Opting Out [RANT]

Lately, people have been opting out of my Substack posts. I didn’t sign on for so much poetry either but bear with me. My muse is prepping some stories for October. If I can work my way through some of my other piles of “want to do” items, I might even post a story before this month ends. If you are keeping tabs, it didn’t happen this week.

Technically, this was the clones’ first full week of school, but they have today and Monday off to assure that lack of consistency I am coming to expect. This may be my way of gently letting you down. A story may not be forthcoming next week either.

My number one fan has already tried to stay home with me a couple of times. Watching me shuffle through piles of this and that in the hopes of making our house weigh less isn’t most people’s idea of a good time yet she seems drawn in.

Maybe I should start a podcast where people can watch me grumble to myself as I try to clean and tidy the disasters that accumulate over and over again in my house. Who wouldn’t want to watch that? I can see some of my commentary that will keep them coming back:

“Has that really been there all summer?”

“How did I miss this corner?”

“Why is she hoarding this?”

“For someone who keeps complaining about the mess, why did he leave this here?”

“That’s what that smell was?”

“We might actually have a pet in here…”

“Oh my, she is a hoarder like me…”

Yep. We do terrible things to our children just by giving them our genetics. At least I gave them giant heads to hold their brains, right?

Maybe you’d opt out of watching me dig through what is probably just piles of garbage. If I were car line compliant, I might opt out of the school bus route. The bus has yet to arrive at the time that we were told it would arrive, either morning or afternoon.

Honestly, it hasn’t been either consistently late nor early. The app which is supposed to make it easier to know where the bus is hasn’t proved helpful. One minute it says the bus is on the opposite side of the road, parked at an intersection and sixty seconds later, it is approaching. Mind you, looking up doesn’t always mean I will then see the bus.

Other times, the bus sits just within view of our stop idling for unknown reasons. I try not to pry but it sounds like a confused child a couple of stops before ours neither wants to go to school nor return from school, so everyone waits.

Yesterday, I was treated to an extra half in the sun while the bus finished its previous route. They had the decency to call after I had already left my house, since the bus was ten minutes early the previous day. On that occasion, I raced to try to catch the bus only to see it zip by and turn around to head back to the school. I think the confused child forgot to get on the bus that day. Is it wrong to think that people who have that much trouble getting their child to acclimate to the bus and respect that it is not a private conveyance might want to give carline compliance the old college try?

I just want my kids to arrive at a consistent time, so I know they have time for breakfast at school and when I will get them off of the bus, so I am not running down the road even though I left my house before the bus should have left the school…

Is that too much?

Does mama need to much?

Our Family [RANT]

I called my stepsister last week to let her know we would be in town. She may or may not have squealed with delight before inviting me to her daughter’s wedding reception. Having met this bonus niece twice, I promptly accepted and volunteered to invite my brothers and father to round out the motley crew of “who are you again?” guests.

Only one brother and my nephew were able to make it. Oh, and me and my three pack of blue-eyed cuties. The oldest of these made it sound like we were forced to attend. My family is an acquired taste that he has no intention of developing. 

But we showed up a bit early and hung out at the venue. My girls assured that I got lots of hints of sulphur and brimstone by insisting we needed to keep checking out the bathroom that showed signs of being entrance to the fiery bowels of the earth. A sign even warned us that the water comes out hot to reinforce this supposition.

Aside from that, the venue was as lovely as ever. One child fell in love with a stuffed bear but was denied a new friend. The other spent most of the previous night having more fun than could be anticipated at that hotel and fell asleep at the reception. She grudgingly woke up to play with her cousin at one point, but she wouldn’t have forgiven herself if she missed out on cousin time.

I should share about our accommodations the previous night. Key features of the hotel included an outdoor pool that was still covered despite claiming a functional indoor pool on the booking site, hallways that reeked of cigarette smoke, a smoke detector both disconnected and wrapped in cling wrap, stale pastries, a moldy ice machine, and pillows that smelled of dog. This last wasn’t really an issue for me, but we requested a pet and smoke free room due to extreme allergies in one member of our party. And this room was the only one available, despite our specific reservation, because it was out of service due to a broken television that turned out to just be a broken remote. At least our media starved darlings didn’t eat us for entertainment. But I digress.

As we waited for the reception to start, another couple wandered over. The husband swore I looked familiar. I said we might be related. Turns out they were from the groom’s side. They lived in the city where I went to college but not while I was there. I half expected to be identified as the chick in the cloak though…

My first view of the groom found him carrying a huge roaster full of pulled pork. His wife, my niece, was helping set up food. We are hardworking people even on our special days. My mama taught me not to come empty handed, so I brought black and white cookies and three loaves of banana nut bread. I got compliments for both. The best compliment was my great nephew telling me I did a really good job on the cookies. I suppose he will require me to bring my children and cookies for every subsequent visit. Otherwise, he might deny me admittance to his Nana.

Another guest told me how fast the banana nut bread was being devoured. It has received accolades before. Thank goodness for Betty Crocker. I also amused some guests by reminding the bride of how she is related to my brother and I. We like to keep familial relationships complicated where I am from. (“Well, I am your step-aunt but I am probably also your fourth cousin once removed. I bet we are related another way too, but let’s stick to what I currently know, shall we?”)

Aside from that, the reception proved uneventful for my normal familial small town gatherings. I feel like my troops’ attendance may have doubled the number of guests for the bride’s side. Events are hard to plan so close to the start of the school year.

I say that because another bonus nephew is having a half birthday party this weekend. The weather is being unkind, so the date got switched, but the cupcakes will still be delicious. That’s right, I don’t plan to come empty handed to that party either.

I have regaled you enough with my own family, so my in-laws just get an honorable mention. They tried to fatten me up, but I succeeded in practicing a modicum of self-control, so I am still around the same weight as when I left for my magical journey to family time.

Stay cool, my friends. Have fun in school, kiddos. And, moms, get ready to deep clean like your fall depends on it.

Just Another Day [RANT]

Yes, I am a grown woman who is still quite precious about her birthday. When my employment came with the benefit of days off, that was the day I took every year, without question. It didn’t matter if I stayed at home, curled up with a book and kitties, or my friends lured me out for dinner and random hijinks. I claimed my birthday as my day.

(For perspective, my boss kept pointing out how I rarely used vacation days. He also kept suggesting mental health days. I could go for one of those now.)

As a mom, clearly I share my summer days with the tiny humans I made. I miss my own mom, who honestly went through quite a bit to bring me into the world. I may joke about having the shoulders of a very short linebacker, but that proved less of a joke during the birthing process. But here I am and my mother may have forgiven me. I can’t exactly ask for reassurance from her at the moment, but I continue to forgive my little loves tor denying me sleep, so maybe…

Back to me being precious. I declared my day of celebration as mine this year by deciding how my three loves could entertain me. Fortunately, they let me drop off to sleep before my actual birthday started. My body made sure I woke up multiple times before the sun rose, but that is just part of the joy of celebrating so many birthdays.

When I was finally ready to start celebrating me, I got to do so by waiting for the opportunity to wash off birthday eve and start with a clean slate. At least someone got to leisurely do as they pleased on my birthday morning. 

I made my own breakfast. I made my own cake. 

My email gifted me laughs with an invitation to join a relationship coaching academy. My constant assertions that I should have committed to being a hobbit hermit don’t stem from a deep-seated love for damp, moldy-smelling caves with spiders nesting in my hair while I sleep. I mean, I wouldn’t rule it out, but I am sure the spiders and I would annoy each other eventually. In other words, no one really wants me as a relationship coach though I can tell you some things that definitely don’t work.

Real life gifted better. One tiny love presented me with a tiny, squishable Grogu. The other selected a necklace that declares “I heart you”. A friend released a new book for me to read on my kindle. My bonus parents found a replacement for one of my ruined books. The tallest love presented me with a cozy shirt pointing back toward our first meeting. Then he played chauffeur for the rest of my demands for the day. I selected matching earrings and a necklace featuring lovely butterflies (anyone know why that is important?) with red flowers and what appears to be a nod to mother-of-pearl. 

Then we went to the Cheesecake Factory for my birthday lunch. Usually, our service there is stellar. In fact, we had a waiter who has provided such service in the past. Yet somehow, my birthday brought on its own luckless abandon. We placed our orders. No problem. Beverages and delicious bread arrived. No problems. We placed our orders. Still good.

Then the food began to arrive. They brought one child’s meal and my husband’s meal. Another wave of servers came toward us. They delivered plates to people who ordered after us. Some time elapsed while my husband stared at his hamburger morosely as he waited for my food to arrive. At last, our final food got carried to our table. Almost. My dressing, as I ordered it on the side, got lost in translation. My husband tucked happily into his burger. I requested my dressing. Waiting resumed. 

I finally got to eat my salad when most of the other food had already disappeared from plates. But that’s okay because after cleaning my plate, it was time to order dessert. I had decided I wanted the Very Cherry Ghirardelli® Chocolate Cheesecake. Delicious and sharable with my picky children. I was informed that this flavor has been discontinued. Then the waiter disappeared.

My body, which I may have mentioned is cranky and old, demanded I make my way to the bathroom. I informed my husband of this and he made it clear I needed to stay put until the waiter returned to take my dessert order. I couldn’t give an accurate accounting of how long his return took, since I was uncomfortable. I eventually had to flag him down. I ordered the pecan turtle cheesecake. I wasn’t thinking clearly. This was not sharable. I tried. Complaints were lodged. Repeatedly as I tried. 

I enjoyed my cheesecake as much as one can with such grumbling. Then we moved on to our next adventure. A few years ago, both of my tiny loves scored new friends at Build-A-Bear for my birthday. We got some gift cards for future use. I decided that it was time to make my own friend. It was pointed out to me that a sale meant one could get two stuffies with only an extra $15. I think the idea was to repeat letting the littles each get a friend. I got exasperated sighs when I suggested the children each pick a sale eligible friend and I would get whatever inspired my little heart. Twice.

My little heart wanted two kitties. My little ones selected a cat and a dog that had coloring inspired by ice cream. We somehow kept the overhead, after gift cards, small. We took our friends home for snuggles and the hope of more cake.

I assure you there was more cake. Layers and layers of lovely cake. I posted a picture on substack. I may still be working my way through said cake, slowly, and with massive amounts of sharing because this cake was impressively large as my cakestrosities must be to celebrate my birth properly.

 

Anyway, I rounded out the day in bed with my tiniest angel because her “heart hurt”. I keep telling her I will hug and kiss her without subterfuge, so I spent the night worrying.

Gifts continue to trickle through though. Much like the cake, they bring back the joy of getting older. Two friends let me love on their kitties. Few images bring the joy of a chubby orange tabby bounding down the stairs to see you or tiny Siamese kittens trying to steal the toe beans of your youngest child (also on the stairs--maybe I need more stairs in my life?) Another friend treated my children and I to lunch at my favorite Queen. Well, not my absolute favorite. This one didn’t feature an Eskimo girl or a view of my birthplace from the entrance. But it was delicious.

I guess I must take the good and the bad. Anyone else suddenly want to watch “The Fact of Life”?

Trash Thunder [RANT]

Woke up last Friday morning to what I assumed was more thunder from the previous night’s storm. Instead, I realized the nice men we pay to haul away what I deem unusable to the dump. If you know me, you know my history of up-cycling what other people would throw out into usable items. I have many friends who continuously give me items they have no use for to boost my creativity and happiness.

My husband thinks I am just hoarding garbage. At least my garbage doesn’t sit in areas designated to specific uses such as food prep until someone else gets tired of working around it and moves it for them. I know I am not alone in being the trash mover of the house. As they say, a mother’s work is never done.

My little darlings have been enjoying camp the last couple weeks. I had hoped to be more productive in my trash filling and moving efforts, but something isn’t quite right with me these days. Is it the continuing lack of a full night’s sleep? Does it have something to do with summer weather versus my charming polar bear nature? Could it be the smoke hanging over us like that table right next to the smoking section before they banned smoking in restaurants? Do I need an honest to goodness vacation where my nervous system isn’t plagued with everyone else demanding that I make them happy…even at the expense of myself?

Probably a little of all of these.

Like any self-respecting writer, I made some time to write, yet I still haven’t got ahead of my writing goals. I did find a stash of old writings in my hoard. They were written by me. Should I polish them up and present them to substack? Would you pay to see what was going on in my teenage mind? 

Suddenly, psychologists are checking in on this page with interest…

Mama Needs Money [RANT]

People keep telling me I should write a book. This usually follows a story about my early years. Instead of writing such a book, perhaps I should see how many people would wisely pay me not to share my experiences with them. How much would you pay for me to stop talking endlessly about cats, childhood trauma, and how I became addicted to chocolate?

But why would I possibly need money? Possibly to fund my corset, chocolate, cat, and fabric addictions? Maybe? 

In actuality, the first issue is an age-old one. As a mother, I was offered the opportunity to stay home with my children instead of outsourcing their care to others. My husband felt that the pay wouldn’t be enough to offset childcare if I worked in an office or a bookstore or a library. And I wasn’t sure I’d want to miss their little faces for forty hours or more a week.

However, the constant need to advocate for extracurricular activities for my kids is exhausting. Yes, I have many random skill sets, but I didn’t pursue teaching as a career because I lack some of the required facets of a good teacher—unlimited energy and patience, for instance. This means I get to hear how bored they are despite my best efforts to entertain. Besides, as their mother, they don’t always give me the same attention they give to someone else who is sharing knowledge with them. 

I want my children to learn and have fun. One of them definitely does better with a definite and consistent schedule repeated every day. This is my second summer trying to execute such a schedule. Thanks to advice from a group of like-minded mothers of faith, they are responding better to my attempts to keep their math skills sharp. What was that secret? Play board games with them and let them do the math, checking for accuracy, of course. They haven’t been as cooperative as I try to give them some life skills like cleaning, organizing, and resisting the urge to hoard.

On top of that, they frequently complain that they want to see their friends. So I try to make that happen. But guess where their friends are? In camps. Most camps seem to average about $300 to $400 per child for a week. That can really cut into the budget, so we stuck with the one camp that charges about $150 per child per week, but that leaves us flailing for the rest of the summer.

On top of that, a kitchen mishap has resulted in me needing to replace some cookbooks and magazines. I ended up photographing the recipes I like or still need to try from the magazines because I bought them so long ago, that people willing to part with them were charging upwards of $50. I may need to up the dosage on my heart medicine to recover from that sticker shock, but a couple of the books were reasonably priced, so I am convincing myself that it is okay to buy them or ask for them for my birthday.

In short, I technically have a very small cash stream. I finally have two paid subscribers on substack, so I will be able to afford those cookbooks by the end of the year. I also get the occasional interested party who wants to buy some of my up-cycled journals or other crafts, so feel free to send an inquiry if you need a gift for an upcoming birthday or other event. After all, it is never too early to plan for Christmas in July. (It might be too late depending on how extreme you want to get though, so choose carefully.)

Final Words: Finally Found [PREACHY]

Somehow, I have decided to fall into the weeds of my digital archives. In so doing, I found some writings that seem to be mostly finished aside from finesse. Some of them might boost my productivity on Substack. Others clearly want to be shared here. So I present an edited and updated mini-post that I buried in some dark recess of my hard drive until now:

One of the podcasts I listen to, challenged me to write my Final words in six sentences. I don’t even remember when this happened at this point. As I mulled it over, looking for perfection though I know I won’t find that in myself, the following wanted to be written. My self esteem isn’t that good or you would have so much more to read from me each week. But why on earth would that be the focus of my final statement to a world in need of hope and guidance?

Shouldn’t those final words be about gratitude? Final words give one last chance to leave the world better than we found it after all. So here we go, my final words should they be needed anytime soon.

1. No matter what happens, don’t forget that you are loved by me, by our Savior Jesus Christ, and by your Father in Heaven.

2. Keep striving to be the good in this world. 

3. Furthermore, try to be grateful for all that you have, both blessings and trials.

4. You need both the good and the bad times to make you into the best possible version of yourself.

5. And remember that you are never alone because Heavenly Father sent us here to care for and strengthen each other.

6. When you doubt any of this, be strong and turn to Heavenly Father in prayer.

This Is Why I Care [RANT]

Some people may have read my last post and are now waiting for my breakdown and the reign of terror. But bad experiences, terrible decisions, and the cruelty of others aren’t all life taught me.

I don’t remember my grandmother very well since she passed away the year I turned four. Yet I have always feel loved when I think of her. My mother assured me that though my grandmother’s cancer had spread to her bones, she refused to miss a moment with me. She relayed that even the intense pain of trying to hold me wasn’t a deterrent. My grandmother wouldn’t let my mother take me from her, even when she heard a snap that sounded like weakened bones giving way. Sometimes, love overrides the pain. 

While many of the people who claimed to try to help me as a child probably did more harm than good by making promises and never following through, a couple of educators truly saw and celebrated me. For some, they showed this by writing a letter requesting I be put in a reading class that would challenge me. One worded it more as an admonition for my enthusiasm making less motivated readers feel bad about themselves and I still got placed back in redial reading the next year. Others gave me outdated reading textbooks from higher grade levels. I devoured all of these words ravenously. 

One teacher in particular took it upon herself to champion me. She didn’t limit the encouragement to just her class. She encouraged my interest in other areas of learning, pointing our with excitement how those interests related to each other. She may have also clothed me for a couple of years. I had a hobo not-chic hand-me-down style that no one else bothered to try to correct politely. (You know other kids weren’t kind—most of the time). 

And she wasn’t the only bonus mom who tried to fill in where my own exhausted mother couldn’t find the time. If you really know me, you know I was the least needy of her children. Some have observed that I essentially raised myself in some areas. In other arenas, I may have been raised more like a boy. Thus you get treated to the weirdness that I call personality.

So despite all my complaints, I have to confess, that I want to be kind. I want to care. I will not randomly decide I hate you because your beliefs or appearance different than mine. And I state certain things all the time, but I shall try to summarize a few here:

I don’t care who you love as long as you respect my assurances that I want to be your friend but I don’t need to be just like you or make out with you to do that.

I am not staring because I am judging you. Sometimes, I am just looking your way because your smile or your eyes are beautiful. At other times, I am looking at the art that someone painstakingly applied to your skin while you exhibited the patience of a saint. 

On a similar note, I may be counting your piercings or contemplating how one tiny hole became large enough to stick a finger through. I am socially awkward not judging you.

If I am asking you questions about your beliefs, I am not about to attack. I want to understand. Honestly, I have bolstered my own faith on more than one occasion where I asked awkward questions about another’s faith. Not because I found their faith wanting but because what they said about their faith sparked a testimony of my own. 

In short, this world we live in needs more love. Let’s assume the best of each other. Sometimes, the person who cut you off just wasn’t paying attention. And even if they were darting in and out of traffic like they mistake the highway for a racetrack, maybe it is best to try to avoid that particular person instead of deciding to drag race them…