I’ve written before about how the day I became a mom I started seeing other people differently. I couldn’t help but see people through the lens of thinking about how their mothers see them. Instead of sitting next to a man at Starbucks and not thinking twice about him, I’d give him a real look and search in his face, his expressions, his gait… all the things that his mom might see when she looks at or thinks of him. Instead of just standing behind a teenage girl and being glad those years are way behind me, I’d look at her and think about how her mom use to do her hair but now probably worries about every choice she might make while she’s off exercising her independence and how she wishes she could protect her from all the things that she knows exist in the world around us that will ingrain in her that she isn’t good enough despite all the things she has done to try to make her immune to those messages.


But then…


I learned a long time ago not to be too quick to apply my own values to other people and assume they think the same, love the same, protect the same, or basically have the same onion of a brain with all the layers that I have. Maybe their concerns are a different sort that I haven’t and wouldn’t even consider just due to the nature of our life’s circumstances and experiences. Maybe they have an element to their personality that I don’t have, such as the ability to not worry about the future, the ability to trust that everything will work out no matter what they do, the ability to just know they’re doing the best job and not stress about what they’ll realize later they missed… maybe they’ll never even give thought to what they might have missed and assign it to the category of being a result of someone else’s choices or just the results of chance. Some of those capabilities would be nice to possess, while others, both on this list and not, I feel grateful I don’t have. While I may one day look back on my life and these years of raising children and realize that I made poor decisions that should have been made differently, I know for certain that I am intentional every day in the attempt to not be that person. I try to find solace in knowing I spend a lot of time in my own head wondering what’s going on in my loved ones’ heads. I wonder sometimes where that comes from; was I just born that way or did my own journey through childhood and adulthood create this result? I think it’s a mix of both, although I wouldn’t attempt to guess the ratio. I am empathetic and compassionate to a fault - or is that even possible? But, if I could, would I choose to be less of either of those things? I don’t think so. But do others who do happen to be less of these things wish they were more of those things? I don’t know.  As I said, I cannot assign my own values to other people nor presume to know their point of view.


I do know it hurts me sometimes to think of the suffering of others and even more so the lack of concern from people for whom those sufferings don’t affect… that apathy… it bothers me, because I know it hurts people.  I know this because the apathy of others to my own pain has hurt me. As a result, I feel others’ pain when the indifference of people who have the privilege of not having been dealt that particular hand means that their pain goes unacknowledged or insignificant enough to do anything about it; even worse is when they presume to know what it’s like and determine that it’s insignificant.  Maybe the worst yet is those who DO know from experience and choose to ignore. The fact of the matter is that every single individual born has to live their entire life inside their own existence, and it is entirely unfair to have one person’s circumstances deemed less important than the circumstances of someone else. It is unfair for people who can choose to make life better for someone else to instead choose to make life better only for themselves. And it leaves a mark far beyond that moment.


Many of the people in my past feel like ghosts to me whether they’re alive today or not. Others feel as real to me and as constant to me as they did in my most nostalgic moments.  For some reason, when I wrote that last sentence, I had to stop; a heavy wave of emotion and tears came over me. Lifelong sadness and loneliness that I keep pushed down deep rose up and pushed its way up to the surface of my chest, up my throat, and out of my mouth and out of my eyes. This happens sometimes, and, when it does, I feel a bottleneck inside where more has risen than what I can get out of my mouth and eyes fast enough.  It’s been a while since I last wrote, and I think it’s because I haven’t wanted to feel the feelings I feel when I write about certain things that weigh on me. And now, there’s a bottleneck.


In a few hours, it is Father’s Day. As I do every year, I will focus on the man that is my kids’ father. The one who grew up without his own dad who passed away when he was a baby, the one who had step-dads who aren’t in his life today, and the one who somehow, despite all of that, just knew how to be a great dad to his own kids, guided by nothing but love and a strong work ethic. He has his faults as we all do, but he is not a mirror image of any of the father figures in his own life or in mine.  He is something much, much better. I have seen men with the best examples of how to be a father not be the kind of dad my husband is. This makes me grateful beyond measure, because the one thing more than anything that I want is for my kids to grow up with not a single solitary moment of doubt about how much they’re loved, how much they matter, how much we dedicate every moment of every day to being for them what we didn’t have.


But, here lately, I have been noting through the peripheral of my sub conscience that Father’s Day is approaching, and I’ve been allowing myself to think about what that day could be for me under different circumstances. I think about the many others (there are so many of you) who also focus on what Father’s Day means for their kids, ignoring their own needs that weren’t and aren’t met, stuffing their feelings deep inside and covering it with all the reasons they have to be grateful for other things so that they can make flowers grow from the rot below. I am covered in flowers. It looks like a magnificent garden from a distance, I’m sure. But sometimes that rot in the ground beneath the garden quakes and out from the cracks comes the sense of loss I have felt my entire life, out comes the pain I have felt from the indifference of others who don’t love me like I love. I grew up knowing every single day of my life that I was not loved the way I love. I’m 45 years old now, so that’s a lot of days.


I tell myself I am well-adjusted and don’t need those things and that I have filled in those spaces with other things that make everything ok. And I truly don’t need those things. But I want them. When my feelings rise to the surface, I go sit by myself in the dark so no one sees my red, blotchy face, and no one hears my uneven breaths or my now-stuffy nose. I don’t want to feel pity from anyone. I don’t want someone to stroke my arm. I don’t want to be reminded of all the wonderful things in my life - I know those things well and I can give a longer list of them than anyone else can give me. It’s not a ungrateful thing, it’s a worthiness thing. I just have to acknowledge what I push down and cover up and shrug off… that I want a dad to celebrate tomorrow that loved me from day one and did everything he could both tangibly and intangibly to make sure I knew that. I want a parent who walked around with their heart outside their body every day since the day I was born like I did when mine were born. I want to be that important to someone, that worthy, that special, that indispensable. But I’m not. And that’s not something you can just become one day. You either are from the beginning or else you feel the void of it until the end.


When I look at this picture and the few others I have from a time when my dad was still a part of my life before the next 17 years that he wasn’t, I see a ghost of someone that I wish I knew now in the way I knew then. The way I knew him then was without knowledge of 17 years of separation that were to come from ages 5-22 and without the 8 years of reconnecting from ages 22-30 that ended in me being angry that I lost him before I’d had the conversations with him I was waiting to have until he reached his senior years and would be ready to speak on things from the mature perspective that I needed. He died too soon and from something preventable… bad choices, bad habits, a predisposition… it’s hard to find the right words to sum it up. But I was angry, because I felt he owed it to me to have conversations with me I needed to have when he finally realized I’m very perceptive and hyper sensitive to bullshit. I knew he wouldn’t realize it anytime soon; he would get exasperated with me when I didn’t accept his words as genuine and refused to concede that I saw through his words. I was willing to wait, because what choice did I have? But then he just died. And so in my mind I focused on my brother’s pain instead of my own. I felt it was my brother who deserved that consideration, not me.


The man in this picture with me was practically a kid himself, just 17 years old when I was conceived. I found out the first time I talked to him at age 22 that I was born on his birthday. No one had ever told me that before and I didn’t remember knowing when I was little and he was still around.  In an odd way, it gives me a sense of a connection with him now. He’s been gone for over 15 years, having died a few months before Jose and I got married. He left me the gift of a brother who looks so much like me that I have always had to force myself not to stare at him. I spent my life searching for my face in the people on my mom’s side, and I never saw it short of a small similarity here or there. When I saw my dad for the first time at age 22, he was walking towards me. I hadn’t been sure I’d know how to tell who he was if there would be other men around, but the second I saw him and he saw me, we instantly recognized each other. I was staring at the male version of my own forehead, my own eyes, my own nose, my own cheekbones, my own mouth, my own body frame. We were very different people in mind and heart, in perspective and character. But he was funny, and I’ve been told I’m funny. So there was that. And he had a son whose voice I had heard when he was a baby when my step mother - my baby brother’s mommy who passed away before I ever had the chance to meet her, asked for me when someone at my house picked up the phone when I was around the age of 9 and handed it to me, telling me it was my best friend Cirila.  As I started chattering away and became quickly confused by the voice on the other end who clearly was not Cirila, and before I even understood her words telling me who she was and passing the phone to my dad, I heard my baby brother’s voice in the background. I remember very well the feelings I had in that moment: shock, fear, happiness - that he actually might love and think about me maybe, jealousy… yes, jealousy. Because they got to know my baby brother and I didn’t. Because my baby brother got to know my dad and I didn’t. But the next thing I knew, the phone was taken from me… someone had seen or heard my confusion. I never spoke to any of them again until the day when I was 22 years old I dialed the number for information and asked to be connected to the man who was responsible for my existence. It was amazing how easy it was to reach him. I remember the shock of it. All the stress and anxiety and courage it took for me to finally make that call with sweaty hands and within minutes his voice was on the other end of the line. I remember wondering if I should have tried sooner? But there was the fear… I never would have been so brave even though I had searched the faces of every stranger I’d seen growing up, always wondering if I might run into him and if we’d recognize each other. In my imagination, he would smile and hug me and say he’d been looking for me every day since the last time he saw me. He would say he never stopped loving me.


And then there was my baby brother now a 14 year old boy. He wouldn’t remember that phone call that our dad and his mom had made to me all those years ago. He probably didn’t know that I’d heard his voice and thought about him every single day since. He lost his mom when he was a little boy. That made me so sad. We had both suffered losses, but he lost his mommy. When I had my own kids later, this fact made my heart ache even more.


During those years of reconnection with my Dad, I got to meet (again) that whole side of the family and realized that I’d had another loss that I hadn’t fully grasped - the loss of people that I believed — and know now, especially with the years that have passed since - would have filled me with the kind of love and acceptance that I longed for growing up. It’s not that I wasn’t loved by mom’s side of the family; it’s just that there were so many conditions on a lot of that love… which you could argue means it wasn’t really love at all but instead some other sort of shallow affection.  But the love I have from my dad’s side of the family is real and has substance. My dad might not have been a great human being when I was born and I don’t blame my mom for leaving him, but the rest of the family was wonderful, and I hadn’t known that they’d missed me all those years. It hadn’t occurred to me that I was special enough to be loved and missed by people; surely, I'd assumed, they’d forgotten about me 10 minutes after my mom left with me and took us 1,000 miles north.  It took me quite a few years to believe that they cared about me as much as they said they did. I think a part of me waited for them to forget about me… that they’d be curious at first and then grow tired of me. The best thing that ever happened was when my Aunt Brenda took me by the hand via a group text with my aunts and cousins and pulled me into the fold. I’ve been there ever since, finally realizing that no one was going to forget about me, and, there, I was free to express my love for them too without fear of them throwing it away.  These are many of the seeds that became flowers in the garden that covers my sadness like a soft bandage.


During all of those years when my Dad was not in my life, I grew up wondering if he thought of me or if he’d been glad to have been rid of the responsibility. I carried on in the life I had without him in it and did my best to be a good kid, do well in school, stay out of trouble. My mom had remarried and had 2 more kids, and from the outside looking in, I’m sure it seemed like a story of redemption for her.  But, eventually, I began to experience terrible things that I knew in my very cells had to be kept secret lest I make someone else’s life complicated and uncomfortable. It would be a domino affect, and I dare not knock that first domino over.


For many reasons that I won’t write about here, I developed a convincing poker face that prevents many people from knowing what lies beneath. It’s my armor, my protection from showing my vulnerabilities that others might not understand or might take advantage of. At one time it was so I could survive. Now it is critical in ensuring that I’m able to maintain some control in my life - control I never had growing up and maybe control that I don’t even need now but still cling to… I’m working on this.  But part of that lack of control I had growing up was all the years I spent overcompensating so others could be more comfortable; anything less resulted in me feeling guilty for their discomfort. I was trained to do this by people who let me know in no uncertain terms that it was expected of me… people that “loved” me but not really… not the way I love.  During these years, I thought about my Dad and wondered if his violent tendencies towards my mother could be any worse than the private torment I had to endure and felt trapped inside. The things that were a part of my world now included the constant shifting of focus away from the bad behavior of others and placing it squarely on my shoulders to carry on without a fuss so everyone else could pretend nothing had happened. Years later, I would realize the extent to which this was true…. a few more years would pass and, with more age and wisdom, I’d realize it was even worse than I’d realized previously. Some people are capable of turning a blind eye to almost anything as long as it means they can live in their fantasy world where everything is idealistic and those that don’t conform are just causing trouble - I was and have actually been made to feel sorry for hurting other people’s feelings who had harmed me.  As I sit here typing these words, I am reminded that it took me until I was over 40 years old to finally take a stand and say, “No. I will not be your doormat, and I do not have to pretend, and I am worthy of more than what you are either willing or capable of being, and I will not spend another day of my life making yours easier for you by pretending that the images in my head that I have to live with don’t matter. To me, it’s unacceptable that I could never have a relationship with a man that has a beard because it makes my skin crawl to feel it on my skin. Since drawing boundaries that have continued to be violated repeatedly, I have been told that I’m selfish for not taking certain secrets to my grave. True story.


It’s not surprising when I look back that one of the recurring nightmares I had from the time I was a kid all through my teenage years and once in a while into my 20’s was of me walking quickly in the dark down the street towards the house my family lived in. I have the sense that someone is behind me and getting closer, and I’m picking up the pace feeling like I can’t find my breath. I get closer and closer to my front porch and become aware that the person behind me has a large knife. I am in a straight-up panic to make it inside in time before the person behind me stabs me. The porch light comes on, and I think I just might make it inside, but no one lets me in. I am banging on the thick, heavy door with both fists as hard as I can, and I only see faces looking out at me from the window at the top of the door. I am screaming but nothing is coming out. I sense the person right behind me and anticipate the knife plunging into my back right as I wake up in a full sweat and gasp for air, finally realizing that I couldn’t breathe in my dream because I’d been holding my breath in real life. If I had this dream once, I had it 1,000 times. It felt just as real every single time. It took me moving far away and physically separating myself to finally be able to mentally and emotionally separate myself years later from what had torn me apart for so long. Still, though, I continued to feel it was my responsibility to keep the secrets that so many who should have helped me already knew so that I wouldn’t disrupt others’ happiness. And that festered in me and weighed me down more and more as the years passed.


I said I look at people around me like their mom might look at them, but I realize - because I cannot apply my own values to other people - that I’m actually looking at them like I would if they were mine.  I’m looking at them like I wish someone would look at me, I suppose.  No man has ever looked at me the way my Dad looked at me when we reconnected when I was 22 years of age… full of amazement, gratitude, love, and pride and even some regret, I believe, at what he’d lost, and that’s another seed that turned into flower. I hold that memory close because I don’t have a lot of that sort.  Other boys and men in my life made me question whether I had any value at all for what’s inside my mind and heart or if I just had one use. They caused me to wonder if boys and men in general had any capacity for genuine love, integrity, morality, and trustworthiness. If not for a handful of truly good men like my Uncle Jerry, I would have grown up convinced of it.  But the women in my life were often just as bad because so many of them were complicit.  It took me many, many years to sort out what constitutes evidence of actual love and that I don’t have to DO anything to be deserving of it.


My Aunt Bev is one who is not a ghost to me. She is and has always been as good and as real and constant as my most nostalgic memories of her and so many flowers in my garden are there because of her. She is one of the shining stars from my childhood, the reason I do have some good memories too. From the night I slept next to her on the floor of the living room when I was 3 or 4 years old so she wouldn’t forget to take me to school with her like she’d promised, to the days of lying out on a blanket in the sun with her while we listened to her portable radio and wore big sunglasses, to the hours we would spend playing games with cards and dice while drinking sweet tea, to the summers I would spend at her and Uncle Jerry’s watching movies, loving her homemade chicken fingers, cutting her hair for her, and the hours and hours we would spend talking while she doodled out her name in bubble letters and painted her nails… all of this without me ever feeling for a second like she was hanging out with an annoying kid but that she genuinely enjoyed being around me.  When things were really, really hard for me, those memories and experiences reminded me that I was lovable and that there was good in the world and that the world was waiting for me to get through those tough years and find even more good and more love.


I can’t say that this is the part where I say, “And then everything was perfect.” No one can say that. There was more and more disappointment and hard stuff to come, but there was also a lot of self-discovery and beauty too… lots more flowers. The older I get, the more I realize and appreciate my need to care for myself. If I say I value myself, then I must act that way. I must insist that others might have to get a little uncomfortable if it means that I can finally find some semblance of comfort. It’s not about getting over something - I’m not persistently wallowing in anything; it’s about understanding that others’ discomfort is not my fault. The fault lies with the individuals who did the things that caused it all to begin with. I am within my full rights to create distance where I need to in order to finally let the broken pieces of my heart heal without it constantly being reinjured. I am entitled to a life without the constant reminder of toxic and painful experiences. I am deserving of inviting all the most loving relationships to come in and have the closest seats even if it means that others that previously occupied that space get moved further back. I must send some people out of the building altogether, and I have.


In Oprah's book The Path Made Clear, there are words contributed by Brené Brown that resonate with my feelings on being a parent, and they are: “Above all else, I want you to know that you are loved and lovable. You will learn this from my words and my actions; the lessons on love are in how I treat you and how I treat myself.”  I cannot say that anyone would have written those words to me, but I can say that I feel these for my kids. I know Jose feels them for our kids. And I know now that there are a tremendous number of wonderful mothers AND fathers out there that feel the same. I’m grateful to be among them, to have the awareness that I do even if I didn’t receive that - actually, especially because I didn’t receive it.


And now, with these words out of my head and off of my heart, I will look outward and focus on the man who is the best father to my kids that I could have asked for and celebrate him on Father’s Day.


With Love…

#ThePathMadeClear #OprahWinfrey #BrenéBrown #abandonment #flowergarden #nostalgia #healingabrokenheart #selfcare #motherhood #childabuserecovery

I skip the drive through line at Starbucks so I can run into the restroom first... I’ve been doing the pee pee dance in my car seat for over an hour now. I’m in line to get a pick me up since I’m about to fall over at this point. A nice - but, if I’m honest, too perfect - looking guy in line in front of me turns around and says hello. I smile and say hi. He turns back around and I look at the menu to decide if I want to use my star reward for a special drink or if I just want a dark roast pour over. I feel like someone’s looking at me and realize the perfect face in front of me is facing me again. He apologizes and says, “I just wanted to tell you that you have great cheekbones.” A little surprised I say, “Oh! Thanks!” I mean that is not a compliment that normally gets thrown around in the general public. “That’s random,” I think to myself, “but hey that’s kind of cool too...” I’m thinking about this now when he continues...

“I’m actually a cosmetic surgeon, and people pay me a lot of money for cheekbones like yours so I had to tell you. I’m sorry if that was awkward.” And then he laughs a little. Suddenly the compliment makes perfect sense, and I realize that because of his training and workday, he probably sees all the little details about a person right away without even trying. I’m still a little nerdy every time I see a mass transit vehicle and notice the bike rack orientation and whether the decals are the standard or upgraded packages... I spent 9 years in that industry with half of it in Project Management, and you just can’t help it. So I kind of laughed to myself a little and thought that was the end of our exchange.

We could have stopped right there; I would’ve gotten the Americano that I settled for, and I would have maybe had a little extra sassiness today with my new appreciation for the cheekbones I got my from dad that I also always notice when I see pictures of him and his ancestors. But it’s never that easy is it?

He says, “If you’re ever interested in stopping in, here’s my card. You have such a great smile, and I could tweak those scars at the corners of your mouth. You’d look amazing.”

What. The. Actual...

I look back at him, tell him politely, “thank you... that’s actually a dimple and it doesn’t bother me. The other thing is a scar from a dog bite, and it also doesn’t bother me. But I’m sure you do great work.”  I don’t take his card. He smiles again and it’s now his turn to place his order. Afterwards he smiles again, waves, and tells me to have a great rest of my day.

I suppose this is how it is for any expert of a particular field, they notice maybe not flaws but maybe opportunities to fix things. Part of me was like “Why is it always me that runs into these folks??” But maybe it’s better that it was me. Because I’m truly, honestly, 100% ok with my dog bite scar and dimple, and maybe someone else would have had to order the entire display of chocolate croissants after that exchange. Not me... just my Americano... so maybe this was an alright confirmation of something else... that I have 4 little boys who’ve already humbled me more than he can do in a 2 minute exchange at Starbucks. 😂

Oh and this is where I suggest if you’re in the cosmetic surgery business, that you pay the compliment and then just stop yourself from going further... Just... hush... shhhh... 

Some people never remember their dreams. I always do. Very often I wake up feeling like I ran my butt off all night and am exhausted.  My dreams are nearly always very fast-paced, stressful, mission-related, and I never complete the mission because of distractions… they end up being fragmented and difficult to describe verbally. Metaphor for my life in a lot of ways? I think yes.


I have been intrigued by this bottle of Dream Catcher that I’ve been reading about… it’s an essential oil by YL that is suppose to aid in emotional balance that induces positive dreaming. I thought, at a minimum, this would be great to diffuse in the boys’ rooms. Well, it arrived on my doorstep last night, so I decided to try it out for myself right before I went to bed. The jury is still out on whether or not I think it improved my emotional state and dreams… here’s why…

So I wake up this morning to Jose kissing my cheek, and I’m confused because I’m being pulled into reality with light, sounds, smells of coffee, and kisses with scruff… I’m transitioning from the very-real-feeling place I’ve been in… in the bed with this woman… ahem…

Preface needed…

Yesterday before all of this started, I was at my neurologist’s office I go to for a prescribed massage - yes, these massages are prescribed; who knew that’s a thing?  They’re to help work out some of the tight neck, shoulder, and back muscles that may be contributing to my chronic migraines. Anyway, my massage therapist is this awesome woman who could easily be a really good friend of mine if we’d met outside of this professional setting. She is similar to me in mind-body-nutrition views and she’s also an animal lover. She has amazing eyes, and she tells me funny stories about her and her wife while she masterfully works out the kinks that plague me on a regular basis. I left her office feeling a lot better and looking forward to my next appointment, because these moments of physical relief are like jewels to my emotional side. She may be the reason I was able to sleep so well last night.

Additional pre-empt…

One of the few shows I watch is The Bachelor / Bachelorette / Paradise family of shows. It’s mindless and an obvious guilty-pleasure. It’s stupid but entertaining. Thus… Jubilee.

Side note…

I’m just going to say it - I am a bit of a hooch in my dreams… I tend to end up in precarious situations with strangers on a regular basis and then wake up sort of horrified that I live this double life in my dreams.  I don’t know why; it’s not my fault what I dream; I just do. And I feel guilty about it, but… I mean…?

Ok, so now that you have these other tid-bits, back to my story…

I’m waking up this morning to scruffy kisses with the smell of coffee in the air, cartoons in the living room, Santi arguing with Dominic over who was holding Mrs. Robert first, and meanwhile, I’m leaving this awkward situation in my dream with Jubilee from The Bachelor where we have just kissed, and I’m telling her I love her lips. She says “Thank you” in a way that makes me think she hears it all the time (I’m sure she does, because the truth is - and this is me in my awakened state telling you that - she has beautiful, amazing pillow lips). A part of me feels relieved that this was a dream because I am not attracted to women in sexual ways at all, even if I have my list of “If I WERE a lesbian, you’d be mine” that I believe most women secretly have even if they won’t admit it (Jubilee is on it, btw, duh). And truly I was worried in my dream about what Jubilee’s expectations were going to be because the only thing I’d actually be up for were whatever SHE wanted to do TO ME with the lights off while I pictured Javier Bardem or Nathaniel Arcand instead of her. Sorry, Jubilee… Actually, she’s probably relieved too, because I don’t think she’s into the ladies anymore than I am… Anyway…

How did I end up in a bed kissing this gal’s perfect pillow lips, you ask? Well, because I WAS The Bachelorette, of course, and I had my Fantasy Suite cards to hand out. Everywhere I looked were these 28 year old chiseled men in their underwear, and not a one of them wanted my card. SERIOUSLY!!  They were all, “You’re a little too old for me” and “I didn’t realize YOU were going to be the Bachelorette” and “When did they start letting old cougars on the show?” and my favorite, “I’ll take your fantasy suite card” and then once in the room they were just mowing down the liquor cabinet while I waited for them to come rock my world. 

Once I’d gotten to the last guy who was now drunk and passed out on my Fantasy Suite bed, Jubilee showed up to say hi. She was trying to make me feel better, and next thing you know, I kissed her. She started to lie backwards, I was following thinking, “What the hell am I getting myself into and how do I get out of it?” when, just then, my handsome real-life husband who doesn’t think I’m too old and haggard and who still wants my Fantasy Suite card every day is kissing my face in real-life telling me it’s time to wake up. I tell him he just rescued me from a really sad dream. He asks if I was dreaming that they were all out of ice cream to which I replied, “It wasn’t THAT sad, but it was still really sad.” I told him what happened, he asked why he wasn’t one of the bachelors (I smiled because he NEVER acts jealous - and is this… a little jealousy I’m hearing????). Then I complain about how he’s hurting my shoulder and he asks, “What’s wrong? I’m not woman enough for you?”

So you can be the judge of whether you think this Dream Catcher business contributed to a different kind of dream. Was it slower paced than usual? Yes. Did I complete a mission? Well, if chasing off 25 young men is an accomplishment, why then YES, I reached that goal like it was my job. I got to kiss Jubilee’s lips and found that they were as amazing as I expected they would be. And I woke up pretty rested… I wasn’t chasing these men all over town, just all over the mansion and fantasy suite… a lot fewer steps than I usually get at night. Mostly, I probably gained an ego-beating last night that ended up being soothed by morning. So, the jury is still out. I’ll try it again tonight and see…

#DreamCatcher #TheJuryIsStillOut #Jubilee #PillowLips

I think most moms will understand what I mean when I say that I am pretty good at taking care of everyone else but fail miserably at taking care of myself most days. I’m always making sure every one’s stuff is clean and accessible even if it means I realized at the 11th hour and then was in a mad rush to get it together. What ends up happening is we get where we are going and the boys look great and I’m standing there realizing I haven’t even looked in the mirror yet, let alone brushed my hair. Or we get to one of the boys’ games and they have all their gear and I have the team snacks, but I didn’t have a chance to grab sunglasses or sunscreen for myself, which means I’ll be squinting and burning for the next 1 1/2 hours. It’s just another day when the boys arrive at a birthday party ready to have a great time while I stand there sweating from the mad rush to get the boys ready and get there by 11am and then feel faint because I haven’t eaten yet. So suffice it to say that over the weekend I’m often so focused on getting all the boys’ copious amounts of laundry finished that I usually don’t have time to do any of mine. Then, until I finally get a few minutes to get a load going when I know I’ll also have time to get it out before it all rots in the washing machine for days on end, I’m scrambling every single day to find something to wear… if not clean, then clean-enough… cleanish.

Today was one of those days when I needed to put on something for my physical therapy appointment, but all of my yoga, stretch, or running pants were in a pile needing to be washed. So I had to go to my closet and pull out one of my ill-fitting pairs that I save for these occasions. The pair I put on were on a pair I’d found on clearance for $5 a couple years ago, and it only took me wearing them the first time to realize why… they just don’t fit right in the hip or pelvic region. I usually just wear long tanks with it, but I’m low on clean tanks too. I was forced to grab a longish tank that BARELY covers a sufficient amount of the top portion of my pants, and off I went to PT, tugging my shirt down every time I sat and then stood back up.

Wouldn’t you know it, my physical therapist decided to add another exercise for me today since I’m “doing so well!”, and, after an ultrasound treatment for my neuritis and a cupping treatment to loosen some scar tissue from the back of my leg where the tendon was operated on, there I was getting handed off to the newer therapist who’s younger than my daughter and likes to stand very close while I’m doing my exercises. “Lie down here,” she says, “and put your feet in this furry sling.” I do as she says and realize that of all the days I could’ve worn these pants and now anyone walking into the room is getting an eye full of lumpy crotch. “Let it go, Gina. Not everyone notices crotches like you do.” I tell myself. 

“Ok, Gina, now you’re going to do pelvic lifts, and you’re going to pull your butt off the table and lift all the way up until your belly and hips make a straight line with your thighs; you’re going to hold the position, hold onto this bar with your hands, pull the bar down to your belly and hip area, lift your arms back up to the starting position, and then lower your butt and back down to the table again. You’ll do that 10 times. You’re going to do it very slowly and hold it at the top each time. Ready? Go.”

So I lift, lift, lift, and I hold it while I bring the bar down with my hands. I cannot bring myself to look at her, because she is super close to me, she is about 3 inches taller than the shelf I’m making with my body, and she is standing at my hip area, and with these pants on doing this exercise, I have got the most obnoxious camel toe that might be found anywhere in existence. My $5 nightmare is pulling up, up, up, as I stretch my back, and there Ms. Camel Toe sits at the top just elevated and on display. It’s like there are 3 of us in the room. Me, the PT, and… HER.  I feel like I should make some sort of introduction, “Have you met…?” Or an apology… “I’m sorry I brought her with me today…?” I don’t know. I just close my eyes, wondering why the PT is still standing there so closely, wondering if she has also lost count, wondering if it’s like driving past a terrible car accident from which you can’t look away. I can’t look at her or it, but I know what she sees. I gasped and cringed the first time I saw a reflection of myself wearing these pants and realized the horrific sight. I would have thrown them out immediately if not for how SOFT they are and how I can wear long tanks to hide the problem… When I have clean laundry, that is. Somehow I survived the 10 reps and spent the next hour hoping we could somehow forget what just happened. She handed me off a little while later to someone else, and I couldn’t be more relieved.

In keeping with my life’s destiny to run into the quirkiest, most interesting individuals, I found myself now getting some lessons on the pilates machine (that is to be part of my recovery from leg & foot surgery) from a 70 year old man who’s been practicing and teaching pilates for over 30 years. He looks 20 years younger and is clearly a nerd of his field… meaning someone who is so intensely interested in their field that they quite easily wade into the most tedious details without trying all due to their habit of naturally segueing into educating others about something they consider to be a little known fascinating fact. I work with engineers every day as part of my career, and, within a small margin of error, I can immediately determine their particular expertise almost at first glance… electrical, mechanical, structural, etc… they each give off a “thing”, and they can go on forever about their topics. I imagine this is true for most people in their individual fields, and I, for one, have a real appreciation for what I affectionately consider to be nerd-speak. Even Jose, who is one of the worst things I can imagine being - an Accountant, gets sexier to me every time he talks spreadsheets.

It was somewhere between my Fountain-of-Youth-Pilates-Therapist 1) showing me which 5 points I should be focusing on in my movements for each set on the pilates equipment and 2) using my own hand to press into various areas of my core to ensure I was engaging the correct muscles when I included a kegel at each full extension of the set that SOMEHOW we ended up on the topic of the difference in a woman’s kegel and a man’s kegel. I hadn’t previously been aware that men did kegels too; I will admit that in my ignorance I thought this was strictly at female thing. I made the mistake of admitting as much, and I found myself following him down the bunny trail of describing with hems, haws, winks, whispers, awkward facial expressions and hand gestures as he tried to describe two different ways of releasing bad bacteria from a man’s prostate… yes, that was another segue… from activating correct core muscles during MY kegel to how a man activates HIS muscles during a kegel, to how one of the ways you can get inside a man’s prostate is by… me… ahh… um… assisting… him… (wink wink, *clears throat* bug eyes and head nod, etc) and the other way was when hyperbaric pressure creates an opening which then allows something to happen that I don’t remember because all I saw was his hands demonstrating something that looked a lot like he was really enjoying massaging someone’s balls… shoulders up, quieter, higher pitched voice, looking both ways and then back at me, *clears throat*… So, yeah.

Now before anyone reading this thinks, “Oh, the horror! Oh, how inappropriate! Oh, he was clearly perverted and should have known this was an uncomfortable topic!” Let me say to you that in actuality this was all just nerd-speak from a 70 year old who LOVES his field and found in me someone who would entertain his chattering on about a topic he realized through my own volunteering of information that I did not know. He was not a man talking to a woman but rather one nerd talking to another, less-informed-on-the-topic nerd, and we could have been sitting over coffee with medical charts for reference… except that I was lying down on the pilates machine looking up at him in ill-fitting pants waiting for him to have me start the next exercise sequence… so, yeah, a little awkward, BUT… I will still just take it as a compliment that I seemed open to the information he had to share and that we had an interesting conversation I never thought I’d have at a physical therapy appointment for my leg and foot. 

Either that or it was just conversation inspired by the forefoot of a camel in the room.

I like to share things with others that added something meaningful to my day. It’s not uncommon for me, in between posts about my kids’ shenanigans or my own mom fails, human fails, and random thoughts to post about a new favorite recipe or a restaurant I’ve just found, or a new podcast, a book that touched me, etc… you all know this, obviously. 
Sometimes I get to writing in my journal and decide that maybe what I’m working through could resonate with someone else who is fighting a similar battle, overanalyzing the same issue, finding their way through a not-so-different challenge, and then I put out some pretty vulnerable things about myself that I don’t do on a typical day. Such was this past year when I shared some things in two separate posts about a journey I’ve been on with my health caused most likely from decades of pushing through a level of stress and sleep deprivation that isn’t sustainable over time. In fact, it causes damage little by little that you continue to deal with until you… just can’t. Eventually your head isn’t above water anymore and all those days, months, and years of it creeping up to your shins, your knees, your hips, your belly, your chest, your neck… now you feel like you’re literally in a fight for your life… and you sort of are. You’re stopped in your tracks and are forced to face it head-on.
​
The tricky thing here is that when you realize it - and that realization takes a lot of time to sort out - you’re already in a situation of no quick fixes. You didn’t get to this place overnight, and you’re not going to be fixed overnight.

Every evening this past year, as many shows and documentaries continued to sit in my Netflix cue waiting for me to finally watch, I researched. And researched. And researched some more. And I wasn’t just searching for one thing but really all things mind-body. Everything is connected… down to how our very thoughts and feelings settle into our organs and can cause everything from intense discomfort to straight up disease. Your liver, for one, takes on a lot of your s***. How? That unresolved issue that causes us to pull our shoulders up to our necks which hurts those muscles and pinches nerves, which now travels down our spine, constricting blood flow to other functions in our body that then suffer the consequences… Organs like our lungs and livers… If you have a persistent tummy issue, there’s a spot on your spine that knows why. Your back is hurting you? Oh, I bet your hips hurt too, right? And then when you do something physically taxing you see a lot of swelling in your calves, ankles, feet… yes? We are trained to go find an anti-inflammatory for it… before long we are also looking for an antacid for the heartburn we now have as a result. Then we need additional vitamins to replace what our blood is now not able to absorb as well from our food because of the reaction to the antacid and anti-inflammatories - but we probably don’t take those vitamins regularly and may not even have the combination our body needs… now we are tired and have a headache and we comfort ourselves with more coffee to stay awake, a quick snack or something with zero nutritional value, so on and so forth. Trace it back to the origin, the source… where did all this start? Ohhhh yeah, that thing that has been stressing me out so badly that kept my shoulders up to my ears… I finally put away the chemical-based medicines and started using plant based ones. If you haven’t heard of Arnica, considering looking it up, ordering some from Amazon or getting it next time you’re at CVS or Walgreens. People use this when recovering from surgery even, so it is effective. And it doesn’t interact with other medications you may be on and it doesn’t cause other problems in your body that then require another medication. I can attest to this personally and from friends who do the same. Are pharmaceutical companies or doctors who are handcuffed to them going to tell you about Arnica or are they going to write you a prescription? What has been your experience? Another thing you can do is to add Tumeric in veggie capsules to your daily regimen. Before long, you’ll notice less pain, and there are also lots of other benefits of tumeric and none of the side effects of Acetaminophen, Ibuprofen, Naproxen, etc, which damage your organs.

If you don’t buy into this, that’s ok, I’m not here to change your mind, just share something I wish I’d known about 20-30 years ago. But I would encourage you to think about it and do some of your own research if any of this peaks your interest. 

I say all of this to get to my actual point: I found things to comfort myself during my own recovery that have made a difference in my sleep and in my rest and have become my little happy places. When you feel awful a lot but have to power through in order to do life, moments like this are so very important to an individual. A lot of the things I do for myself - and for my family too, since sharing is caring - can be found by going no further than your local health store or Amazon and then just including them as part of your routine (i.e., Arnica, Tumeric, Omega 3 supplements - Barleans is great!, etc). 

But there’s one thing that has brought me so much comfort and isn’t quite as obvious or easy to pull together, and, one day while lying down for a bit, I had this moment of obsessing about how many people could find a few minutes or an entire night of some amount of benefit from something I had already been doing for myself and then for my kids. It’s not something that is going to cure all their ailments, but it’s something that could be a real warm and fuzzy addition to their lives either in a situation where they really need it or where they didn’t even know they needed it. It can prevent them from needing to reach over and grab that Tylenol PM or the daytime headache medicine. This is not just for the tired mom with a kink or her neck and a headache, but the dad who is tense and high strung, a pregnant lady checking into the birthing center or hospital to have her baby - or even one having the baby at home, a friend that travels a lot or is going on a long trip and also has a birthday coming up, a friend who is sick and recovering from a bug, another friend who is suffering a terrible, emotional loss of a loved one, kids these days that have a whole different sort of stress than we did as kids and who need help winding down for the input overload they get every single day, , etc etc ETC. Add to it the inundation we all experience with electronics plugged in all around us with the decrease in actually running around barefoot outside breathing in fresh air and feeling the sun on our faces, and you have very unbalanced people trying to do too much in a chaotic world whose neutrons need some serious grounding.

So this little thing that has helped me…

When I checked into the hospital 9 years ago to have the twins, I had my neck pillow in tow. It’s the one thing I need to be able to rest wherever I go, because otherwise I need 6 very specific pillows to support my head and neck in addition to my back, hips, and legs. But this neck pillow provides support to my head whether I’m lying on my back or on my side. What’s different now all these years later is that I’m a big user of essential oils. I slather them on me and my family all the time depending on our needs that day. Because I have a lot of neck, shoulder, back, and head pain, I put oils on my temples, back of my neck where my head and spine connect, and behind my ears. When I lie on the neck pillow, it creates a nice heat that almost feels like a spa treatment, and I can smell the oils constantly as I lie there. Depending on the oil(s) you choose, it can feel grounding, comforting, inspiring, pain relieving, calming, sensual, you name it. On laptops, cell phones, and iPads all day? Use a grounding oil from a tree. In need of something comforting? A flower oil can be just what you need. Dying to get rid of that headache? I can make some suggestions for that too, and then lie down with this oil and your neck pillow for whatever time you can spare - 20 minutes? 

How I have used this with the boys:

With Dominic, because he had two head and neck injuries very close together this year and that awful head injury at the pool a few years ago and also because he’s a funny and sensitive sort, I have been very intentional about the oils I use on him. Javi tends to be someone who is in his head a lot - similar to me - and has trouble getting to sleep at night - like his Dad, and I have a favorite oil for him. Santiago has scoliosis and he also scared the crap out of us this during the summer when we could have lost him to that nasty bacteria from the rat bite at summer camp; I have several oils for him. Adrian is a worry wart and has tummy problems… guess what? Yep… I have an oil regiment for him too. Once I had that lightbulb moment about my own neck pillow and how well it works with my own oils, I got each of the boys their own neck pillows too. They love them - but even if they didn’t let me put oils on their necks and feet - they do, fortunately, so it’s easy - I could put some right on the pillow itself. Now, since I put it on their necks, their pillows always have some residual oils in them anyway, which is great for moments that they get their pillows out to read or watch tv… I don’t have to constantly put oil on them, and it’s not going to waste on their pillows because they’re using them all the time. These are nice, hypo-allergenic, microfiber pillows, so they hold a nice shape, feel great on their skin, and are machine washable. Of all the ones I’ve tried, these are my favorite.

So this revelation I had when I was nursing a headache a couple weeks ago - I thought, hey, the holidays are coming up, and people search for meaningful gifts they can give people, something different from the whatever they found that seemed ok enough to get. Some people come to me to order an oil for them because they don’t order often enough to set up an account, but they can get the wholesale price by coming to me - since I’m a great friend that way 😉. Also, what about those people that have heard about oils but don’t know much about them and feel overwhelmed by them? Well, what if I put together sweet little gifts for people to give to their loved ones, their friends, their kids’ teachers, their spouses, dang it - THEMSELVES!!? And this gives them an opportunity to have a happy place when they use it, try out an oil and see how they feel about it, and maybe get curious enough to start researching ways to help themselves and their families without buying the traditional medicines that cause the other ailments that so many people don’t even connect because it’s just been our way of life for so long?

I decided to pull the trigger and put together some examples of some various gifting you can do. I have lots of colors, patterns, greeting options, accessories, and I can help you select an appropriate oil based on your budget, the person that’s getting the gift’s circumstances, and the theme itself. Got an anniversary coming up and hoping your wife will be in the mood for some sexy time? There’s an oil for that. Got an anniversary coming up and hoping your husband will be likable enough to WANT to have some sexy time (foreplay begins MUCH sooner than bedtime, gentlemen… ahem), got a friend with a baby coming up who might really be able to use a neck pillow and some Lavender or Gentle Baby blend? We can make it suitable for this occasion. Are you celebrating holidays other than Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, Día de Los Reyes, or Eid this year and want something in a beautiful Green, Red, Yellow, or Bright Blue, Patterns with certain decor or oils to fit that occasion? The New Year is coming too... I got you… even the greeting you want that I may not have shown examples of below. 

Bottom line is this: this gift is good for people, it’s personal without being imposing, it’s just for them, they’re going to use this and think about the thoughtfulness of it, and it’s one and done… let me know what you want, we’ll do it to your budget/needs (most of these will start at $30 and go up from there, but this includes a brand new, unopened bottle of Young Living oil, so it depends on which oil you decide to go with). But - boom - your shopping can be done for the season. 

If this sounds like anything you might want to do, send me a text, pm me, call me, email me… you all know how to reach me. Most of you will probably text or pm me, but for email purposes, you can also reach out to me via isawyournutsmommy@outlook.com. I do Paypal (gmrendon) and Venmo (@GinaRendon), so pick your preference.

Below is just an idea of what’s happening in my hobby room… it’s really nice to be down to one butt to wipe so I can actually have time to work on my personal hobbies again while enjoying each one of them in different ways now. Plus they’re great helpers when I need someone to “hand me one of those things over there, please”. :)

​

So yesterday I had a full day that included a trip to Arlington to drop off some connectors. 

​I had a dermatologist appointment before heading to Arlington, and it was determined while I was there that a mole next to my lip needed to be removed. So I left the appointment with a numb bottom lip and a bandaid on it. Decision time - do I visit my customer with a distracting bandaid below my lip or take it off and instead show off what looks very similar to a fever blister? The bandaid stays.


Before I could head to Arlington, my stomach started bothering me, so I weighed some options and decided, given my situation with the scooter, it was best for me to stop back at my house first. By the time I arrived, I knew for sure that was the best decision; however, sitting there having hot flashes and sweating and knowing I can’t just run inside to the bathroom presented me with another situation to think through. I decided I didn’t have any options. I clenched, tried to compartmentalize, and hopped to the back door of the car to wrangle the scooter. There’s no easy or quick way to get in the house, because I either have to go down a step to go in the hard-to-open front door, or I have to go up an awkward step and tricky angle through the garage door. Mind over matter I think and in to the garage I go... 


...Where the scooter wheel grabbed something and I didn’t go up the step squarely enough.  Next thing I know, I’m tipping over to the left side, my casted foot slides off, and I land squarely on that foot, pain shoots up my leg and through my foot and calf... that gnarly sort of pain that you imagine the guy in the movie running from zombies with his leg mangled must feel. Meanwhile,  I’m just sort of suspended, because I can’t move in either direction without falling. Finally after many seconds, I managed to pull myself to my right side without falling on any sharp objects (thank you, yoga). I pick the scooter back up, get it up the step while balancing on my right foot, and I lay my left leg back on the scooter seat, and I stand there holding my breath, eyes stinging, and the sort of shaking that happens when you’re in so much pain that you lost control of your muscles everywhere else. BUT!...


I still haven’t crapped my pants, so it’s not all bad news. (So I have that going for me...)


I somehow make it into the house, around all the corners, missing the soccer cleats my boys didn’t put away, cats' tails that lie there unconcerned and entitled, a dog sniffing my butt the whole way... he knows precisely what I'm about to do... and I make it to the bathroom in time to sit, deal my business, and send a request for sympathy via text to my husband and sister. I felt all kinds of relief, including the choice to come home for this. I didn’t even want to think about what I would have had to do if I’d waited and kept driving.


I wait around a bit until the pain in my foot and leg subside. Then I head back out to my car.


About the car...


I exchanged my company car the evening before for a new one, and I felt so fancy having a car with a backup camera, Apple Play, an engine start button, and a smooth ride that doesn't jerk back and forth periodically due to an undiagnosed transmission problem. I was less excited to realize they gave it to me with very little gas and I needed to fill it up as soon as I left my house for Arlington... after an already exhausting and slightly traumatizing beginning to my day. I was even less thrilled when I realized I wasn’t going to be able to just hop a short distance on one foot to fill up, because for the first time in my life I have a car with the gas tank filler neck on the passenger side - amazing timing, right? So to get gas I needed to wrangle the scooter out of the backseat... ah well... I have a new car and a good job... is this a real complaint? No... just a tiring inconvenience. Still, though, it’s only 10am, and I’m already sort of DONE at this point. 


I wish I could say the rest of the day was smooth sailing, but I did end up ripping my dress later and smiled sheepishly at a small crowd who learned from my 7 year old that I may or may not be wearing underwear, and I did also realize later that I had forgotten to brush my hair all day... add this to the fact that I am recovering from an eyelid infection and have no eyelashes on my left eye, and I’m just the prettiest thing you ever did see.

Today is gonna act right. I just know it.

We are on vacation in Orange Beach, Alabama, and​I’ve discovered how enjoyable it is to ride around the lazy river on an inner tube and have an ice cold beer handy. I’m not a big drinker, but I do enjoy it at certain times and places. It’s hard for me to relax in even the best of circumstances, and so I know once I get in the tube, I’ll feel anxious for a bit and have to constantly remind myself to let go of the muscles in my body that I will be automatically clenching without realizing. It will take me a while to stop catching myself tensing up and to be able to stay in a completely relaxed state. But I will eventually, and I’ll sip on my cold beer and feel so grateful for the experiences my boys are having and knowing that they don’t need anything from me for a while. We have been waiting many years to get to a place where family vacations are actually somewhat relaxing, and this feels really good.

Before I get in the water, I volunteer to go up to our condo to retrieve the frozen tumblers and beer and leave Jose at the pool with the boys. I get to our condo on the 4th floor, and I just try to remember to live in every single moment. There’s no rush, there are no emails to worry about, no phone calls I have to make or answer, no reason to hurry. I tell myself to look around the room and memorize the details of it so later I can still picture it and not wonder things like “Were there curtains? What color were they? What was the dinner table made of and how many chairs were there? Did all the living room chairs have cushions and how were they coordinated? What color paint is on the walls? Are the rooms painted different colors?” I do this, because I know if I don’t make a point of practicing, I will find a way to make even grabbing a drink on vacation a busy and hurried moment. I really do have to continuously remind myself to. slow. down.

I’m holding the tumblers and am ready to head back down to the pool, forcing myself to slow my pace, and take leisurely steps. I already know from years of practice that my face rarely gives away the stress going on inside. I show it in the quick pace of my walk. I have a natural ability to appear easy and breezy if I'm standing still. And, to some extent, I am that person. I just have a constant battle waging within between my easy, breezy, beachbum soul and the one that feels she has to run the order of the universe every second of every day… the one that carries the weight of guilt, stress, anxiety, not feeling good enough, wanting to be better… the overachieving side of me that wears me down but doesn’t allow me to admit it without feelings of failure. 

I walk towards the elevators and I see these young men - maybe they’re in their late teens or maybe they’re in the early 20’s. They’re the guys that I - 25 years ago - would have been excited to get in the elevators with, to see if they were interested in me and if we would start talking and make plans to hang out by the pool together later… I have a friend, I’ll bring her. Ok, that sounds great… see you in a bit. I would walk out of the elevator and feel their eyes watching me go; they would be interested. But here I am now, I am a mom to boys and I look at these guys as someone’s babies not desirable young men. I am now 44 years old; I’m the mom that I would see in the elevators when I was their age. I remember I would look at the moms as being old people that somehow lacked the feelings that younger people have. I didn’t see her as just a person like me really but rather an authority figure who didn’t know how to have fun and was ready to scold anyone that seemed to be having a good time. I assume I’m that person now to these young guys and they don’t look at me as a young, vibrant, sexual woman but instead see me as an old person, a mom, someone their mom would hang out with and do mom-things with. Some younger guys do give us moms this feeling that they have an interest in us… the “I love women your age” type of young guys who don’t realize they’re not exactly complimenting you the way they think they are… these two aren’t those kind of guys. These guys have the young gals on the brain… I saw them at the pool earlier and I know which one likes which one.  Anyway, it’s funny how all of this happens and you realize how much you didn’t know you didn’t know at a younger age. It makes me laugh a little inside. And as I walk into the elevator with them, I smile and say hello. They smile and say hi back to me. I take a sip of my beer from my tumbler only to realize once it was too late that the hole was on the side and not in front of my lips as I’d thought. And now there’s beer running up my nose, down my face, and onto my shoulder and chest, dripping loudly to the floor. Yep, I’ve clearly managed to keep a tight hold on my youthful swagger. They try not to laugh, and I just make a “whoops” face, because what else can I do? I think to myself, “Well, this is new.” I am that caracature in the movies, you see, that trips and runs into poles and spills things… luckily I’m married to someone who sees the endearing part of those things that make me ME. These guys are too young to be impressed by this, and I’m too old to be truly embarrassed.  I’m cool, but they don’t know how cool I am. I’m ok with that. 

I get back down to the lazy river, and we have a grand ol’ time. I go on the water slide with the boys a few times - realizing that I’m not nearly as graceful doing that as I use to be either. The first time I ingest a significant amount of water up my nose and down my throat when I fly into the pool at the end of the slide after whizzing around this curve and that curve and getting a little bit confused about which end is up. When I finally manage to get my feet to the bottom of the pool and stand up out of the water, there’s Jose standing on the other side of the pool looking at me with a wrinkled eyebrow and smirk, shaking his head at me. I can’t tell if he’s embarrassed for me or just realizing that he doesn’t know everything about me after all. The boys think I’m the coolest mom ever, though, and I’ll take it. Plus, I'll pay for it later when my back is aching, but that was fun!

Every day we took some time in the afternoon to rest in our condo. I looked forward to napping on the patio, listening to the waves, wind, seagulls, and kids playing in the pool down below. For the most part, there was less stress on this vacation, although with 4 little boys, there’s always a certain amount of anxiety involved in constantly counting to 4 everywhere you go, especially when you’re in an unfamiliar place with lots of people and lots of water. One such event happened when we were heading back to our condo to grab some lunch; everyone was starving and couldn’t wait to get back to our room. We got into the elevator and pressed “4” for our floor and a guy with his toddler daughter came in behind us and pressed “17” for their floor. The dad was carrying fast food bags that filled the elevator with smells of chicken and burgers. Javi, being Mr. Chatty McChatterson, decided to chat him up about where the food came from, what they specifically ordered from the restaurant, whether there were fries in the bag, etc. etc. All the while, we have reached our floor, the doors have opened, I am shuttling 4 kids out of the elevator, but Javi will not move from his place until he finishes getting answers. So I’m starting to panic because I need to stop Santi from going around the corner where I can’t see him, and I also know the elevator door is not going to stay open much longer. Did I mention that there are 20-something floors in this building?? I know this guy is going to the 17th floor and who knows who will get in and push buttons on the way up. I yell at Santi to come back, and I rush back to the elevator to snatch Javi out when the little girl is now pushing buttons like it’s her job, the dad is begging her to stop, and the doors close right as I get back to them. “Great!” 

So I and my other 3 boys stand there in front of the elevator for many sweaty minutes while my mind goes all over the place trying to figure out what I’m going to do if Javi doesn’t show back up here very soon and how long I should wait before coming up with a plan. Finally the elevator doors open and a lady is standing there with Javi, smiling at me and sending him out to me. I can only assume she is either the wife of the guy with all the fast food bags or someone who got on the elevator on another floor and promised to return him to the 4th floor.  I tell her thank you so much and then Javi and I make eye contact again, him looking at me sheepishly, waiting on the lecture. I just look at him and tell him that from now on we don’t carry on long conversations in the elevator. I’m honestly too tired to say anything else at this point. The whole way back to our room, all I can think of is, “Well, this was a new one.”  I can’t remember exactly, but I’m pretty sure I went straight to the patio and fell asleep when we got back to our room. 

I was really fortunate on this trip that Jose did most of the cooking and without any complaints that I didn’t contribute a lot in this department like I do at home. I woke up from a nap one day about midway through the week to find him chopping jalapeños, cutting corn from the cob, and cooking it all up. We had stopped at a local seafood shop earlier and brought back blue crab, shrimp, and salmon to eat for dinner, so when we sat down to eat, we had quite a spread.  After dinner, Jose took a bottle of wine and 2 glasses to the patio while the boys relaxed in front of the tv just inside the condo from us.  We took in the views, talked, enjoyed the breeze, and had a glass or two of wine before heading back inside to watch tv with the boys for a while before bed time. Once we finally got them to bed and got settled in ourselves, we learned that you can spend 17 years with someone and still not have experienced every type of scenario during sexy time. 

I can tell you that, with hindsight, I’m shocked this has never happened before considering the amount of chile Jose has handled in our years together, and I also realize there is a higher risk of this happening when you’re with a chile-eating man who likes to cook… how we have gone this long without me experiencing… is there a such thing as 4th degree burns?… in my nether regions is actually a bit of a mystery and quite the accomplishment… and one that shall not be repeated, let me add. He says to me with a pained expression, “I’m so sorry. I don’t know how this happened. I swear I washed my hands multiple times!” But we all know that you can’t just get jalapeños off your hands when you’ve chopped and handled them. One of my favorite habits is to suck on my fingers after making chile rellenos, because I like the heat that comes off of my cuticles in my mouth. So of course neither of us should have been surprised when I suddenly realized I was on fire and needed to immediately go sit on an ice pack. This was the first night of my life where I slept with a frozen washcloth between my legs. And, once again, I found myself thinking, “Well, this is a new one.” As I sit here and type this 2 weeks after the fact, I am just now completely recovered from that incident. Consider this your PSA.

During our weeklong vacation, we had an eventful and eventless time, simultaneously. We packed a lot in while also making a point to keep it simple and low key. It was definitely what I personally needed, and I think it did us all some good to just slow down. It did prove to me once and for all, however, that even when you plan for as stress-free of a trip as possible, you just can’t foresee everything that’s going to happen. You are going to have those “Well, this is a new one” moments every day. Well, at least we did and will continue to for our whole lives. Because we can’t seem to have a boring experience no matter how hard we try. 

In my most recent blog, I wrote about a recent experience I had with a cleanse. I have received so many unexpected emails, texts, messenger texts and phone calls, people seeing me and pulling me aside to chat about their own experiences, that I have decided to post something I wrote about what led me to finally have the, honest, raw, and thorough Come to Jesus conversation with my doctor. If you haven’t read it yet, you can still read this one first and then go and read that one if the subject matter interests you.
So, here goes...

I have been dealing with something for a long time and to the nth degree these past couple years now that, but for my (often inappropriate) sense of humor, might have pushed me towards the brink of depression. Sparing what could easily become countless pages of details, I’ll just say that spending years trying to self-diagnose and push through something I assumed was temporary and related to something I was doing wrong didn’t work, and, in hindsight, it slowed down my healing. 

It wasn’t until this past winter that I sat in front my doctor for my annual exam and started to list off things that “just weren’t right” with me, and, while it had never previously occurred to me before that the vast amount of symptoms I was having could be related - and even how vast that list had become, in recent months as I started to keep a list in the notes of my phone of all the random things that were bothering me. I saw the length of the list and knew something big was wrong. I started tracking which ones had worsened or evolved into something else or something more. And - I had begun to suspect that there really was one big thing behind it all that was causing collateral damage, essentially making me feel like I was slowly dying. 
I know how dramatic those words must seem, but it’s frankly the only way that really expresses what an honest look back at the previous years felt like. Where, for instance, I had originally been having headaches gradually and mildly, I began having them during certain parts of the day, and then I began having them during other parts of the day, and then they were occurring every day, and then the time on each side of the episodes was expanding until I had a good hour in the morning and a good hour in the evening, and then… I just had a headache around the clock. 

At that point, the severity of my headaches began to change… worse during parts of the day, not as bad during other parts, and then the worse became more often than the not as bad until I had an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening where they weren’t awful. And then, yes… I just had a bad headache all the time.  

There are several dozen other symptoms that I could go through to explain how they changed similarly… sleep problems, hair loss (including the sides of my eyebrows!), sores and cysts appearing all over me and in my mouth, other skin issues, exhaustion and just complete and utter fatigue, brain fog and confusion, dizziness, tingly, irritability, anxiety, heart palpitations, shakiness, fumbling to find words when I spoke, feeling like my tongue was too big for my mouth, spasms in my face where my muscles would freeze giving me a strange expression for 10-30 seconds (it didn’t hurt - just bizarre), I felt moments of sheer overwhelmedness, sensitive to bright lights and sounds, hitting a metaphoric wall and having a desperate need to lie down suddenly, not being able to remember directions, instructions, or even routines that I had followed without a thought for years, later finding unnatural typos and just straight up WRONG WORDS in my written messages that I’d go back to review (not natural for this grammar nazi and 1st place county spelling bee winner), etc etc… etc. 
More than once I got a confused side-eye from Jose when he’d see me doing something I wasn’t realizing, but he wasn’t around often enough to see that this was becoming my new normal. I have spent my life practicing perseverance and an external facade that I’m ok even when I’m not, so how could he have really known? I hate complaining, I feel awkward admitting that something is hard for me… I have internal conversations with myself all the time trying to reconcile fighting a battle with the sense of failure I feel sometimes. There is a never-ending war being waged inside me between what I want to do and the fact that there is a challenge in front of me that I can’t just blow off. I say all of that to say that I didn’t actually even admit to my own husband that something was wrong with me until I had made the decision to lay it all out there at my dr appointment. Until that point, I was still working out my own action plan and wasn’t really ready for outside opinions; I needed to check off all of my own action items first. This - if I’m honest - is how I have always done life. 

For better or worse, I have to sort through my own stuff before I let others help me. This was even true when my first marriage was ending. I suffered alone for an entire year before I was ready to talk about the affair between my husband and my friend and how we were divorcing. By then, I had come to terms with it and then it was a shock to everyone else who then had to deal with their own emotions about our split. This way of dealing with personal trauma, pain, and adversity is vastly different from those that deal with their own battles with their loved ones by their sides or who find solace in the listening ear of strangers. I find that I am that person for others, and it helps heal me in other ways to know I am trusted by others who are in a vulnerable state. I don’t know why I can’t seek that out for myself. I just don’t know how to do it, I guess.  And maybe that’s just me, and maybe there’s nothing wrong with it. But it has definitely slowed down my conversations with my doctor… it caused me to just say, “Oh, I’m fine. I’m exhausted and not feeling my best, but I’m working on some things and not ready to try what you might suggest.” How stubborn is that??    

Finally, when I had a dr appt coming up for my annual exam (for insurance discounts), I decided I would say that my experiment in my own self-healing was - not over, really, but - I was officially ready to open up my notes and get some help with a potential diagnosis… Actually, I was desperate for it. "Please fix me. I’m convinced I am dying." 


To be continued…

I’m not ready to go into some of the history needed to really build the framework for this story, but, in short, for about 8 months now I have been trying to tackle some problems I’ve been having for several years that seem to have multiple causes. Some things I know, and some things have been ruled out. I have a stubborn case of hypothyroidism that was diagnosed this past December, for instance, and I suspect it has been a problem for a lot longer that I realize and just got tangled up in pregnancies, breast feeding, and sleep deprivation; something I’ve now learned firsthand is that your thyroid affects EVERYTHING. I had no idea how awful it can be before it became a problem for me. Something else I’ve learned is that I am nowhere near menopause, so I cannot blame any “changes”. I have a tendency to have low levels of iron and vit D and am on supplements for those, but all of my other numbers look good. I have arthritis in my lower spine, and I have unexplained back pain in the lower half that causes me to get up and down slowly and to avoid picking up things from the floor as often as possible, evidenced by my bathroom and closet floors and the floor on my side of the bed. If you need any further evidence of this, just call my husband, and he will be happy to confirm. I get terrible abdominal spasms when I sit up or turn a certain way that feel like a charlie horse in my stomach, and this is something that, surprisingly, surgery for an umbilical hernia did not correct.

For the first time in my life, snoring has become a norm for me, anxiety is also a thing, and so has mustering any energy whatsoever for anything that isn’t on the absolutely necessary list. There’s more to it than all of this… much more. But for now, I’ll just leave it at this: I have been on the most significant personal mission I have ever been on - meaning that I am, for the first time in my life, focused on seeking out the root causes of my problems and addressing them by any means necessary. This has meant that I spend a lot of time in the evenings and mornings before work and during any lunches I take alone researching an endless number of topics. It means I email my doctors all the time asking, “What about…?” and “Am I right…?” “Can we…?” and “What have you…?” I have sat with my general doctor, with my obgyn, with a neurologist, with my chiropractor, and with a kinesiologist, and I have ugly cried in front of all of them trying to talk through things that I’m experiencing and things I’ve learned, things I’m uncertain about, and asking for things they think we can check, etc.  

Wherever I can tackle problems naturally, I do. For my thyroid condition, I am taking a prescription, the dosage for which continues to be increased while I wait - and hope - for improved results. I use essential oils, and I continue my life-long interest in learning as much as I can about the mind-body connection and the stomach-brain connection.  We are very food conscious at our house, and, while we do eat out and can’t always be sure what is in that food, at our home we keep it on the up and up. We are believers in quality probiotics, whole foods, collagen, grass fed / wild caught, and drinking lots of water. I've also added digestive enzymes to my daily regimen. One of the treatment plans I’m currently following also involves some eastern medicine… clay packs and such. I’m seeing a chiropractor, I’m getting acupuncture and… Additionally, I’m in the midst of a parasite cleanse. If I wasn’t already a fairly humble person, this process would no doubt have made me get over myself pretty quickly.  You can only be so cool and glamorous when you’re constantly swallowing some tincture or caplets and paying close attention to the clock and to the locations of restrooms every where you go. 

Here’s the thing…

I have this huge, full life. There are 6 people in my home, 7 cats (one geriatric and on medicine twice per day and a special diet), a dog (who takes allergy medicine twice per day), 6 of originally 7 hermit crabs (RIP Rachel), 2 of us working full time, a house that is never straightened up for more than a few hours at a time, laundry, yard work, 3 vehicles - one of which is on its last leg, one kid who still demands a butt wiping several times per day (for another 1 year, 9 months, and 38 days anyway), four kids who get tummy aches, bug bites, cuts & scrapes, banged noggins, fat lips, can’t sleep, etc etc. 

I work and I take care of everyone else. The one thing I do for myself is I journal. I don’t watch much tv, I listen to books and podcasts while I drive, and so when I’m sitting anywhere… on the toilet, on my back patio at night, in my bed while I can’t sleep, during lunch time when I’m by myself, etc… I am usually typing away in my journal. I’m a pretty good listener to myself, and for someone who spends a great deal of my work day by myself or in meetings with different people every day, journaling is my way of meaningful banter or conversation. I don’t go to the same office every day and converse in the break room or in someone’s cubicle. I don’t get a lot of personal time with friends. I barely see my own husband without kids piled on us. So this is basically my non-G-Rated social life… writing.  It helps me clear my mind and work through stress. 

When I first considered that I may have parasites (how about that segue??), I felt some relief in knowing that I may start feeling better in a couple months time. But then I felt very anxious and worried about fitting in the die-off symptoms with… LIFE (see the above truncated summary). I don’t even have time to do the things I have to find time to do, so how was I going to add this very intense process into it? The answer was simply that I didn’t have a choice. And at the end of it, I knew that I may be able to cross something off of my list that contributes to getting myself back to… well, myself.  

So what goes into a parasite cleanse? Well, you swallow things, some of which taste pretty awful. And you do this several times per day and then you tip toe through life with your stomach rumbling and suspicious gassy feelings - do I or don’t I? The answer is DON’T. Don’t ever. But you will, and then it’ll be your reminder to Never. Trust. Again. If you’re like me, you start using the flashlight app on your phone every time you go to the bathroom, bending over to examine everything more closely.  It becomes almost an obsession. And you think more than once, “Omg what I have become?”

Then you get to the part where you’re ordering the case of enemas from Amazon. You put that up on a shelf in your closet and you think to yourself, “This is what it’s come to.” But don’t get all caught up in that thought yet, because what it’s really come to hasn’t even happened yet. 

It’s not even when… You’re face down & ass up in the only bathroom with a trustworthy lock on it and enough space for you to crouch down in that position in front of the toilet in the first place. You’ve inserted the enema and are awaiting the impending emergency when your 7 year old comes to the door to “talk” and then, hearing you answer near the floor, lies down on the floor outside the bathroom door and asks you to hold his hand under the door. You’re holding his hand and sweating profusely, and then he wants to know why you’re so close to the bottom of the door anyway and all you can say is, “It’s because I’m leaning over. And, um, I’m tall, so… yeah.” You finally convince him that you need a few minutes and he should wait in the living room for you, and then you lie your face back down on the hand towel you brought in to use as a pillow and you feel something hitting your head. You realize a cat is on the other side of the door and is slapping your head. And now he’s pulling your hair with his teeth. You might be thinking “THIS is what it’s come to!” but you’d still be a little premature in uttering this phrase, however tempting. 

It’s not even when the emergency happens and you’re up on the toilet that you can truly say you’ve hit rock bottom. It’s actually on any given day during this cleanse that you use the bathroom right after you’ve eaten, you get up, pull up your pants, flush the toilet, and feel a satisfying fart coming as you walk out of the bathroom and you give in knowing you just finished going to the bathroom and there was nothing left. Oh, but what you didn’t account for was that your body is still making more… and there’s always more when you’re doing a cleanse… and you’ve just shit your pants standing up 2 feet from the toilet with your pants on. And now your 7 year old is standing there again and wants a hug and wants to ask questions about dinner, about frogs, about a character in his favorite tv show, about, you know, just life in general. Oh, and he wants to show you how well he can still do the Floss. And you’re sweating again and trying to look composed and breezy while backing into the stall again; you’re trying to close the door while he is very confused. And you think to yourself, “He has no idea what’s going on here. I mean when in my entire childhood when I was bothering my mom or grandma or aunts while they were going to the bathroom did it ever occur to me that they had just shit their pants? It didn’t. It wouldn’t have. And yet, here we are. So now I’m standing there contemplating whether I should ask any of them if they’d ever crapped their pants as adults or if it’s just me that does this.

And NOW I’m sitting back down, peeling my pants off, taking a deep breath while I grab the box of wet wipes, and I think, “THIS is what it’s come to. This. Right. Here.”

To be continued…


#hypothyroidism #parasitecleanse #workinonmyself

If you ask me to describe myself with 5 words or less, I would not normally think to include “vain” in my list of adjectives. In fact, I think I lack vanity almost to a fault since the twins came along and I only floated further away from that description with each kid thereafter. It’s not because I don’t WANT to have a certain amount of vain-ness; I actually think it’s a nice quality to have in reasonable doses, and I envy (just a little bit) people who can pull it off effortlessly.  I see you in my social media newsfeed, and I think to myself, “God, you're gorgeous. I didn’t even take a shower today…” as I shake my can of dry shampoo pleading with the universe to let there be enough to cover me for just one more dirty-headed day and then I SWEAR I will wash this mop. There’s enough… butterflies… relief… YES! This is my day!

The truth is that I just don’t have enough bandwidth for the level of vanity that I desire, because other things fall in line in front of it. I realize I could reorganize my priorities and pull it closer to the front just like others do, but, I’m not that good; I wouldn’t know where to start. 

Sometimes I think about how I would never have left the house without looking presentable in my pre-kid days, and now entire weekend or vacation days can go by without me even having looked in the mirror until I pass by one later in the evening with a laundry basket in hand and sweaty hair sticking to my neck and, ohp, yep… those are sweat drops above my lip too. My poor husband and kids… the way they must picture me in their heads is not the way I picture myself, I’m quite sure of it. In my mind, I’m almost always me on my best days. To them, I’m probably most always the me I think of on my worst days… the sweaty one carrying laundry and maybe mindlessly displaying some side boob sneaking out of one of my favorite, hole-y t-shirts… You know, the me that would never open the front door for you. I’d be pushing my husband to the door and sneaking behind him to the bathroom to put on a bra (damn you, visitor! Don’t you text??).

Then today comes…

Once in a while, something happens in your day to remind you that you do still have some modicum of a quality you thought you didn’t you possessed any longer. Today, I was reminded that I am more vain that I realized. Today I had to leave the house with a cold sore the size of small planet on my face. And I cared BIGTIME.  I seem to get over people seeing my messy hair and yesterday’s mascara quite breezily, but having a sore next to my mouth makes me want to crawl into bed and not come out for 7-10 days. And God forbid I have to meet someone for the first time on a day when I have a cold sore, because I’m convinced that’s how they’ll always see me. “Oh, yeah, the Rendon boys’ mom? Yeah, I met her last year… tall, blonde, herpes on her face?  It was disgusting. I couldn’t even eat my lunch. Anyway, yeah, she’ll be here later (shivers abruptly).”

Let me tell you when you have reached a new level of self-awareness: it’s when you are behind a group of cars that slam on their brakes and a car behind you nearly rear ends you, and your first thought - YOUR LITERAL FIRST THOUGHT - is “Oh God, don’t let me die out here today with this thing on my face. What if I need CPR and no one wants to help me? What if I’m lying on the table in the morgue and everyone is talking about my disgusting fever blister and putting on an extra set of gloves, wincing as they touch me, or they’re calling in the interns, and when they arrive and ask which one, they point at me and say, “That one with the herpes simplex.”? What if they send in my loved ones one last time to visit with me before they take me off to the cremation facility and they can’t even soak in their love for me and wallow in their “I’m going to miss her so much” feelings because they can’t stop looking at this thing on my face? What if my mom takes FRICKEN PICTURES of me and sends them to everyone??!” SHIT!!! GET OUT OF MY WAY, EVERYONE!! This is NOT my day to DIE! And off to the shoulder I go. Safe and sound and a little less humiliated than I otherwise could have been.

So, yeah, vanity may not be in my top 5, but I’m guessing it’s at least #6 after all.

#sweat #sideboob #selfawareness #vanity

Today was a day for ALLL of my senses to be ruffled in one way or another, and yet it was one of those uneventful days in the whole scheme of things. I started the day off feeling heart palpitations over all the work I needed to get caught up on and simultaneously feeling a deep calming from hearing hard rain out my window as I worked. Ahhhh a nice reprieve… it’s all about balance.

I missed breakfast and was nearly sick when I arrived to a lunch meeting where I had the most delicious meal, and I’m pretty sure I didn’t speak a word throughout… I’m a great listener in these situations. Later, as I drove down the highway, I realized I’d left the house without my water or ice tea, and I found myself so thirsty I was almost in a panic when I got to the front of the drive through line… what. is. taking. so. long?? I was hoping I hadn’t made a mistake trying the strawberry infused iced green tea instead of my usual plain iced green tea, but at this point I was so thirsty I didn’t care. The window slid open, and I was anticipating that long, cold drink when I heard, “oops! I didn’t see it sitting there. Hey, you guys! I didn’t know the unsweetened strawberry iced green tea was sitting here, and I knocked it over. I need another one!” Luckily, I have an excellent poker face, years in the making and now nearly impossible to crack, so, instead of showing my desperation, my horror, my inner turmoil, my P - A - I - N when he looked at me apologetically, I just gave him the warmest smile I could muster and said, “That’s ok. It happens.” 

Not long afterwards and clearly before I straight up DIED of dehydration (close call), I had my drink, and I sucked down about half of it before I took another breath. It tasted like soapy water… so much for the potential for a strawberry infused green ice tea habit… not happening. But I drank every bit of that soapy water and was glad for it. When I got home later, I drank 2 whole glasses of water… like Dickey cup sized, not your standard 16oz glass. I’m guessing that delicious lunch I had was SUPER HIGH in sodium. But I lived to tell about it. Would I do it again? Oh, it was totally worth it. Note to self - don’t forget your water bottle next time. And maybe a banana. And some cabbage. And a back up water bottle.

I made a mid-afternoon pit stop that ended up giving me pause. It’s a bad thing when the drive thru people at the ice cream shop smile at you like they were expecting you, right? Like when one in the background looks in your direction too and nods at you like, “Yeah, I knew you’d be here for your Choco Roco today.”  I need to give this further consideration. It felt like I should be embarrassed and maybe even… apologize?

As the work day drew to an end, the rain had cleared and the sun was out, and I decided it was time to clear out the flower cemetery on our front patio and walk way. I stopped at a gardening center near the house. One of my most favorite things in the world is to walk up and down aisles of flowers, plants, vines, shrubs, trees, taking in the fresh smell in the air, reading about plants I’m not familiar with, smelling everything that has a petal on it, and daydreaming about beautiful landscapes. As I was putting plants and flowers in my shopping cart, I found myself behind this guy who was deciding on some creeping vines, and I kid you not I was suddenly bombarded by a fart that smelled like it came from someone who recently ate french fries… does anyone know what I’m talking about here, or am I the only one who has run into this species of fart multiple times in my lifetime? I found myself trying to back out of the aisle since I couldn’t go around him when I realized a store employee had pulled in behind me with a cart full of shrubs. So there I stood trapped in this rancid cloud of old fast food grease. I would not be surprised to see that my bad cholesterol has spiked the next time I get a physical just from exposure alone. I blame that turd in front of me that tried to pretend that he didn’t know that I knew that he knew that I knew that he knew… (that I knew?)… that he gassed me.

After surviving Agent Brownish-Green, I left and headed home. By this time it was sunny and very humid, and I was sweating like… well, I won’t get political… but fill in the blank… we have lots of options as of late. I got just about everything planted and thought I’d do some laundry too. Then I came inside and sat down. And then laundry didn’t happen.

What did happen is that, after a quick bath and changing into a comfy dress I’ve worn more times than I should admit this week, a bunch of little boys piled on me, and we snuggled for a bit, each of them arguing over who was telling me something first. After that exhausting exchange and dinner prepared by our very own superhero, we started our Friday tradition with a movie while I went to the kitchen to heat the pot I use to make popcorn. I looked at the counter and remembered that Javi had asked me to read this book about Pearl Harbor that he’d read so that we could talk about it afterwards… this boy is straight from my heart! “Of course, I’ll read this book, baby!”, I said.  And now that it’s Friday night, maybe I finally will read more than a page before I pass out into a comatose sleep.  Sorry, school library… I’m pretty sure this book is late. Neverless, my heart swelled again as I thought about how precious to me this topic is… I see lots of book reading and comparing notes ahead for us. 

Before I finished making the last batch of popcorn and I was still thinking about how anxious I was to read Javi’s book selection, Alice jumped up the inside of my dress the way he always does when I wear anything flowy. Now if you have never experienced the swatting between your legs by a cats’ paws who is overdue for another application of soft claws, let me tell you… it’s just charming. :<  Of course, there’s a big difference between sharp claws actually puncturing your toot and just grazing it, but you are still forced to fearfully imagine what *could* have happened.. cue the cringing and shortness of breath I experienced. So I seasoned the popcorn while holding my dress between my legs in the front and the back so as to prevent any swaying that may have tempted Alice beyond his ability to control himself, and I then penguin-walked the bowls into the living room.

My dear husband poured me a delicious beer of some bavarian sort. I took a sip and heard a package hit the doorstep. Woohoo my Amazon package arrived, and I could now give Max his allergy pills and with a pill pocket instead of messing with the jar of peanut butter (winning!).  I mistook the smell of poop all over the kitchen for the opened bag of pill pockets… this was after sniffing everything around me including my own shoulder, arms, and then… oh yes… it’s my fingers…  from touching the pill pockets… and then I felt the best kind of relief a tired mom can feel short of a near miss of catastrophic events… it’s not poop! whew.

And now I sit here typing away while my husband watches a hockey game and my boys watch Peter Rabbit. Today I experienced anxiety, calm, hunger, delicious food, embarrassed that I have a whole crew of close friends at the ice cream shop who use to be strangers, near fatal dehydration, annoyance, rehydration with soapy water tea, inspiration and wonderful smells, nausea from french fry farts, the satisfaction of making our patio look nice, and the relaxing bath afterwards, a headache from my kids arguing, and warm fuzzies from our cuddle time, dinner made by someone else, gratefulness, the comfort of our tradition of making popcorn and starting a movie on Friday nights, the sweetness of a request from an 8 year old who loves to read like I do, a close call that could have ended up with stitches in my nether regions and utter gratefulness that I wouldn’t have to do the starfish for a doctor wielding metal objects too close for comfort, the initial fear of hidden poop followed by the relief of knowing it wasn’t, sitting here with my family and it’s Friday night.  

So, yes, this has been a wonderfully, uneventful day in the whole scheme of things.

Reasons I did not go to medical school: I cannot be around blood. I cannot be around poop. I cannot be around snot. I cannot be around vomit. But I became a mom?? Hmmm...

Dominic has been a little congested with the weather shifting gears on us constantly, and it took some rough play yesterday to jog it loose, I guess. He and Javi were wrestling and spinning each other around, and a deep laugh pushed it allll out at once. ALLL of it out.  At ONCE.  All I originally knew was that I heard expressions of disgust coming from the next room, and I looked over cautiously to make sure I didn’t see something I couldn’t unseen… I didn’t want to take in whatever happened in 4D and full color, that much I knew. As I caught a glimpse of the lower half of Dominic’s face completely covered in snot, I looked away quickly and ordered him to the bathroom, instructing him not to touch anything on the way.  I looked over at Javi who was a little green. He and I were both just trying to get that image out of our heads, I think, but I wondered how he could have been so close to it without upchucking. It was one of the most disgusting things I’d ever seen. I started to evaluate whether I was entitled to hang onto my official mom card when I couldn’t even help my own kid clean up his face. But, little did I know, that was just the beginning.

Less than a minute later, I was walking into the kitchen when I heard gagging behind me. I turned in time to see Javi, losing his battle with his aversion to Dominic’s excessive display of mucous, projectile vomiting all over the kitchen floor. I reached for some paper towels to hand him and was going to go get the disinfecting wipes and mop when I saw him heaving again a little further over from his original spot. I mean, he obviously didn’t want to step in anything, so, of course, he needed to throw up somewhere clean. There he went again, splattering it further. He went from spot to spot throwing up like a cat does when it makes its way through the house convulsing and jerking forward leaving piles of vomit everywhere for an unsuspecting person to step in later. Meanwhile, I’m frantically ordering him outside even as I’m trying to grab a bucket or bowl or ANYTHING to cover his face with… I mean hold in front of him.  The smell of vomit started permeating the air, and I found myself swallowing hard, dry heaving, trying to focus and find a neutral place in my head. Javi headed towards the door just in time for another round of vomit and sprayed it all over the door. And wall. And window. 

YEP.

I just stood there for a second with my cheeks puffed out like a chipmunk, holding my breath, wondering how this was my life… this kitchen that was clean a minute ago now completely sprayed in vomit… all within 3 minutes of Jose conveniently leaving to go to Home Depot. And now Dominic was back and was now gagging at Javier’s mess. I immediately sent him outside though the garage door since the kitchen door was now a HAZMAT situation and was now looking out the window at both of them leaning over with their faces parallel to the ground, heaving onto the grass, saliva streaming from their mouths and swinging in the air.

I went to the bathroom to compose myself, wash my face, and brace myself for the task ahead. 

As I walked towards the kitchen, I heard licking sounds and found Max acting like he was at brunch at his favorite buffet spot. I didn’t want to, I knew it was disgusting, but I went back to the bathroom and washed my face again, looked for shiny white hairs that I could pull, evaluating whether I still had 2 separate eyebrows, and examining a new set of age spots on my face, chest, and hands. A little while later, I left the bathroom and went to the garage to get the Wetjet mop, loaded it with a clean pad and the disinfecting floor cleaner, and I headed back towards the kitchen as Max was walking out, licking his lips, completely satisfied… but wait, as he passed by the wall that caught some of the vomit spray, he stopped, sniffed, walked over to it and proceeded to clean it up, as well.  I reminded myself to stay far away from his mouth for the rest of the day, gave him a breath treat, and went about mopping the floor and wiping down the door and walls, trying to forget how gross dogs are and what it said about me that I allowed him to clean it up in the first place.

An hour later, with any evidence of what had occurred obliterated, the house smelling of cleaning products, and a pleasant waft of lavender smelling air coming from the kitchen, kids recovered and playing happily in the backyard, my husband walks back in from Home Depot without any clue whatsoever. 

And this, my friends, is motherhood. I’ve decided I shall continue to be a card carrying member. Medical school is still not in my future.

I didn't think I was ready for a remake of Cranberries' Zombie, but Bad Wolves really nailed it. As I was listening to it yesterday with an ache in my heart thinking of how relevant it still is today... I was thinking back to how the Bosnian War was happening when I was first listening to that Cranberries cd back in 1994. 



Back in 1994, I was living in Germany, and, by 1995, my original neighbors had moved out, and my apartment was then downstairs from a refugee family from Bosnia. That experience shaped so much of my world view... a little girl and her younger brother so timid the first time I met them were, in the weeks and months to come, running to my car when they would see me pull up, excited to tell me all of their new English words they'd learned at their new school. Little Salma was yelling out "one, two, three, four, five!!!" before I even pulled into the driveway. Smiling faces asking me sheepishly, "Eis, bitte?" They had already learned that I kept icy pops in my freezer for them... but only once their mom and dad approved. This family, through their limited understanding of German and English, and my broken German, shared dinners of various types of sausages with me, over time opening up to me about seeing their family members murdered and losing everyone and everything before being brought to this apartment in Gochsheim, Germany. They wore so many emotions in their eyes, on their faces and their postures... exhaustion, hope, relief, fear, ambition, trauma, excitement, strain... so many more things that not I nor anyone who has not lived their experience can even identify. I think about that sweet family all the time... it's been over 20 years, and I still see their eyes, the smiles that eventually spread wider across their faces as they found their new place and some sense of security and safety for their family knowing that everything - despite their emotional wounds and losses - just might be ok... at least for their precious children, the resilience of whom continues to inspire me today. Those two beautiful kids who would come pet my cats and anticipate the "eis" I would get from my freezer.

Look, I share some of my emotions about topics of refugees and about caring about people experiencing things we are so fortunate not to have to experience. I talk about how important it is that we help where we can and not turn a blind eye. Something that gets under my skin is people who talk all day about living in Jesus's image and then find some sort of biblical justification for doing the exact opposite of Jesus's teachings and example, turning the word "refugee" into something it doesn't mean... shadowing it with undertones of somehow bad, sneaky people who want to do us harm and take all of our money and resources without anything in return. It hurts my heart. 

This experience with my neighbors in Germany is what inspired our volunteering with IRC when we moved to Dallas. I felt I could finally do something to tangibly help someone who just wanted a chance for their family to live. This cause is so near and dear to my heart. What I can say is this...

My opinions are not out of naivety and not out of a liberal bleeding heart or whatever someone wants to call it. It is out of legitimate experience, out of stepping out of my protective walls of being a really lucky American and allowing myself to feel the pain of others and see myself in them, see them the way they could be in my shoes... shoes that walked in their own painful path but which seems like a dream to someone who had to flee everything they knew just to survive. A lot of the way I approach life is just who I always was going to be, some I'm sure I owe to the inspirational words I listed to from Pastor Bill Rudd at my church growing up about how to love people, so much is from my own life experiences, living in a lot of different kinds of places, befriending many different sorts of people, reading so much, and opening myself up to others' experiences who differed from my own. I have learned and evolved, and so often I wish I could go back to those dinners with my Bosnian neighbors knowing what I know now and see it through my more experienced eyes, knowing I still wouldn't know the half of it.

So I'm driving along listening to Bad Wolves' version of Zombie and realize they replaced the lyrics "it's the same old thing since 1916" with "it's the same old thing in 2018". Yes, exactly. The Syrian refugees that some in our country want to reject came to mind. And in my heart and mind I'm back at the table with my Bosnian neighbors not knowing how to explain something like this. My heart just aches for the indifference and for the families that could have been sitting across from a new friend in a new country last year, safe from what was trying to murder their family, feeling hope for the future. Those people are dead.

But there will be others. There are others. And all of their lives matter. And we as Americans have a chance to do the right thing now as we will again and again. 

Will we, though?

#RefugeesOfWar #LoveThyNeighbor #BlessedBeTheWeary #Cranberries #BadWolves #Zombie

Today I was THAT person. That one that forgets there are others coming from other directions and moves backwards with my shopping cart without looking first. I usually have a good sense about the presence of others around me even if I can't see them... I feel them there.  Maybe this comes with being use to having a large family and having so many people around me all the time…? More than that, without directly trying, I often know what's around me because my peripheral vision is insanely good. Well, today Jose and I were in Target, and we decided to backtrack to another aisle. I forgot myself and inadvertently started to back up and almost immediately stopped abruptly, feeling someone coming around my right side. Before I could even turn my head to see who I was about to collide with, I could tell she was mad... I felt her anger. As I was turning, I immediately apologized. Usually when something like this happens, people tell each other, "Oh don't worry. It's ok. I'm sorry too.”… these are all the things I say when the roles are reversed even when I know the other person was in the wrong. In the scope of things, this stuff just doesn't matter enough to get upset about... this is coming from someone who has had entire drinks spilled down my shirt at events before they even began and had to sit in my wet clothes for many hours and then fell over myself to console the other person, who I knew felt terribly, to make sure they didn't feel any worse than they already did. "Accidents happen because they're not on purpose" as Jose always says. And sometimes people need our grace instead of our anger even when we feel it and even when we are the one wronged or inconvenienced in some way. 


Well, today in Target, instead of finding an emotionally disarmed person accepting my apology, I felt her tension before I saw her, and, without even being capable of making eye contact with me, I saw her completely stop, purse her lips and grit her teeth, stare straight ahead of her, and seemingly trying not to explode at me while clearly wanting me to just move out of her way. I saw a woman seething, near her breaking point, hanging by a thread. And without thinking, I reached my hand out to her arm and apologized again, and I heard my voice sound concerned about her. And I was. It did occur to me later that touching her probably wasn't the smartest thing I could have done, but I hadn't thought about it; I just did it reflexively. When she still wouldn't look at me and continued to stand there frozen, I backed away and kept watching her, hoping she would look at me. She didn't. Instead she started pushing her cart again and continued on, all of her tension following along like a fog surrounding her.  This entire situation lasted seconds. I am still thinking about her over 4 hours later.

I'm not sure what it is about her that made me feel empathy instead of annoyance at her overreaction or why she is still on my mind now. But I know that I have had moments where I was not out to be a jerk to anyone but found myself clinging to what little patience I had left, and I too needed someone's grace... someone to just let me slide this once and I'll go back to being a better human tomorrow. I know I have felt bad about it even as it was happening but was just unable to cope any better in that moment. That is a person who is stretched very thin, who is very tightly wound, someone who is carrying a very hard and heavy load. It is possibly someone who is just a jerk in life too, but I had this feeling about her that this was a fragile moment for her. Jose and I both stopped and waited for her to go as I apologized one more time. And I looked at him and said, "She's about to break." His expression told me he knew what I meant. Did I mention that I have not stopped thinking about her since?

Situations like this are the reason I feel that some misunderstandings happen and then even worse things as a consequence. I could have been mad at her because of how she acted. I could have said something sarcastic to her or told her to chill out, I could have made a scene. None of those things would have helped the situation. There's that saying that you can't control how other people behave, you can only control how you respond. There's also a saying that you don't know what other people are dealing with in their own lives. If today reminded me of anything it's that it's not so important how this lady behaved towards me today - I actually applaud her for holding her shit together when I could see she felt like blowing - it's more important that when we see someone struggling that we don't contribute to worsening that moment for them.

This is not about removing responsibility from people and their individual behavior.  Also, I will never advocate for being anyone’s door mat. This IS about the human connection, though, and channeling our best perceptive skills and noticing when someone is struggling, and it IS about leaving a person better than you found them... or at least trying.  I hope she is now sitting in a calm space decompressing a bit as I know I have needed to many times myself. 

I wonder if she is thinking about me too.

I just got the best massage. It was by Javier Bardem. Well, it was in my head anyway. In reality, I had my eyes closed from the time I laid down before the masseuse came into the room, and, by the time I opened them again, he was gone. But it was definitely a man with strong hands, he definitely worked hard on my knots, and he definitely got a little winded in the process. In my mind, Mr. Bardem was sweating over me, wanting nothing in return. Grossed out yet? Keep reading…

You know what I love? Like L-O-V-E? I love it when I don’t tell a masseuse anything about my troubles, and they find them on their own. There are tell tale signs that they know what you need when they strum those guitar strings deep inside between your neck and shoulder a few times and then roll up their sleeves and dig in without glossing over them. In addition to my tight shoulders and neck that I’m convinced plague every mother on the planet with the load we all carry, I also have arthritis in my lower spine and persistent pain up to about the middle of my back. Mr. Bardem got right in there using all facilities available to him: elbows, fingers, hands, the base of his hands… I floated between reality and a happy place. Well, I could have done without the karate chops to the butt. I can get that at home for free just lying in the middle of wherever the kids are playing. But still…

Speaking of butts, you know what else I love? I love it when the masseuse just gets ALL UP IN MY butt. There are places in the nooks and crannies that really get to the problem areas caused by my spine trouble, and Mr. Bardem did not disappoint. There were a few moments where I was a little concerned about the momentum caused by my butt jiggle, but I think Mr. Bardem found a use for that also. It was around this time that I heard the heavy breathing, but man did he have perseverance, I mean, just straight up tenacity. I was holding my breath and screaming all kinds of profanities in my head, and then… relief… I was a tough piece of steak that had survived the tenderizer, and now there were relaxing massages again, (and then some karate chops that I blocked out), and then more deep, soothing massages, and then… then it was over and he softly thanked me and told me to take my time. I felt myself pouting a little bit before fixing my face and sitting up.

I didn’t dare open my eyes before he left, because I didn’t want to mess up the image I had of my personal masseuse. Also, I stopped myself from asking him to cuddle me while I took a nap. Something told me that might make it weird. But I left feeling like what people must feel like when they say they want a cigarette…? Or maybe not since I’ve never actually wanted a cigarette… but I wanted something… oh yeah, I wanted Javier Bardem to cuddle me. But I would have settled for a nap. Instead, I made what seemed like a giddy, walk of shame across the parking lot, followed by a raw appreciation for the light drizzle and the warm breeze on my face along the way, and… hmmm I want something to eat. So, yeah, cigarettes aren’t my thing, but an afterwards-snack is right up my alley.

​


​
​




​

While putting the boys to bed last night after returning from my business trip, it was evident that each of them had lots of things saved up to talk to me about, so we ended up getting them to bed in later than planned.
I went to tuck in Javi, & he jumped back out of bed and said "Oh! Wait a second, Mommy!" He ran out of his room and down the hall to their bathroom. I heard spraying and then footsteps running back towards me followed by a waft of men's cologne." He jumped in bed and said, "Ok, I'm ready!" 
I tucked him in and told him, "Wow, you sure do smell good." He smiled big and said, "Thanks!" And then, "Mommy, if Daddy snores tonight can you come sleep with me?" I told him, "Sure."
Hugs. Kisses. I love you's. Goodnight.
I walked down the hall and into Dominic's room...
Dominic: "Mommy, how come when me and Javi were in your tummy you were going to call me Nic for short but you always call me Dominic?"
Me: "I don't know. We just always called you your whole name... we don't like 'Dom', and I guess you felt more like a Dominic than a Nic. Why?"
Dominic: "I like Dominic but Nic better." Can people start calling me that?"
Me: "Sure. If that's what you want."
Dominic: "Ok. From now on, I'm only answering if people call me Nic."
Me: "Sounds like a plan."
Hugs. Kisses. I love you's. Goodnight.
Walked down the hall...
Dominic: "MOMMMMYYYY?"
Walked back to his room...
Me: "Yessss?"
Dominic: "When babies are born, does it hurt when they cut the rope?"
Me: "Nope!"
Dominic: "How does it come off where it's attached to the mom?"
Me: "We will talk about it some other time... it's late and past our bedtime. Love you. Goodnight."
Walked down the hall...
Dominic: "MOMMMMYYYY?"
Walked back to his room...
Me: "Yes, Dominic?"
Dominic: "How many galaxies are there in the whole universe?"
Me: "You have a book about this. You can look it up tomorrow. Goodnight, Doodle."
Walked down the hall...
Dominic: "MOMMMYYY?"
Walked back to his room and heard him making a request of Alexa...
Me: "WHAT DO YOU NEED?"
Alexa: "I'd like a cheesesteak and some fries."
Dominic: *busts out laughing*
Me: "Goodnight. To both of you."
It's like I have an extra kid now or something... and she's usually back-talking. 

#Alexa #HighMaintenance #BedTimeDelays #BackTalking

I have hated country music for my entire life. But then one day, years ago, I heard Nelly was doing a song with Tim McGraw, and I was like "Huh?" I had a similar reaction the first time I ate a savory dish with fruit in it... "Huh?" Turns out, rap and hip hop blend really well with country music... at least for my ears. And grapes do something magical to chicken salad. Nelly did it again later with Florida Georgia Line, and by then I was adding fruit to a multitude of savory dishes on the regular... one having nothing to do with the other, of course. I'm just saying.
I started catching myself tapping my foot in a restaurant to a pop-ish country song I didn't even realize I was listening to, and then I found myself singing a song and turning it up when I was flipping music stations and learning that the guy who sang it was named Luke Bryan. I YouTubed him and found some of his other songs, realizing I really liked them. 
So today I still hate country music for the most part, but I actually have some on my playlist that I keep on regular rotation... and I may have a little fantasy that someone out there could have written those songs just for me (I'm a sucker for romance... and Luke Bryan makes me feel sooo special singing those songs to me. 😜)
Anyway, I'm sure I'll hear other country songs down the road that I like and - who knows? - one day maybe I'll be a full-fledged country music fan. Nah... don't push it. And don't try to put pineapple on my pizza either. I draw the line somewhere before there.
So...
Today on my drive back from Tulsa to Dallas where I had entirely too many hours of thinking on my hands, I was listening to Luke Bryan's Drunk On You, and I couldn't help but think that if someone HAD written that song JUST for me, or maybe just dedicated it to me over the radio... wait, they don't do this anymore, do they? Ok, say they put it on my mixed tape... oh, wait... anyway, suppose they just TOLD me that the song reminded them of me, my first reaction would probably be "awwww, that's so sweet", and I think most people would have that first reaction too. But then that line "If you're not a 10 you're a 9.9" would play, and I just know someone out there would be saying, "Wait. What's up with that .1?" And then too much thinking and over analysis would happen and she'd say, "So who DO you think is a 10?" And then she'd be sad about something that was intended to make her feel special. And I'm not talking about me here, but I know some of you are identifying with this right now because I'm really good friends with some of you. 😂😂 Sure you might add some unnecessary drama to the universe, but you also add passion, excitement, and probably some fun "making up" after your tantrum... at least that's what I hear. 
Anyway, I digress... Luke Bryan keep singing to me... making my heart all a flutter with your lyrics.
I wish I had a Waldorf salad about now...

A friend of mine sent me something this week that made me laugh so hard I cried (that's one way to get some forever-love from me!). Another friend was apparently watching as I was reading it and took this pic unbeknownst to me. She sent it to me in a text later and said, "I know you're going to complain about this pic, but it's the face your lovely kids see every time they make you laugh, and it's one of the most special mental pictures they'll ever have." 
And, well, I just thought that was just an amazing observation. So here it is... my laughing-crying face that my kids see probably more than anyone else... for better or for worse. 

#MakeMeCryLaughing #MomLife #Memories #RealLife

When you're on the road often, you come to terms with the fact that you're going to be using public restrooms more often than you'd like (and we'd all like to NEVER use them). Because I'm often driving in remote areas between large cities, and because I also have standards... until the emergency takes precedence over said standards, that is, I will pass many a hole-in-the-wall/sketchy-looking places doing the peepee dance in my seat... or, ahem, the "other" dance... the sweatier one, figuring I'll just eventually have to pull off into a wooded area if I don't come across something in the acceptable range : urgency ratio. 
I've had many years worth of practice perfecting my "hover", and when I see evidence that a careless or poorly skilled hoverer has been to a place before I arrived, I just shake my head at their incompetence or laziness... at a minimum, I wish they'd clean up after themselves. But while that is merely annoying, the real problem lies here...
Like any sport, you can tell right away if your form is off or spot on and your mind and body connect in either jubilation as you await the crushing of the ball into the net, into the basket, into the hole, into the back field, etc... OR with utter disappointment as you watch it go too high, too low, too far left, too far right. It is with sheer horror that you react similarly when your hover form is off and you feel the public toilet water splash back up and hit you where the sun don't shine... and you still have an hour left of your drive back to your hotel and shower. Such was my day... form was off... and then... no toilet paper in the vicinity. Total rookie move not checking first.
#roadwarriorconfessions #howwasYOURday

I've been driving up from Dallas, Texas, to Stilwell, Oklahoma, for work meetings for the better part of a decade, and I have ALWAYS said, "Man! This place needs a coffee shop." 
After my decaf disappointment at my hotel this morning, I was dragging when I rolled into town, and I asked a local lady if she knew of any place with good coffee. She told me about this new coffee shop just down from the Walmart in a small strip mall that also has an H&R Block in it. She couldn't remember the name. Well, I found it, and I'm here to tell you about one of my new favorite places!! 
This is Lisa, and this is her place: Stomping Grounds Coffee & Cakery. 
Everything is fresh and made from scratch, including her syrups!! What?!? Because she's a great conversationalist, and I'm nosey, I found out that she personally worked with local roasters to find her perfect taste, and she gets regular deliveries to ensure freshness. What a bright spot in Stilwell, OK!! 
Oh! And she's been baking for 10 years... I picked up some goodies for my afternoon meeting, and I'm over here making yummy noises over the latte and brownie cookie thing I got for myself. 
This is a new, regular stop for me when I'm in town! Go see Lisa!! She opens at 5:30am, people!! And she offers discounts on bulk orders like mine!

#StompingGroundsCoffee&Cakery #StilwellOklahoma #Lattes #Organic #MadeFromScratch
​#FindHerOnFacebook #FindHerOnInstagram

Dominic is home today with Jose to make sure he's ok to go back to school tomorrow following his concussion yesterday. Dominic cannot have any screen time, bright lights, physical exertion, etc.
Soooo...
This is an actual assessment made by yours truly this morning while I was packing up for a trip to Oklahoma...
Dominic + Boredom =
"Mommy, can we get a butler?"
"Mommy, when can we go see Paul Revere's house?"
"Aaaand... Do you know about the Red Coats?"
"Are bean chips really just beans made into chips?"
"I think Justin Bieber weighs about 154 pounds."
"Hey Mommy, what if you run out of water on your trip?"
"Do tsunamis happen in Oklahoma? I'm worried you might get caught in one and not make it home."
"How do you make Kombucha?"
"Mommy, when is something drugs and when is it medicine?"
"Mommy, take a picture with me so you can look at it on your trip."
That last one was the easiest... Done. 
Jose may need some positive energy blown his way, because Dominic has nothing but time and curiosity on his hands today. 😂
#ilovethismonkey #thesequestionsthough 🤣

I've been trying to pull each boy away for short occasions so that they can each have some special time away from the rest of our rowdy group. I was doing better about this until this last year, and I really wanted to make a point of making it happen regularly again starting this month. So, to get back on track, instead of cutting each of the boys' overgrown hair last week myself, I took each of the older 3 one at a time, 1 evening at a time, to get their hair cut at a "guys' place" as Javi calls it and then out for an ice cream cone afterwards. Santi isn't one to appreciate a barber shop yet, but he HAS been telling me a lot lately about how badly he wants chocolate cake.  I had asked Sol to stay late tonight, and, when I got finished with meetings this evening, I picked up Santi from extended care at pre-school. I took him to the place for the best chocolate cake on the planet as far as I'm concerned: Platia... a Greek restaurant in Frisco, Texas. We LOVE all of their food, but their chocolate sponge cake, the  sokolatopita, is, well... HEAVEN. So I pulled up, and we went inside. Santi ran over to the dessert counter and pointed to it as I knew (HOPED!!?) he would, and we asked for a table for 2. He had milk; I had Greek coffee. We had two forks and one huge slice of sokolatopita, and we talked about life (who he played with at recess), about love (that he really wants a play date with Brooklyn and napped next to Dresden), and about mistakes (like falling off the restaurant chair 3 times in a span of 20 minutes, hurting his knee, his ankle, and then his fingers, respectively). Then we got down to business:

Santi: "Mommy, is this their fork, or did you let them use our fork?"
Me: "That is their fork, baby."
Santi: "So do they wash it after someone's done with it so they can let someone else use it?"
Me: "Yes, they do. They have a lot of plates, cups, and silverware that people use, and then they wash it and then somebody else uses it." 

(This conversation has me thinking more about how people should probably be more disgusted about this than about whether Jose feeds Max off of a fork that I know for a fact we sterilize afterwards, but, anyway, Santi continued...)

Santi: "But what about if there's a booger on the fork or spoon?"

Me: "That is pretty yucky, but, when they wash it, I'm sure it comes clean."

Santi: "But what if it is the really sticky kind that doesn't come off with water?"

Me: "Hmmm good thinking... I hope you checked your fork before you started eating your cake."

Santi: *eyes bulging* *lips pouting* 

After further thought, I think the utensils at our house are definitely safer than using any restaurants' that were probably washed by a bored teenager. So don't give me crap about feeding our dog off our fork if you're still gonna eat out and eat off of sticky booger forks. But, anyway, by all means, let's all go back to eating out without thinking about what may have previously been on the fork we are putting into our mouths. Deal???

Dear Husband, we need to talk…

...it’s about our youngest child. Your eyes are full of apples, I know; the one to which I’m referring is the long, skinny, light-haired one. You’ve been leaving for work before anyone is up and then not getting home until they’re in bed and I’ve got a mere millimeter of light seeping into my own eyes as I surrender to the zzz monster that’s been chasing me since my alarm went off in the wee hours of that morning. So we don’t have a lot of time to talk, and I don’t expect you to know all of the contributing factors of my own exhaustion even as spreadsheets and auditors and long hours contribute to yours. It’s true that for the most part every day is like the one before… I get up early to get lunches and snacks prepared, and it’s important that this is done before the boys get up so that they don’t come in and start nitpicking and complaining and making special requests… out of sight out of mind, so time is of the essence. My sanity depends on it. Then it’s time for the boys to get up, and I am digging through piles of clean laundry in and around baskets in the living room to find something they can wear to school once I’ve checked the weather for the day. While they’re eating breakfast, I’m wrestling with our beloved, geriatric Tobey Cat to get exactly 1 1/2 pills down his throat while dodging Mrs. Robert’s claws as she sits next to us and tries to attack a curious Max who has come over to sniff Tobey who is lying on my lap while I repeatedly blow on his face and rub his throat, alternatively holding my finger over his nose to force him to open his mouth, which never works. Then as I’m wiping blood from the cat scratches on Max’s snout, I’m also filling his stinky pill pocket with his allergy pills, because, as though life isn’t complex enough, we have a dog who is ALLERGIC TO GRASS… for the love…


The boys will come down from brushing their teeth, and I'll make a mental note that one of them yelled about cat puke somewhere up there. I will remind them dozens of times to put on their shoes and socks, and I’ll remind them for the 3 millionth time that if their shoes were put back where they belong the day before they’d be right there this morning. And, no, Dominic; I allow you to express yourself in many fantastically fashionable ways and even encourage it, but you WILL wear matching shoes, so keep looking. I’m fixing their hair and arguing with Adrian about how I will not style his bangs to cover one eye, because he needs to be able to see out of both eyes. I’m asking Javi to PLEASE tie those shoelaces… and why is it the same shoe every day that is left untied, laces flying around with every step as I visualize myself having to take another trip to the store to get more laces after he wears these ones out again. Always the right shoe. Always. He doesn’t mind tying the left one but the right one is…? …what? … too much trouble? It’s baffling.


Everyone is just about ready, so I head out to start the truck and warm it up. I come back in and hear much splashing… it’s the telltale sound of cats playing in Max’s water bowl. Nose actually dips each of her paws in his water over and over and then licks them dry. Alice and Ears try to slap out the dog food that Max dropped in there while eating, and there are actual waves in the bowl. I know I’ll need to get a towel to put down over there before we leave.


Eventually, we will have 4 bodies with their jackets and backpacks on standing near the door, and we will be walking to the truck and headed to school where we will argue all the way there about who is touching whom and who snuck whose Pokemon cards into their pockets. We will kiss and hug and (gently) nudge kids out the back door of the truck so we can get Santiago to pre-school, and I’ll listen as Santi tells me me a dozen times before we even get to Preston Rd that he is hungry and didn’t know he should finish his breakfast before we left. 


Now I have to get to work, and depending on the day it could look like anything. All I know is that I have a hard stop at 5:45pm, and so I don’t have time to mess around. I’m the most efficient, overloaded mess you’ve ever seen, I’m sure of it.


I’ll come home at some point, and I’ll be getting dinner ready. We have probably already been to a practice for one or more of the kids, and so it might be earlier or later in the evening, but I’m in a hurry anyway, since bedtime is important for the next morning’s flow. And as I’m hurrying around the kitchen, I may hear Santi in the distance saying, “Mommmmmmy! I’m cleaning the bathroom! I’m doing chores!” And I’ll hear him and an alarm bell will go off somewhere in my head, but there are many other sources of input coming at me all at once, and that is only one of them. Plus the boys are giving Alexa a playlist, and having a conversation across the house is too much competition for my voice which lacks sufficient force and depth even at my highest volume. So I make a mental note that I’m probably going to need to look in on him with squinted eyes at some point… but I forget… until I’ve got them all in bed, and I walk into the bathroom only to find the floor very wet, and things sort of strewn around soaking in the… water?  I go back upstairs and ask Santi who is not yet asleep what he used to clean the bathroom with, and he says he used water from the sink (whew) and that he used wet wipes (ok) and… “that scrubber thing with the stick”. I thank him for “helping” and without even being asked, and I offer to clean it with him together the next time so he can learn how to use the cleaning supplies. He’s very happy, smiles, hugs me, and says, “Yay!”. I go back downstairs and look in the bathroom to see what cleaning stick he was talking about, and I see the toilet scrubber lying on its side under the small table. Yay! Ugh. The entire bathroom has been “cleaned” with the toilet bowl scrubber doused in water. Let that sink in a minute… it’s a germ party of the worst kind… escherichia coli, staphylococcus, streptococcus, gardnerella, shigella… all these bacteria just living it up, multiplying, using my bathroom floor as a slip n slide right now. I’m going to have to deal with this, which means the dishwasher will not be unloaded and reloaded tonight since I feel the last of my energy expiring quickly. It is for this reason, Dear Husband, that I REALLY appreciate it when you don’t show a reaction when you come home and walk into the kitchen… or the rest of the house, for that matter. Trust me, I feel the same reaction as you… deep in my bones. I just know it’s a lost cause at this point. One day we will have the cleanest house. That day is not this decade.


We are all in bed, the boys and I, and at some point you come home… I have vague memories of you lying down next to me, hugging me, and kissing my cheek. But I’m out.


The next thing I know, I’ve hit snooze for a good 30 minutes, and at 5am I drag myself out of bed. I have a text from you at 4:57am telling me you’ve left for work and you love me. I go downstairs and see you have ground up some coffee beans for me to make a fresh cup of coffee… thank you. I love you. I look around at the picture of destruction and just put my head down and get started on lunches and snacks. A while later, the boys come down and they’re getting dressed. Because Santi gets distracted and will eventually come down wearing a backwards, inside out shirt that is NOT a school shirt along with some swimming trunks, 2 different flip-flops, and a panda hat, I get his clothes out of the pile and help him get dressed. As he is taking off his jamas, he informs me that he “was having a dream that he was looking at girl boobies” and he gets red cheeks, starts giggling, and his dimples pop. I smile and say, “Wow, really? Well, I dreamed about lots of ice cream…” Really, I just dreamed about nothing… it was a deep, black hole of doing nothing, which was ahhhmazing, but I feel like ice cream is something he can relate to more, and I really just don’t want to elaborate on looking at girl boobies right now. It feels too early in the morning to try to come up with an acceptable response. If I'm honest, I'm glad he sprang that on me and not you, because I'm not sure I would have wanted to hear your response to that (I love you!). I take him to the bathroom to brush his teeth and note the new bottle of mouthwash that replace the one he wasted by pouring hand sanitizer into it, and I’m happy for Adrian that he won’t get a mouthful of soap again today.


And then later, after the older 3 have been dropped off, and I’ve driven Santi to pre-school 20 minutes away, we pull into his school parking lot, and I turn around to look at him, his face covered in sharpie marks that he made on himself last night, and I ask him where his backpack is, and he looks around confused before he says, “Oh, I’m sorry, Mommy. I took it off and forgot to put it back on.” And I will count to 10 inside my head, take a deep breath, and I’ll say, “Let’s go.” And I’ll take him inside while I count to 10 in my head again.  Hugs, kisses, “see you later”’s, “have a good day”’s… 


And then we do it all over again… every. single. blissful. day.


And so when you call me later and say, “What are you doing?” and I say, “Working” or “Sitting here staring at my eyeball skin” or “Making dinner” or “Herding cats while so&so has basketball practice” or whatever it is at that moment… just know that you’re asking me a loaded question and any answer feels unsubstantial and severely lacking context. I know one day it’s going to be VERY quiet around here. Our house will be clean, we won’t be missing any drywall or have sharpie drawings on the hallway walls (or faces, for that matter), there will be no laundry of this magnitude, we will actually have to converse with each other, and I just can’t even picture it because it seems impossible that you can go from this RPM to that. But this little, blonde, Dennis the Menace one… the baby of the family… I will blame the majority of my gray hairs and wrinkles on this one. And I just realized that maybe the reason I can’t picture us sitting alone in a clean home one day is possibly because he accidentally brought the roof down around us trying to “help” and we are actually living in a shack or at a campsite or something. But he will have said, “Oops, sorry, Mommy” and those dimples will have popped, and we will have just started counting…

Ahhh we share a wonderful, messy life, my love.