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Yep – I’m a Joiner!
What Does The Tooth Fairy Bring Puppies?
Sidenote: Hi Stouffer’s – your French Bread Pizza recipe is NOT improved, however new it may be.
On to today’s post.
My beautiful daughter asked me today why Penny chews on everything.
“She’s teething.”
“Will the tooth fairy come and give her something when she loses a tooth?”
“Uh….Sure she will…What do you think the tooth fairy would leave a puppy?”
(said in the world-weary know-it-all tone of a 3yo who feels mommy should be more on the ball) “A doggy treat, mommy!”
“I think you may be right!”
She walked away looking awfully pleased with herself.
I, on the other hand, started to wonder if puppies do lose baby teeth and if so would those shark-sharp crazy little teeth end up beneath my feet at some point. Ok, I read they do lose those “milk teeth” but no idea what happens to them.
Crap, I hope I don’t end up having to actually go through the tooth fairy ritual for the dog.
Image Source: Zela via sxc.hu
Because Everything Is More Fun Than Toys!
I know I’m not the only mother that laments buying toys for my kids.
Why do I buy anything for my children when I know they will ignore everything I buy them in order to play fun games like:
- Unroll the toilet paper and see how many rooms you can put little pieces in. Extra points awarded for feeding toilet paper to dogs and/or each other. More extra points for making toilet paper wet.
- Make the dogs bark until Mommy’s head hurts.
- Cheese stick wars. Or, alternatively, who can eat the most cheese sticks.
- How long can we leave the refrigerator door open before Mommy notices?
- Let’s sneak into the backyard and hide! This makes mommy think we’ve run out the front door and she totally freaks. That is fun times!
- We’ll play with the puppy and get her all riled up and then scream like we’ve cut our heads off if she nips us!
- The water in the bathroom NEVER gets old (see above: getting toilet paper all wet) also: washing hands, walls, and the dog with Softsoap, cleaning the bathroom with toothbrushes, and hiding under the sink until mommy freaks out.
- Belly crawl, military style, quiet as a mouse into the office and grab ANYTHING to write on the playroom/bedroom walls with. Nail polish, pens, sharpies, pencils, eyeliner…most of those things mommy doesn’t have anymore, but we always find something to write with!
So I’m thinking about just getting rid of all the unplayed-with little people, dollhouses, blocks, and miscellaneous crap that they never play with and basically just use occasionally to make one another jealous. A few toys they really love are Hot Wheels cars and tracks, the dogs and all the dog toys, bikes and outdoor toys, and My Little Ponies.
Maybe I could donate all the other toys to Goodwill for parents whose kids like real toys.
Me? I just wish my kids were old enough to play board games – I’d be much more likely to play with them. I don’t like being scissor wench when it’s arts and crafts time.
Image Source: Ayla87 via sxc.hu
I Think FlyLady Has It In For Me
Not on a personal level, but man, it feels like I get sabotaged every. single. day.
Yesterday all the kids’ laundry disappeared. The kids told me, “Daddy took it.” I scoffed at first…daddy knows he’s not supposed to be touching anything remotely laundry-related. This morning I hear the washer going and I ask Randy (before the Enterprise Rent-A-Car guy gets here to pick him up), “What’s in the laundry you’re not supposed to be doing?”
Some of the kids stuff and a couple stuffed animals.
Uh…thanks. I guess.
See, I’m kind of totally super anal about how things get done methodical. If something gets messed up in the middle or before I begin I actually panic a little. My husband’s way of dealing with things is more clean what’s on top and forget what you were doing halfway through laid-back. So, if I’m taking over cleaning, he needs to learn to leave it alone or we’re going to end up with a really messy house.
We’ve got a pretty darn clean house (except for the office which looks like a storage unit right now with a bunch of things in big plastic bins until we decide where their final home will be) and I want to keep it that way. Sure, our rug in the living room is awful and stained – but I don’t want to replace it until the last kid that pops outta me is in Kindergarten – because anything under five years old just cannot be expected to pay full attention to a beverage and the alternative is either making them drink everything in the kitchen or strapping the sippy cup to their faces while they drink.
You Know What Makes A Good Blogger? A Good Memory!
There are probably ten things that happen on a daily basis that make me laugh really hard and I think, “I have to blog about this!”
Then I sit down and…viola…it’s all gone and I’m thinking about the fact that my hip hurts and I found out today that it was my sciatic nerve which was actually a huge relief because I had visions of arthritic hips dancing in my head last night as I cried out whenever I turned over. See…not funny…not even mildly entertaining.
Today the air conditioner guy came to the house. Again, not going to win any awards for humor. We picked out an air conditioner and a heater and should be climate-controlled come next week. Here’s hoping because this “coolest July in 60 years” stuff can’t last forever. Which led me to wonder how people in the deep south (rainforest country without the forest) survive in this heat with mint juleps and ceiling fans. Sure, most people have air, but not everyone. Hell, I grew up in California with a 15 year old swamp cooler chugging along in the front window – damn thing just pretended to be cooling the house – in reality I think the only temperature drop we got was from hoping the swamp cooler was actually working.
If I could remember the door to door salesman coming to my house while I was in a bra and shorts that might be interesting. Sure, I threw on a jacket before opening the door (the dogs were barking and unlocking my bedroom door in order to get a shirt was just going to take too much time) and then one of the dogs ran out and then I lied and said I was the babysitter to get them to go away because honestly the odds of me buying something from a door to door salesman is pretty much zero. Mostly because I am the “phone first” type even if it’s a friend dropping by. I’m not wandering around in full clothing here, people. Especially in summer. You’re lucky I’m willing to wear shorts and my boobs are covered even after you call before stopping by.
So I need a notebook or something – then I could write down all the funny stuff I see and write about it later. Of course if I had a notebook in the living room the kids would steal it and write in it or the dog would eat it.
But hey, that would be funny, right?
Dear Virginia, Managing Director of Birthing From Within – What Happened?
So I wrote a post on my somewhat kind of awful experience with part of a Birthing from Within class over here.
When I received this response in my comments I was really excited.
Hi Jennifer,
As Managing Director of Birthing From Within, I am concerned that you have not had positive experience with one of our classes/teachers.
Email me directly, as I’m interested to know more about the situation.
And all the best for your upcoming birth.
~Virginia
I thought, “Hey, I can find out if this was just me or if I was the wrong type of person for the class!”
So I emailed her on June 19th…
Hi Virginia!
While I was kind of emotional when I wrote the post, I hope I did try – in some way – to make it clear that it might just be me.
While it was a very negative experience for both my husband and I, we also only attended the first three and a half hours. I still regret my husband got sick because had I gone through the whole thing there would not be a question of “maybe it would have gotten better”
Maybe it’s not normal for a woman that has already had two children to attend a class like Birthing From Within. Maybe it’s not normal for someone like me, that reads and researches things extensively online, to be part of the class. Maybe I was just being picky about how she presented birth – in what *I* felt was a very negative light.
Even though I have a lot of facts and figures in my head, I also seriously considered having my birth at The Farm, so I’m by no means not an emotional or spiritual person. I did not expect to be told my birth story was “atypical” and dismissed.
I don’t know. I hope this email and my post don’t come across as angry…even though I know that when I’m sad it tends to look a lot like anger, but that’s really all I am, sad and disappointed.
She assumed everyone in the room would have long, painful labors like she did, and I just wanted to cry. Why would you do that to them? My midwife told me later it was so the husbands could be prepared just in case.
I’d love to talk more with you about what it could be like, because from everything I read online and from what the workbook says…it really seems like something I not only was hoping to embrace and learn from, but I told my husband that I might go through the training and become an instructor afterward … because I have so much knowledge about hospital birthing and soon will have a lot on homebirthing (and possibly unassisted birth, just ask my midwife LOL) that I would love to share that birth does NOT have to be this scary wall-hitting floor-clawing experience … it MIGHT be … but it’s not a given, you know?
If you’d like to talk (I’m actually a really friendly, person, I swear) please let me know a good time for you.
I would love to know if the problem was me – that I made a mistake in choosing something that was made for someone that is not in my situation or if it really was odd for the class to happen that way. And if it’s odd that I’m supposed to pay for something where I was dismissed as being odd but still expected to help teach the other two couples what was going on. I was there to learn and grow, not teach and correct. (I hate correcting teachers – I was taught from a very young age that is an inappropriate thing to do, so it makes me uncomfortable.)
Thank you for taking the time to write, I really appreciate it
Surprisingly, I also don’t talk quite as much as it may seem from my lengthy writing. It’s tougher for me to explain things properly in text, so it ends up being long.
Thank you for getting this far!
Needless to say it’s July 28th and I haven’t heard back. I’m starting to think that maybe it wasn’t me, but the way the Birthing from Within organization is run.
Maybe I sounded crazy when I wrote her so she did not want to contact me. But then, why reach out?
My guess is that she was either busy and forgot, or just wanted to look like she cared by leaving a comment on the blog. Either way I am left having spent far too much time and energy worrying about something I will barely remember in a year.
It’s a shame. I had high hopes for Birthing from Within. Now? I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. Not just for the teacher, who was not my cup of tea, but because the Managing Director doesn’t have any follow through, which makes me think that this is probably not the first or last time this will happen to someone.
Such a shame.
I Would Sell One Of My Kids for a Broomstick Skirt
You know the one I’m talking about. The skirt that’s all wrinkly already (so you can’t screw it up and get it wrinkled) with nothing but an elastic waistband holding it up.
My last two pregnancies I had two of these skirts. They were hideously ugly and I loved them.
They can be worn under the belly, or pulled up to your underarms for a dress suitable for wandering the backyard (as long as neighbors can’t see you.) They are unflattering, airy, and usually see-through if you get hit by a sunbeam.
One of the things on my “baby is coming” list that has not been checked off yet is a skirt to give birth in. I don’t feel like wandering around my house naked from the waist down (want to see what I’m wearing up top for the birth – check this magical item out… the Rainbow Bra by Bravado … it’s a one-of-a-kind tie dyed nursing bra …) I figure the worst that can happen is I end up with rainbow-colored boobs and baby will have an unnatural love of rainbow sherbet when she grows up.
Seriously, I’m in love with this bra. I hope it’s just as awesome when I get it as it is in the picture. Normally I hate tie dye but for some reason…maybe my reptile brain is digging on it or it’s pregnancy hormones…I’m really excited about it! Hopefully this is where it ends, because if I come home with incense, my husband will kill me.
But yeah – I just don’t want to be wandering around my house naked when the time comes. I’m all about naked in most cases, but I’m not all about sitting on things while I’m naked. It’s just a thing I have. But I also don’t want to wander my house in underwear because what do you do when the baby starts to, you know, come out.
There are skirts designed for giving birth but, wouldn’t you know it, they don’t come in plus sizes (that I’ve been able to find). Fat chicks don’t have babies because they’re all infertile I guess. (I’ve heard that before, I didn’t make it up … too bad no one gave that memo to the last five fat and healthy generations of my family who were quite fertile…) I could sew one, but yeah, then I’d have to sew one and while we do own a sewing machine, uh, I’ve never had lessons and don’t want to learn by accidentally sewing my fingers to my other fingers. I’m not into playing with sharp things like that.
So I’m on the hunt. I’m going to find a skirt I can wear while in labor. Wish me luck.
Disclaimer: I paid $45 for the bra. If you want one, so will you.
Queen of the Identity Crisis
There was all this pre-BlogHer talk about finding your tribe.
Tribe? Like clique? Or was it something more visceral everyone was looking for?
I spent the first night feeling like the parties were all hype and no follow-through…too m any people in small rooms makes me hide. Hiding doesn’t find you anyone. Luckily I brought a non-bloggy friend with me so I wasn’t alone. We people-watched and enjoyed ourselves and ran into a very bloggy friend I gave a ride home later.
Yes there was some swag, but really the most wonderful part was meeting Nina and Star from the Goodnight Show on Noggin. I’m not proud to admit I know who children’s television characters are – I mean, I always feel bad admitting I own a television…everyone knows all the really cool, hip, trendy moms do arts & crafts with their kids. Instead I scored my kids an autographed picture that they loved and that I will be framing and hanging in their room. A testament to my forever not-good-enough parenting.
The next day I was scared to go back. I’m not good at talking to strangers that may or may not know who I am and then having to figure out how to identify myself. Sure, I talk about my kids now and then, but the only thing that really makes me a mommyblogger is that I’m a mommy and I’m a blogger. It kind of feels like being called an animal-rights activist because I own dogs. Just because it’s part of my identity does not make it the epicenter of my identity.
But then, what am I? I blog about personal finance…but am not in any way a personal finance blogger. Sometimes I’m funny, but I’ll never be funny enough or consistent enough to be a humor blogger. Hell, I can’t even keep my categories straight so it’s not like I’m even really good at organizing my blog.
Right now I feel like I’m standing on top of a fence (a wooden one, my balance isn’t good enough to perch on a chain-link fence) – on one side is stay-at-home-mommydom where I worry about the next load of laundry or if the baseboards need to be cleaned. Where I take an active interest in my kids’ schooling and become a room mom or volunteer or something and help a bunch of little kids make crafts. (Why does it always come back to crafts if I’m thinking about being a good mom?) The other side of the fence has meetings, speaking engagements, clients, and plans. Where I work from home and stay mentally stimulated and produce work that gets paid in dollars instead of those non-tangible-but-still-important mommy rewards.
BlogHer didn’t help me make that decision. Well, it sort of did. When I found the group I wanted to be in they were all highly successful business women. The definition of success may have been slightly different across the board but they were all doing what they wanted to be doing.
Me? I don’t even know what I want to be doing…all I knew was that I wanted to be with those women. Not the ones with fifty-hundred swag bags talking about sponsorship. Except Sheena – she had a sponsor and is a mommyblogger but it just didn’t feel like she was defined by just those things. I’m sure the other moms had much more going on too, but I just never got to hear about it. That’s not anyone’s fault but my own. We choose who we spend time with. I made my choice and I was thrilled by it.
Interestingly enough, I felt like the woman I hung out with at BlogHer were almost out of my league. Like I was still in the majors, but a rookie…the thought of getting as good at what I do as any one of them was an exhausting train of thought. Maybe that’s because I’m pregnant, maybe that’s because they spend so much time and energy on so much and I just don’t have it in me. Time will tell.
Because if there is one thing I learned at that table it’s that I am really good at PR and I understand the blogosphere, I *get* marketing. Lunch did not consist of me having to explain the basics of how to get noticed by PR reps and start a relationship. I didn’t have to tell one person how to write a letter to a PR company.
But just because you’re good at something doesn’t mean it’s what you are destined to do.
So….what the hell do I want to be when I grow up? Fabulous mother? Hobbyist? Blogger? Employee? Business owner? Artist? Writer? Freelancer? Middle management? Crazy cat lady? Author? The worst part is when I think about possibly choosing more than one. My brain almost breaks.
But It’s AUTHENTIC Exhibitionism…Right? RIGHT!?
Have you ever been to an in-person networking event (or church event, or any other random public event) and someone you just met tells you some amazingly painful, traumatic detail about their life only to leave you with the reaction of, “Oh my gosh, I don’t know her name, how can I know this woman has been raped and not KNOW HER NAME??”
Maybe it’s just me (and I kind of hope it is – for your sake) but this happens to me one out of probably every five events. Rape is the most common confession but there are others. Many, many others. From people who I don’t know beyond a five minute conversation.
You can say this is because I have “one of those faces” or “that kind of energy” – but I never agreed.
Over time, I’ve come to believe that being a total exhibitionist about your childhood or early-adulthood trauma is something that is a part of the healing process.
Enter the Internet.
Yesterday I got a link from Twitter to a business blog and the comment was something about how amazing the authenticity in the post was. So I clicked. How could I not. I am all about seeing what the end result of pledging yourself 100% to the religion of authenticity (and it is a faith-based religion, y’all) looked like.
What I got?
Paragraph after paragraph of all kinds of childhood and early-adulthood oogie-boogies. I mean it was an all-you-can-eat buffet of trauma. There was actual mention of actual blown up bits of body parts. It was….painful to read.
Sure, I wrote a post about being abused as a kid a while back. I wanted to explain why I cherish my childhood because if I’d had a normal childhood I”d have a boring, normal life and be unable to appreciate everything around me the way I do. Like, “Thanks, trauma, cause I’m kind of an awesome person and wouldn’t be me without you!” (Plus I’d had a bunch of people ask me that week “how did you get so strong?’ and “why are you so intimidating?” LOL I don’t think I’m either of those things but I have boundaries. Good ones. So I thought I’d explain.)
You know, cause I was trying to be UPLIFTING. Assuming if you wanted to wallow in that “bad touch” feeling you would go find someone that is like that. Plus, this is a PERSONAL blog…when you’re on a personal blog you accept you may be stepping into someone’s personal doodoo.
But a business blog? I could see it if you’re tying it into your business, but this was a drive by in-your-face non-consensual sharing in an arena where I would have no way of knowing this was coming.
Just because it makes YOU feel better to flash your bullshit all over the Internet and have people pat you on the back for being authentic…DOESN’T MAKE IT RIGHT.
You don’t keep secrets because they are shameful. You keep secrets because those are what you tell your significant other, your family, your close friends, your personal blog.
Part of me applauds you – you have made it to the part of your personal journey of healing that means you tell everyone you meet your issues. That’s close to home stretch.
I just wish you had put a warning or disclaimer at the top. It’s not fair to the rest of the world who may not be in as good a place as you are. Not putting a warning is basically telling me that what you did was entirely selfish – but hey, at least you were authentically selfish, right?
It scares me. When we blur the line between personal and professional I believe it can be a great thing. But when I come to your business blog and read stories of personal trauma I didn’t sign up for, well, not only will I not be going back to your site but I’ll be sure to tell people you have NO IDEA what authenticity, branding, and marketing yourself are all about.
Because you don’t.
Not because you’re a bad person, not because you don’t keep your secrets to yourself, but because you are still healing and have not gotten to the point where you have learned appropriate personal boundaries.
I hope you find them soon. Unfortunately, the Internet will always remember your not-so-youthful indescretion. Good luck getting that next job when your boss googles you and sees all that. Even better luck proving that’s what caused you to not get a job.
It just feels like such a shame. And getting praised for it. That will just make it take even longer to heal as well as encourage others to post stories with names attached that are nothing more than feel-good attempts and requests for pats-on-the-back disguised as some bullshit being sold as authenticity.
