Endorphins = Good Stuff
Aug 25, 2008 Parenting, The Story of My Life
This here? This is the ellipictal trainer my mom LOANED me (see mom? I remember it’s just a loan!). I don’t have the plug for it yet so I worked out on it without resistance, which obviously is a pretty dang low key workout but you do it fast enough and your heart rate will get up there. I woke up this morning knowing that I was going to get on it come hell or high water and I wasn’t going to let any stupid little forgotten power cord screw it up for me! Brett will pick it up later this week when he heads over to paint my mom’s kitchen. (He is a gem!)
This is my first chance to get down to my desk because I had my sister’s kids for the morning/afternoon. The boys disappeared into the basement but the girls bickered and bickered and bickered. And flounced out of the room at each other. And came whining to me. Then made up and put on princess dresses and danced around until it was time to bicker again. Bicker. Flounce. Whine. Dance. Repeat. That was my afternoon. Also? Nobody liked my PB&J stromboli. Next time I’m making them boxed Mac & Cheese. Hmph. (Actually I didn’t love the stromboli either so I won’t hold it against them. I’ll hold it against Donna’s Day although there’s no one to blame but myself for making the dough from scratch. What a time-wasting fool am I.)
I don’t think they fight as much at my sister’s house and I think this is because 1) Madison isn’t as good at sharing as Lucia is; 2) my sister plays with them or at least sets them up with stuff. I generally don’t do this. For a former preschool teacher I have a remarkably low patience level for playing with kids. I’m a great one for rolling my eyes and saying, “Work it out yourselves! I didn’t take your tiara!” I’m a reluctant referee.
To be fair to myself, I had a rotten evening with my own girl-child. She woke up an hour after she went to bed and stayed awake until after midnight so I was burned out as soon as I rolled out of bed this morning (naturally, she rolled out of bed with me and followed me around chattering while I groped for the coffee).
But now — ENDORPHINS! I love my kids! I love babysitting! I love my messy house and messy kitchen and the funny way my garbage disposal smells and the pile of dirty dishes I have to deal with before I can cook diinner! That, my friends, is the miracle of endorphins. It’s like crack only good for your heart!
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Tags: babysitting, Brett, ellipictal, endorphins, exercise, Madison, my mom, patience, sister, work
Woe is me (whiny and self-indulgent)
Jul 16, 2008 The Story of My Life
- I opened the refrigerator, reached for the milk and did something to my back or my shoulders or my neck or something. This is what comes of being on the computer all of the time. I worked really really late on Monday and I haven’t taken the time to stop and stretch since then. Plus I’m still not sleeping well so I’m not really relaxing at night. Result: Sore, aching shoulders/neck and wrenching something merely by reaching for milk. I feel like I’m 80-thousand years old. Argh.
- We can’t get any channels on our television. Well, we can get very fuzzy channels but not ones you can, you know, watch. And Tivo doesn’t recognize them so we can’t use Tivo. I’m sure we’ll figure out a fix but we’re grouchy about it. Apparently we were worse cable addicts than we knew.
- I’m really busy and it’s not all happy-busy. A lot of it is just busy. I’m tired. My neck hurts. Too much busyness and not enough happy-busy!
- What is with gorgeous, smart, funny women who are living with/dating/married to rotten men? What is up with that? How can we put a stop to low self-esteem and low standards? People! How can we save our sisters??? <— said like Cree Summer playing Freddy on A Different World (I miss cable)
- I have another complaint that I’m not blogging (yet) but we could use a medium-sized miracle in the next few weeks and I’m tired of looking for one. Reality bites. I’m worn out from spinning my wheels and forcing myself to be cheerful about it.
- You people with your adorable free kittens! Stop flaunting the cuteness! We officially have decided NO KITTENS. Sad but true. Reasons are as follows: My sister and nephew are very allergic and having a kitten here will be a hardship to family visits; Peanut may not like kittens; kitten vet visits aren’t in our budget at the moment; litterboxes; kitty footprints on our kitchen counter skeeve me out. I like kittens so even though I believe this is a smart decision, I’m bummed out about it. Particularly the not-in-the-budget thing. I want to have enough money to be mildly irresponsible without feeling so dang guilty about it. Like, “Pizza tonight? Sure! Order two — they’re small!”
- It’s hot. And humid. Dang Ohio. Why’d we ever leave the Pacific Northwest? (grumble)
That’s enough. Whining didn’t seem to make me feel better so I’m going to try OD’ing on caffeine next. A temporary fix is better than no fix at all, right? Grouch.
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Tags: a different world, budget, cable, complaining, cree summer, humidity, my sister, pacific northwest, Peanut, sister
High on iced coffee
Jun 10, 2008 The Story of My Life
- Want to know how to make great iced coffee? The secret, my friend, is using sweetened condensed milk. Two tablespoons for every cup of coffee. Just thought I’d share.
- The heat broke last night and we woke up to chilly rain. Everyone had trouble waking up but the one car situation meant they had to get out of bed because we’re leaving in fifteen minutes to take me to work. Poor grouchy kids. Poor Brett stuck with grouchy kids.
- Madison has been out in the wading pool every day this week and her hair is tight curly and gorgeous from being wet and then drying in the humidity. I love it!
- Noah slammed his face into the zip line. Slammed is the wrong word because, of course, a zip line is a very thin line. He was jumping off the elephant slide into the wading pool and walked into the line then slid down so that he looks like he was in a bar fight. It was traumatic. For me. He screamed and screamed and I was sure he’d scraped off some important part like an eyelid or his nose. Thank god he’s fine.
- I’m going out with my big sister and my little sisters tonight. (On my dad’s dime — thanks Dad!) All of my sisters are now adults — Whitney turned 21 last month. I can’t remember how old my oldest (not Erica) sister is but I want to say about 45? I think she was five when Erica was born.
- Pennie has a blog but I’m not sharing the link here. Anyway, she’s only updated it three times. Rats. And she only writes about food. I’d harass her more about blogging but she works full-time and goes to school full-time so how unreasonable would it be to harass her about blogging? Answer: Very unreasonable.
- Someone ate all of my peanut butter crackers that I take to work. I’ve been making him feel guilty about it but somehow this hasn’t made my peanut butter crackers reappear. Hmmm. Maybe I ought to try a new tactic. Like asking him to pick up more maybe.
- And now off I go into the world of fluorescent lighting. Where I will see no natural light for the next nine hours. Alas.
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My six random things
Apr 21, 2008 The Story of My Life
Cynthia tagged me!
- I just got a gig I was wanting! I don’t know what the job is or what the hours are or how much of it is on-site because I haven’t found that part out yet. I interviewed three times and am still not sure. But I know it pays on time and I know it’s not full-time (although it may be 40 hours some weeks) and that’s good enough for me. Whew! This is going to take some of the pressure off, lemme tell you! (And I think the job will be fun.)
- I am five foot four but people usually think I’m taller. At least they seem to remember me as taller. My mom is five foot eight and she always thinks I’m taller.
- My eyes are getting lighter as I get older. Bummer. They used to be as blue as Noah’s but not so much anymore. Anyone else experiencing this?
- I have a weird memory. I can remember song lyrics to songs I haven’t heard in decades, outfits that friends wore at parties they don’t remember going to, and phone numbers from my childhood but I will forget your name ten minutes after you tell it to me. Those three interviews I had? I have no idea who they were with because I can’t remember names. But my best friend’s phone number in third grade? Oh yeah, I could still dial it.
- I’ve written this before but what the heck. I’m a lucid dreamer. I usually know when I’m dreaming and will sometimes discuss this with the people in my dream. I also will sometimes wrench my dreams around to better suit my purposes. In my nightmares part of the nightmare-ish of it is that I know I’m dreaming and I wrench the dream around but the other people (bad guys) in the dream will wrench it back.
- I am unable to return phone calls in a timely manner (if at all) unless it’s work-related and I have to. My friends know this about me and seem to accept it. I’m also not prone to calling people to chat because I hate to bother them. (The exception to this: My sister.) It’s worse with cell phones. I hate to call people on a cell phone because I know that they can always (theoretically) answer it and if they don’t want to, they might feel obligated. I hate to put them in that position; I’d rather just not call.
I tag all y’all. If you don’t have a blog (and why in the world wouldn’t you by this time????) then you could always answer in the comments. I mean, why not? It’ll be fun! Try it!
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Tags: dreamer, dreaming, Erica, Friends, interviews, lucid dreamer, lucid dreaming, lucid dreams, memes, my mom, Noah, sister, wordpress
Family myths
Apr 9, 2008 Family
I mentioned in a previous post that my sister and I were talking the other day and debunking family myths and Chanie asked me to elaborate.
I can’t elaborate so much because these stories we’ve been telling ourselves as a family are sacred stories even when they’re wrong and even when the telling them has done some damage. Which is to say that it’s one thing for my sister and I to talk about them or for me to share what I’ve learned with close friends but it’s another thing to share ‘em on the internet. I’ll give pretend examples instead.
They’re family myths like “You know she gave up her life for him” or “he never did learn to appreciate her.” They’re myths that we trade on to relate to each other. If she’s a martyr in legend, we treat her like a martyr. If he’s a louse according to fable, we treat him like a louse.
My sister and I sometimes say, “But you know, this story doesn’t fit because…” and then we tear them apart and talk about how they hurt us or held us back or how losing them is painful because they were important stories we told. As I get older and as my kids get older (so as I get a new perspective on a different stage of parenting), I revisit those absolutes and question them. I have different insight that colors the way I used to see things and it frees me up to start dismantling some of what I thought was a firm foundation.
It’s useful to have someone who grew up alongside you or who was an interested party (so a sibling but, too, an aunt or a cousin or someone who had a different point of view on your family). My sister and I are about three years apart — she’s older by 32 months — and the mom and dad she experienced aren’t the same mom and dad that I experienced even though we’re pretty close in age. It’s even more apparent with my brother, who is 27 months younger than I am. We witnessed different discussions, had alone time with my mom at different points of her life. (My sister spent her first years as an only child. My earliest memories were shaped when my mom was struggling with a new, unexpected baby and a husband who traveled all of the time. My brother was small during the halcyon days we spent in California.) It was the same family but it was not the same.
I have always been more independent and so I didn’t notice when my mom quit eating when I was a teen. It was my sister who was making her sandwiches and running them upstairs. I would have had no idea today that my mom was depressed back then because I was so busy with my own depression and crazy behavior. (My therapist later said, “Maybe you were acting out to try to bring your mom back.” But I don’t know because I was so much in my own head.)
I say, “Those were a terrible time…” and my sister says, “What you didn’t know was…”
When we do this there are other things, too, those myths. It’s when I venture, “I always thought that … but now I wonder if …” and it’s scary to say it out loud. Having someone who can say, “I never thought before but now it all makes sense.” Or “I always wondered that, too.”
All of our families have their troubles and secrets and stories. As adult children, our job is to try to uncover them so we can make our own mistakes. I hope my kids are able to do this someday, too.
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Tags: California, Erica, Family, insight, my mom, sister, view, wordpress
