Whatever: Motherhood or how I became crazy

The M word. Mother.

I  never thought I wanted to be a mother. 

I had other plans, other ideas and other wants for myself.  I wanted to travel the world, live life out of a duffel bag and  have a fancy two seater car.  I wanted a clean house and adult vacations.

Motherhood, at least when it happened, was not one of my plans.

what can I say...I loved that show Hart to Hart!

Motherhood was for those girls who needed something to fill their lives.

I thought you had to be crazy to want to become a mother. 

Little. Did. I. Know.

I had other plans, but I truly believe that God had plans for me that included getting out of my head,

out of my comfort zone and out of my selfishness.

Plans that included loving someone and being willing to sit on the sideline while they shine. Being willing to walk around with poo/spit up/ dirt/ gum on my person and be okay with it because it came out of a little person that came out of me. Plans that involved being driven  more than just a little bit crazy

and still striving to be the best I can be so that I am the best example for someone else's happiness. 

I would like to say I came to it easily. I didn't. I would like to say I am a natural. I am not. 

I turned around when my oldest was 6 months old and was shocked that she was sitting there in her highchair. I started bawling! It hit me, " I am a mother."

 I still find myself at a loss for words when it comes to raising my daughters. Sometimes that is a good thing.

 As it turns out, I love being a mother. 

Not every second of every day, but most of the seconds of every hour. 

My kids are pretty great. They are kind and thoughtful people. They are interesting and they are funny. 

I hope that when they grow up they will say that I was funny, diligent, patient (doubt I'll hear that one), kind,

 a little bit crazy (but in the good way), an excellent cook, a good friend and  most of all that I loved them.

 

Happy Mother's day to all the great  mothers in the world.

Whatever: May?

May 1st rushed by me in a flurry of laundry, cleaning out defrosted freezers and trying to get back to normal. But yesterday, as I wrote the date on my check, I realized...It's MAY!  How in the world did that happen? 

Seriously? It's May! May is the month of field day and the last day of school. May is the month summer starts and we wear flip flops and bathing suits. I am so not ready for a bathing suit. May is the month my oldest gets older and I decide what my summer drink will be. (Leaning toward vodka tonics, but that is so unoriginal.)

I have lots to do before the kids get out of school in 23 short days. Firm up, clean up, paint, run and lots, lots more. 

 Here is the to do and the done list update for May. 

BIG LIST  2011

#1 Eat less sugar: doing really well with this except for my wine intake.

#2 Cook a new ethnicity once a week :have hit Greece, India, Thailand, Mexico, now looking into Canada. Do they have a cuisine?

#3 Paint the doors and trim in my house: started, but not finished

#4 Read 100 books : heading for a replenishment today.

#5 Find inner peace I must have been drunk when I came up with this one!

#6 Learn 60 Bible verses only 52 to go!

#7 Get a new hairstyle  (check!)

#8 Reduce my carbon foot print : 1 week without electricity helped this one along!

#9 Reduce my spending: check!

#10 love more : post lent I am vowing to not be a basher. It is hard, but I am making progress.

#11 Train for a half marathon DONE!!!!! Doing a super big race next!

#12 learn to swim : still fighting with this one, but as I am going to the Keys in July, will have it done come hell or high water (get it "High Water!"?)

# 13 Embrace my inner craftiness: moving art around is crafty, right? 

 I have learned a few things in the last month.

#1Walked a half marathon with my sisters and sister-in-law last weekend. Can now check that off the bucket list. Will only run them from now on. 

#2 If you look around, there are Bible verses EVERYWHERE. Read at least 5 different ones on the race course last weekend. 

#3 My daughter steals my books. 

#4 Hotels with complimentary happy hour(s) are worth whatever you pay to stay in them.

Happy May!

Oh. my. gosh.

Well, as I am sure YOU have had power for the last 5 days, you must know what happened in my neck of the woods. We had a little storm or 4 and many lost trees, power and more. Hundreds of lives were lost and millions of dollars of property was destroyed. In my city alone, 75,000 were without power. In our town and surrounding area, the death toll was more than 30.

We were very, very  lucky and lost only limbs of trees and power. The power was off from Wednesday morning until Sunday very late and it was like living in a dream where nothing works right and you keep doing the same things over and over.

I was lucky enough to have planned to go out of town and be with my sisters and s.i.l. in a hotel for the weekend, so my husband bore the brunt of the weariness that comes with no power. It jolts you  into the reality that you cannot control everything and that you are putty in the hands of nature's forces. I think if you still don't believe in global warming and the severe weather that comes with climate change, you need to go to Tuscaloosa, Ringgold, or just my neighborhood where 100 year old oaks were ripped from the grown by their roots.

Now that I have some perspective that comes from sleeping in an air conditioned room in my own bed for a good 8 hours, I realize that there are some good things that came out of this. Glass half full, if you will.
They are the following:

#1 My kids learned that laundromats are actually a really nice thing to visit when you need 5 loads of laundry done and you don't have electricity. They were a little leery of "the unknown", but  were very impressed by the efficiency with which we got our laundry done (5 loads wash, dried and folded in an hour and a  half). They also got to see some people that don't look or sound like us, but were just as happy to be doing their laundry in a well lit, nice place.


#2 I will now stock up on food that does not  have to be refrigerated or microwaved when I  know a storm is coming.   Microwave popcorn...not good in a power outage. But fruit, crackers and nutrition bars are excellent. We had lots of those. We do have a gas grill and cooked pizza, scrambled eggs, salmon burgers and boiled water on it. However, we had to eat out a lot. The grocery stores were open after the first day, but really, who wants to go shopping?


#3 Thank goodness we own cast iron pots and pans. They are amazing on the grill! They were worth every penny we spent on them.

#4 We had flashlights.  My husband had bought and horded flashlights for a situation just like this.


#5 The government is not all that bad. As my friend Ken said last night, " You can complain all day about the city government, but when your power is back on  in just a few days and you are safe, you have to think that is amazing."  As far as I know, we had no looting or violence from the power being out.


#6 Nothing is important as your family. We were lucky and did not have much storm damage, but many people did. Families lost mothers, fathers, sons, daughters and more. We did not even lose a cat. (They are not easy to wrangle and were not in the basement with us during tornado number two.)

Overall, we were super lucky. My kids were safe in their schools during the first storm. We were all safe during the remaining ones as well. But the reality is, we cannot control nature. It controls us. We get involved in our daily lives and sort of sleep walk through them. Nature has a way of waking us up and putting things in perspective. Thanks, Nature!