I have recently become convinced that despite what may be implied by shows like Desperate Housewives and Weeds, getting acclimated to life in the suburbs has very little to do with what a person looks or sounds like, and virtually nothing to do with what one’s husband does for a living. I could be wrong, by my most recent hypothesis suggests that the most important thing a person can do for social status and fraternity among the natives is succumb to the growing trend of public-scrapbooking in the form of auto “decals.” Auto-decals, the more sophisticated younger brother to the bumper sticker, either magnetic or static in nature, can be affixed, removed, and reaffixed (if necessary) to keep up with suburban family growth and change. For those, like me, who’s five year old’s baby book sits mostly empty in its original box at the top of the closet, I thought it might be helpful to outline a series of very simple steps to get started on the journey to suburban popularity. Continue reading “Rockin’ The Suburbs”
If you aren’t a blogger (read: most of my regular readers) than you may or may not know about a WordPress “feature” called Freshly Pressed. This is a compilation of editor picks, so to speak, for the blogging world, that are all featured, daily, in one place of popularity and fame. Because I am not blogging in the hopes of becoming freshly pressed myself one day, I have never explored the ins and outs as to how and why a post gets chosen, but I do know this: it is quite an honor indeed.
Of the Freshly Pressed posts I’ve actually clicked on (which is several, especially when there is nothing good on TV), fewer than half manage to intrigue me as much as they intrigued the WordPress gods. What the posts rarely fail to do, however, is remind me that no matter how big and vast and scary The Internet seems to people like my mom, it is really just a vortex of similar ideas, swirling around and reminding people like me that we’re not as creative nor unique as we think we are. And, newsflash, neither are our children.
I made a goal a few weeks ago to start waking up earlier than my children. There were no stipulations in this goal of say, how much earlier I planned to arise nor what I would do with my extra morning time. As most guilt-ridden church goers know, promises to pray and read the Bible more, especially early in the morning, typically end up leaving us with more guilt and little else to show for our lack of discipline, except maybe a reminder that we are weak, weak humans, who can’t even sacrifice a little bit of our first moments of the day with the One who created us.
I don’t know about you, but I also ignore my husband in the morning. It isn’t personal, God. Really.
On Sunday I participated in a little race called a duathlon. For those of you, like me, who pretend to be much sportier than you really are (or are totally over denying the truth) a duathlon is not the same thing as a biathlon. Most people know that a triathlon is a swim-bike-run event. A biathlon is just two sections, either swim and bike, bike and run, or swim and run. In the winter, I hear, a biathlon can also mean things like ski and shoot at targets. A duathlon on the other hand is two sports in three segments, typically run-bike-run.
Like everything else I sign up for that is not a marathon, training, for the most part, seems optional. Continue reading “First Duathlon: What to Expect”
You are always exactly a week away from heaven, or a week away from hell. If you stick to your guns and hold your boundaries, blissful cooperation is right around the corner. But if you give up at day three all of your effort will be declared officially worthless. And the kids win.
Apparently this is a lesson I supposedly received more than one time while working at the wilderness camp. John swears he said it to us as our trainer, and repeated it again throughout his private tutoring sessions with me (aka: dating). Somehow, like most of that year of my life, such important nuggets of wisdom all seem like a bit of a blur.
This is what child-inflicted stress can do to a person, people.
This is why we continue to have more children after the first two nearly killed us.
Having forgotten this nugget, I had been recently toying with the idea of implementing some creativity into my discipline style. Before I go on, Continue reading “How to Make Your Child Obey (Part 2)”
I know every single woman on Earth has sworn she would not grow up to be like her mother and probably most of us have eaten those words in one form or another. The lucky few of us who are no longer blind to how awesome our mothers actually were all along, don’t try to hide it.
A couple retorts that were pretty regular in my house were things like, “I’m the Mommy, that’s why,” (she even had a cross-stitched shrine to herself with this saying hanging in the laundry room), “Wait until your father gets home,” (what non-single mother on Earth didn’t use this one I ask you), and the ever-classic, “Who said life is supposed to be fair?”
Okay. So maybe I internally rolled my eyes at these when I was young. I’m sure my own children will one day be doing the same thing. Continue reading “How To Make Your Child Obey (Part 1)”
Even in North Carolina, where it is currently seventy-five degrees the day before St. Patrick’s Day, the winters seem long to me. I will choose too-hot over too-cold any day, despite the argument that you can always put more on but there’s only so much…blah, blah, blah. Somehow, my body tends to adjust more quickly and more readily to the heat than the cold.
Plus, I like sunshine. Call me crazy.
Last October, almost as my liturgical goodbye, I found a 90% Off Summer Sale at Rite-Aid and cleared the shelves of bubbles.
With my fairly lax stay-at-home schedule these days, and the guarantee of ninety minutes (or more) of uninterrupted time every afternoon (not to mention three mornings a week) I have more than once thought about boosting my presence in the world of freelance writing. Almost by accident, two writing jobs have found me in the past three years which, although certainly cannot count as a second income, are steady, and provide me an opportunity to exercise my academic writing muscles with regularity. The extra cash is like a little bonus, which gets taxed down to dimes on the dollar, but also allows me to continue legally contributing to my IRA every year.
So about a year ago I discovered a website Continue reading “Freelance Writers, Just Say No”
I think I can safely say that this is the first year in, perhaps my entire life, that I’ve looked forward to, and then celebrated, setting my clocks an hour ahead. This is most likely due to the fact that, in North Carolina anyway, the average temperature for the past eight weeks has been around 61 degrees. In anticipation of high nineties, mosquitoes, and likely a drought, come July, I have been trying to make the most of our outdoor time while it is ripe.
Unfortunately, I am not currently a morning person.
Combine the weather with a few other timely circumstances and what I’ve discovered is the 5-step recipe to preparation for, and a quick recovery from Springing Forward. I will share the following, which is probably advice I should have shared a few months ago. Always next year…
- Spend the entire winter sleeping until at least ten minutes after your children are awake. No matter what schedule my children are on, the encroaching longer days means there are at least two weeks where the sun is up an entire hour earlier than normal. Despite the white noise machines and black out shades, somehow both of their little pre-pubescent bodies are acutely solar-equipped. After a glorious winter of nightly hibernating until at least 8 o’clock every morning, I have been cursed by the sun to sudden and unrelenting 6:45am wake-up calls. On the day where 6:45 magically becomes 7:45, I actually tricked myself into believing the children were sleeping in again.
- Contract a stomach virus within 48 hours of the global sixty minute shift. Sleep all day, except for three twenty minute breaks to shuffle around the house looking for some couch or bed that has not yet been sweated out or drooled in. Do not eat anything for at least 24 hours. It will not matter what time those first few rays of headache free sunlight start to pour in. Operate according to hunger and thirst, rather than the clock.
- Take up a new outdoor activity with people you actually enjoy, who also have full-time jobs. After spending a couple weeks or months communicating only with children (or co-workers who act like children) make plans for a new social hobby that includes cool people and time spent outside. When the only time of day for getting together to ride bikes or go for a run is after 5pm, that extra hour of daylight suddenly feels like a gift. (I guess if you weren’t the active type, you could substitute a drinking club on a rooftop bar for this one. As long as the activity must take place outside and is comprised of cool people only, it doesn’t really matter what it is.)
- Make a commitment to something early on the Sunday morning after the switch, but be sure to schedule it early enough that you don’t realize which Sunday you committed to until it is too late. Perhaps this is serving soup downtown, or walking in an early morning 5K. Maybe this is coffee duty at church. Again, it doesn’t really matter, as long as it is something you can’t wriggle out of at 10pm the Saturday before.
- Re-embrace the mid-day nap. This is one I obviously didn’t need to implement in my day, and let me tell you, the habit has come in nicely for overcoming the 2pm Spring Forward slump. No guilt here for spending my Selection Sunday passed out on the couch while birds chirped in the 65 degree Eden that was my backyard. Why? Because, I take a nap at least three days a week. It is something I have unconsciously blocked out time for in my life so that my mind can also rest while my body does. It turns out, guilt and anxiety are two of the most common factors affecting poor sleep, so the sooner you can train yourself to let go of one or both, the sooner you can start feeling better about listening to your body, something Oprah and your hot yoga instructor have been preaching for years.
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I think I can safely say that this is the first year in, perhaps my entire life, that I’ve looked forward to, and then celebrated, setting my clocks an hour ahead. This is most likely due to the fact that, in North Carolina anyway, the average temperature for the past eight weeks has been around 61 degrees. In anticipation of high nineties, mosquitoes, and likely a drought, come July, I have been trying to make the most of our outdoor time while it is ripe.
Unfortunately, I am not currently a morning person.
Combine the weather with a few other timely circumstances and what I’ve discovered is the 5-step recipe to preparation for, and a quick recovery from Springing Forward. I will share the following, which is probably advice I should have shared a few months ago. Always next year…
The UnderToad 