So I’m wondering, what happened to the sons and grandsons of these men?  Did women shatter their sensitive natures, causing them too much emotional distress to allow them to take a risk on being the knight in shining armor?  Or was it something else?

Please, don’t misunderstand me.  It’s not that I want to return to the dark ages.  I enjoy being able to vote, I’d rather not be forced to stay in an abusive relationship because I’m just ‘the little woman’, and I do prefer not being thought of as a second class citizen.  I’m just wondering if women can’t have all of those things and still have a man dash in like the Calvary when we have to unload a trunk full of boxes as he’s strolling by. 

Case in point:  An elderly woman pulled up in front of our church to unload a van filled with boxes.  A volunteer drives by on the riding lawn mower, looks right at this little old gal with a big box and a vehicle filled with more, and waves then continues on.  As he makes more passes he makes sure to smile at her each time, as she and now another fifty-plus woman continue to unload.  The second woman is my mother, and the elderly woman tells her, “Even as recently as ten years ago the man doing that would have taken a quick break and helped us unload these boxes, without me having to say a word.”

I have been in relationships where I have literally been the bread-winner, the house cleaner, the chef, the mother and the father.  I didn’t choose this, but after months of being the only income working fifty hours a week, watching the house fall apart, I decided I’d have to do everything.  So I did, thus I am currently turned away from those and any other romantic involvements.  I hope I don’t remain this way forever, but unless the gentlemen return I don’t foresee a change.  This makes me wonder about the minds of men. 

Are there men out there just waiting for the return of the old-fashioned woman?  Men who want their woman to stay home, cook, clean, balance the check book, look after the children and be waiting with a smile, a drink and a kiss when he walks in.  I really think there are a lot of women out there still willing to do those things, we just want to take a couple of classes, volunteer here or there, and have some intelligent conversations with you in addition to the day to day.   Or, maybe, too many men have been raised by woman who do everything, rather than fathers who teach them the art of being a man?  I don’t know, enlighten me.

As far as the women who don’t want to have a man do anything for them, perhaps you could just be polite about it for the sake of those who do.  Just accept the door opening, and politely decline the heavy lifting. The thing is I can lift that heavy box, I can jump a car and I can change a tire, I am the DIY queen, but it feels so good to have someone help you with those things, especially if they’re doing it just because it’s a nice thing to do.   Come back gentlemen, a lot of women miss you terribly.

 

 

When spell-checking this piece I found it interesting that my use of the word ‘lady’ resulted in a tag due to ‘bias language’.  So tell me ladies are you a lady or not?

 

Image by Francesco Marino http://www.freedigitalphotos.net/images/view_photog.php?photogid=809

Not The White Bread Sort

As I was reading through some blogs and comments this evening I saw a comment that sort of felt like someone pinched me really hard then ran away laughing.  ‘Millions of White-Bread Mommy Blogs’ was the reference, I suppose to blogs just like mine.  Just a mom spewing her daily madness to relieve some of the stress and maybe amuse someone out there once in a while.  I really am okay with no one ever actually reading these words except for me and perhaps my kids if I should get hit by a bus or something tragic like that.  However, I feel the need to speak out just a bit against the ‘mom-in-a-box’ catagorizing. 

There are a lot of us moms out here.  Some of us are like June Cleaver, others are more likely to be carrying a cleaver.  There are mountain moms, artists, hippies, gardeners, soccer-moms, dance coach moms, writer moms, etc, etc.  Most of us are a little of everything.  Actually if it weren’t for us moms (and dads too) then none of you Uber-Cool non-mom people would be sharing your shiny little lives here.  Just saying.

Me, I’m a gamer mom.  When the kids are in bed, when the chores are done, when whatever at home work-out is done (cause not all moms can afford them fancy gyms), I become warrior, healer, defender, mage, military mistress of mayhem, or any other number of things.  Yeah, I know I’m a total geek, but I’m fine with that.  There are of course many more facets to me than this, that do not revolve around my kids. 

So if moms have so much besides just their kids to talk about then why do our blogs tend to revolve around our kids?  Call your mom and ask her.

P.S.  We eat whole wheat bread, multi-grain bread, ciabatta bread, naan bread, but almost never white bread.  Don’t you know wonder bread is called that because it makes you look like one of the seven wonders?!?

From 3AM On

Minor DIY happening in my bedroom, so I went to bed on the couch.  It is a nice comfortable couch for one person, and I was sleeping soundly until…….

-17 month old woke up once, twice, yep three times for that little lady

-by 3 am I brought her out to the couch with me, she slept soundly until 6am

-3:30am baby head butts me and keeps sleeping

-4am baby head butts me and keeps sleeping

-5:15am baby head butts me and keeps sleeping

-6am baby is ready to get up

-6:15am she is standing at the fridge doing her ‘hysterics giggle’ because she is ready for breakfast

-6:30am son and daughter are both at table eating dressed up scrambled eggs and toast

-6:45am folding laundry and getting dressed at the same time.

-7am everyone is sorta ready until I discover that son who is leaving for an overnight retreat has decided he doesn’t need to pack soap for just 48 hours of getting filthy in a cabin.  We pack the soap.  He has packed no sweatshirts, I coulda sworn I checked this bag last night.  We pack the sweatshirts, as the baby unties his sleeping bag pouch and tries to pull it out.

-7:15am get the cupcakes out to take to work, slip half of them on the pretty plate only to catch scent of my daughter

-7:17am changing dirty diaper while my darling mother attempts to put on my daughters shoes at the same time.  I’m pretty sure this would be moderately counter-productive for most people, but it worked because my family is just weird.

-7:40am what happened to the time between 7:20 and 7:40 I’m not exactly sure, but somehow I’ve done the dishes, my son and brother are each sitting at computers showing how helpful teenagers are, my daughter is running from me with a trail of toilet paper, the cupcakes are still sitting on the counter only half on the ‘pretty’ plate.

-7:43 everybody is out the door, loaded into the correct cars, and off and running.  The cupcakes are still sitting on the counter only half on the ‘pretty’ plate, all alone, those poor sad little cupcakes.  I’m so thankful we don’t have indoor pets.

I Must Know

So, I’m wondering if adults who take full responsibility for themselves are now on the endangered species list.  Has anyone recently seen one of these elusive creatures?  Are you one of them, and if so have you reported in for counting?

I spoke to a women this morning who has missed two appointments in a single week.  She is a married mother of two, she is employed and owns a car.  That’s right she could be driving next to you when you venture out today.  We did call her and leave her messages to confirm her appointments on the phone number that she selected for this purpose.  Her response regarding the messages left was a rather snotty ”Well, you don’t actually expect me to check my messages everyday do you?  You really need to call again and again until you reach me.”, followed by “So when can you get me in, it’s been so hard to get an appointment with you.”  Really? (Hang on this requires an additional forehead slap!)  Unfortunately as someone who has never been here before and has now missed two appointments there will be no further appointments scheduled.  I received a rather atomic response to that bit of information, followed by a sudden disconnection of the phone line.  Odd, surely she must have lost service.

It seems as though this  ‘not my fault’ culture is running rampant around the U.S.  They’re on the news, in the papers, they’re involved in law suits regarding things like the hot coffee they spilled in their laps that was hot so someone needs to pay, because again, it was hot.   They’re in prisons too.  Like the man currently suing the police department because they tasered him after he assaulted an officer who stopped him from running down the middle of a busy road in his underwear. 

So is that really how the majority of people exist now?  How do these people even manage to use the restroom alone?  Hmmm, maybe that’s why people always go together in public places. 

Please, I’m begging you, if you are one of these people who expect everyone to do everything for you, go out and find an actual adult to handle your life.  If you honestly believe that every mishap you’ve ever had is someone elses fault seek help, because you are living in Lala Land.  Perhaps you should have your mother come and live with you.  (If your already living with your mother and she is just like you then maybe someone elses mother should come live with you.)

This has been a word from your local annoyed single parent.  Please note these opinions are my own, they were not given to me by someone else, no one is standing next to me forcing me to type these words.  I take full responsibility for everything I said.

Peace and Quiet, I Think Not

This morning was set to be perfection.   The household had to be everywhere early, the office had a late start.   My plan…..get everyone out the door, go in early, keep the lights down low, have thirty full minutes of coffee and serenity.   Well I’m here, I’m not on the clock, the coffee still isn’t brewed, everyone had exactly the same idea and it’s taken me fifteen minutes to write this one paragraph.   Fail!

Oh well, at least we’ve all had some time to shoot the breeze.  Soon there will be coffee, and my banking has been accomplished.  Times up!!

When The Apple Flies

It feels like fall this morning.  Crisp and cool, blue sky with puffy white clouds.  I wish I were outside, laying on a blanket in the grass trying to figure out what each cloud looks like.  Instead I sip my coffee and breathe the piped in filtered air as I feed you snippets of my life that you could probably survive without, while I make calls and sit on hold.   

My little girl is learning to use her spoon by herself.  Actually what she really likes to do is be fed bites of food while she mixes and mashes the rest of it with her spoon.  My teenage son (teenage…..I still can’t believe that) breaks the hardboiled egg-shell into tiny pieces for no apparent reason as my daughter launches her apple across the room.  They both stop and look a me expectantly, I’m not sure what they expect me to do, I’m not awake enough to react with any oomph.  I pick up the apple, rinse it off and take a bite.  This is breakfast on a weekday morning in my house.  Messy, chaotic, incredibly beautiful.

I drive by a man who stands on a corner almost every evening.  He is probably in his sixties, bushy white beard, tattered fedora, old slacks, faded button down and a vest, fully buttoned.  He holds a sign that says ‘work’.  He has been in that same spot in those same clothes every day for months.  Whatever money he collects standing on that corner and whatever he uses it for, I bet he’d trade it for just one of our messy, chaotic mornings.   When I am frustrated with life, he reminds me of how much I really have.  Despite his situation, the man has style. 

 Are you really going to wear the stuff shoved in the back of your closet that you haven’t even thought of in the last two years?  Perhaps someone else could wear it.

Cheap, Fast, Easy Cooking For The Day:  Get a plantain, slice it into thin rounds, fry it like a potato chip, drain on a paper towel, add a bit of sea salt if desired.  Serve with a sandwich and fresh fruit or veggie plate.  Yeah, yeah I know fried food bad so bad, but come on if it’s a sandwich night you know you were gonna buy chips anyway, you might as well bring something fun and different to the table.