The Triple Threat

I've said it before. I love other people's stories. Love to hear them, love to tell them, love it. So I have to share one from my BFF this week.

Her 6 year old son is the cutest thing ever. He's sweet, quite handsome and is already premier league athlete material. As her neighbor says, for casting his high school future - 'the triple threat'.

He's also a bit of a Mama's boy. My BFF has quite an extensive network of neighborhood friends and she rarely has to get an official 'babysitter'. Usually it's just trade with her kids friends parents. Last week she had to resort to getting a real babysitter. A sweet, cute, local high schooler. Her son was beside himself. He was very stressed out. He didn't know this girl, he didn't want his Mom to leave. He wasn't having it.

She was feeling a bit badly about it and the next morning she asked her 9 year old how the evening went. Did her little brother do okay with the babysitter? Her daughter snorted and continued pouring her cereal. She says in a mature tone... "Please. 5 minutes after you left he was upstairs putting a 1/2 bottle of Dad's hair gel in his hair to impress the baby sitter". Nice. Love it. Starting Early.

Managing Hypochondria

I think the Red Dress Women's Heart Disease Campaign is working too well. The other night as I sat down to watch my pre recorded American Idol, my heart started racing and my arms felt numb. It was like I couldn't get a deep enough breath.

I tried not to panic and calmly told my husband that I didn't feel that great. This is never new news to him. My stomach is always the basis for much complaining and moaning and groaning. Particularly when associated with french fry eating (You need a shock collar! He tells me often.) I always have some sort of headache that makes me turn off his annoying 37 minute classic rock songs and I can't stand listening to the cat yowl in the evenings while I'm making dinner. (FYI screaming SHUT UP to a cat doesn't really work. Plus it's annoying to have to tell your kids those are not words we use in our family...)

These were all new crazy feelings. Luckily we're so used to being 'wired' that I didn't have to wait to see if I would make it through the night. I jumped on WebMD to check out my symptoms on the 'symptom checker'. I guess if you input anything having to do with difficulty breathing it all immediately goes to "proceed immediately to the nearest urgent care center". Oh. Yeah I didn't feel like I was dying enough to get off the couch and put on a bra and shoes. I remember the Dr. telling my Mom that if you're having a heart attack it will feel like someone is standing on your chest. Mine really felt more like Emerald Downs opening day in my chest.

Well I made it through the night and even worked out with my friend early the next morning and I didn't die then either. I did however make an appointment with my very nice Doctor.

Apparently I had an anxiety attack. Great - now I'm just like my high maintenance sensitive friend that I've often had to shake my head at. The one who I've had to talk down from crazy panic attacks in random places. The who has been on all kinds of prescription drugs over the past 10 years. No thanks. I'll pass.

My Doctor says patients have success with 'relaxation tapes'. Or another friend recommends meditative yoga. "Not the downward dog type yoga" she says. I headed home after picking up both girls from daycare and school respectively. Racing to start dinner so I could run out again for my once a quarter gathering with some old friends.

As I'm starting my harried journey, I see a sign for 'Buddhist Meditation Classes.'
That sign was definitely not there yesterday.
Hhhhmmmmmm.

Galavanting in Swimsuits with Adults You Don't Know

This weekend I realized that I officially am not in tune with the 'vibe' of my daughter's school. Like when you're dating and realize it's just not going to work. Seriously.

I can't do any of the events, meetings, reading help, egg carton gathering, coffee hours etc... (and the etc is lengthy) at her school, because they all happen WHILE I'M WORKING. I realized too late, that I am in the severe minority of this school community - being a woman who works in an office, full time. (And apparently not many wear high heels either, because some child asked me why I was wearing those shoes? Umm.. why are you wearing that sweatshirt? Because you want to!) But as usual, I digress.

Since I cannot often help out or participate in the school events, when they have the "Family Fun Outings" I feel it necessary to go. I have to at least make an effort to be involved, lest I be a total leper. Last month we ice skated (and I had to reintroduce myself to most everyone). I couldn't participate the month before in sledding because it happened with a week's notice. On a Friday. At 11AM. While I was WORKING.

So this weekend was a Family Swim Outing. I should have clued in that it was a 'Family' Swim Outing. Apparently I hang with crowd of Mom's with a totally different mind set. I assumed since Kate could swim without assistance, that only one of us would get into the pool to swim with Riley. Typically I do not CHOOSE to put on my swimsuit in April in front of a whole bunch of parents that I do not know and jump around. So I didn't bring mine. I was the ONLY LOSER MOM not in the pool!! Seriously! I felt like the biggest horses arse. Am I so selfish about my own issues that I wouldn't swim and frolick with my child?

Kate proceeded to be her solitary self and not swim with any of her friends.....and refused to swim with Jeff and Riley. So there is my lone 5 year old - in the deep pool all by herself. While her selfish mother wearing shoes NOT appropriate for the pool area watches on. I felt so stupid I even looked at purchasing a swimsuit from the lobby store....but I didn't feel $78 worth of ugly utilitarian swimsuit guilty.

One Dad asked me from the pool how come I was not swimming. I could think of no witty answer. The truth was all very selfish. I have to go to dinner at my in laws directly after this and didn't want to have wet hair and raccoon eyes? I'm still working on getting back in shape and didn't feel like having to show off all my jiggles to all those judging stay at home Mom's? None of those were appropriate.... I just laughed and stammered at a total loss for words. Hopefully it came off as mysterious. Maybe I have some hideous scar I can't bear to show. Yeah, okay probably not.

Lesson learned. Next time I'll be the one cannonballing and laughing and frolicking with my children. Why the hell didn't I do that? I just assumed the kids would all play together and the parents would chat and watch on like we do at swim lessons at this same pool. Thank goodness my awesome husband was of the same mindset and backed me up.... But I can't help wondering, are there bigger lessons for me here? Jeez!

Things You Do On A Thursday Morning

I really don't know how I ever was late for work or a meeting or anything prior to kids. You have so much time and are only responsible for yourself!!

This morning we woke up to snow.. again. They said it was coming, but I kind of dismissed it. Probably because there was no crazy 'STORMWATCHSNOW HYSTERIA 2009' with fun graphics on the news that usually gets everyone all amped up. Well maybe there was and I just missed it.

So now that it's snowing that means I have to send my kids properly equipped, i.e. gloves, hats and boots. So here is where procrastination does NOT pay off. The last time Kate wore her boots she stepped in dog poop (and then got it all over Jeff's car, which he somehow totally missed?) Did I proactively clean off the offending boot? No, I left it in the slop sink in the garage to be taken care of another day. Today is another day.

So after making pancakes with chocolate chips, getting out the lunch box, the books and laying out clothes and shoes for the day, I find my self hunched over in the garage with the one rubber glove I can find, some 409 and a screw driver...... scraping dog poop out of the crevices of one purple boot. All before coffee.

That's just before we even start the day! I'm assuming it can pretty much only get better from here.... and anyone else ever try to convince your kids it's 'cool' to have two different gloves?? Yeah, my 5 y.o. wasn't buying it either.

Things You Do On a Lazy Sunday

I'm writing this while laying on the couch trying to recover from a girls weekend of skiing and consuming many adult beverages.... (complete with a trip to the local tavern in small mountain town). I'm trying to get geared up to go put on a swim suit to take my 2 year old to her swimming class. The kind where you have to get in the water WITH them. Joy.

As I'm contemplating if I've hydrated enough to make up stairs with out a case of spins.... I'm watching the Miss America pageant. I don't know why.. maybe I'm just too lazy to to find the remote control. But the sick part is that I've decided it sounded like a good idea to eat some mini Twix bars WHILE watching the swimsuit portion of the competition. What is that? But I did have to laugh at Mario Lopez explaining that they keep the swim suit competition as a focus on 'health and fitness'. Whatever. You're not showing off health and fitness with those chicken cutlets slipped into your bikini top. Maybe walking in super high heels while wearing super huge heavy sparkly earrings constitutes a work out.

Youth is Gone Baby Gone

For whatever reason there's been a big swirl of activity on Facebook among my high school and college friends. I never really got 'addicted' like people say.... until now. All of a sudden I'm going down all kinds of memory lanes. My sorority sisters have been posting some silly pictures of college (hello big hair, big eyebrow, big overalls.....)

It's got me contemplating. Plus the whole it's a 'New Year' thing. I've always been a romantic. I'm a huge Jane Austen fan. I cried last night reading Little House on the Prarie to my daughter (they left Jack the dog crossing the river?) I've recently become horribly addicted to the Twilight series... this feels like mid life crisis in the making. Am I emotionally stuck at age 22?

As I was jamming out to my streaming radio just now while at work I realized how much I love the old school (and new school) r&b stuff. So does that mean I'm going to be one of those really obnoxious Mom's that tries too hard to be cool or young?

Would it be weird that your soccer Mom was blaring Tupac when dropping you off for a sleep over? What if when I'm a Gramma I'm groovin to some Shai - Sex Me Baby while vacuuming the ranch style house in my matching velour sweat suit and big hoop earrings? Is that wrong?

My ring tone is 'Dangerous' by Akon (which my conservative classic rock loving husband thinks is obnoxious). I love it!

I told him I was sad when it dawned on me the other day that I've reached the age that if I wanted to go dancing at a club (okay, not that I could get the time away from kids and life to do that, but if I WANTED to), I would be one of 'those' ladies. You know the ones who are too old to be there but are anyway and are trying WAAAAY too hard. I'm having a flashback to a bar we went to in Atlanta that was known as a dance club for 40 somethings and I thought that was so weird and kind of sad. Oh man.

I know, I know - look at what I do have. Family, children, a job, good friends all good things, I'm not discounting that. I just kind of finally realized I'm reaching middle age and what does that mean really? I guess it is what we want it to be and I'm pretty sure my version includes some music my husband will hate.

Hey kids, better practice that walking WAAAY in front of me on the street pretending we're not related thing....

Too Much Together Time

I'm BAAAACK. I pretty much checked out there for a while... work is crazy, Thanksgiving, Christmas (and Hanukkah - hi Grandma NJ!) blah, blah, blah.. you know the drill.

So even though I'm swamped at work, I'm taking time the in the EVENING (see, not even cheating and doing this at work!) to do some blogging.

If you've seen any 'Storm Watch' Northwest news, you'll see that the Seattle DMA pretty much only has 3 snow plows and one truckload of gravel in it's DOT shed. Add that to equal parts of substantial snow (hey, for Seattle it was a lot!) and you get some MAJOR together time.

It all started December 17th? 19th? Some teenth.. where there was a 'chance' of snow. Seattle school district freaked out, so in turn Riley's daycare freaked out.. and there I was working from home. Mind you, no snow actually fell until LATE that night. So I've spent approximately 2.5 days IN the office since December teenth.

I'll say this now - I have figured out why my BFF tells me she's on her hands and knees sweeping, cleaning, wiping her floor every single day. Because kids and husbands and a visiting dog (who was much cleaner than the kids) means I was on my hands and knees sweeping, cleaning, wiping..... ALL while trying to do real work of course.

My husband who claims his job consists mainly of meetings where his presence is physically mandatory went into work many more days than I did. Mind you he was probably 1 of 10 people there.... But he still couldn't figure out that why on one of the few days he was at the house, when he announced he was going to get coffee, I completely freaked out on him NOT UNTIL THE BABY WAKES UP YOU'RE NOT! I had been trapped in the house entertaining, cleaning, working, taking on snow clothes, taking off snow clothes for WAY too many days for me not to be going on this coffee run. He looked at me like I had 6 heads. How is that hard decipher?

The turning point was this past Saturday when we were standing in Costco waiting for hot dogs after purchasing the big box of bulk diapers. My husband is on his blackberry doing who knows what, the girls were sitting on the box, racing around the box, running into other people's carts, Riley falls down in the path of some old impatient man and I turned into that shrew Mom lady. 'Stop moving around and sit right here' in super bitchy voice while giving my husband death glare because he's totally not even paying attention. I see the nice church lady Mom at the table next to where we're standing give me the raised eyebrow judging look. That's it. I'm done.

While I love my family, I've never been so happy as to go back to work today and get back on schedule. I like things on a schedule. I like things clean and put away, I like having the opportunity to miss my kids a little bit..... Grass is always greener?