Chuck That Thesaurus

Books sit in piles in front of me, dollars spent on Amazon in hopes of that one right word, reading late into the night to expand my wordstock, following the monthly "It Pays To Increase Your Vocabulary!" with each new Reader's Digest issue.

For what? For naught, that's what.

I just saw a video where Dennis Rodman answers all these world important questions with freakin' made up words! I sat my husband down and made him watch a news interview done after Dennis' trip to Korea -- when it was finished, I rolled my eyes and turned to my husband, asking his feedback on the ridiculousness of the word vomit just witnessed. My intelligent, well employed husband says, "THAT? Was awesome."

There you go. Awesome.

Read about my word snobbery conversion, at Aiming Low. My post today "I'm Going To Make Up My Own Words."

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*Thank you. xo

I Cannot Tell a Lie

Folded in haphazard half, was my Mother's Day card from my youngest.

It was printed with pink marker on pink paper, which made the letters look kinda of orange-ish, pale -- but I could still make it out when I stood next to the brightness of the kitchen window to read it.

An acrostic poem, and an ambitious one, too. Not just made up of first letters of my name spelling out only one word vertically. This boy had written me a deluxe model acrostic -- he had penned in a complete sentence for the first letters of my name, which he thinks is MOTHER.

It was a wonderful read, and I had tears from the laughter. He, of course, didn't understand what was so funny, and when I couldn't stop laughing he explained, "What? You know cards are hard for me and it feels funny to not tell the truth."

I'd photocopy it but against the pink paper and pink marker, it looks like a dark blob. Letter for sentence, I've copied it here.

Happy Mother's Day

Many sided sides to her.

Other things I can say about her.

There is a lot of stuff that I like about her but people say is weird.

Hours and hours of fun we have doing her favorite thing of nothing.

Everything she says with the faces that go with it.

Realistic, she tells me exactly what she thinks.

I love you mom.  

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*Pretty sure this is a love note, don't you think?


xo (hope you all had a wonderful mother's day)

** BONUS day for me today: besides this wonderful note from my boy, I'm also being featured on mamapedia! Voices! with a post on parenting and teens, "What Happened to the Meat?" THANK YOU mamapedia! Stop over and check them out, you'll find great community voices as well as online resources for all sorts of sharing info. and parenting's nuggets of wisdom.

Happy Mother's Day To Them

For the past 18 years, Mother's Day has been a celebration for the three of them, my sons. The ones who made me a mother. I spend the holiday doing for them because they have made me so happy.

I don't ask my three for anything, but they still make me their cards and have their dad take them to buy me my flowers.

I'm happy at home, starting the day with the cinnamon rolls they love so much, and asking them what they'd like for dinner.

Because truthfully, in the life I've had, this holiday has always felt hollow and mandatory to me... until they were born.

Mother's Day is a day spent like any other of my days; in disbelief of the gold I've been given. The diamonds of my every days -- and though I have never not begun or ended a day since they've been born thanking everything under the stars for the jackpot that has rained down on me with them as my life, on this annual celebration, I say to myself over and over, I can't believe I am their mother.

I spent Sunday staring at their faces while they talked, the way their cheeks look so soft when the sun hits them from behind, reveling in the sound of the joy in their laughs, recognizing the uniqueness of each of their smiles and how one's lip curls up only on the right. I know just how one stands with his left leg jutted out, and how the other one always points his left knee out to the side.

Mother's Day is a day of granted requests, and I wait for them to sing to me. It's what I tell them I want when they ask me what I want them to do today. I laugh and order them, "Sing me a made up song!" And they do. Each one out voluming the other in hopes of getting the loudest applause from me, and at the end of it all, with furrowed brows, they scold me and say I can't clap the same way for all of them.

So they decide they have to do it again.

Thank you for today, my children, for giving me a holiday to celebrate. Happy Mother's Day to you.

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We live in an imperfect world, and as well intended of a sentiment as Mother's Day is, for many, it brings on an overload of complexities and life circumstances. If you're someone looking for shared words to help you feel like you're not the only one struggling with this holiday, here's a magnificent post I found: via hopefulworld .org (a great community site) In Case Mother's Day is Hard for You.

xo

The Pinality of it is...

Recipes you tell yourself you'll make. Beautiful shoes that will kill your feet, manicured fingertips that look like the ocean at sunset and will last two days tops at your house, arrangements of flea market pictures you'll never find above your kitchen stove -- you'll even stare up at the ceiling at night, wondering how you can ask your husband for a second honeymoon just so you can wear that layered chiffon wedding dress you just saw.

Welcome to the world of Pinterest, where we lose our minds and foolishly tell ourselves we can do things like cut our own bangs or bling our own jeans. Our eyes say me likee, but our effort says not in this lifetime. Pinterest is like a magazine full of only things you like, not a glossy paper one full of occassional seductive items -- nope, pinterest is something you can stay up until l3 o'clock clicking through and seeing what other people find appealing. It's better than going through their real life medicine cabinets because you know in an instant what they're really about.

I tried Pinterest months and months ago, but just as I said above, it became all too quickly obvious that the world would know what I was truly like -- so I got rid of everything I had up there. Because the everything I had up there was all 10 Ways To Beat Depression, and 15 Ways To Cook Chicken in Twenty Minutes. Also lots of shoes that my bunioned feet will say no to and clothes, coats, hairdos, inspirational quotes, crafty things that will never materialize -- all responsible for too many nights of Pinsomnia.

What was I thinking during that Pinterest phase? Pinterest makes me crave bacon wrapped anything in the middle of the night and has me convinced I look good in sleeveless breezy summer dresses that go waaaaaaay above the knee. A soft blue skimmer, really? After a week of 1 a.m. bacon wrapped meatloaf snacking??

It just didn't happen for me and Pinterest, though it isn't totally out of my life, I still haunt the site because it is eye candy, but I now enter that Pinterworld with the appropriate mindset -- that of Pinality.

Pinality -- the true reality of your pinteresting ways, in your world. First of all, you won't do, wear, buy, make any of the things you've pinned on your Pinterest board -- like saving every single paper towel cardboard tube and plastic cups so you can cobble together makeshift iPod docking stations for your kids.

Or spraying  brown sugar and water mix in your hair to give yourself caramel highlights.

And second of all, the pinality of it is, it'll just make you wake up with ants in your hair and bacon crumbles in the corners of your mouth.

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photo credit: Bunches and Bits {Karina} via photopin cc

Happy Birthday, Ann Imig!

I have always loved other people's birthdays, because you get the chance to use their special day as an excuse to let them know what they mean to you, their place in your life -- no questions asked.

Doing it any other regular day of the year, and depending on the receiving end, but it could make someone uncomfortable. We've all seen that situation set up in cartoons and comedies, "You changed my life! Now I will be your life servant! Your wish is my command!"

So yeah no, can't do that. BUT, today is Ann Imig's birthday, and I am going to take this opportunity of an open window that makes it socially acceptable and not scary in any way, to say Thank you, Ann Imig, you changed my life.

When I found your blog annsrants four years ago under Wisconsin bloggers, I never thought that four years later, we'd be working together -- and that I'd be the one bringing life change to others and into their lives.

I hardly recognize myself these days. Taking phone calls while on a treadmill, assembling 14 unique community voices into a beautiful ebb and flow of recognition of the art of motherhood as I bring a show celebrating motherhood to Milwaukee. All of this done with the fierce belief that we are all someone.

From the outside, my community may just see a woman driving around in a mini van that needs vacuuming with too many empty bottles of gatorade rolling around inside, but behind the wheel is a woman with a cast book in the passenger seat and a notepad of things to do right next to it, no longer wondering what she can bring to this world -- because I know now.

I can bring opportunity, and all it took is one person to tell me that all of our actions are a leap of faith.

The internet celebrates you today, Ann Imig -- just this year alone, 300 Listen To Your Mother Show voices. Add in the over 100 voices from Listen To Your Mother voices from last year, and 100 more from the year before, and the 100 from the year before that.

All of us shouting, thinking, feeling, brimming with grateful hearts: THANK YOU, Ann, for creating Listen To Your Mother and taking the leap of faith in us.

We don't do anything alone or without the help of others. And you inspire us to do what you've done, create community and spread the power of connection.

You have founded a movement that is generating universal energy and our words have been catapulted out full force with heart and soul, and that makes it impossible for things to ever be the same. How can they be when all of us involved with Listen To Your Mother are saying "I know what I can bring."

Happy Birthday, Ann Imig. THANK YOU for being on this planet.

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photo: Rochelle Fritsch