Favorite things from today:
- listening to children enjoy daddy-time in the backyard

- making delicious smoothies to stave off this heat

- making 2 new pieces of jewelry

- making one of the pieces of jewelry become something when it was originally going to be tossed out

My not so favorite things about today:

- proving that I’m a bit too incompetent for instant mashed potatoes as they boiled over again!

My older son has this annoying habit of saying “that’s ok, I didn’t want it anyway.” if I say “I’m taking away tv for the weekend” or any other slew of threats (which I do follow through on) that are rained down upon him in the wake of disobedience or backtalking.

It’s annoying for me as the giver, but really smart on his part as the receiver.  He will not be touched by this sadness, by this decision, he will merely live with it and even get a bit of pleasure out of saying ’screw you, you’re not getting the best of me’ in the nicest way possible.

Embracing this ‘tude (badittude I call it) can really help in the big world too.  It is just basically making lemonade out of lemons, but more as if said lemons dropped into your house via tree that just took out your roof, crystal chandelier, and grandmother’s ashes in that urn you’ve been meaning to move away from the window for years now. You can say “ha ha, free air conditioning, a shiny shard filled floor, and Grandma always did like lemons!” (and if you can say this and not cry then all the more power to you)

I don’t believe in the holy be all end all answer.  I don’t believe that if I just ask the powers that be for a million dollars that it’s going to end up on my doorstep gift wrapped.  I do believe that adopting the badittude will be my saving grace … or at least darn entertaining on the way to the funny farm.

Car tires slashed? I could use the exercise anyway.

Broken leg? I always wanted to use crutches!

You are here to take away all my worldly posessions? I’ve been meaning to declutter and now you’ve saved me the hassle and the trip to Goodwill, awesome!

Appendicitis? I am so excited to lose 3 ounces…

well you get the picture. Think Badittude.

So I’ve been heading to the gym daily and getting in some good workouts. I spin, I lift weights, I am pretty strong …or so I thought!

I got this fancy idea in my head today that we should go for a bike ride as a family (a family of 3 since my oldest boy is out with his Grammie) and I wanted to try a new bike trail that I saw on the bike path map at the gym.  Well, they should really give those away as relief maps because it had it’s ups and downs.  I will never again complain about the slight incline on the way to the market. 

I was really happy Matt had agreed to go with us, he called it an adventure, how could I not bite my tongue? Well because apparently instead of smelling the burnt almonds when you die, I smell cilantro.  At one particular point in our ride when I was struggling up a hill all I could smell was cilantro and I thought “The last smell before I die is cilantro…I hate cilantro”…Of course it could be coincidence that we were riding behind Qdoba Mexican Grill…

But after riding and pushing up all these hills with 20 lbs of camera gear strapped to me, pulling a trailer with a 30 lb kid, a tripod and other various items in the back, I had had enough.  I asked Matt if he wanted to pull the trailer and so we switched bikes.

WOW …I really underestimated how much more weight that trailer and it’s contents added to my ride.  I rode Matt’s bike with no problems except for the fact that I was going SO fast at one point I lost my footing.  I even made it up this hill that I swore I would have to walk up at the end because it was so steep …

What a difference … Matt says “oh it was all uphill so of course it was hard” but coincidentally I had a lot of uphills too, so one of us has a skewed perspective LOL

Well the good news is that after doing that bike ride today, I know I can do a lot more around here than I previously thought I could, including riding down to the Farmer’s Market.

Maybe I’ll get some cilantro while I’m there.

So first of all I have to rave about Zappos.com which I have to assume everyone knows about…well ok, I have to NOT assume that.  In my opinion they were predominantly known as being an online shoe seller, but they seem to have branched out (or I just now bothered to notice – how self-absorbed in the shoes am I?) to handbags, clothing, and other such items.  They ROCK at customer service.  R-O-C-K.  My mom offered to buy me a pair of shoes for my birthday, so I placed the order this morning (Monday) and by Monday afternoon I had gotten a note saying that my items were going to be upgraded in shipping so I’d get my items faster and I figured that meant priority. Woo-hoo!  Monday NIGHT (just moments ago) I got a note saying that my item was in transit now via next day air…WTF? WOO-HOO! I just sent them a nice email and if I was the type of person to send a fruit basket I would have done that too.

I’m totally getting off the subject though because that’s not what this entry was to be about.  It was to be about order history on Zappos.com, which apparently never goes away no matter how hard you try.  I’m simply marveling at how time really does change your choices in certain things you always thought you would be steadfast about.  I have never been a girly girl, but I do love me some shoes. Or at least I used to.  I still admire gorgeous Jimmys from afar, but they’ll have to shorten someone else’s achilles tendon and numb someone else’s toes because I’m pretty much past that part of my life.  I couldn’t feel my feet in my Nina’s my entire (church) wedding day in 1997 and that led to a pretty picture of me stumbling around Maui on my honeymoon as though my last 3 toes had been amputated from each foot or that Matt rescued me from some sort of defective-bride institution.   But I didn’t learn my lesson from that, I kept on buying shoes that were pretty and try as I might, comfort was never 100% found in many of my shoes of the late 90s. 

According to Zappos my tastes have changed significantly.  My order history reads: knee-high kiersten boots, 3 inch strappy dressy sandals, 4 inch aerosole strappy sandals, dressy Franco Sartos… have 2nd baby, stop going out to party, start going to the gym more, Aerosole slip on sneakers, Crocs flip flops, my first pair of Rykas, and successively my next pairs of Rykas – all workout shoes.

And the fact that I’m super excited about them just wraps up the whole story.

I’ve become that mom whose uniform consists of yoga pants, tank top, hoodie, ponytail, tennis shoes, ipod shuffle.  I have the urge to say ‘kill me now’, but the sound that drowns it out is actually my feeling of being proud of myself for the other changes that stand behind the choice in shoes.

At least I don’t.

So is this doll anatomically correct? Would I only ask that if I had Electra issues? Shouldn’t the word ACTION be in quotes?

Ah things to ponder until my next therapy session, eh?

Here are things that I wonder about and that may always be a mystery to me…

Why does Ambien say they have a side effect that ”May Cause Drowsiness” as if it’s a bad thing?

Why do people take things out of the microwave and say “ooh Hot!” (i am guilty of this though, doesn’t mean I know why i do it!)

Why is there always one person in the crowd that will say “That’s what SHE said!”

Why is that person always me?

I’ve had my washing machine for about…like 10 years… so it’s been eating socks for 10 years…shouldn’t that little drum be full by now?  (and yes, I know I should use those netted bags, but realistically I just don’t)

How come my son refuses to put his dirty socks and underwear in the OPEN hamper, which is one swift move and instead prefers to do the 3 steps of  1)opening toybox lid 2)inserting dirty clothing 3) closing toybox lid

How come my husband could throw his clothes in the spot where the hamper usually is when the hamper wasn’t there, but once the hamper was back, started throwing things in front of our dresser again

I am looking through these old photos, just doing a little reminiscing and reflecting and also digging up a couple of pics that I told a friend I was going to scan in

And I’m realizing something pretty important.  I was definitely thinner in high school, but I had no idea who I was and I’m not absolutely sure I was comfortable in my own life.  I also talk about my past as though life were perfect back then. Some parts of it were, but one thing I glamourize in my mind is my body image.  I imagine I was thin and beautiful and happy and that I must struggle now to get back to that time because it was a time of happiness.

That’s total crap.

In the pictures that I’m seeing again, with fresh eyes…or open eyes or something lol, I am seeing that I was nothing more back then that I want to be again.  I think I have been struggling with myself to go back to a time when I THOUGHT I felt happier in beating myself up about my weight, when what I should have been concentrating on is the present and the future.

I am absolutely more fit now than I was then.  I was thinner then, but not fit at all and I hated P.E.  I went to the gym for fun as a way to hang out with my friends or because my mother made me. Now I go because I enjoy it and I love showing my boys a healthy lifestyle.  Sure I might change my mind a million times and try to find a reason not to go, but I’m never sorry that I did end up going. Never.  My dad used to make me work out when I was younger, but he never did anything active for himself.  He was not a good role model of a healthy life and he passed away when I was just 23. 

I am happy in my life at this moment and I am 100% authentically me and I say what is on my mind. I never had that kind of voice because I was often shot down for speaking my mind and so I put myself on mute.  I am really proud that my boys have the freedom to share with me most anything and that I know they are growing into people who will not just accept things and will be questioning.  I just have to learn to deal with that when they question me LOL.  I stayed in a job when I was 19 that I HATED and it was because I felt like I had zero voice and had to stay there because what else could I possibly do? I don’t want my boys to ever feel that way.

So in that regard I am glad to have found these photos so that I could have the appreciation for the life I have now, that I have made for myself, that I might otherwise have taken for granted.

Otherwise, I’m really enjoying these photos because I have had many of my friends for years and while some have come and gone, and come and gone and come back again lol I realize that I’m so lucky to have these people in my life as part of my extended family.  We’ve trick or treated together, walked on railroad tracks, piled into each others cars shriner-style, seen each other through the best of fashion and the worst of fashion (um was there a best? perhaps I misspoke on that), and we’ve cried hard and laughed harder with each other through all these years. I’m going on about 22 years with quite a few of you and I’m going to be 33 tomorrow. That says a lot about our friendships through the test of time even if we’ve just reconnected again…

Thanks guys for one of the best birthday gifts ever – the gift of these memories

My very awesome 8 year old asked me today “What is more than infinity?”

And I told him that “infinity” is pretty much the end all be all – it is forever.

And he told me “Well if there is nothing more than infinity then you are 6 Billion Infinity years of good Mom.”

And that’s it – he doesn’t want anything. He just wanted to tell me that.

Between that and my 3 year old telling me I looked just like the model on the ad at the mall it’s been a good day for me through my children’s eyes. <3 <3 <3

I used to be a super romantic, but at 6 minutes past March 22nd, I have to admit that I JUST asked my husband to go back in time 6 minutes and then wished him a happy anniversary.  To give myself the benefit of the doubt, it’s not either of our wedding anniversaries (we have 2 – one for civil ceremony, one for church ceremony), but it is the anniversary of the day he asked me to be his girlfriend officially back in 1993.  The thing is though, that I spent all day with him and KNEW what day it was because it is also our friend’s birthday!

I’m not sure how I feel about this… On the one hand, it makes me feel like the days are gone that we celebrate our “one month” “two month” “65 day” anniversaries, and that is a good thing because it means we’ve been together long enough to just be without having to draw attention to every little thing, but then again, I hope that my husband  doesn’t think it cosmically means anything more than the fact that I’m getting older and I forget shit.

Love you, honey

You didn’t really think my mom flipped off my kid, did you?

I consider myself pretty knowledgable about a great many things, but tonight I found another rock that I seem to have been hiding under and it is on the subject of something very important in the sporting world.

The foam finger.

My mom took Z to a King’s game tonight and though they didn’t win, my son had a superb time.  He said he felt super special because they were in a little box/suite to view the game, his first ever attended.  He talked incessantly about getting a foam finger in the hours leading up to me dropping off my little chatterbox to his Grammie.  I must be very sheltered because I’ve never seen an ACTUAL foam finger before!  True story!

So when he came home, it seemed that his sweet talkin’ ways had won his Grammie over into buying him him a big purple pointy “we’re number 1″ foam finger… and he was kind enough to share with his dear old mom.

And it is here that I learned a truth about a misconception I have had all of my life.

You don’t actually get to stick your finger in the pointy finger part!  I had no idea. All this time I’ve always assumed you actually got to wear it like a glove!

What do you know?  You really do learn something new everyday.