Boy did I stick my foot in it!

When I screw up, I do it royally. Tonight was a doozy. It all started innocently enough. My daughter had pretended to cut my hair. So I played along and then she commented that it would grow back anyway. I should have seen the danger signs, but I just agreed and kept getting her PJ's on. Then she asked, "Why does your hair grow back when it's short?"

Blithely I replied, "Because your body just grows and it's part of your body. And you know what's really cool? When you die..." Oops! I caught myself too late, and she heard it, dammit!

"When you die what?"

Ugh. Kicking myself, I finished the sentence. Maybe she would let it drop after that if I said it in a sufficiently that's-so-cool sort of tone. "When you die, your hair and nails keep growing for a while. Nuts, right?"

"Yeah!" Pause. "How do they come back?"

Damn. "Who?"

"People who die?"

Go ahead, slap me now. Now I've got a 4 1/2 year old freaking out about death. But I couldn't bring myself to lie about it either now that I had stepped so deeply in the mucky muck.

We went to read How the Grinch Stole Christmas (cheerful place, our home, isn't it?) and she seemed to have forgotten her gloom. But then she cornered my husband. When I went to see what was up, she started crying about how if I died she'd miss me and if she died she'd be someone else. Apparently he'd tried to comfort her with a cursory explanation of reincarnation. At least I am not alone in my stupidity.

Finally, she asked if dying was real. I didn't answer; I just looked at hubby. Of course she asked why I was looking at him. She's really too smart for her own good. Anyway, he did it! He told the lie! "No," he said, "It's not real. Nothing bad is going to happen, now go to sleep."

How many ways is this going to come back to bite us in the butt. I know it's not nearly over.

What a dope I am.

Brief Hiatus

Hello! I will be taking a break for the month of November from blogging in order to write a novel. I may pop in from time to time, but otherwise, I'll be back in December!

Happy November and thanks for reading!!

That Time of Year Again

I'm actually a little late this year, but I've started gathering my materials for my marathon of gift making for the holidays. It's an odd phenomena that happens to me every year. Some time toward the end of every summer or the beginning of fall, I somehow stumble across a new craft or a new level of a craft that I'm already involved with. The past few years, I've been developing my picture DVD making. I had planned to learn more about video making for this year's batch of family gifts, but then I got sidetracked.

So, my new fun thing is felting. A friend introduced me to the process and I'm so excited! I've already made a door sign for my son and a purse for my daughter. These are by no means extraordinary or magnificent things, but for first tries, I'm pretty pleased. I also tried felting a crocheted witches hat which I plopped on the pumpkin in my window. And par for my course, the inspirations hit (with some brainstorming help from said friend).

I think that if this batch of gift - scarves, neck gaiters, purses and barbecue mitts (those will be the most challenging) - work out well, I may restock and reopen my Etsy.com shop under Craftybear. If I do, I'll add the link to my list. I think I shall take some pics and post them here as well. I'm pretty psyched about the possibilities!

When Will It Stop?

I just watched part of a video on MSNBC of two middle schools fighting in a bathroom at school. I’ve seen girls do worse, but of course they were in jail, so it’s sort of apples and oranges. I was a teenager once and I remember threats and viciousness, yet I still found this video clip disturbing. Perhaps I have a different perspective as the mother of a little girl. But it goes a little beyond that, I think. For all the honey in the Hundred Acre Wood, I can’t figure out what it is that we are teaching kids to make them so damned volatile.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of these people petitioning for violence and profanity to be eradicated from all media. I just monitor what my kids are watching. I don’t allow them to watch most TV shows, I seriously restrict violence and our viewing is usually limited to Disney, Nickelodeon or Discovery Kids. But I don’t think I have the right to tell other people what to let their kids watch. At the same time, I can’t understand people who allow their preschoolers to listen to hard-core rap, watch violent movies like Spiderman III or horror flicks and then don’t understand why their kids do things like assault their own parents, curse at them or attack their siblings. That seems to me to be a bit of a contradiction.

We can’t have it both ways. People complain that kids are too violent but then let them play games like Grand Theft Auto.

I don’t blame the media or entertainment industry. I don’t wholly blame the kids. I pretty much think that parents need to stop being so damned touchy feely and start setting some limits on their kids. If everyone parented their kids, I think we might start to see a bit of a change. And I know that has been made virtually impossible these days what with all the ‘experts’ telling parents to boost kids’ esteem and empower them and let them be free and let them make their own decisions at the age of three. “Let them work it out,” I hear from one neighbor who used to be a preschool teacher. “They have to learn.” Sure, okay, but they also need some kind of guidance. That’s the problem with all this ‘self-help’ advice: it throws out great one-liners, but never gets into the reality of implementation. Life cannot be reduced to a catch phrase.

Yes, we should boost kids’ self-esteem, but they also need to understand that they won’t be the best at everything, nor will they win all the time in the real world. I agree that kids should be allowed to make some choices for themselves, but quite frankly, if a three year old could make all their decisions for themselves, they wouldn’t need parents. How’s that working out by the way? You have a kid who thinks they know everything and never has to follow a rule, you say? I can’t imagine why.

I think a bit more of the ‘old-school’ way is going to have to make a comeback and fast. I don’t think that kids need to be beaten, I won’t go that far, but at the same time, parents need to be allowed and supported in setting some better limits on our kids. And stop blaming the media or the entertainment industry. Just because a child wants to watch something or play a game, doesn’t mean they have to be allowed to. Just because everyone else is doing is doesn’t mean that my kid has to do it. How is a child supposed to not succumb to peer pressure when their parents are giving in to it? Barbara Bush may have had some kind of an idea.

Granted, my kids are little and still very much under my thumb and I have no experience raising anyone older than six, but I honestly believe that if the foundation is set at a young age, kids will take those lessons with them. I’ve been fighting those peer pressure battles since the day my oldest was born. People pushing me to let my kids have candy or crappy snacks all the time have changed into different people thinking that I’m stupid for putting their seat belts on to drive down the road. But you know what? My daughter was playing McDonald’s the other day with some peers at the playground, and when she placed her ‘order’ instead of asking for soda, she requested water. I wasn’t there; I heard the story from Grandpa. So obviously the lessons have sunk in. When my kids start expecting gifts and trinkets on a regular basis because they were being given them (against my wishes) I put a stop to it. Now we have a reward system and they have to earn their little treats. And when they want something strictly because they see someone else with it, I say NO! because they don’t always have to follow the crowd.

We’ll see how this works out for us, but I certainly don’t get the sense that I’m alone in thinking that parents are starting to feel the need to regain control. I look at it this way, I can let my kids run amok now and then let them pay the price later (that girl in the video is being charged now – she’ll have a criminal record at the age of fourteen) or I can take the responsibility now and hopefully they’ll be spared when they’re older. As far as I’m concerned, I signed up for the latter the day I decided to become someone’s mother. Or maybe I’m over-simplifying. What do you think?

And just as I finish writing this, there’s another story of a school shooting, and the fourteen-year-old suspect killed himself. When is it going to stop?

How Do They Do It?

There are a number of things that I'm good at. I'd even go so far as to say that I'm a halfway decent parent most days. One thing I stink at, though, is home-schooling. I don't know how all those moms do it. It seems like it should be the simplest thing in the world, natural even - I mean people did it sort of before there were schools, didn't they? Yet the skill set consistently eludes and frustrates me.

My daughter didn't quite make the cut-off for kindergarten this year, and because of finances, she's at preschool less than she was last year. But she still has to know certain things before she starts kindergarten, because from what I keep hearing, these things are no longer taught but expected. Even the children in her class have more developed skills than she does, because they are working on them every day. So I try to work on these things at home. We work on holding the crayon properly, beginning letter sounds, numbers, whatever we can. But what we 'can' do is increasingly less as my patience rapidly dwindles.

It wouldn't bother me so much if it didn't bother her that she's slightly behind her peers. It does upset her though when her kindergarten friends call her a baby or snottily point out that their drawings are better than her scribbles. She gets frustrated when she's having trouble cutting and is the last one to finish her school project. She chastises herself almost as mercilessly than they do and I can't take it. So I try to tell her that where she's at is fine and that she just needs to keep practicing. But she doesn't want to practice - she wants to watch TV or do puzzles or go run outside. While I can't blame her, if she doesn't do the harder things, she won't get better at them and she'll continue to be teased and to berate herself.

We worked on writing her name this morning. First she traced my block letters, then over my dotted lines, then connect the dots. That was all fun until she had to try it on her own.

"I can't do it! I'm no good at writing my name!"

"Yes you can, you just did it five times. Try."

"I don't want to!" And she threw the pencil onto the table.

There is something in my personality that gets very annoyed with people who give up too easily. Some things I have infinite patience for - quitting is not one of them. Even when my husband gives up on a game of chess, on the rare occasion that he's not slaughtering me, instead of playing out the game and seeing if he can pull a win out of his butt, I want to whack him right upside his head. What's this nonsense that you only play until the end when you're winning? I'm as sore a loser as he is, but at least I get mad when someone else beats me - and don't just settle for beating myself.

My daughter seems to have adopted this same trait. She gives up before she can fail. We don't pressure our kids to be great or even good at anything, but I do demand that they try. I just don't seem to have the patience to deal with their frustration intolerance.

Perhaps I have unrealistic expectations, and maybe I'm unwittingly putting too much pressure on my daughter. I just don't want her to feel badly about herself by comparing herself to her friends. She's a smart girl and she's naturally good at lots of things. But she also needs to understand that even if you're not great at something doesn't mean you just stop working at it, especially if it's something you're going to have to do like it or not. You don't want to practice soccer because it's too hard? Fine by me! Do something you enjoy! But being able to write and read is pretty much not optional. She'll need to know those things even if she does join the circus (like she's telling me right now).

So, what am I doing wrong? How do I get her to keep working on those skills without making them so miserable that we're both irritated with each other and the task at hand? How do those home-schooling moms do it? Any comments or advice will be much appreciated.

Who Says I Have to Do Something With My Hair?

Almost two years ago, I decided to stop relaxing my hair and to wear it naturally. That was on Election Day of 2005. Not long after that I decided that I was ready to transition into dreadlocks. There were many reasons for these changes, but one major reason was that I felt I needed to regain some part of my cultural and ethnic identity. Other factors were a desire to stop poisoning my hair and body with chemicals, and to stop warping my mind by trying to fit the description of someone I could never be. I don't think I consciously wanted to be anyone else, but subconsciously, it's kind of ingrained in the culture: long, silky, shiny, bouncin'-and-behavin' hair was the the way.

I love my locs. They require some maintenance, but are actually easier on a day to day basis than having my hair relaxed, or even just wearing in naturally loose. I've had periods of wanting to chop them off, more out of a need for change than anything else, but they've always passed. My hair is my hair and it's awesome (to me) just the way it is.

So where did I get this crazy notion that I need to do 'something' with it tonight?
My husband and I are going to a wedding this evening - his cousin is getting married. I should point out that his family is Italian. I bought a really knock-out dress and made a lovely shrug to go with it. I've got the shoes and accessories to go with it. Then for some bizarre reason, I got this idea in my head that I needed to do 'something' with my hair.

It's not so huge a leap to make - that's what all women say when they're dressing up, isn't it? When you're 'going out' you go get your hair done. The thing is, there's not all that much to do with my hair. I go to a loctician periodically and she's done a funky thing with pipe-cleaners to set it and make it curly, but I can't do that myself. Nor do I have the money or time to go see her. I actually think my hair looks nicer without the curls. But still, I tried.

I washed it and twisted as I normally would. I even did some cute twists at the front and secured them back from my face. And then I decided to try the pipe cleaners. Call it temporary insanity. Clearly I am not my loctician. I noticed pretty quickly that it was not going to work. So then I spent a very frustrating time trying to get the pipe cleaners back out of my hair. But I didn't quite give up on the idea of 'doing' my hair.

I kept the front twists and then thought that maybe if I rolled up the back and secured it in a kind of bun, the ends might get a bit of a curl. I should really know better.

This morning, after a night with an awful headache, I undid my hair. Now it is a) still damp and b) not curled at all. Total waste of a good night's sleep.

So now my hair looks pretty much like it always does and this is not a problem in the least. It's clean and groomed and will drape nicely over my shoulders, not taking away from the real focus of my ensemble: my dress. If I do say so myself, I think I will look pretty darned good tonight. I just wish I had saved myself the headache of trying to conform to someone else's idea of 'done' and had spent a bit less time time in pain. Live and learn. I locked my hair as a way of accepting myself as I am. Sometimes I just need to be reminded that everyone else will just have to accept me as I am, too.

What happens when I get off my ass

Not to pat myself on the back, but I kind of amaze myself sometimes. It seems that what I really need to get myself motivated is a deadline, preferably one that is ridiculously close.

I have a wedding to attend this Saturday and I needed a wrap of some sort. I'm just being practical here - it's October, I hate to be cold and I don't have a lot of disposable income at the moment to buy something I'll wear once. So I decided to make a shrug.

Now, I had started this shrug back in the spring. Between May or June and this past Monday I completed about 5 rows (crocheted). Today, the shrug is just about completed. Did I really have to do the marathon crocheting thing, working until my fingers were ready to fall off every day? Apparently I did.

So there's the secret. In order to avoid a million unfinished projects, I need to have a specific purpose or goal BEFORE I start a project. And that goal has to be imminent. For example, I can't start making a gift for a pregnant friend when I find out they're pregnant. No, I have to do it the week before the baby shower. Otherwise, I end up (like I am now) with three or four unfinished baby blankets in my closet and a whole mess of yarn that I would never use for anything but a baby blanket. It's kind of wasteful, when you think about it. I'm hoarding all this perfectly good yarn, with the vague intention of using it sometime, but someone else could be using it much more productively.

And there we have it. I think I will have to impose some sort of deadline for the rest of these projects (i.e. scrapbooks) that I have sitting around. I want them OUT!!

Scrapbooking

Generally, I love scrapbooking. I love creating the layout designs, choosing colors to complement photos, devouring magazines and books to learn more, more, more. I love when people see my scrapbooks and are moved by them, whether to tears or laughter. Why does love always seem to lead to trouble?

For the past several years I've given family members scrapbooks - hard or digital copies - for Christmas. They're usually a huge hit. They were such a hit that my sister-in-law requested a scrapbook for her wedding gift. That was a year ago. I just can never seem to find the energy or the motivation to sit down and do it.

Then around the same time she asked I got the brilliant idea that I could do custom scrapbooks for people. My mom, trying to be supportive, decided to become my first customer. She ordered 3 identical scrapbooks for my kids, my brothers kids and for herself. The were supposed to be gifts for last Christmas.

It would seem that I am an incredible flake, and maybe on some level I am. But I am also responsible for 2 kids, a husband, a cat a house and a few jobs. I can't work on scrapbooks during the day because kids and scrapbook materials don't mix well. At night, I'm pretty much incapable of doing more than drool at the television until I pass out, which usually is about thirty minutes after my kids have gone to sleep.

Knowing that I have all these responsibilities, people have still made their requests. It's flattering on some level, but I think there may be a teensy bit of resentment. am I not stretched thin enough, people? Now, it's not like anyone is breathing down my neck for their books, rather I'm breathing down my own neck because I feel bad. I don't like to disappoint or flake out on people, but I only have a finite store of energy, which is usually depleted by five o'clock every day - I just don't have any more in me.

the books will get done. Maybe by Christmas, maybe by next year, who knows. I know one thing for certain: it's a darned good thing I never went forward with that business idea.

Saggy (pajama) Pants

Before I go any further, I should point out that I've been awake since 3:45 am, so I'm not particularly filled with sunshine and daisies this morning. I was awakened by my daughter who had kicked the covers off and was cold. But then I couldn't go back to sleep because I was cold and my pajamas were annoying me - mostly it was the pajamas.

I was very excited the other day when I went out and bought some new comfy jammies. They're quite nice - blue plaid, flannel. I was pleased. That is to say I was pleased until I put them on and discovered that they, like almost every-doggone-thing else, are low waisted. Did they have to do it to the pajama bottoms too?

Who the hell are clothing manufacturers dressing anyway? Certainly not me. I don't think I'm alone with my little bit of a gut from birthing two babies. Granted, not everyone in the world has a belly after they have kids, but I find it quite odd that in this country, which we are told has a pandemic obesity problem, there are more women with flat little model bellies than woman with more rounded ones.

I actually did some looking before I started ranting. It's damned near impossible to find pants that come to the waist anymore. They even have the nerve to advertise these waistlines as more comfortable. For whom? Are you kidding? Is it really more comfortable to have your navel hanging over your waistband and to feel like your pants are constantly falling off? Don't get me wrong, you can still get natural waisted pants, they just tend to fit and look like something my grandmother would have worn. Also, what's this nonsense about the 'natural waist'? Do they mean the natural waist of a short waisted person with long legs or the natural waist of a long waisted person with short legs? Because I'm neither, so I guess I'll just grab a fig leaf, thanks. Maybe that's the problem - it's too hard to figure out where the waist should be, so why not cut it out altogether?

I'm not even forty yet - I don't need to dress but so matronly; I'd just like to not accentuate the fact that I've put on a couple (dozen) pounds since I had my kids. And being that my hands are usually occupied, I'd prefer to not have to keep stopping to pull my pants up. Why is it so impossible to look cute AND keep your pants up AND not go bankrupt to do it?

And now it's the pajamas. The last thing anyone needs is to feel like their pants are falling off while they're trying to sleep! I thought they'd be okay and that as long as I had the drawstring tied, they'd stay put. Had I been able to sleep through the night I probably wouldn't have noticed.

For those of us who can't afford to spend hundreds of dollars on a pair of jeans and tend to shop at big retailers like Walmarts and Targets, there is sad little to choose from. Would someone please tell these clothing makers to cut us some slack...and maybe another inch at the waist?

It's that day again

I tend to not like remembering this day. Not that I don't think it deserves remembrance, it's just painful. I don't want to think of all the lives lost. I don't want to relive the conversation I was having with my mom while I was watching Good Morning America and wondering why that plane was so close to the Tower. I hate to remember the terror of not knowing where my family members were.

But I do remember those things, vividly. As I sat at the vet today, I watched the memorial on television. I didn't cry this year; it's only taken six years to get past that.

I've never attempted to visit Ground Zero, never been able to get up the nerve. Too many ghosts there. The din would break my mind and the emotional tumult would shatter what's left of my heart. I honestly don't know if I'd be able to physically walk out of that place, if I were in fact able to walk in.

And as if the loss of life were not enough to traumatize and entire world of people, I also get a bit misty over the destruction of the buildings themselves. They were a part of so many histories...I still have trouble believing that I will never be able to take my children to the top.

I remember the first time I visited the Twin Towers, and the only time I ever went to the top. It was Thanksgiving of 1984 - I was fourteen and my brother and his wife had taken me to the parade. That was my first and last Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. It was too cold for my taste; watching on television has always sufficed for me.

I remember visiting a church across the street. I want to say it was the oldest in the city, but I'm not certain of that fact, nor will I go look it up. I prefer to leave the memory just as it is. There were these statues, black metal, of people in different poses: a businessman sitting on a bench reading the paper, another suited gentleman walking down the street. One statue was on the steps of the church if I recall correctly. I was caught off guard and thought a couple of them were real. I don't know if they survived the attack, and I think I'm happier not knowing for sure. Then there's hope that they did.

The top of the tower was windy and I recall the feeling of the building swaying beneath me. It did nothing to soothe my fear of heights.

Today is pretty dismal - a stark contrast to the bright sunny morning of six years ago. That was a Tuesday as well. I think the rain makes it appropriately somber.

My heart goes out to all those families who lost loved ones in the tragedy.

Random insights

I'm fading.

Fragments of myself have been slipping away piece by piece, and I'm not even sure sometimes who or what is left.

I used to dance - not well, but freely. I used to hit the club, check my Self in at the giant speaker in the corner, and then lost myself in the rhythms. But my husband doesn't dance, so now neither do I.

I used to sing. I wasn't terrible, but certainly no Patti La Belle. Still, I could often be seen in my car making the ugly faces, lettin' loose to the blasting stereo. Hip-hop (old-school), R & B, Classic Soul...Now I listen to kids' music, mostly, because my daughter complains when I try to listen to mine, and honestly, some of mine contains lyrics that I don't want the kids listening to. Also, my husband and I generally have divergent tastes, so we look for what's tolerable to the both of us and compromise.

Compromise. This is what happens when you marry outside of your own culture, except that it tends to end up swaying toward one or the other, so the compromise is inevitably imbalanced.

I'm Nemo the fish: snatched from my ocean and plunked into this fishbowl. Totally my own doing, but I still miss home. The other fish in this tank are reasonably nice, but they aren't enough, at least not yet, to make it home.

And yet, I've always straddled the lines between worlds, have always been multi-cultural in a sense. When I was very little, I enjoyed Barry Manilow just as much as disco music. Now the choices are more along the lines of: pasta and meatballs or rice and beans; hard rock or R & B; khakis and a polo shirt or baggy jeans and a t-shirt. Back in the day, though, they were: rice and beans or oxtails; Salsa or Hip-hop; bright florals or African prints. No big difference when you get right down to it. My cousin's friend once commented, "She's not black, she's Puerto Rican." Hmm...he must have been looking at someone across the street.

The difference is that right now my Self seems to be MIA. There was an apparent theft when I wasn't looking. I checked my Self somewhere, turned around for a second, and then it was gone.

It's really no wonder that I identify so much with Bella Swan - I am Bella in some ways, without the fun of having a sexy-as-hell vampire and werewolf in love with me (that I know of), and Talair. More accurately, Talair is me, or will be soon, although she doesn't know it yet. IT will be painful news to deliver.

So what's a fragmented gal like me to do? I suppose if I had money I could go take some sort of cultural dance class. If I had more time I could do more yoga; that at least helps to lift me above sides and fences, and I can just be without needing to choose. Yoga puts the pieces back together in such a way that the parts are irrelevant. There is only one whole.

For today, Dave is my glue. I've been listening to the Dave Matthews Band this morning, and he's been talking my ear off. Talair will be busy come November. DMB has become for me like that speaker in the club: I can check my Self in at Boyd's fiddle bow or Leroi's high hats and know that my Self will be safe when I get back. They never require that I choose, only that I listen and let go. Hmm...probably not the wisest thing to do while driving, by the way.

I am wondering if my depression is a cause or effect of this loss of identity. Perhaps it's a bit of both. At any rate, balancing right smack in the middle of the fence has felt pretty good today. I haven't felt like I'm missing anything. I've actually been just one person today - just me.

The Fish Incident

Yesterday was an interesting day. I got to see an example of people at their best and unfortunately people at their worst, all in the space of a single afternoon.

We were at the lake, my in-laws, the kids and me, and a woman with what seemed to be a hundred little girls of various ages. My daughter, being the little butterfly that she is, right away made friends. MM (my daughter) is four and the youngest girl there had to be at least five or six.

The first thing to tip me off that these might not be the most angelic group of children was that they asked MM if they could borrow her shovel...and then her pail...and a couple more shovels...a strainer...pretty soon they had taken every toy that we'd brought to the beach. Not one of them thought to give MM something to play with even though they were her toys. I said nothing and let her deal. I got slightly annoyed when Gus went to use our watering can (probably to help the girls who were playing with it, by the way) and one of the girls shooed him away because they were playing with it. It's his watering can! I screamed internally, but still I kept my mouth shut. I can't get involved in everything my kids are experiencing; they have to learn to speak up for themselves.

Later in the afternoon as I was in the water with Gus, there was a sudden disturbance on the shore. Apparently the girls caught a fish. It's a pretty typical thing for the kids to do, so I didn't think anything of it at first. MM ran out of the water to see what her new friends were up to.

At first when I looked up, I thought they were carrying the fish around by a fin. This would have been disturbing enough, but then I got a better look: the poor thing had a stick jutting in one gill and out the other. I pointed this out to the lifeguard who went to rescue the poor thing's body before it could be further defiled. Apparently the girls were about to poke its eyes out.

I have to say that I am incredibly proud of my daughter, and I told her so. She didn't like what she saw, and she spoke up. She told her new, older, gang of friends that what they were doing was not nice. And there were real tears glistening off her cheeks when she saw that the fish had been bleeding. My daughter may be a lot of things, but she has a truly compassionate heart, and the courage to stand up and speak out against what she feels is unjust.

Part of her character is undoubtedly just her personality, but I think part of it may stem from having a brother with special needs. She's come to his defense, even though he's the older, on several occasions. Even when a big bear of a man yelled at Gus one day, she wasn't afraid; she went right to hi and in her most polite and endearing voice, apologized for what her brother did, and the man felt about two inches tall for picking on a little kid.

When MM does something inappropriate, I check her immediately. No, you can't listen to loud music when someone is sleeping - you wouldn't like if they did it to you. No, you are not allowed to put your hands on your hips and glare at mommy when you're angry at me. No, you don't get your way by having a hissy-fit, you suck it up when you can't have something, and maybe if you behave well enough that might change. I would have never in a million years sat by and watched her harm an innocent animal.

This brings me back to my original thought. The little girls at the beach were not being very nice, sugar-and-spice little girls. But I don't blame them. They were not alone; they had a "responsible" adult supervising them (if you want to call it that). But the woman said nothing. she sat and watched them torture this poor creature whose worst crime was probably chasing after a pretzel thrown in the water.

I am constantly amazed at people who complain about how rotten kids have become over the past couple of generations. Well hell! It's not their fault! No one wants to discipline or be the bad guy; no one wants to be the one to say "no" to their kids. "Empower them!" parents have been told. "Raise their self esteem!" But this has gone far beyond the intended limit, I fear. Because we've got a generation of kids who can't cope with losing, who can't take correction or criticism, and who have a sad deficiency of empathy. And no, it's not all kids. I think finally parents are starting to see how maybe the loosey-goosey style of parenting may have some flaws. Unfortunately, there are still an awful lot of parents who think the word "no" should be taboo. My daughter was crying over the cruelty of those little girls, and their "mother" (she was someone's mother if not everyone's) couldn't be bothered to say, "No. Stop. That's wrong." She left that up to a four year old.

Back to School Shopping

First, I have to say to chain stores like Walmart and Target: Would you PLEASE stop stocking your racks and shelves a season ahead?

What ever happened to the days when back-to-school shopping was done at the end of August, just before, oh, I don't know, when school started? This year I started seeing school supplies the first week of August. My son hadn't even finished summer school; who the hell was thinking about September? We were just getting into the swing of summer!

Anyway, we went and did our supply shopping today because Gus goes back next week. It went well for the most part, but it was also frustrating. I've got pants, sneakers, supplies and even boots for the kids. Why, can someone tell me, can I not find long-sleeved t-shirts? I even found sweaters for MM, but no shirts. Two stores! I found one shirt for MM and one button-down for Gus. But boots and sweaters. I just don't get it.

Don't even get me started on the lunchboxes.

And, I'm sad to say I'll have to make yet another trip because my kids still have no shirts. But I'm guessing by then the winter coats and things will be out. Maybe that was part of the plan. Put half the stuff you need out in the summer, then make you come back in early September to buy the rest at which time you get sucked into preparing for the snowstorm that won't be coming for three months.

Does St. John's Wort work?

I have no idea; I'm only one person, but I think maybe it does.

Last night, my husband, an MSW, needed to do a 'test' evaluation on someone for his job. They were trying out a new assessment tool or something. So he used me as his subject. He called this morning to let me know he'd scored the test and I am apparently severely depressed.

Now, I've known this for months, and actually so has he on some level. I started taking St. John's Wort in May twice a day. It helps somewhat when I remember to take it. You've got to love irony - depression can effect your memory, so I have to remember to take my 'meds', but if I forget, my depression is worse.... If I wasn't in such a crap mood so ofter, I'd find the whole cycle mildly chuckle-worthy.

So we've determined that I should maybe up the dosage to three times a day - just because I often forget to take the pill twice a day is no reason not to aspire to take it once more. I feel somewhat better when I do take it, less good if I forget a dose, awful if I go a few days without. So I can only assume it's doing something for me.

By the way, I'm fairly certain that my mood swings are hormonal, resulting from estrogen fluctuations. So maybe if I stay on St. John's Wort for the next ten years until I go through menopause, I'll be cured! Hm... perhaps I shouldn't pursue a comedy career until that actually comes to pass.

Yoga Guy Video

I could tell so many stories about inappropriate yoga people in general; I'm sitting here laughing my butt off. In this video, the yoga guy is hitting on women, but what about the inappropriate yogis who are just annoying and can't be bothered to learn basic yoga etiquette? While there are many "Inappropriate Yoga Guys," not all of them are hitting on girls; some of them are just too loud, too raucous, too obnoxious, and not always men.

Of course there has to be some kind of concession made for the newcomer - he or she might take a few minutes or a few classes to get the subtle hints about behavior. But what about the regular practitioners who are still doing things like talking loudly at the beginning, or worse, during class?

I've been teaching for about five years now and I've seen some...interesting characters. And I should say that I'm not the strictest, most rigid teacher. I like to keep things light because I find that it lends a nicer energy to the class and the practice. But even with that, there have been some moments.

I taught for a long time in a gym, so you can extrapolate whatever you will from that, in and of itself. There was one "Inappropriate Yoga Guy" who I always dreaded seeing because he hit on me every time he came to class. It was to the point that at the end of class, I would make sure that one of the other regulars would hang around and not leave me along with the guy.

It started pretty early in my teaching, too. In the beginning, since my classes were fairly small, I would do manual adjustments on each person during final relaxation. It's a common practice: apply some pressure to the shoulders, give some traction at the head or legs, all in the name of helping the students relax more. Well, that didn't last long. This guy happened to be at a class where I was doing the head-traction thing and suddenly after that, he would request it during every class. Now, I was also pregnant at the time, so the manual adjustments had to stop anyway - the bending was to much for me - but even if I hadn't been, I would have had to stop because, quite frankly, he creeped me out.

This situation went on, on and off, for the four years I worked at that place. He wouldn't show up for a lovely period of months, then out of the wood works, he'd come to class, stand around not doing half the poses (so I'd come and pay some attention to him, which eventually, I stopped doing) and then after class would ask really inappropriate things. The last straw was when he started asking about soul-mates and if I could help him find his. He had the nerve to say this in front of at least two other people who were gobsmacked at his audacity. I responded, less than politely, that I'd found mine and I couldn't help him with that. After that, unprofessional as it may sound, when he would come to class, I would try to pretend he wasn't there for the most part. See, in that environment, there was no one for me to complain to. If it had been a studio, I would have told the owner and he would have been dealt with. But in a gym, the management couldn't care less.

Even where I'm working now, my very first class was during a 'free' week. Two men came to the class, and at the end, sure enough, one of them started asking me if I danced and gave me his number and all this information about a swing-dancing group. This was after I pointed out that, no, my HUSBAND and I don't dance. Insert sigh here.

There have been the guys who just make loud proclamations of an irrelevant nature in the middle of a class, or the guy who loves to show off his headstands, or the woman who has to let everyone in class know about every ailment she's ever had, and by the way, she's getting old and can't do this stuff, or the person who just can never seem to get to class at any other time but during meditation.

The best was the woman who came to class with her two very elderly parents - one who could barely move and the other with sever Alzheimer's - and then left them there in a room full of about thirty-five other people. That one I had to put a stop to for their own safety and the safety of my other students. I mean, honestly, it's not good for anyone to see a person climbing on their spouse's back during Downward Facing Dog.

What do you do if you encounter one of these characters? Talk to the teacher first. If that doesn't work and you're at a studio, go right to the owner - they have the authority to ban people from their studios for refusing to behave. At a gym, members have much more weight than instructors in the eyes of management, so going to the teacher is still a good move, but then you may need to address the complaint to the club manager or the group exercise manager if the club is big enough to have one. I don't recommend getting overly upset (unless the behavior is so out of control, like someone making physical contact) right off the bat. Gentle admonitions can often do the trick - some people really just don't know any better and need a little guidance. Getting angry and calling the perpetrator out in the middle of class though will only serve to ruin your practice and sense of calm, along with everyone else's. If all else fails, set yourself up for deep relaxation, grab and eye pillow and just say OM...and then chuck said eye pillow at the back of the jerk's head. But you didn't hear that from me.

Leave my freakin' drink alone!

This annoys me: when I leave half of my drink on the table and have to get up to do something (I always have to get up from dinner to do something) and I come back to find my drink gone. My husband doesn't usually clear the table (although he does do the dishes), but when he does he has this terrible habit of pouring out the remainder of my drink. What the hell? Leave my drink alone! He leaves drinks sitting all over the place for hours and I don't bother them. Yet it's open season on my beverage if I walk away from it for ten minutes. I feel like I have to be Mad-Eye Moody - constant vigilance!





Is it such a hardship to just ask before pouring something out?



This brings me to another pet peeve - I really can't stand being in a restaurant where the waiters hover, giving the clear impression that you're talking too much or eating too slow and would you please leave now but give me a nice tip even though I'm pushing you out the door.



Anyway, back to the matter at hand: my drink. What makes it worse is that since I've been trying my hardest to wean us all off of unhealthy foods, sugar has been the number one thing to go. So that means we have no sodas or juices or sugary anything liquid in the house. I bought some cold-brew iced tea bags and I've been sweetening them with alternative sweeteners - Agave or Stevia. These sweeteners, because they are all natural, are very expensive. So it adds insult to injury to waste half a glass of a drink sweetened with these products.

Whatever - husbands, you've been put on notice. When you see a drink on the table, leave the damned thing alone unless you've verified and confirmed and gotten orders in triplicate to take them away. Otherwise, you may very well bring on Armageddon.

Ten Ways to Thoroughly Depress Yourself

Start with a dreary day, preferably one that's bitingly cold or oppressively sticky and hot for best results.

Don't bother to put on clothes; stay in your pajamas. I find that if I don't get dressed in the morning, especially when I'm sick, that can pretty much ensure a bout of the blues by midday. Don't dress the kids either if you can avoid it; happy, energetic kids will kill a depression. Better to have them as lethargic as you are.

Have something with loads of sugar as early as possible. That way, you'll have just enough energy to do what you absolutely must - like getting the kids out to school - but then you'll have that lovely sugar crash. The more sugar you've had, the harder it is to bounce back from the crash, so eat accordingly. There's also the added guilt of eating empty calories, but that only works if you've got any internal issues with your weight. If you're happy in your body, don't expect a sugar binge to help you to fix that.

Make sure you have nothing productive to do. I for one only have to leave the house for work a few days a week, so my best days for being down are the days I can stay at home.

Start a blog or create a MySpace, LiveJournal or some other such page, and then friend lock it. But don't invite anyone to come and join with you. That way if you need to add loneliness to your feeling of despair, you can just click on your page and see the glaring lack of interest in, well, you.

Talk to someone you can't stand, or at the very least, someone who will criticize you mercilessly. In-laws or parents can be great for this! Moms have really perfected this to an art-form, by the way, as have mothers-in-law (well, they are moms too, so it would stand to reason). Not married? No worries - there's always a bully somewhere close by if one only looks hard enough. Don't give up!

DO NOT leave the house, except in the case of fire or other life-threatening emergency, especially if (heaven forbid) the sun has decided to come out. This should be made easier if you've followed the first rule of not getting dressed.

Listen to sad music or watch a sad movie. Better yet, watch a show about really rich people, or someone who has things in life you will never even be able to dream of. Obviously, if you're rich and attempting to use this method, your options will be limited.

Scour the Internet aimlessly. Something about the lights and the screen just seem to kill brain cells.

Shop online! Now, it's been proven that shopping can give you a temporary mood boost, but that will only last as long as it takes for you to get that email confirming your impulse purchase! Then the guilt, and possibly fear about how you will pay for the item, will undoubtedly set in.

So if you're really intent on being an unhappy camper, some or all of these things should get you well on your way. Happy wallowing!

The Temeraire Series

I've been reading Naomi Novik's historical fantasy series for a while now and for the most part, I love it. The first book, His Majesty's Dragon introduced Laurence, a naval officer who by an odd twist becomes a dragon aviator. And the reader watches the relationship between aviator and dragon, Temeraire, develop into one of the most intense and loving partnerships I've ever seen. I already loved dragons, but Novik goes far beyond your traditional dragon story. She shows a whole culture built around this aerial corps and her attention to detail is magnificent. And Temeraire is amazingly developed - he's smart, witty, fiercely loyal to his aviator and crew - if this ever gets made into a movie, he'll have women of all ages swooning over him.

The conflict is set during the Napoleonic wars with the added bonus of dragons acting as sort of fighter planes, complete with gunners, cargo holds and full crews. The dragons are intelligent and the different breeds have special abilities. What I wouldn't give to live in this world!

The second book, Throne of Jade, takes Laurence and Temeraire on an adventure to the far east. Here the reader learns more about him and his background amidst a back drop of a very well crafted intrigue. Temeraire is a Chinese dragon, you see, and they have a very different outlook on dragons than their European counterparts. While this book slowed down considerably, it was still an exciting read. Temeraire grows in some poignant ways, while receiving a few lessons in the harshness and injustice of the world.

The third book is where I'm having some trouble. Laurence and Temeraire must get back home with a very time sensitive cargo in this third installment. The first problem is obtaining the package, the second is getting across the world through several different obstacles and delays. The delays are where the book starts to falter. There is still lots of intrigue, betrayal, vengeance, and more, but for some reason I'm finding Black Powder War less engaging and very plodding. Even the battle sequences seem to lack the same lustre as in the first two novels. I'm a bit more than halfway through, but it seems to be taking forever. Hopefully it will pick up and I'll finish it some time this year.

Fisher Price is funny

One of the reasons we chose today to go to the zoo was that Fisher Price was sponsoring a kids week there meaning that there were extra activities going on, characters, story times, crafts, etc. After we had spent a decent length of time seeing the animals, we went to check out the activity area. Fisher Price cracks me up.

It was nothing more than a toy showcase before the holiday season kicks in. It was a pretty smart ploy - let y9our kids play with our newest toys so they can harass you for them for the next four months. Honestly, though, I hope they have something else lined up for the holidays, because what we saw today was unimpressive. At one point, a gentleman whose daughter was playing with the same toy as mine was had to ask one of the attendants the age group on the toy. Why? Because none of the three parents there could figure out how to work the darned thing. When we did, it turned out to be kind of crappy.

The ironic thing is, that after the whole scandal with the Mattel recalls, most of the toys were Dora the Explorer and Diego! toys. I mean, this even must have been planned ages ago, but what good timing for them! Come buy our big headed Dora doll - it doesn't have lead. By the way, there was a life sized Dora doll that fell over because its head was indeed to heavy for its body - the woman next to me and I both thought a child had tripped in front of us - a particularly large headed child. One more thing my daughter will NOT be getting this year.

Weird mood

I'm in a very strange head space this morning. The wheels in my brain are spinning all over the place. It's like the Tasmanian Devil is running around my head. But at the same time, I feel really tired and I don't really want to do anything. Then there's the sneaking suspicion that I'm going to be depressed, like crying and wanting to crawl back into bed, at any minute. I think I can resist that if I can just find something productive to do, but I can't seem to settle into anything. I've tried doing research, job hunting, chatting via AIM, eating...jeez, I can't even figure out what I want to snack on! I thought about writing and finishing the story I'm working on, but that's not coming to me the way I need it to; I thought about starting a new short piece - a world building piece for my novel, but I can't get a clear image to start with on that either.

I just don't know what to do with myself! And right now, this is about as much as I can get together in a coherent thought pattern.

Edit: Since this morning, I've attempted to bake a loaf of bread. Unfortunately, so I've just learned, bread doesn't rise well if it's too cold. And it's pretty cold and crappy here today. And my son's laptop (which was given to us on its last leg) just died, and he's not a happy boy. Nothing is working! I'm almost afraid to attempt the laundry.

Impulse buying

I seem to have a problem, and I'm certain that I'm not alone. Whenever I'm starting to feel that we're getting squeezed financially, I have this ridiculous habit of doing the most impulse spending. It's backwards and (I think) a little insane, but I can never seem to stop myself. In the past twelve hours I've purchased an autographed photo of my favorite Harry Potter actor and a bread maker. It's not even nine o'clock yet! In my defense, the photo was my husband's idea, trying to make up for something really dumb that he did over the weekend. But I jumped all over the opportunity.

We've got a ton of expenses coming up: major dental work I have to take care of, getting the fireplace cleaned and inspected, fuel, back to school clothing and supplies, and half the expense for our patio expansion that I owe my in-laws. There's a hospital bill hanging over our heads from a procedure that my daughter had months ago...I really have no business buying a bread maker from eBay, even if it was only $25.

Every two weeks at bill paying time, I sit at the computer lamenting over how we're going to pay them, wondering where we're going to get grocery money from this time. The stress and depression continue to build and then eventually, it all boils over and I shop. I buy books, toys for the kids, food treats, organizers for all the crap that I buy that I have no space for. It's like a sickness. I end up feeling guilty and getting more depressed and the cycle starts again.

Am I the only person who does this? And if I'm not and someone has any clue how to stop, I'd love to hear it!!

High School Musical 2

We were big fans of HSM, partly because the music was fun and partly because it was something we could watch with the kids without fear of our heads exploding (or theirs, like with Cars). So when HSM2 was announced, it was a cause for excitement in our house. Gus was particularly excited because it would be the first time he was allowed to stay up late to watch a movie like a big kid. It provided a great bribery tool all week.

Unfortunately, but expectedly, it wasn't anywhere near as good as the first one. It wasn't terrible, but I don't see myself humming What Time is It? anytime soon. Unlike the first installment, HSM2 didn't hold the kids' attention and they chose to go to bed halfway through.

The movie starts off on the last day of the same school year as the first movie, but already there was one continuity break that just screamed at me. Now, whether or not it was unintentional, the principals suddenly look way more polished than they did in the original movie. They just didn't look like they'd just finished their junior year to me at all. I don't mean to say that they looked bad, although I'm not in love with Zac Efron's new hair, I just had a much harder time buying them as the age they're portraying. And this is from someone who's obsessively and religiously followed the Harry Potter franchise.

The plot was pretty uninspired, but while the first half seemed to lack any realy conflict, the movie bounced back in that area by the second half. Likewise, the music in the first half, especially the first song, seemed to be trying to recapture the best of the music from the first film, but didn't quite make it. A couple of the later numbers got a bit more creative. The song I Don't Dance had some interesting elements of swing and hip-hop; Zac Efron's solo Bet On It was very reminiscent of one of my favorite scenes in West Side Story; the duet Gotta Go My Own Way nearly moved me to tears with Vanessa Hudgens belting it out and Zac 's teary eyed harmonizing.

I will say this in praise of the movie - the actors have all grown in their craft and the performances were much improved. The supporting cast was given more to do this time around and were allowed to show a more of their talents as well.

It's a likable movie. I don't know if we'll be buying the DVD - the kids may be ambivalent about it. But if they do want it, it's still good clean entertainment appropriate for a wide age range. Not what I'd call a waste of time or money. I'd give it 3 of 5 stars.

Edit: I was just informed that Gus loved the music and is already singing the songs. He's asked for the soundtrack and the DVD, so my review is pretty much irrelevant. The kid liked it.

Go ahead and laugh

Around one o'clock this morning I was awakened to a blaring, beeping noise. I shot out of bed, head whipping around, and then I realized where it was coming from. It was the alarm on the back door. Frantic, I woke DH (which is like waking a zombie) and yelled, "The alarm!" We both raced downstairs to check the back door.

Now let me just pause here to point out that we were completely unarmed. What the HELL did we think we were going to do to an intruder in our jammies, half asleep, with our bare hands? I turned on the light at the base of the stairs and...nothing there. DH went to the back door to find it locked, and he turned off the alarm. Now we were really freaked out - what tripped the alarm? I checked the front door and it was locked as well. I should also not that I keep the proper doors AND the screen doors locked in the front and back of the house. The chances of someone getting in without being heard long before the alarm goes off are very slim.

Anyway, we searched around and...

About a week ago, Phil installed some roll-up blinds because of the curtain-breaking incident. When he did this, we realized that when fully up, the blinds lean right against the alarm. It's usually not an issue, but if the door is open, and then we slide it closed without lifting the blinds a little, the other piece of the alarm hits it. So one day I forgot, closed the door and a little piece of the alarm, which is just held on with mounting tape, came off. DOH! I was able to stick it back on, but apparently it wasn't stuck enough. The little piece fell off last night, broke the connection and tripped the alarm.

But good to know our reflexes are so sharp that we took forever spinning our wheels before finally doing the stupidest thing possible. ROFLMAO!!

Welcome!

Hello!

My name is Angie and this blog is about me and my opinions. My interest include: family and parenting, books, movies, writing, crafts, yoga and spirituality, and there are many others that may appear from time to time.

I am a full time mom and part time yoga teacher, so of course it follows that I have loads of time to spend at my computer blathering away! I hope you enjoy your visits and come back often. Enjoy!