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.
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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”. :)

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