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I will be offline for a little bit. Yesterday, my mom passed away. She was 52. She had been in poor health for many, many years, but it was still sudden.
I knew this time would come, but I always assumed it would be after a hospital stay, where I could prepare myself mentally. Unfortunately, that isn't the case.
I will probably be writing this week, though it will be very depressing, so feel free to skip for a few days. I need to write to get through this.
Thank you.
I would like to take a minute to express my condolences to all those affected by the events that took place on the campus of Virginia Tech on Tuesday. What happened appeared to be the work of a madman and I am sorry that it had to happen.
As a teacher, this type of story always freaks me out, especially since we are approaching the anniversary of the Columbine shootings
I hated feeling so vulnerable. I hated thinking that as teachers, we not only had to teach, but protect to. I hated being worried about my safety. As the years went on, we were always on high alert when April 20 rolled around and were thrilled when it landed on a weekend. We would hear the students - will there be a copycat? There were students arrested for having "kill lists" in their backpacks.
Even now, 8 years later, schools still have these same issues. And they all came back to light when the terror at VT was reported. My first question was this - how does someone shoot people on one side of campus, then go shoot 30 more two hours later on the opposite side of campus? I am not criticizing the police, I just don't see how it can happen. I'm sure there will be s lot in the news about this tragedy, so I won't dwell on it here. I just want those affected to know that they are not alone in their mourning.
Oh. My. Goodness.
I just found a GREAT new website. It's called I'm An Organizing Junkie and what could be better for the Domestically Challenged peeps out there?
Today I am focusing on OJ's Menu Plan Monday feature. One of the things I mentioned in Domestically 
Challenged is the importance of planning (even though I don't always follow my own advice). Well, Laura has taken this to a new level by making it public. Isn't it great - now if I don't follow through with my planning, the entire blog-o-sphere will know it?
I love it.
Here is this week's menu:
Now, please keep this in mind - the soccer night menus will not change much. As a busy mom, I need to keep it as simple as humanly possible and this is the way to do it.
I found a cool new blog today - Casual Keystrokes - and thought you may like it too. I was looking for menu planning ideas, and found her blog.
The best thing about it was this new movement around the blogging community called the "do follow" 
movement. Basically, it means that if you leave a comment, you get a link. To be quite honest, I didn't realize that you didn't already get this, so it is a great movement to get involved in. For more info, read here.
She also has a WAHM blog at Essential Keystrokes - I especially like her post on blogtipping, which I think I am going to steal copy. She offers great tips to help juggle the stress of being a work at home mom. Where was she when I was still working at home?!?!? I think I will contact her and see if I can do an interview for the blog here.
Enjoy!!
I am reading this FABULOUS new writing book by Ariel Gore called How to Become a Famous Writer Before You're Dead: Your Words in Print and Your Name in Lights
Enjoy!!
I Write In The Laundromat
I write in the laundromat.
I am a woman
and between wash & dry
cycles
I write.
I write while the beans soak
and with children's voices
in my ear.
I spell out words for scrabble
while I am writing.
I write as
I drive to the office
where I type a man's letters
and when he goes to
lunch
I write.
When the kids go out the door
on Saturday I write
and
while the frozen dinners thaw
I write.
I write on the toilet
and in the
bathtub
and when I appear to be talking
I am often writing.
I write in
the laundromat
while the kids soak
with scrabbled ears
and beans in the
office
and frozen toilets
and in the car
between wash and dry.
And your
words
and my words
and her words
and their words
and I am a woman
and I
write in the laundromat.
I helped to chaperon a field trip for my son's first grade class the other day and all I could think about was this - doesn't anyone teach their kids manners anymore? Obviously as a teacher, I see the worst of it. But on the field trip it was SO bad. It's a total lack of respect and quite frankly, it frightens me.
These are the people of the future and they have no common courtesy. There were little kids (6 & 7) swearing. One kid would walk in front of the other kids and say "Look at the crap coming out of my butt?" WTF? Oh, and did I mention that this was from the kid who broke my son's arm? Yeah, I exercised good restraint that day. But, I digress...
When I am out with my kids, I make sure that they are respectful to others (especially adults) and use their manners at all times. There are soooooo many people who don't do this. I see it with the kids in my son's class, the kids in my daughters preschool and even the kids in soccer. Is it really that hard to say please and thank you? Is it a big deal to say "Yes Please" or "No Thank You"? I think not. And I'm getting ready to start letting others know that it's not ok.
I am quickly turning into a cranky lady who gives a kid a snack and then sarcastically tells them "Your Welcome" knowing damn well that they didn't say "Thank You." I am the one who mad dogs parents when their little heathens kids, bump into (or run over) another kid without saying excuse me.
I remember when I was in Kindergarten and I had to learn phone manners. We learned how to answer the phone, how to take a message and frankly, it was probably the beginning to my obsession with talking on the phone. Now, how many times have you talked to someone who was rude to you on the phone? Hell, you have people who are now rude to you while their talking on their cell phones and they're not even talking to you!
And what do parents think when they see their kids and know that they are rude? I think we are in an era of lazy parenting. It takes too much energy to tell little Mikey to be nice, so they just let them do what he wants to and who cares what the consequences are, right? It's just like parents who expect their children's teachers to teach them the basics of life. It's not a teachers job, it's the parents. Plain and simple.
AARRGGHHH! OK, I will get off my soapbox now. If you will excuse me...
In an effort to write more, I am doing a meme from Daydreaming on Paper (which is a great site, BTW.) My random topic generator came up with the following: What is the best gift I have ever given?
I have several answers to this. The first bestest gift I have ever given is the album I made for my husband for our 10th wedding anniversary. It took A LOT of work, but I did it and it made him cry. It was one of the happiest moments in my life, because I was able to give him something with some meaning. I also put a lot of hard work into and was worried sick he would be like "oh, that's nice". That wasn't the case and he shows it off everytime someone new comes over to the house.
Now I figure I have another 10 years until I have to come up with something with the same impact. That should be enough time. This got me addicted, and I made 6 albums to give away for Christmas this past year. The results weren't quite as dramatic, but I liked giving something that wasn't just "stuff". I have a tendency to be a pack rat so I try really, really hard to not perpetuate the process. I hate getting "stuff" just for the sake of giving something. To me, it doesn't serve a purpose. I also like giving something personal because I like feeling good when others feel good. It's a little selfish, but at least I can admit it.
As for material types of gifts and excluding things given to my kids, the best gift I have ever given was the Ipod Shuffle I got for my husband for Valentine's day this year. I really splurged on it (it was a lot of money to me) and prayed that he would like it. He always gets me the coolest gifts ever (Palm Pilot, MP3 player, video camera, etc) so I wanted to be able to return the favor for once. I am very happy to say that he loved the gift and listens to it everyday. Not only that, but I also got him hooked on listening to audiobooks, so we can now both listen to and argue discuss books together.
Even though I have never played soccer, I volunteered to coach my daughter's team this season. If you have been reading here, you will see that this was not necessarily a good idea. This was reaffirmed when we had our first game this past Saturday.
For the record, I helped coach my son's team of 6 year olds and did just fine. They seem to be able to follow simple directions about the game, such as little things like the fact that in order to play soccer you have to actually be standing on the field. My husband warned me about coaching soccer. "Don't you remember how bad it was for me?" Apparently coaching is a lot like pregnancy and childbirth - you remember the happy points and forget the pain, so you can presumably do it all again if you are crazy enough.
Here's how painful the game was for me. My daughter, my very own offspring, was on the field for about 45 seconds. My husband had to go and get snack for the team (we had a member of the team gone), so he wasn't around to help me. My dear, dear daughter then TOOK OFF during the game and played on the playground for the entire first half of the game. Nevermind that a crazy pedimo could have taken her. Nevermind she was completely unsupervised. Nevermind I had to try and get the kids on the field to listen while trying to locate my daughter 50 yards away.
It just sucked.
THEN, to top it off, I couldn't get enough kids on the field at one time. You know how many I needed? 3! I couldn't even get 3 kids on the field at the same time. How sad is that?
I actually started having flashbacks during the game about the movie Kicking and Screaming. Now I know why Will Ferrell's character needed all that coffee. We have one kid on the team who can score at will. It was just like "Kick it to the Italians!" - he is the ONLY reason we scored any goals at all. I would have done better coaching with a martini in one hand and a bag of chips in the other. At least that way I could have dulled the pain and bribed the kids towards the goal at the same time.
I remember one point in the game I just wanted to sit down in the middle of the field and weep. Or drink. I mean, hell, I couldn't even get enough kids on the field. Not only that, I couldn't even get my OWN offspring to be near the damn game.
This season will definitely be a lesson in humility. Or alcohol tolerance, at the very least.
I was tooling around the net today, looking for fodder for my blog today and I stumbled across a few blogs that talked about Real Moms.
Initially I had a few funny responses (real moms think toddler diets work, real moms aren't afraid of poop, real moms are all CEO's), but then I thought about it a little more and came up with a conclusion - real moms are moms who take care of themselves.
Many moms get into the routine of doing everything for their families. If they work outside the home, they can also fall into the trap of putting everything they have into their jobs. Unfortunately, too many moms don't make themselves a priority.
I fell into this trap too. I had many, many times where I experienced Mommy Burn Out because I was working too much and sleeping too little. I wouldn't take time for myself, because darn it, there was too much other stuff to do. Clothes to wash, kids to wash, calls to make floors to clean (ok, so I didn't do the floors THAT often, but still). There was never enough time.
I finally realized that I wasn't being a good mom, wife or person. I wasn't taking time to recharge my batteries. I wasn't taking time to take care of me. I took care of everyone else, but not myself. And why not? Wasn't I worth the time? Is there anything wrong with me having something to look forward to that isn't family related? Does it make me less of a mom because I don't want to think about mommy stuff 24/7. I think not. It simply makes me realistic.
Nowadays, I have no problem letting the laundry or dishes sit while I read a book on the weekends. It may not be the "right" thing to do, but you know what? It makes me happy. It helps me relax. And it helps me be a better mom and wife. It's a win-win situation.
