350 - It Ain't Just a Number on the Oven Dial

Heavens to Betsy, it's a miracle! My oven does "heat up."
(You'd never believe that I really do cook, sometimes, would ya?)

"Honey, it's already dead. No really, trust me.
That's what it looks like before the 
restaurant people serve it to us."

"Dear Santa, all I want for Christmas is

...a bigger kitchen...and a maid...and a nanny....and..."

And, here is the proof that it really did taste okay.
dB is eating leftovers with Smudge.
He hates to eat with Smudge (notice that his ears are laid back)
but this time he wasn't gonna let Smudge get all of the leftovers.

The kids survived my "heating up!"
Shewwww! What a relief. :)
(They love that old, pink, worn-out Jeep,
- it doesn't even have a battery anymore
 but they don't know it. They just push
 each other around the yard in it.
Sometimes, they just sit in it together.
I have no idea where they're going - do they? -
but it's fun getting there.hahaha)

These big smiles represent my favorite "tradition" (2 years in a row makes it a tradition, right?) of Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving night we put on our new Christmas Pjs and watch,
"The Scary Train Movie," also known in some circles as
"The Polar Express," downstairs on Daddy's BIG Tv
(it's a projector with a screen 
so the little boy experience is intense)
We have "hot chok-co-lot!" and popcorn to go with the movie.
In this photo, Middle Child and Wild Child are
laughing out loud at the hot air popper as it shoots popcorn out.
(Simple Kids-what do you expect from a mom that lets them play with an old dilapidated Jeep without a battery? hahaha)


This is my favorite part of Thanksgiving.

Halloween, THANKSGIVING and Then, Christmas

Happy Thanksgiving! 

(You know, that pesky little holiday that hangs out between Halloween and Christmas-somebody tell the retail stores, 'cause I think they forgot about it.)

This is it for this week,
I am going to take Thanksgiving (Thursday) off and just hang out with my family and a big dead bird.
Okay?
Good.
I think that’s fair.

I am actually cooking this year.

Wait, that is a lie. Kroger is cooking and I am “heating up” but hey, I will be heating up a big fat turkey in my oven. For a woman who has been known to use the rack in her oven as a place to dry flowers, THIS.IS.A.VERY.LARGE.DEAL.  (Wish me well, even this concept is a little daunting-seriously, where am I gonna put the left-overs???)

I have progressed from dead flowers to dead birds, this is a major advancement in the world, as we know it. Quick, you might want to buy stocks (or sell them) or something before this hits the newspapers (sorry, my age was showing again) the internet  Maybe, not. But you never know how the butterfly effect can change things. You were warned, I’m just sayin.’


Speaking of my age, I remember Thanksgivings when, really, everything was closed (you‘d just pray you could find a gas station that was open in case you HAD to go somewhere,) when you’d just about die of boredom as a kid, when you had turkey lunch at the kids’ table and then sat around and twiddled your thumbs at one another. My sister, my cousin and I turned this into a poker marathon one year. I still get tickled thinking about the three of us little girls in our green visors, our pretzel stick cigarettes hanging out of our mouths (you let them hang there until they got soggy and then you‘d eat them and steal another one from your neighbor's "money pot" to “smoke,”) and our cache of pretzel-stick-chips, arguing about whether or not Jokers were wild.

“I’ll see your 5 pretzel sticks and…”

Arbitrary Thanksgiving Tidbits:

Best Thanksgiving: Several years ago when I was in Dallas, Texas at the spa  (no, of course it wasn't really the spa! But I swear people thought that - for 6 weeks, I got stabbed every 15 minutes with needles and people secretly thought that I was AT THE SPA!)  at the Environmental Health Center-Dallas, we discovered this great sushi bar, the Blue Note. It was small and I could breathe inside (a BIG deal in those days) and very yummy. While in Dallas, we just kept returning to that place -  it was my “I actually, finally, feel like going out, but where?” place. K-Man (anyone else see the cartoon caveman dude and hear him yelling the words “Captain Caveman!!!!” when they read “K-Man?” No? Okay, well it must just be me) and I spent Thanksgiving there that year all by ourselves and it was awesome. I was finally feeling better, there was absolutely no stress at all and the hope for better days was just about palpable. Plus, they had this version of a Tiramisu that was to die for.

Worst Thanksgiving: The one right after my grandmother died. All around that table were volcanoes of emotion, all in various degrees of eruption, but there nonetheless. I drew a picture of what it felt like…it’s around here somewhere…let me find it…can't find it…yeah, I didn't want to see it, either.

Thanksgiving Memory Most Likely to Make Me Giggle: The pizza year. My ex-husband (after this story, you might not wonder why he’s an ex. hahaha ) and I had friends who had the excellent idea of switching out Thanksgivings.

“I’ll cook this year, you cook next year.”

Stupid, I am not. So, I was honest with her,

“That sounds great but really, So & So, I DO NOT cook. You’re going to go to all this trouble and then next year I’ll just order pizza. I’m serious, I’ll just order pizza.”  

Apparently, she didn’t believe me. She went to all the Thanksgiving meal trouble on her year and then kept reminding me all year that the next year was my turn.
I KEPT saying,

“So & So, I’m ordering pizza.”

When my year finally got there, what did I do?
<Shoulders scrunch up, “What?”>
I ordered pizza. (DUH!) I ordered it a day ahead of time to be sure that I could find a pizza joint that was open and then, right before they got there, I heated it up. (I don’t remember if I had to remove flowers from the oven or not and, apparently, “heating up“ is not an issue for me.) Her kids were tons happy. She was not amused. Really, I didn’t mean to piss her off. Try making small talk after that, over your pineapples and anchovies. ;p

This year, I am thankful for:

• A husband who thinks making cappuccinos for me on Saturday mornings is FUN.

• The fact that I have three children who are, more or less, OUT.OF.DIAPERS.

• A hobby that I love and am passionate about. I used to watch other people ride really well and dream about being “able to do that,” this year I surpassed that. Wow. (Sunday, I hooked my horse trailer to my truck, loaded Horse, drove him to another barn, unloaded him, tacked him up, rode him all over the cross-country course in an Eventing Clinic,only said a few dirty words as he LEAPED over the jumps, loaded him back up, took him back to his barn, BACKED my horse trailer into it’s spot between the trees and unhooked the trailer, by myself. I haven’t attempted making coffee at the same time, yet, but I’m thinking about it. Hahaha See September’s post, "WIS, That Was Fun!" for why this is a big deal.)
• Our own personal comedy duo of  “Smudge and dB." (Don't be fooled, I just heard a big crash from the living room and the other little "bundle of joy," is so overcome with love for me that he is BITING the inside of my upper arm as I type this. They better, both, say a prayer at Thanksgiving that their tiny furry butts make it until New Year's. hahahaha) Explanation to be found in November's post, "Hmmmm, It Won't Come Off."
• Red wine and dark chocolate.
• A smile that comes easy to my face.
• And, hope. That’s the clincher, you can deal with just about anything if you’ve got that bad boy in your corner. Hope rocks.

Happy Thanksgiving to you! 

Good luck “heating up."

Just Call Me “Snowflake”

Well, The Blindside movie came out (you probably saw it so I won’t bore you with details that you already know. If you haven’t seen it, stop reading this immediately and go watch it)  and people who I know and love were comparing me to the Sandra Bullock character. Really? After we watched the movie, when I was commenting how my friends were saying that I was a lot like the Bullock character, Oldest Child looked at me and said,

“Mom you ARE her.” 

Okay.  I didn’t know how I felt about that. I mean, there was a lot to deal with in that character. And, not all of it was nice.There was a protective pit-bull quality about her that I'm not sure I have. I want to be that protective "safe" bubble for my kids, but honestly, I'm not sure that I am. I do have high expectations for my kids, I do hold them to a high moral standard, but this was a mother who could smother you with her very large expectations. Um, thanks but no thanks?

I think I finally realized it about myself, about five weeks ago.

About five weeks ago we went to the Eagles Concert in Piedmont Park in Atlanta. (Yeah, I have to process before I can write.)
I learned several things: 
the Eagles are awesome (well, I already knew this one)-even more so live and in concert,
I want an actual seat next time - a place to put my old butt  -
I’m too old for chaos
and pot smoke always smells the same.

I’ll admit, it’s been a while since I’ve been to a concert. I’ve got little kids, I don’t have a nanny and by the end of any given day, I’m just plumb worn-out. But the Eagles are one of those bands that I don’t want to miss -  they’re grandparents by now, they are more worn-out than I am and it’s only a matter of time until they say “enough!”

I don’t want to have missed it.

So, when my husband wanted to go and his brother couldn’t go with him, I sorta reluctantly agreed to go. I am so glad I did. Once we got past the “help me, I’m overwhelmed, how do we hire a baby-sitter?” part, it started to seem like a lot of fun.

However, it was at Piedmont Park in downtown Atlanta which was great in some ways
-being outside, the band, the weather,all of that was nifty.
But, it sucked in some ways
- there was only general admission, we had to sit on the ground and 30-something-thousand people fighting their way to the stage was not fun, particularly since they seemed to be doing it over the top of us. (Really, there was, like, a neon sign over our heads that read,

 “Please, walk RIGHT HERE to proceed down the hill. Don‘t mind the old people beneath your young virile feet, they‘ll move their worn-out bodies out of your way.”)  

And, as we know already, I don’t like crowds, see November's “…Smell My Feet…” post. (In my defense, this concert happened before Halloween, so, you know, I plead the 5th. hahaha)

We’d found a spot up on a hill to put our blankets. It was sorta the “old fogies” section. It was a ways away from the stage but we could see and stretch out.

Even the pot smoke was kinda that nice, faint, sweet smell in the air, not the overwhelming, blue-haze, “I never inhaled,”  Clinton-esq bull crap, that it could have been.

We were pretty happy

Until “Hotel California,” started up. I think that’s when this happened, my husband swears that they DID play “Hotel California,” but I only remember the last few chords of it, ‘cause it was at this moment that the young slightly (um, yeah right!) toasted kids behind us decided to rush the stage.

My husband was flattened up against a tree with the binoculars out, watching Joe Walsh hit his guitar licks. I was just about flattened by the mob that descended the hill, flying past me on both sides, walking on my stuff, knocking into me. It was a bit frightening until I heard myself start screaming.

“Hey! Hey! Stop it! Hey, guys! I’m SITTING here!"

And, you know what happened? The mob stopped. One of the guys stopped directly above my head and glared at me, I glared back until he stepped over me and stomped away. But they stopped.

I knew then that I was not that same ‘ole “good girl” I’d always been. The one who would just about implode in order to maintain the

 “A(-Girl), be nice!” 

order given by my mother. The one who’d take untold abuse in order to be seen as “the sweet one.”  I’m not nice anymore. And, I’m proud of that fact. I’ve finally gotten healthy enough to protect myself.

I hope I am always kind, I will not always be nice. There is a difference.

In my mind, “kind,” always seeks to understand the other person, (there are never good enough excuses for bad behavior but there are reasons, I hope I always seek to understand a person‘s reasons) “nice,” infers that I won’t hold my boundaries.

I will.

That Friday night at the Eagles concert cemented that fact for me - no matter how much I may “understand” the other person’s reasons for their actions, I am not going to let them step all over me and my boundaries.

That makes me happy.
For one thing, that’s healthy.
For another thing, as an adult, I have a responsibility to protect the people who are under my influence. I will not be very good at protecting my kids if I’m not very good at protecting myself.

I know intimately the damage that can occur when the adults refuse to be the protectors of the children.

It’s not gonna happen in my life or the lives of my kids.
That is a very cool thing to realize this side of 40; I’m a good Mom. A mom who does a good job of protecting herself and therefore will do a good job of protecting her kids, as an extension of herself.

A mom who is okay with being kind but not always “nice.”

And, as I reminded Oldest Child, after The Blindside, a protective mom who drives you crazy with her high expectations can also make you reach beyond yourself to become greater than you would have been without her pushing you.  She is, usually, also the mom who will stand toe to toe against the bad-guy-drug-dealer with the “gun in her purse” when it comes time to protect her kids. She will NOT back down.

You can’t buy that with a million bucks.

(And, to that young chick, 

at the Eagles' concert, 

who referred to me, as

“That annoying girl!” 

hahahahaha 

Thanks! 

Jokes on you, lil' chica, 

I’m old enough to be your mom, but thanks!!!)

Hmmmm, It Won't Come Off

SOOOO, my neighbor has cats. Oh, my. That is an understatement. She has a herd. (They gallop, you can hear them. You think I’m joking…)


Kittens have been coming to visit us for a while now. Wild Child is in heaven. Where Middle Child came out of the womb sputtering, “Vrrrrrrmmmmm,” and loving all things with wheels and engines. (I swear he had a whole fleet of vehicles in there with him and rolled them all over my internal organs…I was so uncomfortable, that is the only answer!) Wild Child has always loved his “babies.” Every night, for a long time, he was nearly lost under the pile of stuffed animals in his bed. He has a favorite stuffed “Kitty” and a VERY favorite stuffed “Puppy.”


K-Man and I have been saying for a while that the kids, Wild-Child in particular, needed some real “babies.” At some point. That point is NOT now. I have a three yo and a four yo that I’m trying to keep up with. No, not another breathing, dirty-making thing is allowed in my house.
No.
I said, “No.”


Apparently, the universe wasn’t listening. Or it was laughing in my face, ‘cause down the street came Smudge-the-Super-Kitty. He took one look at me and said,

“Um, yeah. I live here now.” 

He's not really that pretty (don't tell him, kay? Thanks.) but his little personality is awesome and the for-sure-she's-gonna-let-you-stay - he's VERY kid tolerant. You know that saying that you don’t pick your pets, they pick you? It’s like that.


So, the kitties (yes, plural!) have been to the vet and declared healthy which makes it official in my book…

I, obviously, named this one, "Smudge."  
To me, he looks like a white cat that someone 
tried to decorate with a graphite pencil and just got smudges all over him.

My audio-video freak of a husband named this one “Decibel” or “dB” for short. 
And, yes, dB are the correct initials for "decibel." 
I have no idea why 
- drives my English-major-brain nuts but makes perfect sense to my Engineer husband.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decibel
For the rest of us, this means that a decibel is 
a unit for measuring sound. 

("It's a power ratio... formally, it's a unit-less thing...

so it's like so many watts over one watt so 

the watts cancel out...blah, blah," my eyes just glazed over. hahahaha 

I LOVE him but he talks Math-ese. 

Actually, I find it very sexy I just do NOT understand a single word he says. hahahaha)  

Don’t tell our kids, they are busy naming these cute little babies after their best friends at preschool. :)

Middle Child surprised me with how much he loves the kitties.

Wild Child having a ball.

                                                                                                        

I just love this picture for 
Wild Child's fashion sense. 
It is truly stellar.

After the kids go to bed, 
guess what the parents do. hahahahaha

This is why we get two kitties. CUTE.

Right when I get sick of that litter box, 

I see something like this and it's worth it.

(He has an ITCH. I will remain in willful denial that 

Middle Child is picking his nose in MY sweet picture. hahahahaha)

Who am I kidding? I hate a litter box, they will be indoor/outdoor kitties.

                                                      

My first cat picked me when I was 5. She walked right up to me, this little scraggly multi-colored kitten, on Ellis Street in Augusta, Georgia and claimed me as "her" human. Mrs. Ellis slept, curled up on my bed, for many, many years. 

Truly, in nearly 4 decades of life, I have found that everything you do in life is better if you're cuddled up with a cat. 

Yep, cats make a house, a home.

Crapola!

Okay, so I lost my keys.
I don’t do this-lose my keys. I am WAAAAAY too obsessive to lose my keys.
Drop my drink? Break a glass? Chip that new set of plates? Oh, yes.
Lose my keys? No.

This drives me insane.
I do have backups.
That’s not the point.
It’s the principal of the thing.
Not to mention the fact that Home Depot can only reproduce one of the three keys
so now I have to contact people and admit that I lost my keys.

AND, somewhere, somebody has found a set of keys on a Sundowner keychain. If ONLY they could figure out what a Sundowner was (heehee)  and where it was parked then they’d have keys to everything-my new horse trailer, the coupler lock on my new horse trailer and my tack box. Everything except Horse. Okay, that’s the good thing, they can’t take Horse. Hmmmmm,  this is seriously making me reconsider getting a LoJack for him. Hahahahaha

The thing that really, just really, lights my match is that I KNEW when I did it that it was a bad idea.

I remember tossing my keys up on the back of the cover of my truck before I went and shut the windows on the horse trailer. I remember thinking,

A-Girl, this is not smart. 
You don’t normally do this. 
You could forget. 

And, I ignored myself.  THAT makes it doubly and triply bad. I knew better. And, I did it anyway.

Yep, last time I ignored myself I was trail riding on Horse and we saw a vicious, horse-eating white-tailed deer standing in a clearing. It must of opened it’s great snarling mouth and lunged at Horse with it’s fanged teeth ‘cause next thing I knew we were galloping through the woods.

Seriously, galloping through the woods.

There’s this thing about horses, they can dodge trees for themselves almost effortlessly. They do not dodge trees for the 3 foot of human that is sitting above them or the foot and a half of human that is out to the side.

You’re on your own.

TREE! TREE! TREE! 

If you could have read my mind, this is what you would have read. It literally took all of my mental capabilities to ride that gallop, dodge those trees and piece together what was going on. I could hardly think about stopping, 

One rein stop, A-Girl.  

Well, that would be a good idea, 

TREE!

except where to do it? 

TREE!

Stopping a horse that is running flat out seems like a straight forward thing to do, right? Well, this isn't a car, you don't have total control, he won't necessarily stop in a straight line and we're in the WOODS. I can't ride this ride and make a good decision about this. And, honestly, getting in a horse's way when he's got things covered (more or less) isn't always the best thing to do. Nope, better to just focus on staying on the horse until better options present themselves.

Finally, I saw the edge of the path coming up in my perphial vision and I looked down long enough to think,

There’s the path, 

get him turned onto it 

and you’ll have enough room to stop him.

I quit dodging trees long enough to think this thought and when I looked up a branch caught me full in the face. Luckily, it was a small one but off went my hat and my prescription sunglasses.  I managed to get Horse turned but now I was galloping down the path totally blind. I reached out, pulled Horse’s right rein toward my body and, as he pulled sideways, he stopped.

I slipped down off my horse and, as I retraced my steps through the woods, picking up my hat and sunglasses (thank goodness there were other people there to "see" for me) I KNEW exactly what I’d done wrong.

I'd ridden my young horse in unfamiliar territory with loose reins. I KNOW he has a tendency to spook and bolt, I know this and, yet, I let myself get too comfortable.  Things were going along so well that I'd all but dropped the reins on Horse's neck in front of me. I remember looking down at them and thinking to myself, I'm not sure this is such a good idea.

Deep inside of all horses is a prey instinct.
When the big hairy beast comes along, they are the prey.
And, literally, seconds can mean the difference between being dinner and eating dinner.
Their immune systems are keyed to run first, stop and assess later.
Anything moving in the woods could mean that they are tonight's main course.
So, when the EVIL deer appears, it's not the deer, it's the deer's movements that freak a horse out. Whether the deer is the bad guy or running from the bad guys doesn't really matter. He's moving, end of story.

It is an instant reaction for Horse to move his feet in the face of  "danger"- the adrenaline rushes, the heart starts beating faster, the feet start to move. I really think that before his brain can engage he is already moving.
If I can give him just a few seconds shut-down then it is time enough for his brain to catch up with the instinct to move his feet. A few seconds means he can think, Yep, it moved. But I'm safe. No need to run.

Normally, outside of familiar territory, I ride Horse like this, with reins short enough to gain instant control if he should do that "shutter step" that I know means "bolt!" is coming next.
Normally, he'll do the shutter step, and start to spin, I'll pull him to the side. He stops. He usually relaxes pretty much instantly.
Normally, I have my hand on the emergency break.
"Normally", was not that day.
(In fact, later that day, the mustang that was with us spooked again but this time we were all ready. I was able to shut Horse down immediately with just a hard tug on one rein. And, the young, green, just-off-the-range Mustang spun a few times before he stopped but nobody's horse took off through the woods, again.)

Does this freak me out?
Um, yeah.
Does having an experience like this,
in which really dangerous things happen in the blink of an eye, make me nervous?
Not so much nervous.
A tad bit terrified.

The thing is that this scary, creepy I almost died!!! feeling will slide over from my “OMG Basket” and drop down into my “Confidence Basket,”  if I can manage to retrain my brain. If I can meet every panicky feeling with logic- if I keep saying to myself, about the situation,

Yes, the worst thing happened 

but you handled it. 

You did not die, that day. 

You handled the situation. 

It  will actually make me feel more confident for future rides. I mean, I learned from it-do not ride with a loose rein on a five-year-old Warmblood on a trail ride. DUH!!! But I also get bigger britches from it.

I can do this.

But only if I, literally, get back on the horse. Only if I meet the fear with determination to not let it stop me from advancing. Only if I head back out to the trail, again.  That old saying, “You have to get back on the horse,” is true in a lot of ways.

"Courage is being scared to death...

and saddling up anyway." 

~ John Wayne

I can let fear become more fear which becomes…more fear… or I can make it become strength. It really is a choice.  (There’s a fear that goes deeper than that cold lump in the pit of  your stomach, you have to know the difference- don’t be stupid, get help with that one.)

This is one of the things that I love about riding horses- I am having all these little mini-adventures in my life. I’m constantly testing and retesting myself. I’m gaining confidence in my abilities in this area and that spreads over into all areas of my life.

"Life is a daring adventure or nothing." 

-Helen Keller

But...

...somehow, I don’t think that there is ANY deeper meaning thing to losing my keys. I think losing my keys will always JUST be an annoying thing which just… really… annoys me. :)

"And Now, I Have the Comforter..."

  (for explanation, see October post entitled, "And Now, I Am the Master...")

The all mighty "Star Wars Bed."

                                                                        

                            




The scary Stormtrooper lamp.

The kid hasn't stopped smiling (and he hasn't been in MY bed) since we put the thing together. The headboard was one side of his crib so it's sorta magical that his crib became the toddler bed and then this, the for real, "big boy bed."

And, suddenly...

... Middle Child's room became "the" place to be.

He and Wild Child disappear into it often

(Even Daddy has

been known to visit every now and then.)

OSU...Who?

I was raised by rabid Auburn fans, in a time when the great Bear Bryant would pull a miracle out of his pants pocket and, literally, jerk the game right away from you, when the Bama cheerleaders would bow down to the goal posts and my mother said that it was proof enough that they worshiped and loved football more than they did God. And, that was reason enough to hate them.  She was only half-kidding.

I remember years of football, years where emotions were dictated by a pointy brown ball on a field. I’ve dedicated whole Saturdays to the games, put up with a moody father when Auburn lost our modern day “brother against brother” version of the “Civil War" - the Iron Bowl against Alabama - or any other game for that matter, put up with a moody Ohio State fan husband after losses to teams I‘ve never even heard of, years where cold weather made me crave the sound of sports announcers -in fact, the best sleep I ever get is in front of a game.

Some of my earliest memories are of the sounds of football. My parents said that I called it “shoe-ball” and I remember staring at the screen and wondering where they found so many men with big shoulders to play and how come I never saw any of them out in the “real world.” It was only after I asked my parents about this that I learned about shoulder pads.

(I grew up in Georgia and became a Georgia fan at an early age - one of my favorite memories is going to an Auburn/ Georgia game in middle school. I went as a Georgia fan, the whole rest of my family went as Auburn fans.
Georgia won (heehee heehee.)
 As an adult we lived up above LA for a while and couldn’t get SEC football or Big Ten ball. I discovered, apologies to Will  Ferrell, the Oregon Ducks. They are so delightfully weird - among other things, they go for it on 4th down, they go for two often, about 25% of their plays are sent in by pictures on poster board, and they don’t wear uniforms, they wear costumes-the yellow shoes, oh my!  Any one who has the balls to have a duck for a mascot has got my vote. I always think of the saying, “pecked to death by ducks,” when I watch them play. They make me giggle. )

(Ohio State's
mascot is a nut.
A nut. Named Brutus.
It shouldn't even have legs!
Or...arms.

 <giggle>
I love you, Honey!)

For those of you not inducted into the South Eastern Conference of college football, either from birth or from circumstance, this may be hard to explain to you.  I had never met fans quite as ridiculous as Auburn/Alabama  fans until I met my husband and discovered the Big Ten Conference's Ohio State/Michigan Rivalry. Those fans come close. (Georgia/Florida, also close.) But this insanity is not one that is limited to the SEC or the Big Ten or even college football, in general - all you have to do is watch the chaos of  a pro football game or the shenanigans of a baseball game or the deadly crowd antics of an overseas soccer game, to realize that this is universal. Right outside my hometown, not that long ago, a parent pulled a knife on another parent at a kids’ T-Ball game. A T-Ball game.

No, this “crazy” seems to be everywhere where human beings gather. My grandmother’s fanaticism (yes, “fan” comes from “fanatic”) increased as she aged. These are my memories of her - this sweet old lady on the couch talking out loud to her soaps or screaming at football on Tv,

"Get him! Get him! Get him!" 

hahahaha
She was cute. And, I miss her.

As I’ve gotten older (here it comes) the competion has lost something for me. I don’t get it anymore. Okay, I get it but I don’t like it.  When it’s fun, it’s fun but when it’s not, it’s really not. It gets way too serious, sometimes. When the fans (and the players, sometimes even the coaches-Steve Spurrier and his visor is JUST FUNNY!) act in ways that make me cringe, I just want to turn off the Tv and refuse to ever again hunt Ebay for tickets.

GameDay's Lee Corso putting on mascots’ heads (or his own head, ha!) and playfully bantering back and forth, watching my superstious husband change his clothes at half-time in order to try to turn the tide of a game = fun.

Fans screaming and hollering obsenities and calling each other (and the refs) names, the players throwing punches, coaches not reprimanding (and sometimes encouraging) said players throwing punches, or worse = not fun.

My  hubby says that it is a “primal level, us and them.”

Okay, I got that.

Only, this is not hundreds of years ago where the outcome of “us and them” dictated who lived or died that day.

This is just guys in colored jerseys on an arbitrary field of grass. Most spectators didn’t even go to the schools involved and, if they did, the years that they roamed the halls of said schools or were even somewhat intimately involved with the pride of going to the school is long past. But that's not limited to college ball. There are MANY people who are deadly serious about a pro-team but have never even lived in the STATE where the team resides.

I think a little perspective is needed sometimes.

Odds are that most spectators don’t know any of the coaching staff or any of the kids on the field.

Odds are that most spectators don’t make any money from the outcome of the games (- if someone is silly enough to bet on something in which they have no real participation and therefore no control at all of the outcome, then, I think, they deserve to lose their little colored Monopoly money.)

Odds are that most spectators lives will not change one iota if their team wins or loses. They literally have no REAL vested interest in what happens. Except for their pride.

Pride is a miserable thing to lose friends and integrity over.

It’s just a game.

No matter if “my” team wins or loses, in the morning the sun will still come up, my kids will still eat, my spouse will still love me and I won’t be fired from my job. ( Who'd want to fire me? I take care of a 4 yo and a 3 yo - nobody wants my job. hahahaha)

If my colors did badly, well, there’s always the next game.

If my colors did really well, there’s….well, there’s always the next game.

Sometimes, I just have to remind myself of this again:

G.A.M.E.
It’s suppose to be fun.
Chill to the Out.

(And, go Dawgs and Ducks! Woof  Woof! Quack Quack!)

"...Smell My Feet..."

A-Girl Note: It has been pointed out to me, by a very dear friend, that what follows sounds a lot like an anxiety disorder.Yipes. Well, information is power, right? (Yeah, that sounds a lot stronger than I feel :) )

Halloween is one of my hubby's favorite holidays. (Christmas is first but Halloween is clipping it's heels in second place.) The kids are finally at that fun age where they "get it" about holidays so, what with the infectious energies of all my guys about Halloween, we bought costumes a long time ago. And, have been anxiously awaiting THE DAY.

"I want to smell my costume."

We've been visiting the costumes, hung in the hall closet, for weeks now. 

K-Man heard about this neighborhood-Briers North - on the radio. It has the kind of Halloween that we all dreamed of as kids (well, not me but that's coming) -  it's so big that it has it's own website and it's own police for the event. It's also about half an hour into the city of Atlanta from my house if traffic cooperates. 

Okay, I'm game.

Well, I WANT to be game. I really do.

Buuuuuuuutttttt...

I have sensory perception "issues."   

The sounds, the smells, the lights, (it all comes flying at me -  too fast and too much to process) the costumes, the people EVERYWHERE, the unfamiliar territory, trying to keep up with a 3 yo and a 4yo (in costume, "is that my Power Ranger, or is that my Power Ranger?") with a husband who does not have these issues and therefore does not keep the kids as tightly under control as I'd like. Huh, to be fair to him, a straight jacket might not have been as "tightly under control" as I would have liked. 

And then, it got dark.

It was a nightmare.

You can see it on my face, in my body language, in every picture, in every video. I am STRUGGLING. Struggling to maintain composure in the face of panic.

<Deep breath> <Put on "nice voice">  

"Here ya go, Honey, here's your pumpkin. Say, 'Trick or Treat!' Wasn't that fun? Okay, let's go to the next house. Oops! 

Don't run away from Mommy! 

Wild Child, I can't see you. 

Wild Child, GET BACK HERE!"

They are having a ball. I am not. And, working very hard not to ruin their good time.
At what point do their needs and mine intersect? At what point can I say,

"I'm done. Take me home?"

We did leave within a reasonable amount of time, before I blew a gasket.
Okay, Honesty-Time: not quite before I blew a gasket. 

We're headed out, "Just please pick them up and let's go."
Still working that "nice voice," still trying to maintain my sanity without ruining their "happy."

Now, it's well past dark-thirty and we're headed against the people-traffic, all the way out of the neighborhood, all the way down the street and down the street (3 feet away is traffic whizzing by) and down the street to the church parking lot where we're parked. There's a cop car with HIS LIGHTS FLASHING at the end of this nightmarish tunnel of people. The closer we get the more I'm struggling. (Seriously, don't they know that flashing lights cause epileptic seizures in some people?? Oh, god. Not me, tonight. Please!)

Finally we get to the truck-by now, I'm hyper-ventilating - throw the kids in their seats, <nice voice> " Did you have fun? <breathe> I'm so glad you had fun. <breathe> What piece of candy would you like? You can pick some candy, which ones do you want? <breathe> Chocolate? Chocolate's good. <Tear the paper> Here ya go." 

Slam truck door. 

Lean against truck. 

It's coming, I can feel it. 

I burst into tears. 

My poor hubby is completely bumfuzzled.
(And, just how long can I hide this from my kids? They're - at 4 and 3 -  a little oblivious to this now but soon...)

"It's just a physical reaction to the stimuli, I'll be okay. Give me a minute."

OH, GOOD GOOGLY-MOOGLY! I don't want to be this person!

I want to be Fun Mom.

I DO NOT want to be "Sits at Home 'Cause She's No Fun to Take Anywhere" Mom and I'm afraid that I am quickly becoming that one.

Humph! Who am I kidding? I have ALWAYS been that one. No one knew it. But, I was and I am. No one knew it because I was always trying to be someone else - someone who loved all that crazy loud stuff. I was always internalizing my stress and pretending to be "OK," when I was anything but OK. I still don't like to admit it, I'm a little shocked that I'm writing about it, now.

I will find a way to stop doing this - not quit having the reactions that I do, those are part of me and I'm tired of pretending that they're not. It would be as nuts to expect my hubby NOT to really enjoy this stuff as it would be to expect me to suddenly think it's grand. I can't  "buck up," I can't try harder (seriously, I'm trying about as hard as is humanly possible, already here,) I can't smile and have a better attitude.

I can't be something that I'm not. 

I will figure out something that works for everybody. Me included. The kids should be able to have fun, I should NOT have a break-down when it's over (and it takes days to get over, I'm still sorta in "stuck" mode, emotionally.) My needs should be just as important as theirs are.

(Maybe next year, I'll hang out with the kids around our decidedly slower-paced neighborhood for a few houses and then K-Man can take them, by himself, to "Nightmare Alley."
hahahahahaha
I'm serious. :) )

That's cool! I am figuring myself into the equation, now. Score!!!

Getting old ain't so bad if you're learning to treat yourself as well as you do other people, if you're finally learning to cut yourself some slack, if you're learning to become your own best friend.

Wild Child as Red Power Ranger. 

Middle Child as Stormtrooper.

  

We put this costume on him, he rubbed the front and said, 
"I have boobies!"

The kid "shotted" everything in site. We got "stuck" at one house while he and a couple of Iron Men duked it out. I'm not sure who won but our Red Power Ranger did get in on the action. Eventually, everyone got back to grabbing candy and life returned to normal in the city. Crisis averted. Shew.

 Wild Child was so busy looking at Darth Vader 
that we couldn't get a picture. 
"Look this way, Wild Child!"

My little Stormtrooper just could not get up the guts to "meet" his boss, Darth Vader. (He was probably afraid Darth Vader would make him into an Admiral - we all know what happens to Vader's Admirals.) 


Now, if only I could find that photo of me circa 1977, dressed in a home-sewn white smock and with my LONG hair rolled into Princess Leah "ears."  Thanks, Mom! :)  My favorite Halloween costume, EVER!