WhatSheSaid.net - The Column

I need to preface this blog by saying that I adore my sisters, and that we have a great relationship.  They are my best friends, next to DH, the ones I share everything (else) with.  If I could only take a select few people to my own island, they would make the list, right after dh and my kids.

We went outlet shopping today, which is a 90 minute drive each way.  Just an FYI, it is hotter than BLAZES here in Iowa right now; I think the heat index was like 105 degrees, no joke.  I am a big girl.  Okay, I am large.  I have mentioned it before.  My sisters were blessed with my mother’s slight form, and both are petite.  While I love them to bits, I hate shopping with them.  I am a decisive kind of gal.  I see something, and if I like it, I get it.  End of story.  There is no trying on, gallivanting in front of a mirror at all angles, or leaving it with a sales clerk while I try to make up my mind.  I don’t have time for that.  My sisters, though…well, apparently they do.  So we split up, which was just fine by me.

I sailed through every store I wanted to go to in about two hours.  Now, I confess, my heart wasn’t really in it, since it was so hot and long sleeves and pants were about the last thing on my mind (first thing was a margarita, if you must know).  I didn’t try on much, and mostly shopped for my little guys.  There I sat promptly at 3:00, waiting for my sisters in heat that is better suited for the Equator, and they are late.  Finally, at 3:25, they showed up.  Sorry, they said.  The line at the Gap was long.  They had to pee.  They needed to buy a bottle of water.  I silently got into the car and shook my head.

It’s a good thing I love them, lol.

The words awestruck and star-struck seem almost redundant, don’t they?  However, they are not, and hopefully by the end of this entry, you will know why.

I have had the opportunity to go to a few concerts this summer, most notably John Mayer and Keith Urban.  Yes, I know, very diverse, right, lol?  Yet as I sat at those concerts, I couldn’t help but be star-struck.  There I was, in an “intimate” crowd of about 15, 000 people, watching these music-industry A-listers perform.  Even cooler still was who these guys knew…I mean, married to Nicole Kidman?  I love Hollywood news, so the gossip monger in me was secretly hoping for an onstage visit from Mayer’s notorious ex, Jessica Simpson or Urban’s Oscar-winning wife.  The hope alone was incentive for me to go to the concerts.  And these guys were goooood.  Mayer was soulful and sincere, and Urban was charismatic and earnest and he worked his a$$ off onstage, playing for well over two hours. He’s also much cuter than any magazine picture I’ve seen, by the way. And I don’t even like country music all that much (it was a girls night out thing that made me go I the first place…)  That made me realize something….

I still have the ability to be awestruck by things.  I looked around the auditorium last night at the sellout crowd and was in awe by it.  I watched the lightening in a thunderstorm last week and was in awe of its beauty.    I look at my sons and am in awe at their intelligence and wonder.  At the age of 33, working in a job that can sometimes take the most optimistic person and turn them bitter early in life, I realized that I am still awed by the little things in life.  And you know what?  It felt good.  As long as I have awe, then I have hope and promise.  It’s when I lose it that I know beyond all doubt that I have gone cold.  Being star-struck as I was at these concerts, I think I’m good to go.

Genius.  Freaking genius.  I am not sure what marketing cube monkey at what snack company thought up the concept of “100 Calorie Packs”, but whoever it is should be able to retire rich and know that s/he has thought up the most creative and innovative marketing scheme so far this century.  I’m a fatty.  It’s okay…I know I am, and I have reconciled myself to it.  I will do something about it when I have time.  For now, though, as the mom to two and a teacher to hundreds and a wife and sister and daughter, I don’t have the energy to focus on dieting.  When I am munchy (as is often the case when I come home from work or after hanging at the pool), it is very tempting to go for the Butterfinger or bag of Doritos (totally should be its own food group, in my opinion).  Those stupid little bags…those 100 Calorie packs of Teddy Grahams, Lorna Doone’s, Ritz Crackers, Oreos…somehow, one or two of those manage to tide me over until dinner, or bedtime, or whatever.  Most of the moms I hang out with love them, too.

And then it occurred to me:  some cube monkey at a snack company is getting credit for what moms have been doing for decades.  Since the advent of the plastic baggie, mothers have been cramming snacks to take with them everywhere. Cereal, crackers, pretzels, all that stuff has found its way to a purse or diaper bag near you, I am sure.  Yet we don’t call them “100 Calorie Packs.”  In our defense, we don’t know exactly how many calories are in the ones we create.  That being said, we’ve been mastering the concept of tiny snacks in tiny bags at a tiny cost for years, and the cube monkey gets the credit for it, and gets the big company bonus and retires early.  I guess we get the comfort of knowing that, although we didn’t copyright the idea or anything like that, we had a huge part in it.
And for that reason, I give props to all parties concerned and again reiterate:

Genius….freaking genius.

It’s summer.  For Pete’s sake, put sunscreen on your kids.

I belong to and lurk at several websites having to do with child-rearing, infertility, pregnancy and childbirth, and the like. What I have noticed is that as temperatures outside go up, so do tempers on message boards. What gives? If you don’t like someone who is posting or chatting, leave or don’t post. If you disagree about something that person says, take care of it privately (and by privately I DO NOT MEAN posting a message to them on the board). Most websites provide member emails….that is what it is for. This whole “I’m gonna call you out on a public board” is a bunch of BS. Grow up, ladies. You are getting your panties in a knot over someone you have probably never met in your life and you never will. It’s called perspective. I like my internet friends, and there are a few I would really enjoy meeting sometime. If someone drops out for awhile, then respect it. Geez.

It seems that lately I am accident-prone.  Well, I hit myself with a golf ball (it ricocheted off a tree and hit me right back in the leg); I got hit in the butt by a foul ball at a triple-A baseball game (insert your own joke about the size of my butt and what I was doing; for the record, I was leaning over halfway in my aisle seat when a foul ball hit just up from me, bounced down, hit my fanny, and then proceeded to get picked up by the guy across the aisle from me…just my luck), and tonight…a laundry accident.

What your moms don’t tell you, what your teachers don’t tell you, what you don’t learn at college or church or at the mall is that HOUSEWORK CAN BE HAZARDOUS TO YOUR HEALTH.  Sure, you can do something “easy”, like mix cleaning products and “tox” yourself out accidentally.  Not fun, possibly lethal.  Then there are the average muscle strains from schlepping around a vacuum or vigorous sweeping with a broom. Painful, rarely fatal. For me, spraining my ankle while precariously carrying laundry to the laundry room is perhaps my worst. Our laundry room is adjacent to the toy room.  Need I say more?  It hurts.  What hurts worse?  My ankle or my pride, you ask?  Hmmm….can I get back to you on that?

My solution is a ban on all housework.  It’s just downright dangerous.  OSHA doesn’t monitor my house (yikes, maybe it needs to!).   I don’t get workman’s comp at home.  Maybe I should check into AFLAC for the summer.  Now that’s a thought….

Okay, I will clean my house, if for no other reason than this:  I have a mother and a mother-in-law.  ‘Nuff said.

My sons, ages six and eight, finished their little league baseball seasons yesterday. No big deal, right? As I sat outside on that uncharacteristically cool Iowa morning watching them throw, swing, and hit with my family around us, I realized several things.
MY KIDS ARE EIGHT AND SIX!!!! They are no longer the little guys I had to do everything for. Well, I still had to find their uniforms because I forgot to put them in their dressers, but…they are big boys. Wrapping my head around that has been tough the past twenty-four hours, as I dash around the spilled cereal they love to eat in front of the TV.
MY KIDS ARE SIX AND EIGHT!!!! I am, for the time being, done with diapers, burp cloths, midnight feedings, and the like. I am not sure what my future holds in terms of adding to our family (it sounds like another cat is inevitable, but that is another story). My sister brought her three month old to watch (baby, not cat….just to clarify), and the level of preparation that took was admirable. Can I do that again? I mean, I think so, but…..
MY KIDS ARE EIGHT AND SIX!!! That means that next summer, they will be nine and seven. They will move up to higher leagues, and play more, and practice more, and my husband and I will have to make a big decision: What kind of sport parents are we going to be? What kind of example are we going to set for our children? Will we befriend the coach (okay, it’s a small town, we know most of them already)? What if someone calls my son a dirty name, as happened two games ago? Will I be satisfied that that particular child knew I knew what he’d done, and that made him behave? Will I be the parent narc, and exactly at what point does that occur?
MY KIDS ARE SIX AND EIGHT!!! Despite my wanderings and ramblings above, I am grateful that they are happy, healthy, ambitious (my oldest son wants to play in the NFL and be a meteorologist during the off-season, the youngest wants to drive for NASCAR—I’m just trying to get him to lead a pit crew, marginally safer, haha), and intelligent. God has blessed me, and I have to ask myself….dare I ask that he bless me again?

Oh, I dare. I can be grateful and yet ask to be blessed yet again with a child, I have decided. What He decides I can only wait to find out. I’ll keep you posted.