Fun with ...

This is the next post, in what I hope to be many as part of a blog project I am doing with three other ladies. At the end of my post I will give you the links so that you can check out what they have to say on our topic. Who knows, maybe you will find something else you like.

This weeks question is:  Describe a situation in your life which is totally normal for you, but others may view as strange, or weird, or different.

Immediately, I knew what I was going to talk about, but as the week progressed and I thought about it more, I thought of more things that we do that are a little weird or odd.  Like the elaborate stories we tell about various stuffed animals that come into our house.  If you have some time, ask one of my kids about Uncle Phil, Wooly and the Felipe crew.  You will see that we have our very own special kind of crazy.

But, I am going to stay the course and talk about what came to me first.  Even the husband thought of this immediately when I shared the question with him.  It is the underwear container.  I remember someone commenting on our underwear container and I looked at her and in all seriousness said, "doesn't everyone have an underwear container?"  I think this friend still laughs about that.

The underwear container was born out of laziness.  When potty training my now 10 year old, I was too lazy to trundle upstairs every time he needed new underwear.  See, he would NOT go to the potty until he felt a little bit of pee come out and only then would he go.  But this meant that he had wet underwear every time he went to the bathroom.  We changed underwear every time he peed.  So, we went through a lot of underwear and I didn't want to keep going upstairs to get clean undies. 

The underwear was in a pile on an end table for a long time.  We finished a container of pretzels from Sam's Club, and in a fit of organization, I re-purposed the container.  Thus the underwear container was born.

I was a ubiquitous part of our landscape.  It survived all three kids, and only when we finally put our house on the market did the underwear container die.  After one kid didn't need it anymore, the next used it, and so on.  Eventually, it was filled with little girl panties.

See in the background of this picture, there is it on the hearth?  Ignore the mess of toys...  But our underwear container stands proud.

Mostly this one is a gratuitous cute kid pic, but in the middle of the left side, you can see the top of the container peaking out.

Kids would come over and they would play in the underwear.  It was clean.  The kids would play with it.  We had lots of fun with underwear. 

The kids are going to be so happy about this pic.  I think I will put it up at there weddings!  Anyway, we had some good times with underwear.  I know it seems odd, but to us it was totally normal.

Want to see what weird stuff the other ladies do, then check out Froggie, Merrylandgirl and Momarock.

WYSIWYG

This is the next post, in what I hope to be many as part of a blog project I am doing with three other ladies. At the end of my post I will give you the links so that you can check out what they have to say on our topic. Who knows, maybe you will find something else you like.


Today's topic is:  In the Glee episode "Born This Way" the Glee Club is told to put a quality they see in themselves as a flaw on a t-shirt. This is done as a way for them to embrace this particular flaw. What I want to know is what would your t-shirt say?  I don't watch Glee, I didn't really get the whole concept.  But, what I gathered when I asked more questions was that it is about embracing your flaws. 

I have thought about this a great deal.  The flaws I that perceive about myself are not ones I would put on a t-shirt.  Tenacious, Difficult, Over-Weight?  These are not slogans that would sell a shirt.  Then it hit me,  WYSIWYG (whizzy-wig).  That is the perfect slogan for a t-shirt, and it embraces my flaws perfectly.

What is WYSIWIG?  It is a computer term that means what-you-see-is-what-you-get.  It is from the 80's, so it dates me perfectly.  It is geeky, so that works too.  It is so perfect.  It is just hip enough to make folks of this generation think, and it is all letters so it is all text-y.  I may actually have a shirt some place that has this printed on it, come to think of it

But, why is this my flaw?  Well, I am a what you see is what you get kind of person.  I am not subtle, and this is sort of a problem.  So many people, can't handle the truth.  But, the truth as I see it, well, it flows from my mouth at a fairly rapid clip.  I am direct.  You always know where you stand with me.

My directness is embraced by some and completely rejected by others.  The problem is that sometimes being too direct is a bit rude.  As I have aged I have realized this, and I try very hard to filter my thoughts.  To put things in a way that is more palatable.  That is less direct.

This directness feeds the perceptions of tenacity and diffiultness.  I just think that if you really understood what I was saying you would agree with me.  Or you would explain your point of view to me and I would realize that you have a point and I would moderate my position.  But, this tends to come off as a bit difficult and tenacious, especially if you can't justify your position.

I am not the person that will sulk in the corner when you treat me poorly.  I will say something about it.  There are relationships that I have that have been really damaged by the fact that I have said something about the fact that the other person hurt me.  I think it has something to do with taking responsibility for your actions, and I really don't understand how I am the bad guy for telling you XY & Z was hurtful to me.  From my point of view, if you cared at all you would apologize and we would move on.  Conversely, if I do something to you, you get to tell me about it.

To quote Popeye, I am what I am.  That is why WYSIWYG is the perfect slogan for me.  There is good with that, and bad with that.

So, want to see what everyone else has to say on the topic!  Momarock, Merrylandgirl and Froggie

Mom is ALWAYS Right

This is the next post, in what I hope to be many as part of a blog project I am doing with three other ladies. At the end of my post I will give you the links so that you can check out what they have to say on our topic. Who knows, maybe you will find something else you like.

Today's topic is what advice did your mother give you?  It is sort of a backward nod to Mother's Day.  Like I  said, mom is always right.

So, my mother always told me that "this too shall pass."  When I was a teen, I never believed that the sun will still rise and fall and that I would carry on.  That the fact that this boy didn't like me, I didn't get asked to the dance, someone was mean, I didn't get the job, my hair looked funny, ment with 100% certainty that I would die, and the world would end.  I am living proof that I didn't die from all the horrible things that I worried about when I was a teen.  Further, I don't really remember all the afronts to my person I had to tolerate.  Oh and the sun still rises and sets like it did back then.

I have done things I am not proud of, and for the most part, the chips have fallen where they may.  Life has moved on and things are what they are.  It has passed.

Things have happened to me that I am not real happy about, for the most part the chips have fallen where they may.  Life has moved on and things are what they are.  It has passed.

This topic is so germain to my life right now that I almost had to laugh about it.  I had written this post a couple of days ago.  This morning I got an email that was not intended for me.  It basically said that this person was not happy with me and didn't want to work with me anymore.  I was really hurt by it.  I am still hurt by it.  I haven't decided what I am going to do about it, if anything.  But, I know that my mom was right, this too shall pass.  I know that in a couple of weeks that specific event will be forgotten.  I think that the negative feeling might still be there, but maybe that will be past too.

I will make a decision about how I go forward based on this information, but at the end of the day the sun will still set, the sun will rise up the next day and life will move on.  Other problems and concerns will crop up.  My life will go forward and eventually I will forget about the specifc event I am writting about.  I know with 100% certainty my wound will heal and that I will be fine. 

A little time boxing their pictures into oblivion helped too... but I digress.  I love to hit things with that big stick.  Gotta love a good day in the gym.

So, I leave you with my mom's advice, "This too shall pass."  My huband's thoughts on the topic are good too, "It is never as good as it seems it is never as bad as it seems."  That helps me get to the past part of my mom's advice.

If you want to hear what advice the other ladies mom's gave them you can find them here:  Froggie, Momarock, Merrylandgirl.

Hiding my head in shame

This is the next post, in what I hope to be many as part of a blog project I am doing with three other ladies. At the end of my post I will give you the links so that you can check out what they have to say on our topic. Who knows, maybe you will find something else you like.

Today's topic is:  If you could travel back in time to meet a past celebrity crush, what time period would you travel to and who would you meet? Describe how you would meet them and share something you would say to them.

Ok, so, here is the thing, I am a child of the 80's.  So you HAVE to suspend judgement and realize that this is what everyone looked like back then.  A word on that, I remember looking at my sister's old yearbooks from the 70's and thinking how funny they all looked.  I distinctly remember thinking, I will never think I look funny when I look back at my pictures because I am so stylish, and style this good never looks bad.  Yeah, was I wrong.  The 80's were a VERY bad period in fashion history.  I always get nervous when we start to revisit that era.

So on to my crush...  Please find a picture of Duran Duran.  I loved them so much.  I had the hugest crush on Nick Rhoades.  He would be the REALLY HOT one with the stylish headband.  See what I mean, style that good NEVER goes out.

 
I look at it now, and the horror of it all.  He looks like a girl.  He was probably totally gay.  Now I know could look it up, but I am not that interested.  Ok, I looked it up, he was married and had a kid, but that still does not mean he isn't gay.  They actually all look like girls.  But I digress.

The question is what would I say to them.  I mean if I was my 16 year old self, I would probably giggle a lot and say Oh My Gawd, like, totally a million times, you know.  But, as my older than 16 year old self, frankly, I just don't care anymore.  I have no desire to meet him.  I sort of cringe at the whole thing. 

Looking at a current picture of him, well that makes me want to meet him even less.

That is not someone I want to bring home to my kids.  All and all, I think it was just a crush of peer pressure.  Everyone had a crush on someone in this band. 

Just to make the whole thing less stomach turning, I leave you with a picture of Mark Harmon.  Now there is a man I would like to meet, now.  Really, I am not busy at all at this very moment.  Clicking my heels and hoping.

Isn't he hot?  Now, let's see what everyone else has to say on the topic, Momarock, Froggie and Merryland Girl.

Week in Review

So, let's talk a bit about soccer.  It is an all consuming passion in my household.  Everyone, and by everyone, I mean EVERYONE, kicks that soccer ball at some point during the day.  Yes, I do it when I am dribbling it towards the ball rack, but I have learned some pretty nifty foot moves and can get it up without bending over.  Now that our backyard is not submerged underwater, the kids are out there morning, noon and night.   When they aren't playing soccer, they are watching it on television or playing it on the wii. 

Which brings me to a recap of out last weekend.  We only had three soccer games, of course they were not at the same times, so we spent two days watching soccer.  Some was good, and some was not.  We have been playing soccer since Mac was 3, but this is the first season everyone has been on a team.

Mac's team looks like they are having fun, but they aren't very good.  Hannah, well it is fun to watch a bunch of little kids chase soccer balls around.  The real excitement comes from Sam's team.  This weekend they won.  After more losses than we can count they finally won one.

But, when I talked to Sam about his game, the first thing he told me was not that they had won, but rather that he had gotten a yellow card.  He was so proud of his yellow card.  What made it even better was that it was for slide tackling.  His very favorite thing to do.  I did start to wonder if perhaps we made a bad choice in sports and maybe American Football would have been a better decision.

Here is the problem, it is not a good thing to get a yellow card.  Yet, because he stopped the kid from scoring a goal, some of the parents were telling him that he did a good thing.  I don't want my kid to be a brute on the field.  Sure I want him to be aggressive, but not brutish.  I was really dismayed that he was proud of getting a penalty. 

I know he did not slide tackle with the intention of getting a penalty, that he was trying to get the ball and he missed.  Sure he is little and his ability to slide tackle, while good, is not perfect.  But, I do not want him collecting yellow cards the way kids collect baseball cards.  For now he seems to get that, but he is still proud of the fact that he stopped a goal.

Well, and that they finally won.... and no they did not play the blind kindergarteners. 

Big Day

I haven't commented on the Royal Wedding, the birther situation, or really any sort of current event recently.  It isn't so much that I haven't had an opinion about the things that have been going on around me, it is more that I have not been moved to say anything about them.

The death of Osama bin Laden, while unlikely to have a significant positive impact on terrorism and more likely to have an negative impact on our over-all safety, it is an emotional victory.  I lived in Connecticut at the time of 9/11.  I remember driving to work that day, listening to the person on the radio talk about how 9/11 is a day of safety.  She discussed when and how to dial 9-1-1.  She talked about how you shouldn't call it 9-11, because you might look for the 11 on the dial and not be able to find it.

I was working when Fred, a man I worked with, walked into my office and told me what happened.  I remember people thinking that because our company was run by an ex-military officer and we made parts that were used in defense that we would be targeted.  Which was laughable.  People watched the replays of what happened in offices, on televisions in the break room.

My mother was in Boston when it happened.  When she hauled butt out of the Boston area, there were no tolls being charged on the tollway, they wanted people to keep on moving.  She got to my house around the time I got Mac from daycare.  We hugged each other and Mac.  We put him to bed and were glued to the television. 

Bob and I flew to see his parents on the first flights that were allowed to fly.  Friends and business associates were forced to drive home from business trips and vacations because they couldn't fly home.  Some shared cars with strangers who were headed in the same direction.  Everyone banded together. 

This one day forever changed our everyday lives, remember when you didn't have to strip naked to get on a plane?  But, living in Connecticut, it was impossible not to know someone who was impacted by the towers collapse.  Bob had been in the towers just the week prior, on business.  He could have been there that day, it wasn't out of the question.  Friends didn't go to work that day for various reasons, others did.  Why some lived and others didn't is a mystery in luck and timing.

Today, we hear that the man who masterminded this attack, has been killed.  Just as I will always remember the day that it happened, I will remember today.  The day my baby won his first Panther soccer game (more on that later), Bob's BFF's birthday, the day that Osama bin Laden's death was announced.  It has been a big day.