Bear It Well [RANT]

This post got out of hand. I may want to post more than once a week if life is gonna be like this. You may want to read in doses:

Yesterday’s scripture study reminded me of the value of bearing each others’ burdens. I was struck by how, in relationships that last, helping and supporting has to go in both directions. No one likes to be the one scrubbing and cleaning while the other supervises and/or plays. (Not referencing Martha and Mary here, but it does sound similar. One was cleaning and serving while the other actively learned from the leader among men. Both are noble tasks. We just need balance.)

I probably shouldn’t write about my feelings this week since it has been a busy one. Maybe you should opt out of this post now, so I will start at Thursday and let you know a story is live on Substack.

Now to rewind the film and review. We started with a long weekend, three days for the hubby and four for the babies. (None for me. Mama doesn’t get a day off.) Most of you have probably picked up that I don’t enjoy being the only person cleaning while everyone else plays or continuously blocks my progress. But we were having friends over Monday and I try not to scare away my friend with my filth.

So I woke up last Friday with a sore throat brought on by my new friends, allergies and sinus drainage. I still wonder if I wouldn’t basically come down with a man cold every time they hit had I grown up with allergies and adapted to their place in my life. I muddled through and cleaned some things, continuing my ongoing efforts to tidy my house one toy, one piece of junk mail, and one mystery item at a time. My husband swooped in and boxed up some items I had left in hopes the kids would help. He informed the kids he threw them away. No one enjoyed the resultant screams and complaints.

By Monday we felt capable of hosting our guests so the kids could play but I wasn’t up to the full day of excitement. Thankfully, one of my friends suggested we skip the dinner portion. (I still sent them home with brownies and have some left. Guess who isn’t eating healthy today or tomorrow?) Another guest pointed out that our house was hotter than outside. It only reached 80 degrees, so I hadn’t clued into our AC needing a checkup. 

I just adapt if the temperature falls between 50 and 80 degrees. (I am the lady in sandals, shirts, and a t-shirt when others have pulled out their down-lined parka.) My body was trained to adapt to that wide array of temperatures at a young age. All the fans in my house growing up pointed at my mother to keep her from melting and the trailer wasn’t well-insulated. In fact, my mom insisted on rolling down the windows of the car in the middle of winter because she was hot. Wisdom dictates that I am not in charge of the temperature for the happiness of people who are zero to fifty percent polar bear.

The following day, a tall young man came to help resolve our temperature issues. I think confirming with my husband that we wanted the repair took longer than the rest of the visit, which included replacing the faulty part. I appreciated this efficiency as I had other things on my mind…

Wednesday was a perfect day for cake and celebration. That date requires such pageantry since I officially became a mom. My little pooch enthusiast even started her day off right by petting a neighbor’s dog. She may have gotten some stuffed puppies of her own since allergies preclude a real puppy or kitty taking over our hearts and home.  I think baby sis almost exploded from excitement while waiting to present her gift. Overall, satisfaction and happiness stemmed from the givers and receivers.

Thursday found more confusion on the bus route. Because we live off of a busy, fairly straight road, I can see the three stops before ours as I wait for the return of my cuties. The bus barely stopped at the first one, zipped past the second one though the mom tried to flag him down though the child was nowhere in sight, grabbed the girl at the stop before us, and then he stopped for us. The sub informed me that the stop I referred to didn’t exist and drove off. So someone got to experience car line.


The afternoon was even more traumatic for another child and their parents. We had been informed of a bus change. Then another change was announced. The app said the kids were still on the first substitute bus. I decided to live by the adage “don’t trust the app” and hurried to the bus stop. The bus stopped at the stop below us, where it released the child it forgot to pick up earlier in the day, but the other student who got off at that stop didn’t have a visible parent, so she got thirty to forty more minutes on the bus. I feel like they should let us list people we trust to guard our kid in case we get caught in traffic or such, but no one at the bus depot has approved that idea when I put it forth in the past.

Retrospectively, the dad may not have been able to get down the street with his car and had a younger child with him. About an hour before I raced for the bus stop, a loud hissing sound from outside made me think my neighbors were having their house power washed. I was later informed that emergency vehicles had the road behind mine blocked off, so it may have been a water main break or a gas leak.

Thankfully, the substitute bus driver didn’t question me claiming all the kids from my stop since work delays kept my neighbors from reaching the stop before the bus. Another neighbor let my children pet their dog, so it was a puppy love win again.

The rest of the day and night was spent working on my prize of the week: the story I mentioned before. Have you read it yet? Offer me moral support.

Yesterday was a little less frazzled aside from letting one child’s stuffies take a ride on the amusement park rides we know as the washer and dryer. I may be testing a hypothesis about weather one can wash them repeatedly without having to play Doc McStuffins. I should inform you that fluffy friends purchased at the dollar store don’t take this kind of treatment well. Thankfully, I keep needles and thread close at hand. 

Now I must leave you, but I must tell one last little story about how my life is going right now. I drove down to the church today. As I neared the building, I noticed that the larger parking lot was completely blocked by a huge tree. I promptly parked in the smaller lot, jumped out of my car, and wandered over to take a picture. I proceeded to send said picture to people I hoped could handle this situation with wisdom and alacrity. I then went to check on the neighbor to see if they had input on the subject of the tree.

I believe our accents, hers adorable and probably from some lovely European country and mine from the south of this multi-faceted country, were working against us. At one point, she assured me she didn’t pushed the tree over. It was a large tree. She is a sweet, tiny lady older than myself. That thought never crossed my mind. By the time I left the church, a tree crew had arrived to help assure plenty of parking for tomorrow morning. I have done my due diligence. We shall see what this following week brings.

Spoiler: a party is happening and cake is being baked.

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.