It's Soccer Season

My oldest played her first game of the season on Saturday. Heavy rains left the fields too wet to play last week.

Backyard Soccer

My neighbor (and good friend) has signed up to play on a woman's soccer league. Last night my daughter saw her practicing and decided to help her out. My daughter is an avid soccer player who has given up the sport this fall in order to play basketball for her school team. As you can see, her equipment has not found its way out of summer storage. Fortunately she walked away with only one small injury.

Finding Yourself

I've often heard of people who are trying to find themselves and always wondered what a person means by that. How do you find yourself? I think it's often used as an excuse for someone to extricate themselves from a difficult situation, most often troubled relationships. I imagine some find it as a deeper way of saying, "I'm not happy with you and I want out to find someone that does make me happy." Although I'm a firm believer that you can't depend on someone else to make you happy, but that's another rambling.

So as I'm reading from my most recent fiction selection I come across the term "find yourself" once again. I then realize that I think I get what a person trying to find oneself is looking for and at the same time I realize that it can't be found. It is something that comes with age, wisdom and experience. The experiences are not always good but they certainly help shape who you become. When I think back to my youth, especially my twenties, I can certainly put my finger on the floundering that likely creates this need for one to find oneself. I see it as a need to figure out what you believe and the need to understand why you believe it. It's a desire to feel content with who you've been and who you've become. It's a need to be at peace with the events of your life, to be sure that they happened for a reason or maybe to be able to pin-point the good that came from the especially tragic events of life.

So then I wonder what will I tell my daughters someday if they express the need to find themselves? I think I will have to tell them exactly what I've expressed here. You can't find yourself, simply live life, accept and embrace the good and bad of it and one day you'll wake up to realize that yourself has found you.

Conversations with a 7 year old

7 year old: "Mom, is there something I can wash my face off with? I ate a caramel apple and it's all sticky."

Me: "Yeah, it's called soap and water, it does amazing things."


She rolled her eyes at me! Is there something wrong with soap and water that someone has not let me in on? Does it cause premature aging? Cancer? What? Sheesh!

A tired I haven't felt in a long time

I am definitley feeling the effects of working full time and being a single parent. It is certainly a tired I haven't felt in a long time. But, let me confess, it's a good tired. I'm now ready to sleep at a normal hour, like the rest of the world and once I can actually force myself out of bed (this has always been a challenge for me), I feel rested and ready for the day. All these things get a little slack when your a stay-at-home mom.

Oops, abrupt change of subject: The weather has been gorgeous the past three days. No shivering on the soccer fields yesterday morning, not even for the 9 a.m. game. I can only hope the trend continues. In case it doesn't, the girls and I are now on our way, with our rollerblades, to meet some friends and enjoy the 80 degree sunshine while it's here. I only ask that you pray for me, it's been over a year since I last rollerbladed and I'm not the coordinated type.

Oh how I laughed

Eleven year old - "I spy with my little eye, something yellow."

Nine year old - "Your teeth!"

All work, no play

That's pretty much what my life is feeling like since I've started working. Between working, homework, the start of soccer season, Easter, etc... there has been very little time for posting. Ok, I confess, there has probably been plenty of time to sit down and post but truth be told, I'm too brain fried to come up with anything to write about. Which brings me to the fact that this post will not be all that exciting. But there is a plea for information within!

The job is going good, lots of information to absorb. I keep telling myself that I'm very fortunate to have previous experience in the printing field because without it I would be clueless. I'm attempting to do marketing for the printer I'm working for. Once again, clueless. While I've worked in sales and advertising before and have some journalism education I've never actually worked in marketing. I've been trying to do as much research and reading on marketing as possible, which brings me to my plea. If you have any good marketing advice, know of any good articles or blogs, especially, about marketing I would love to hear about them.

I'm not feeling completely lost, I have some good ideas in action already and I know the more I get to know the ins and outs of this particular company the easier it will get. But, I'm an information hound and the more I have the better prepared I feel.

Desperate need

Often times when I'm on the computer Sophie (aka Pup) will step inside the door and make little growling noises at me. These growls are her way of letting me know she has a need. Many times when I'm absorbed in what I'm doing the growls will turn into barks. Her needs are usually a trip to her "potty spot" out doors or sometimes she will grab a toy and want me to play with her. Pretty smart little pup if you ask me.

Earlier (as in about 20 minutes ago) she stuck her head in the door and growled a couple times. I immediately went for the patio door as she hadn't been out in awhile and I figured she needed to pee. As I got to the patio doors I realized she wasn't following me but still standing in the dining room. I went back and gave her a little love and returned to the computer. Not five minutes later she was back at the growling bit. This time I let her lead and show me what she was after. She led me to the dining room stopped, dropped down and rolled on to her back. Which we all know is the universal sign for "RUB MY BELLY DAMN IT!"

Can you believe it? My dog is demanding belly rubs now! Who does she think she is? Yes, I fell for her demand and gave her a belly rub. Only to have return a few minutes later and demand another. I obliged a second time and now she seems content and happy. You can tell by her expression below that her momma is certainly no second rate belly rubber.

Learning to add fractions

When Michigan temps hit 75 degrees in March
math homework must be done outdoors.

So I got a job

Yes, it's true, it seems someone finds me still employable after 11 years of being home with my kids.

Tomorrow I start work for a digital printing company doing sales and marketing. It's pretty much what I was doing before I had kids. While I admit to being a little bit nervous I'm mostly really excited to have the opportunity to actually use my brain again. The people I'll be working for have been very kind in offering to be flexible so that I'm still able to take my girls to school and pick them up at the end of the day.

But of course, with every good opportunity there are draw backs. Be prepared a few of them are petty.

1. No more dropping my kids off at school while still in my pajamas.
2. No more going back to bed on the mornings I feel the need for more rest.
3. No more summer vacation. It's not so bad, by week three I want to pound my kids heads together anyway.
4. Pup is so not going to be happy with me when she has to start spending her days in her kennel.
5. It's a 30 minute drive one way and gas is not cheap.
   

So, back to the reality of the working world I go.

The Red Metal Tool Box

This past summer I was cleaning out the garage and came across an old, red, metal toolbox of my husband's (now deceased). I decided to bust it open in hopes he had been hoarding money during our marriage, which would be ok now that it would be all mine! Instead what I found inside was every note and card I had ever written or given him pre marriage. How romantic eh? That's what I thought until tonight when I remembered the tool box and decided to start reading them.

After laughing through them I decided that first I will need to sort through and separate those that I will allow my children to some day read and those that should probably be burned. I already fear that my children will need therapy in the future simply because they drew the short straw when it came to getting the really good mom. No need to make it worse by reading the sometimes rather inappropriate things I wrote to their dad in high school.

On a side note my 11 year old told me this evening (after a conversation about some parents she was observing in the restaurant earlier) that some people just shouldn't be allowed to parent. My question was, "Am I one of them?" Her answer was no, so I still have the wool over her eyes for now.

Back to the red tool box. Once I made the decision to censor what my children could read I thought it would be fun to entertain the internet with some of my notes, my personal embarrassment is a small price to pay for your enjoyment. Please keep in mind that he and I dated through most of my high school years and that is when the majority of these notes were written. I swear I've grown up since then, I really have.

Let's start with the profession of love:

Matthew,

I love you!

Love-ya,
Me

P.S. I love you!

Hmm, profound.

Ok, moving on to a typed note (gee, I'm guessing I was in typing class perhaps neglecting my typing assignment):

Matthew,
Howdy! How ya doin'? Me, fine! I guess! I have a terrible headache though.
And I miss you! And I LOVE YOU! About last night, I'm sorry for questioning
you about whether or not you really loved me! I believe ya!

LOVE-YA,
ME!

Ok, I must take several issues with this one. For starters I know I'm not as chipper, nor have I ever been, as the number of exclamation points in this note might indicate. Then notice how in high school I was already practicing the "honey, not tonight, I have a headache" move. I was always ahead of my age. Did I seriously start this note with "Howdy!"? ACK! One theme I noticed in a few of the letters that is also present in this one is obvious insecurity issues. I wish someone would have grabbed me by the shoulders and told my high school self to GET A GRIP! No fear, I got over that about the first week of marriage when every time I moved from his sight he asked me where I was going. We only lived in 780 square feet, I couldn't go far.

Ok, this is the last one I'll share for tonight, as I still have lots of them to read through.

Matthew,
Hi hon! I'm sorry I didn't have much time to write but we were learning
how to draw atomic models and I had to pay attention!
Kay-O? I promise I'll write in 5th hr. maybe!
I LOVE YOU!

Love-ya,

Me

Well, it's good to see that I was at least attempting to pay attention in one of my classes. Thank the stars I learned how to draw atomic models because I'll be damned if I don't use that knowledge on a daily basis. Apparently I didn't feel I would need to learn anything 5th hour though because it seems it was necessary to write my boyfriend yet another dreary, pointless note. Did I really write "Kay-O?" ACK!

Stay tuned there may be more episodes of "The Red Metal Tool Box" to come.

Ponderings

And so I ponder, why is it necessary for the dog to chase her tail in the middle of my bed?

Today the answer came to me. It is so that when she has chased her tail for so long that she can no longer stand up, at least it will not hurt to fall down.

Blogging vs. French Fries

In the mail today I received my much anticipated copy of No One Cares What You Had for Lunch: 100 Ideas For Your Blog. I sat down with it immediately and was determined to make this the most exciting blog of the year only to find I couldn't concentrate. Hmm. Ok, my mind is on a lot of things today so I figured I would get back to it later in the evening, after the kids are in bed and things quiet down.

So, here I am after my second attempt at reading this book. Once again I couldn't focus. That's when it hit me! I know what it is that keeps distracting me from the contents of the book. It's the picture of those awesome looking fries on the front cover! They look so perfectly hot and crispy with that bright, cool glob of ketchup. I can hear them calling my name. Everytime I sit down with the book I start craving french fries. Tomorrow I might just have to go out, order some fries and munch while I read. If that doesn't work I may seriously have to rip the cover off and put it through my shredder before I can even think of improving my blogging.

Caught during a weak moment

Let me tell you how much I love my paper shredder! I really get into the process of shredding paper. I love to see how an entire bulky stack of paper can be shredded and compressed into a small little pile. I get so into this that my 11 year old decided to take advantage of the situation tonight.

While I was shredding she began asking me math questions. I was giving her the answers, some even required quite a bit of figuring in my head, but none difficult enough to distract me from my shredding, nope, not, never. I'm not sure how many questions I answered before I realized she was doing her homework!

I feel so used.

Number Gender

Do your numbers have genders?

Yesterday while driving, out of the blue my 7 year old says from the backseat, "Mama, 9 is a girl." I immediately disagreed with her and told her that 9 is indeed a boy. About that time I noticed my 11 year old looking at me like I was nuts. So I asked her if she thought 9 was a boy or girl and her response was, "I have no idea what you two are talking about."

That's when it occurred to me that maybe not every one's numbers have genders. I immediately dialed my crazy friend to ask her if her numbers have genders. I knew for sure she would say yes and make me feel saner, WRONG! I'm pretty sure she thought I'd been smokin' crack. I've since asked a couple more people and I've yet to find another adult who's numbers have genders.

So inquiring minds (mainly just mine) want to know... Do your numbers have genders? If so what are they? For instance my numbers 1,6,7,9 and 0 are all males while 2,4,5 and 8 are female. I've never really been able to put a gender label on 3, I think he/she might have numeral gender identity issues. Someone told me 3 should be a female because it's curvy. That then led me to wonder why exactly my numbers have the genders they do or why I've gendered my numbers at all. It's not something I did consciously, it's simply always been that way for as long as I can remember.

So please, I want to hear from others about this. Unless your a mental health professional and you plan to tell me I'm not well (I already know that so let's just keep it between us).

Reflections of a 5th grader

My fifth grader will occassionally mention problems with classmates, ya know, typical 5th grade girl angst. She mostly takes issue with people who brag about themselves all the time. My oldest is, in my mom opinion, nothing like that type of person. I feel it's because she has a healthy self-esteem. I tried to explain to her that sometimes when people don't feel the greatest about themselves they need to brag to make themselves feel better. I guess my message was, be understanding and forgiving but don't let anyone push you around. Apparently my little speech brought forth a memory from second grade that she felt the need to share with me.

There is one classmate in particular that my daughter has problems with. She told me that one day in second grade she decided to stand up to her and tell her how mean she was and that it wasn't appreciated. She said she was feeling pretty good that she had been brave enough to confront this girl. Finally she said, "Then I realized my zipper was open."

Chalk that up to a lesson in humility.

Fun craft projects for your next snow day

The next time your stuck at home with the kids on a snow day why not gather together some supplies and build a tampon shooter! The downside is you won't be able to take it outside to play because once the tampon hits the snow it'll be too big to reload. Don't forget the bandoleer, an absolute must have accessory for the shooter.

You already have a tampon shooter you say? Well then, perhaps you'd enjoy making a tampon toupee for the bald love of your life.

Not in need of either of these items? Take a look around Tampon Crafts, there are all sorts of bizarre crafts for those of you who can't stand to leave your tampons in the cupboard the other three weeks of the month.

Because I can relate

This video at Very Funny Ads speaks to me. Probably because this is how my luck runs.

The work of Satan

Doesn't it just figure that on the day I've decided to give up eating junk fo 40 days I would stumble across this tempting site. After I've been doing so good with my fasting today, I mean all I've had so far today is a half bottle of Coke and one Cadbury Cream Egg!

For real?

As recent years have shown, Britney has lost complete hairbrush function and decided to just do away with the rat's nest all together.

Seriously, can anyone tell me what exactly is wrong with this girl? I wonder how long her boys will run crying from her until they get used to their new bald mommy.