Why Old Moms Tell New Moms, "Enjoy Them While You Can!"

In the days when venturing out happened with a bitty one snuggled into a front carrier and two more just as bitty in my double stroller, older moms would pass me and glance with longing. "Ahhh, I miss those days. Enjoy them while you can! They grow up before you know it!," they would sigh a warning as their eyes misted over.

As if I hadn't been hearing that since first becoming a mother.

I knew what the older moms were saying was true, in fact, children do grow up. Of course they do, but it didn't feel like that was something that was going to happen in my life any time soon. When you're drowning in the endless days of motherhood, how do you even digest advice like that?

From the moment my oldest child was born, I was his favorite being. Only I would do. When he was five days old, I walked into his room and just at the sound of my voice, his eyes began searching out. Followed by the cry for me, the wail, actually. He had such an enveloping need for me that my husband would have to lift him up and hold him overhead to see me when I disappeared behind the shower curtain, trying for a shower for the first time in days.

I couldn't take it anymore and my husband's shoulders started breaking down so one day at the discount homegoods store when I saw a see-through shower curtain, I knew I had the answer to our sanity. Now everyone could see me in my full naked glory, just like they all screamed for. My child could not live without me remaining in his sight, I was that essential to his survival.

 

My son and I lived a co-existence, one rightly filled with highs and lows. It was hard to tell where I left off and he began. At three years old, when I would ask him what he wanted for lunch, he'd answer, “What mama have!” I was submerged in motherhood during those days - loving him so, and at the same time, falling apart with the fear that things would always be this consuming. 

 

I didn't know about the seasons of parenting. Just as with his finger sucking, that I thought would last forever. And his climbing on chairs and falling off onto the kitchen hardwood floor, his determined screams of refusal when it was time to take a nap and therefore be separated from me ... I thought each one a static condition, and eternal.

 

But life is fluid, dynamic, and though we see children growing up when they belong to other people, it is impossible for us to imagine that tomorrow comes for us. Will our own children not always be an infant, a toddler, a child in grade school? Nope.

So when that same baby of mine, who once imagined that the oxygen he needed to breathe could only come from me, left for college and found his own air, I couldn't find mine. It turned out he was right, because now I'm the one searching for how to breathe without him here.

The memories I have of holding his small body in my arms are some of the sweetest in my life, but I never thought the moments would end this quickly. When did he grow up? Because I had my eye on him the whole time, and I watched for changes.

 

The days slipped by because children don't grow up little by little, they do it overnight. You go from leaning down to snap their size 2T onesies to standing in front of them, your arms reaching up as you help them with their tie on graduation day. Like that.

Childhood is temporary, even on the days it feels permanent.

Older moms on the bike path who would pass me with reminders of the whooshing of the days, I would hear them, I would. But how could I tell them Thanks for the reminder I know you mean well but it doesn't feel like the half-second that you remember it as because I am knee deep in the seasons of babyhood.

You have to be at the far end of anything before you can look back. That's the only way it works. How can you see your starting point if you're not at the finish line? In those days of early parenting, when women feel it their duty to tell you, “Enjoy every bit of it!,” I didn't want to reflect on that.

Because I just wanted one freakin' second to myself.
Because those days of early parenting are trial by error/ baptized by the flaming hot fire/flying by the seat of your pants.

 

No one can tell you what those days are like because you have no point of reference. Loving those minutes so much that every thought is about your children, their well being, what they need, do they have it all? The other half of your body and soul are falling apart while you watch. How do you explain to a parent that both ends of the spectrum are part of life with children? That you can't untangle either one and would they believe you, if you tried? 

 

That's why “Enjoy them when they're little!” doesn't work. I want to say it myself, to so many new moms, but I catch myself and swallow the words because I know. Just as when it was said to me, the woman with three children hanging from her neck like necklaces, it's impossible to project that far out with little chubby fingers waving in front of your face. When your days are made of four-hour sleep the night before and your lunch is left-over finger food from toddler's plates while you stand at the sink rinsing something out for the twenty-ninth time that day, who's going to believe, "Enjoy it while you can!"

 

Had you told me that one day this 20-pound baby of mine sitting on my husband's shoulders, red faced from screaming on the other side of the shower curtain for his mama while I for the love of God took just a three-minute shower for the first time in five days for God's sake, would today be half an inch shy of six feet tall and grabbing for the car keys, I'd tell you that happens to someone else's child -- but not mine. Mine will always need me there in front of his vision, won't he?

 

If I could say anything to new parents, it would be this: Smile when you can, cry when you have to, and know that where you are now, is part of the beautiful seasons of your life.

 

You don't need me to tell you to enjoy them while you can.

I have no doubt that you already are, and know how -- in your own way.

 

Just like I did.

 

 

Red Flags

*TRIGGER ALERT*

***

It's extremely flattering to be noticed. We all try, on some level, to look nice, sound smart, be funny--somehow stick out from the crowd as someone who is special. When someone singles you out, as that one that makes them blind to anyone else when you're around, it feels incredible.

I come from a home that was above anything else, protective of me. I grew up without a father, and that made my mother, grandmother, and my brothers live in overdrive when it came to making sure I was safe. If I was going to be out somewhere, late, my mother would send my brothers to walk me home so I wouldn't be alone at night. I was told ways to be aware and how to never let my guard down. I was a street-smart one, and I knew what to watch for out there and the ways to reduce the risk of danger.

As added assurance, my mother sent me to a small, private all-girl high school. It was a world of uniforms, nuns, and no males. I was a made-to-order student and you could find my face in the yearbook under student council, Honor Society, and Spanish Club. My days at school were uneventful, but if there ever were anything there to put me in harm's way, my sixth sense that was always on full-alert mode would pick it up.

I knew how to be safe.

My sophomore year, I started Driver's Ed classes. They were held at the public high school that was only a block away, but they were at at night, so my two brothers walked me there and then back home. These classes were open to all area teens, which means we were a mixed bunch of boys, girls, and me: someone who spent her days in a plaid-skirted all-female environment.

The Wednesday night classes became the highlight of my week, being the one time that I'd be able to dress in something other than the blue and green skirt and white blouse of my uniform. I'd run home from school, and spend the two hours before class going over every detail: the right jeans, the peasant top, the Frye boots. I would smooth my hair, put on two thick coats of navy blue mascara, and rosy up my cheeks with Bonne Bell's Angelfire. In the way that all sixteen-year-old girls look to everyone else in the world except to themselves, I was so sweetly pretty.

Our Wednesday night Driver's Ed class was packed, the instructor we had was casual and I remember thinking how young he was. He'd joke with us, and the classes felt more like a social night than required curriculum. The confident kids sat up front, and the quiet ones--like me--always found a seat in the back, in the corner, where we could disappear and not get called on. We went around the room, quickly said our names, where we went to school, and what we wanted to do when we finally got our licenses.

There was a group of swarthy boys that always came to class late. They moved together, a band of tough looking guys who seemed much older than 16 years; intimidating in the way they'd saunter in, not even quieting their steps. They'd find their desks in the back and let their bodies fall into the chairs, legs draping over desk tops, or feet resting on the chair in front of them. Our instructor never said anything to them about what time they walked in, or where they'd place their legs.

From the first night I saw them, I could hear the red flags popping up in my head. I would sit in the back of the room, and though I stared straight ahead, believe me--I was well aware of who was sitting in the chairs around me. I wanted no part of them--they were danger. And yet, after the third week of classes, when the leader of these toughies threw a folded-up paper note on my desk, I felt my heart race.

I was 16-years-old, a wallflower of a girl who wasn't on any A-list and especially not a part of any popular girl cliques at my school. But somehow the evil of the world I had been warned about had come looking for unnoticeable me. My grandmother's voice whispered in my head to ignore the note, place it back on his desk; at the very least, just leave it sitting there--in its 50 little folds--unopened.

You know what it feels like when you find out you took first place in a poetry contest?  Or you hear that you made the cast after you audition? How you can't believe it's you? That's what attention feels like to a shy, skinny teen-age girl.

So I reached for the white paper package, with my pink-tipped fingernails that I had freshly polished only 30 minutes before class. I picked it up and carefully nestled it in the bottom of my flowered purse.

I knew he was watching me because I felt it. I saw him lean his head over to his friend and whisper something. As soon as the class was over, I grabbed my book and purse and rushed past him, embarrassing myself by bumping into his desk in my hurry. I didn't want him to talk to me, not with my brothers waiting outside.

I knew the trouble that would happen if they saw me walk out with a boy who looked 19.

I took the stairs out of the school two at a time, never turning around once to look behind me.  

***

Tomorrow:  Part II The Note

**reading the comments here: so sorry to have had to make this into a TBC, but the story is much TOO IMPORTANT to rush through and tell at one sitting.  Thanks for your caring, and patience--you're all so kind.

NSPW

National Suicide Prevention Week is September 9th through 15th, it surrounds World Suicide Prevention Day on September 10th. Reading, knowing, discussing, seeing that this week exists, encourages awareness and sheds light on a subject that is too often whispered about and carries a social stigma. The quieter we remain about suicide*, the more people will be made to believe that they have to be alone in their struggle. No doubt, this leads to the fact that suicide increases every year.

Suicide is real, and it happens. And its deaths are real. Here are the facts.

• Suicide is the 4th leading cause of death among adults ages 18-65 in America.
• Firearms are used in more suicides than homicides
• Every 15 minutes, someone commits suicide, which is equal to about 101 American deaths by suicide every day. (every 15 minutes!)

Suicide needs to be brought out in the open. Discussion can lead to prevention. It's worth a try, isn't it?

In honor of NSPW, and in memory of those that felt they had no one to turn to, please talk about this subject. If something tells you in your gut that someone you know may need a friend, follow that instinct. It could be a look in their eyes, or the hesitancy in their voice, whatever it is - ask them how they are, please do it. Make time to listen, and do it without judging. Let them know you are there and will help. If they tell you they have thoughts of taking their life, make a call with them. People do commit suicide, so listen and stay with them. Make this call together, right away. You may not get another chance.

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline (24/7) 1-800 -273-TALK(8255)

The truth about suicide is that it doesn't take away any duress or its pain. It's a devastating, permanent action that's not an answer - it just passes the weight of your burden on to someone else. The problems never disappear, just like the fact that you are on this planet can never be erased.

Taking your own life is beyond sad, or tragic, or horrific. Killing yourself is something that is done when thoughts aren't clear, when the mind is turned upside down, when the maze of thoughts becomes too twisted and coiled to the point of looking like there's no way out: and that the future is only more of the same.

I don't believe that anyone wants to end their life; I believe that they just want the days of living with despair and emotional torment to end.  

If someone turns to you and feels safe enough to speak honestly about the pain they're suffering, please listen. Listen without saying a word or giving a lecture. Be that person in society that doesn't let them down and who accepts them at the point where they are in their life right now.

I can't imagine a darker moment than those few that lead up to that final minute, when the person makes that move to just stop their life now. I don't know how all of us in the universe can't feel what goes on in those last seconds. The world must stop in its rotation for a millisecond, don't you think? The scream of their silent shout has to be heard somewhere.

Suicide happens across all demographics: no one is immune to it, all are stunned by it. Deciding to end your life is an action taken when the person has no other idea of what to do. The aftermath of an unfinished life - unnaturally yanked out of being - reverberates through those left behind in such a loud clamor, that years later, the whispered cause of death is still an undercurrent in the survivors' world.

How does anyone forget a suicide?

We don't.

It shapes us, it's a word we use to describe ourselves when asked who we are, it's the ache we feel when we hear yet another has taken their life.

The worst consequence of a suicide? How over forty years later, it's the first characteristic that comes to my mind, when asked who I am.

I am the child of a parent who committed suicide.

Please, if you know of anyone - or if you yourself have ever thought the world would be better without you - listen to my words here:




Listen To Your Mother Show, Madison, Wisconsin, Mother's Day, 2011. 

*I know about the imposed silence and oath of secrecy that family members ask for. I was asked to do the same, until I couldn't just watch as I'd hear of others taking their lives - and me, saying nothing. The first time I ever talked about my family and suicide was only a little over a year ago, at The Listen To Your Mother Show in Madison. Staying quiet helps no one.

The Way We Pictured It

Image

A set place for everything, meals that look like nouvelle cuisine, satiny bras with bottoms to match. When I daydreamed about my adult life, this is how I imagined it.

Instead, I sit here typing, holding a blue coffee mug that doesn't match any others in this house. I've got a box of noodles, jarred sauce, and thawed chicken breasts planned for dinner - and do you really want to know about my faded flowered underwear and once-upon-a-time-white bra? I'd answer no; if you read it, you'll picture it, and now I'm sorry for what your mind just showed you.

My gushy butt is on a mismatched chair that's not even shabby chic. Our crafty coffee table is unintentionally crafty via Hot Wheel cars scraped across its top not that many summers ago -- and not because it was seized by a knowing eye at a street fair.

I have papers at my feet because I can't decide on the best way to file and also keep everything I have going on in my life handy so that I can find it again. Easily. It's hard to remember what name I've given to what file on any given day.

I need a way to outsmart myself, and I have none.

Did I think I'd be a woman who'd enter middle age with a bottom so soft and flabby it hurt to sit on a church basement folding chair on donut Sunday? In my wildest dreams, did I envision triceps so loose they'd enter my field of vision when I'd angle cut carrots for dinner?

One promise I made to myself for my life as an adult was to never let myself, or my life, "go." Letting yourself go, you know, it means exactly that - letting things happen, no plan. Letting go is the reason the muumuu exists. Just - everything on my body, make a run for it, see how far you can get before someone tries to stop you.

Run, triceps! Run, glutteus maximus! before your owner says enough and returns you back to order.

Ha. They started running years ago and no one's yelled come back! since.

It's hard to say what's stronger; the desire for life as I dreamed it would be: bright white morning sunlight pouring in through billowy curtains dreamily parted open by a pair of yoga-strong arms. Or the reality -- one curtain panel yanked to the side by a still sleep-dizzy hunched over woman who just trenched her back by stepping on a dryer ball that fell out of last night's laundry, muttering to herself about it being 6:00 a.m. already. 

I had choices, but I never took the time to ponder. I could have planned; what things went in my home, how my days would go, the domestic table place settings and enchanting meals, everything - so much better.

My God it sounds so sad, doesn't it? Nothing in my house - especially me - is neat or thought out or perfectly matched.

Except for the first thing that I see when I open my bedroom door every morning. To my right, one precisely placed next to the other - displayed and arranged to the equally measured height and space in between them as the tape measure directed me to; in frames decided upon after comparing 15 other blacks from flat to gloss, on matting that was felt between thumb and middle finger for thickness and held up against color swatches for the white closest to the color of clouds - are portraits of my three boys, each one in a daffodil yellow shirt.

I spent forever deciding on the exact yellow of those shirts.

* * * 

Image via flicker cc

  

You Think It's Easy?

Worrying more than usual, fearing what might happen more than the average person, preparing for the remotely possible even if others don't. For the phobic and uberphobic among us, this is a way of life.

And it's not easy. We have to be faster, quicker, smarter, more clever - to do just the typical-all-in-a-day's-work things, like turning left on a yellow arrow across four lanes of traffic at 5 p.m. on a Friday night.

Not easy. But, through the awesomeness that Aiming Low is, they give me the space to write up aaaallllll my secret tricks to making it work. Today, brought to you by Aiming Low, Better Living Through Phobic Efficiency.

Have hope, my dear tribe, it can be done.

 

And Then I'll Be The Only One

Next week at this time, it'll only be me in the house.

I'll be the only one pounding on the fireplace screen this time, hoping to startle away the scuffling blackbirds that spent their mornings squawking on our roof all summer.

Our three boys will be in school and I'll be home that first day, alone, after being with them every day for three months. I'll talk out loud to myself while I wipe up the counters from that morning's toast, about how eager the three of them were to get back to their friends and catch up on who went the farthest on vacation and whose hair grew the longest over the summer.

I'll drop them off at school one by one, and then I'll go for a walk - not yet ready to go back into the house, to the sight of Lucky Charms floating in cereal bowls, the milk dusted with yellow and green specks.

It'll feel like a ghost town when I first walk back in; like the exhibits of Pompeii, frozen moments in time of what was live only minutes before. I'll pick up the book left open face down on the coffee table and wonder whether my son likes it or not. I'll look at the sketch of a robot, three-fourths finished, my son's favorite black marker left uncapped on top; closing the pen for him so it doesn't dry out. I'll put away the scissors left open on the living room floor where my son was cutting out his favorite comics from the Sunday paper and taping them into his scrapbook.

There will be plenty to do, like there always is, and the day will run out of hours, like it always does.

I'll fold laundry, drag a vacuum cleaner across carpets, unload dishes, sweep wooden floors, return phone calls, shop for tonight's meal, sometimes coffee with a friend. My day will pass and then it will be time to pick up my children from school; and then I'll turn around to drop them off again, to piano, soccer, swimming.

I don't have enough time in my day to do everything that I need to do. Before I know it, it's time to get my children. There is never enough time in my day.

And yet, there is too much.

Too much time until I see their eyes meet mine in the rear view mirror asking me what's for dinner, telling me they hope it's spaghetti. Too much time until then, and so I fill the hours with all the things I know I need to do, to help make it pass. 

___________________________________________________________
 

Hope 2012: A Blog Relay

Melanie Crutchfield, who blogs at melaniecrutchfield.com, came up with this inspirational idea to spread some positive change in the world. She decided to blog, and invite others to blog, about HOPE.

So far, there are 52 blogging writers participating in Hope 2012: A Blog Relay. The posts linked up so far are deep-breath awakening and leave me feeling ten feet taller.

Today, there are 53 linked up. How could I pass up an invitation to write about HOPE?

I've never written about what this word means to me. Just the thought of HOPE is a personal, beautiful, intensely private, defined one. No one can tell you what hope is to you; only you know what it means in your life and what it has done for you. I have been fortunate enough to have held hope in my arms at a time where I can say it is the only way I lived through a season in my life.

We use the word hope every day, loosely. We say it when we hope to find a parking spot; we use it more earnestly when we hope we have enough money to pay our bills for the month. There are the moments of hoping that what we've put hours of work toward, we see rewarded.

Are there degrees of true hope? Not for me -- hope can be a positive state of mind, of being optimistic -- hoping we get rain for our dry lawns. Hope can be realistic, knowing we stand a good chance of arriving somewhere on time or getting a piece we submitted published.

But it's the personal experience I've had with a certain kind of hope that makes me feel that hope is not on a continuum, that it's not a dash marker on a spectrum.

It's the hope that comes with desperation -- where you find yourself saved only by the thought of rescue --  that defines hope for me. Emotional, financial, or physical forms of hope; I think of trapped miners, parents with a child in NICU, someone waiting to hear back from the fifth or eleventh job they've applied for in a year. 

For me, it is that hope of desperate belief in something when you have nothing else, that pulled me through one of the blackest periods of my life -- my post partum depression when I became a mother for the first time seventeen years ago. I needed that kind of hope or I wouldn't survive; I needed that hope to hold me up and promise me a tomorrow.

Even though it was seventeen years ago, the graveness of that time in my life makes it feel as fresh as if it were last week. There was a nurse from the hospital who cared for me in the days after I first brought our son home; she sensed something wrong, and checked on me. It was her; the hope of a nurse who somehow saw what no one else could see, saying to me, in the loudest voice possible without screaming, "I promise you, you will get better," that saved me.

I wanted that promise of getting better and to believe her. My God, I was scared enough to. But what was I going to believe? Was it her promise that was my hope? The part of me too scared that I wouldn't get better shouted back that no-- I won't be one of the lucky ones. I was afraid to believe in case she was wrong. But I had to. Through the roaring of giving up in my head, I heard her tell me I would get better; but it was me that had to decide that I either would be or wouldn't be, one of the ones who made it.

I remember that very moment when my son was five-weeks-old and I sat on our sofa, holding my baby, talking to my nurse who came to see how I was -- me, not even able to talk, but only sob; and she understood what I couldn't say. I heard her voice break through the deafening defeat in my mind with the word "promise," and then, somehow through the fog I was imprisoned in, something in my heart clicked on its own, and my pleading soul took on the fight for me and my baby and believed what she was telling me. What I felt was beyond a state of optimism, it was far more forceful and powerful than positive thought or statistical probability.

It was the belief that she was right. I would get better. I had taken that HOPE into my dead heart and made it mine. From then on, I knew I had to wake up every morning and claim that hope for me and my son.

I believed that living spark of knowing that I saw in my nurse's eyes when she looked into mine. I still feel that white hot commitment to hope when my soul took hope at its word and planted it deep, giving it no time limit or ultimatum for when. I accepted hope on its terms and believed in its promise.

Hope gave me determination and became that tangible thing that I clung to when I was barely hanging on to sanity in those earth shattering early weeks of being a new mother. I held onto it by the tips of my fingers and never let it out of my sight. Hope made me sure to look at my child with a smile on my face -- always. Hope led me to the library to find CDs of Broadway show tunes so I could learn songs to sing loudly, happily, earthily, to my child. One morning, as I sang "Oklahoma!" off-key but with my whole heart, my son smiled at me. He was ten-weeks-old, but with his first smile, he showed me how beautiful and indescribable, hope is.

Bit by bit in the days to come, hope kept showing me flashes of gifts of what life is like when hope survives within you.

It is this gift of hope that is flesh and blood real to me. When I speak to New Mothers' groups, I talk honestly about the slow, struggling climb out of the depth and darkness of my early days as a new mother, about the pain of hopelessness. I tell them, in a voice that still breaks from the fierceness of the memory, my true unprettied up story from the past with the hope that they'll believe this seemingly put-together woman standing in front of them, when I confess about the days when I thought I'd never get better. That once, I was right where they are now.

When I look out, teary-eyed, into the faces of the women sitting in front of me, I see them listening -- their desperation for belief in my words so clear, in the same way I wanted my nurse's promise of hope for me to be real -- like it's the only thing we have.

I beg them, in the loudest voice I can without screaming, never give up, never give up HOPE.   

 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Pass along the HOPE 2012 torch. Blog about hope, ask others to blog about hope. Ask them to ask others. Let melanie know of your post, and link it up here. 

Then set some quiet in your day aside to spend reading on melanie's site about what others have to say about what hope is in their lives. Let's recognize and celebrate how hope has held us up or pushed us through. 

Write your stories, share them with us. We can't wait to read what you have to say. **Melanie Crutchfield will gather up little snippets from people who wrote about hope, so make sure you link back to her as the originator of the relay.

**Update: Friday, August 10: At last count there are 81 posts in HOPE 2012, and at least 196 people invited. Closing ceremonies on for Monday, August 13, so there’s still time to write if you want to! Go write, you crazy people! Write!

Maybe It's Not So Common Sense

It was 6:45 p.m. on Saturday night; my husband and three children would be walking in through that back door coming home from the pool -- starving -- within seconds. And I had no dinner on the table; not only no dinner but I wasn't even close to being ready for them to be home yet. After years of marriage, I automatically jumped into action. Quickly scooping out a teaspoonful of minced garlic in olive oil, I tossed it into a small pyrex bowl and started the microwave.

15 ... 10 ... 5 ... 0 ... bing. Voila! I open the microwave door and let the smells of what could be interpreted as someone hard at work in the kitchen fill the air. Next, I pull the kitchen stools up on top of the island to give a semblance of the floors having just been washed. Taking the vacuum cleaner out of the hallway closet, I set it in the middle of the living room--laying flat on the ground, as if I had been interrupted by say, someone walking in?

Common sense illusions, setting the stage like the famous Rice Krispies Treats Faker Mom commercial, showing how busy and dedicated I was all day while they were out. That's how you do it. Everyone knows this, don't they?

This past weekend, while zapping the garlic in the microwave, the thought occurred to me: maybe my fellow bloggers that I love so much DON'T know how it's done.

So I'm sharing with all of you today, because I love you:

Super fast tricks and stagings, to make it look like You are worth your weight in gold:

--Pull laundry out of the dryer and don't let it sit in the basket; instead spread it out on the front room floors and sofa, to show you were just working on it when they walked in.

--Always keep an 8-qt pot with water on the stove and a wooden spoon near by. At the first sound of a doorknob jiggling, run to the stove and start stirring. I swear, from behind you'll look exactly like you're making soup.

--Between the hours of 8 a.m. and 8 p.m., always have your hair pulled up in a work ponytail and an apron on your body. Looking dressed and ready for the job.

-- Keep some Windex, a roll of paper towels, a toilet scrub brush, and a bottle of Scrubbing Bubbles in a plastic shoebox container under every single sink in the house. When you hear someone come home, pull out the box and set it up outside of the bathroom door, looking like you're in the middle of scrubbing those stubborn hard water stains.

--At all times during the day, have a cutting board on the kitchen counter or island, a knife along side, and an onion or tomato chopped in half with a few wedges to the side. Looks like you are in the midst of something really good.

--Keep a notebook and pen in a handy place near the phone. If you have only a few seconds notice that someone is about to walk in, grab the notebook, pen, and phone; sit down in a chair, and play out an exasperating phone call to an insurance company. Rub your face with your hand and let them see you roll your eyes. Your significant other will be so grateful that you've saved them from these hell's fires that they'll blow you kisses as they walk past you.

--Never lay in the backyard hammock or chaise without your gardening gloves on, kneeling pad close by, and a paper bag with a few token weeds inside. The stage is set that; obviously, you're just taking a break from weeding, I mean: your gloves are on.

--And my most desperate ace in the back pocket that I save for when the day has been a total bust and it's only me to blame: I tie a scarf around my head with an ice pack underneath while wearing sunglasses in the house. The whole family knows the Migraine Get-Up, and no one dares ask "what did you do all day?" when they know it could get as ugly as a bear waking up early from hibernation. *note: it's not a lie if you don't ever say you have a migraine. I never say I have a migraine. This is one case where assume doesn't make an a** out of u or me.

Sneaky, yes. Worth it? You got it. Does it work? My husband and children reply with this, when describing me, "She works so hard for all of us. Really. She's always working. We hit the jackpot."

You know what they say about the best relationships; both sides feel like they got the better end of the deal.

And now I've got to get to bed: big plans tomorrow; Meg Ryan Marathon on TMC. Setting up the minced garlic as we speak.



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**An internet friend I've known for almost two years now, the wonderfully real Erin Margolin, is recovering from surgery. She's called in a few reinforcements to lighten the load for her while she recuperates. I am proud to be helping Erin heal, and I have a post there today, on something in my life I never anticipated.

I hope to see you there, and I know you'll love meeting Erin, from The Road To My Writer Roots.

We've Been Found Out

Somebody, after a special time together with their spouse this weekend, when they were feeling extra super close and intimate and confusing he is so my BFF with just he is my pal, confessed to their SO.

One of us out there leaned in close and whispered, "You know, honey, how when you call me from work and ask my how my day is and I say awful? Almost didn't survive. The twins just about did me in today. Can you stop on the way home and get take out?"

"Yeah?"

"Well.

Some days, it's not that bad.
Some days, it's pretty good.

My friends come over.

And we have our coffee with Bailey's.

If it's after 12:00, we'll have the opened box of Franzia's in the fridge (more affordable and better for the environment), mixed with a little Mott's apple juice. It doesn't sound good, but it really is.

One day a few weeks ago, Cindy was over with some others for our Sports Equipment Acquisition Meeting and mixed too little of the Mott's with too much of the Zin, and I didn't have time to go to the store for cheese and crackers because I had to run back here after school drop off and clean the toilets before anyone came over, so there was the wine on the empty stomach and next thing you know she freaked out -- even though she was fine -- about having to leave and pick up her kids from school.

She forgot her Xanax that morning because she was in a hurry to get here, and so with the Franzia in combination with the no Xanax and no Cheddar she spun into this full huge panic attack -- have you ever seen one of those? -- and half of us had to stay with her and talk her off the ledge, and the other half of us split up and got her kids to piano, soccer, and swim.

Even though I personally think it was just low blood sugar, we decided not to let Cindy make her own wine-apple sippers anymore.

So, some days are pretty hard.
But some days really aren't that bad."
                        *
Yeah and Thank you for that Miss-Gets-Weak-In-The-Knees-By-A-Little-George-Clooney-Weekend Stubble. Now the cat's out of the bag.

Which is why there are these posters up on every single street corner of the subdivision this morning:

*24/7 Party Alert*

If you hear of a party about to happen under the guise of  "playdate" or "playgroup" or "book club" or "school fund raiser meeting," please call this number 26I-KNOW.


Ingestion of alcohol may be occurring.


Your call will be kept in confidence ... you may make it anonymously if you choose.


A family member will contact the homeowner, the party host and /or the appropriate responsible party without identifying the original caller.

Any of these parties under the cover of a legit activity has the potential to result in unweeded yards, garbage days being missed, frozen Encore for dinner, and unwalked dogs.

There may also be alcohol loosened lips resulting in gossip being spread that was sworn to secrecy, physical injury from ones thinking they can still dance to Flo Rida, and assault over someone outdoing another in their Bakasana crane pose.

This hotline is staffed Monday through Friday, from 9:00 - 3:00 PM.

PLEASE CALL and an appropriate chaperone will be dispatched to monitor the "Plant Sale Committee" in session.

Thank you.

*thanks and no thanks, you know who you are. We realize the flesh is weak, but still -- next time you find yourself wobbly weak in resistance to weekend time with your spouse, commit to zipping your lip first. And if you dare let in on why we actually go to Story Time [30 minutes alone, with People magazine] consider yourself alone, mixing your own Mott's Specials from now on. 

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