Surfing in a Child's Ocean

One of my parenting mandates is lead by example. Sometimes, I am not very good at it either. Such as when I'm tired, which I've been for about seven plus years now. But if I fess up to my mistakes and actually learn from them, then my kids can learn too.

Humans learn almost nothing when life goes perfectly throughout their entire childhood. Those poor folks are in for a very rude awakening when their first trauma hits in early adulthood. I know it sounds weird, but I'm always thankful for my less than perfect childhood. I feel well prepared for life, although I still think it's really hard being on this planet at times, at least it never comes as a surprise.

"It's not fair," my kids say.

"Exactly," is my honest response.

Anyways, back to leading by example. I don't swear, in front of my kids.

Although, it is getting trickier with their evolutionary enhanced mind reading abilities to keep my private thoughts private. So much so, that I am having to limit the curse words I think in my head while in their presence. Oh no, it isn't enough that I have given up alcohol, crack and nearly all of television, but now I have to monitor my thoughts as well? "Not fair!" Oops.

Don't feel sorry for me, I have kept, and even added to, the hobbies I love. I didn't like the way I felt after using crack and TV, anyways. Besides, both of those drugs really interfere with my surfing. If I stay up too late watching TV I will invariably miss out on something else and it makes it impossible to dawn patrol the next day.

Many times my kids will say out loud, what I'm thinking in my head. Can't we just go back to the days of communicating with words out loud, please? How are we all going to lie and get away with it, anymore? I suppose the good news is now we can all relax and be ourselves. I can't possibly be the only one who is experiencing the, "omg my kid has esp," phenom, can I?

The other day I was having a hard day in parenting world, when my oldest son says to me, "I know what you're thinking."

"You do?" I ask feeling like an open book, which would be an understatement except for the fact that he reads books for hours on end.

"Yeah, you're thinking you wish Gio and I were never born."

Fortunately, he was a bit off, but not by much. I was actually pondering, "why on Earth didn't someone tell me how hard parenting really is?"

They all said, "you two will make such great parents." And I believed them.

"Sucker! LOL ha ha ha. We got her good." Does anyone else hear those voices besides me?

Sometimes it is hard to feel like a great parent, especially when my kids are doing things like teasing each other mercilessly, or just plain old not listening to me. Oh and the looks other people give, well, it's a good thing I really don't care what they think, but sometimes it would be nice to have a little support from the outside world, especially since I now have to live in it.

People don't tell potential parents how hard parenting is because if childless people knew, they wouldn't do it. If the childless were smart, they would get a cat, a stroller and walk around town pushing their meowing babies all the while pretending to play house.

There is no way to actually know how great and how hard parenting is until the task is undertaken. And then it is too late to back out. Especially since we can't drop our kids off in Nebraska anymore. Those legislators totally ruined my back up plan.

People without children don't have the capacity to comprehend the vast ocean of parenting. Until a person becomes a parent there is no need to navigate the treacherous waters of endless madness and boundless love parents undergo. Trust me, I know I used to be one of those people. Ignorance is bliss, baby.

One of the things I love (barf!)hearing when I discuss my parenting dilemmas with friends who have older and grown children is, "my kid never did that." Yes I love that one. Those words pop my parenting self esteem bubble right into outer space. Thank goodness I have friends who still remember the torture they inflicted on their siblings, and vice versa.

I also wonder what medication people are on when they say , "oh I loved that age. It was so easy."

"Excuse me?" Okay, now I know they are on crack. There is no easy phase, maybe easy days. Everyone thinks parenting younger kids is easier than parenting teenagers who drive cars and are under the influence of raging hormones. Wait? On second thought, that sounds much worse.

But even knowing it gets harder doesn't help when right where I am just sucks. It was like thinking having one kid was so hard. Wrong. But I didn't realize that until I had two kids. Having one kid is practically like not having kids at all. Especially when I realize, "uh oh, this isn't like one of those bad dysfunctional relationships where I can just walk away? Nope, I'm pretty stuck in parenting hell with the nearest exit being my next lifetime, maybe. And even then, they might still find me."

Like when we try to go shopping and my kids suddenly experience severe brain damage thinking, "hey this is a great place to play tag and hide and seek," running around the store like wild animals. Yes, those were my kids.

Okay, I concede it would be fun to do that, but please for Mommy's sanity, "STOP!" I may not care what people think, but I hate being stabbed in the heart by strangers' piercing glares. And being a mind reader makes all those stares so much worse because I can, also, hear what they are thinking. Sometimes, I have to remind people that they were once children, too.

News Fast

Photo by Vinny

News fasting has sadly come to a close for me. And it all ended with this blog. Sure, other great things have happened since I started blogging including, but not limited to, sleeping and feeling an inner sense of joy and peace. One of the challenges of blogging daily, besides blogging daily, is I am now tuned into global consciousness.

I'm kind of sensitive and at some point in my life I started having nightmares and anxiety from reading the news that lead me to give up reading or watching the news. Being a journalism major, I know for a fact that news leads with death, mayhem and celebrity, not in that order. And the more the better.

Even blog readers don't want to read about what someone had for lunch. "Zzzzzzz." By the way, there's an excuse for my kiss and tell writing style.

Newspapers need sensationalistic headlines to sell. Although that doesn't seem to be going well for them lately does it? Turns out everything is connected.

"Hooray!"

I've been saying it all along, and it's not about me being right. I'm excited because the world seems to be catching up with me, even if it had to come at the expense of everyone's wallet. Out of bad things, come good things.

Waking up isn't easy and who enjoys the sound of their alarm clock, anyways? Not me. But it's going to be a lot easier if we all just get out of bed, and quit hitting the snooze button.

Since I started blogging, I have felt this need to become informed on what's going on in the world. Not a lot has changed since I tuned the news out. Yes, there is the good stuff, such as, "wow Americans aren't as racist as we once thought," paralleled by "but those Californias aren't so opened minded, now are they?"

But even the latter articles don't bother me so much as the ones about the violence that plagues our planet. Violence often perpetrated on innocent victims by people they know. By parents on kids and allegedly, kids on parents. By husbands on wives. By terrorists on civilians. That is the news I have a hard time reconciling in my mind, body and spirit. It's hard to read about that stuff day in and day out.

But, then I think of past life expert Brian Weiss and I figure the things that are happening now, probably, go way, way, way, way,way back. What someone doesn't learn in one life, carries over to subsequent lives, until that lesson is learned. People, please, do your homework. If not for the sake of this life, then, at least for the next one. All this repetition is soooooooooooooo boring, isn't it?

Repeat after me, "love is all that matters." Everything else is just silly.

Hmmmmmm? I wonder what I'm repeating. Oh yeah. I'm supposed to be breathing, being me, holding my vision of world peace in my mind's eye and feeling my feelings, because those are some of the things I can do in this world. And they are the actions that allow me to be in the moment.

Now is right where I want to be. Not in the past. Not in the future.

Oh, and when I forget all that, as I sometimes do, could someone please remind me? Thanks.

Just Jump!

I have this really smart dog. But sometimes, just like the rest of us, she lacks the necessary confidence to carry out a task.

Or maybe she isn't as smart as I think she is. She incessantly attacks the vacuum cleaner when it's on until I get so frustrated with her behavior I lock her outside with the kids. What's the point of that? If she could learn to leave the vacuum alone she wouldn't end up outside with the crazy people.

And it was only a few months ago, I saw her open a door for the very first time in ten years. I'm not talking about a locked door where she needed a key to gain entry. No. I'm talking about a door left ajar, with too small an opening for her to squek through. Up until she had the just push the ajar door open to gain entry epiphany, she used to stand there growling and barking for help in all her patheticness, until someone came to her rescue.

"Woof, woof, grrrrrrwl!" calls Nadia the Dog for help.

"Oh honey are you okay?" coos Stefan as he comes to her aid. He is a total sucker for her. When he's not looking, she sings this song to me. Specifically the part, "David Duchovny why won't you love me? I'm gonna kill Scully." Yes, that makes me Scully.


I call Nadia the Dog pathetic because compared to Nay Nay the Cat she is. Nay Nay the Cat, who is much smaller, can open a door with such force it's startling. Her door opening abilities frequently cause me to wonder, "who the heck just walked in my door? Phew, it's just Nay Nay the Cat."

On the other hand, Nadia the Dog is smart in a sneaky, caniving sort of way. She often talks us into feeding her second dinners by convincing the person who didn't feed her dinner that she hasn't had dinner yet. And she waits until the person who did feed her, leaves the room.

When I leave her in the car, she finds food I didn't even know was there and devours it leaving a mess of crumbs and fur as evidence to her misdeeds. Somehow she manages to hop from the very back to the snacks and back to the very back before I return to the car.

Even worse is when she gets my mochas, leaving behind an empty Starbucks cup and mocha drenched paw prints. Good thing for my handy dandy baby wipes. How she gets the lid off I will never know? I have a hard enough time doing this with my own hands, I can only imagine her challenge with paws and mouth. I have a feeling she is going to be in for a rude awakening when she realizes I have switched from mochas to Americanos. I can only hope she won't like Americanos.

Well, here is Nadia the dog stuck on a rock at the beach we have walked countless times. Eventually, she figured her own way down. And although I had to walk back to her royal stuckness and talk her down from the rock, at least I didn't have to carry her off the rock.

"Come on girlie, you can do it!" I say encouragingly. Funny thing is those are the exact words I need to hear when I'm stuck on a rock, not knowing if I should jump off into the wild unknown or head back for safety the way I came.

15 Times A Week, No 20, Make That 25.

The other day I was talking to my friend who says, "it's so awesome having sex 15 times a week."

I hadn't gotten lucky with my husband for a few days. She was only the second person that day to tell me how much sex she was having and in my grouchy deprived voice I say, "please don't talk to me about sex right now."

While, I have written my ideal amount of sex would be everyday, with work, opposite work schedules, plus kids that number is fiction. The days I don't get lucky I take a very long shower.

Thank goodness my husband only works 185 days a year. Of course, that doesn't account for the other 480 days he has to lesson plan and grade papers. But at least on those days he can sleep in and not wake up at 5:30 AM.

A few days later my friend changed her number. Good thing I don't cuss on the blog.

"Can I talk about your sex life in the blog," I ask her. I always, I think, anyways, ask people if I can talk about their private intimate details before I mention it on the blog.

I can tell when I talk to people, about private stuff, their minds are wondering if they are going to read about it the next day in my blog. Especially when they say things like, "I never want to be in the blog!" I hope that doesn't count?

I don't won't to go Jenny Schecter (from The L Word) on my friends. Jenny wrote an expose on her friends lives, and it turned into a movie. Her friends were really pissed. She hardly changed their names either. And she wasn't very nice about what she said. But she got really rich. I like that part. I want that part.

"Yeah...... my friend answers" "But I think we have been having sex more like 20 times a week. Wait, it's more like 25." I was starting to wonder if she was exaggerating for the sake of the blog.

Oh to be childless, think of all the sex I could be having.........But even I wouldn't trade my kids in for more sex, not for more than a month anyways. And I would definitely visit them if I didn't have to get on plane or drive for more than two hours. Is that called summer camp? Is this the time parents catch up on their sex lives?

Oh well, until summer time, cartoons will have to do.

That's Why I Love You

"That's why I love you," says Stefan after reading my blog.

"Why?" I ask.

"Because you're so funny, and that's the only reason," he says laughing.

"And I thought you loved me because I look just like Angelina Jolie when I'm naked?"

"She doesn't do anything for me," he says. "She looks like an alien."

Although, I think if we were watching her in a movie he might feel differently. But maybe the whole Billy Bob blood thing is still lingering in the back of his mind. Sounds like Billy and Angie each thought the other was Jesus or something.

At any rate, Angelina doesn't really do anything for me either. While, Brad Pitt may be a better person, I have to say he doesn't look as cute since he became Brangelina. He looks prettier standing alongside Jennifer Aniston.

And Stefan probably wouldn't have left Jennifer Aniston for Angelina if he was Brad, but I would have. So let's see what he thinks of the other Jennifer.

"Okay does Jennifer Nettles do it for you?" I ask leadingly.

"Yeah," he says. And I can feel his body getting excited at the thought of her. He was trying to hide it, but I'm really kinesthetic.

Now there is something we can both agree on.