Sand

When I was younger I loved the beach.  Living in a place where lakes abound, I was fascinated by the ocean and couldn't wait to get there.  When I did I marvelled at how beach sand is so much richer and more coarse than the crappy backyard sand they truck in to line the beaches where I'm from.

But all that changed when I became a mother.

Sand is the enemy.  It gets everywhere.  There was a time when I didn't mind taking a nice walk on the beach and shaking out my shoes when we got home. 

Now I have to worry about shaking out shoes, ears, butts, toes, and still finding sand in the strangest places months afterwards.

Some of us (my mother included) are crazy enough to put a whole box of the stuff in the yard so that it can be tracked through the house all year long.  Not me.

The trunk of my car looks like a sandbox from just a few modest trips to the beach where I swear I shook and rinsed and de-sanded everything before we left.

There are toys that she will no longer play with because they have something that appears to be a permanent sand dust on them.

There are sea shell collections that pop up in very unusual spots.  A few days ago I found 3 of them shoved in the dirt in a houseplant.

And yet, in spite of all the trouble and all the mess, we are still constantly drawn back to the beach, aren't we?  We spend all winter longing for the damp breeze and the hot feeling as we dig our toes into the sun-warmed sand and recline while the kids play with a bucket of sludge from the edge of the water.

There is something incredible and beautiful about sand.  And its ability to stay with us long after we think we've left it. 

(Inspired by a prompt from the Red Dress Club)



http://thereddressclub.blogspot.com/

Mother's Day

As much as I complain about my kid, she really is amazingly adorable and wonderful.  This morning after sleeping in until a whopping 8:30 am, as I came down the stairs Lila came speeding through the house smashing her shoulder on the doorway to yell "Happy Mother's Day" at the top of her lungs for me.  Now, I knew she hurt herself, but she was trying SO HARD to be strong and brave and I saw her little lip quivering but she refused to cry.

Next she gave me my presents...a leather bracelet she picked out for me at Target because "It's rockin'" and a pretty little book she made for me at preschool. 

Well, they spelled my name wrong but you have to love a 3 year old's perception of age!

Seriously, how fucking cute are my kid's answers?

I LOVE HER.

Then she presented me with the gift her and her Mia (Ben's mom) made for me over the course of the last two weekends.  It's a MAILBOX!

I blotted out the names and address.  Sorry stalkers!

Seriously.  I have never ben so happy to have this little on to take care of and I hope that you all can find joy in your special day as well!

HAPPY MOTHER'S DAY, MOMMIES!

Because you guys ROCK!

I am finally doling out the awards that were bestowed upon me several weeks ago:

The first one goes to No. 7 and comes with the prerequisite that you tell us all a juicy secret about yourself:

The Second goes to JLK at Pieces of Me because she writes beautifully about a bunch of different topics:

And you only have to give us 7 short facts about yourself in order to claim it. 

OH, and please...pass them on to a blogger you love.

Lila ruins everything

They say that imitation is the highest form of flattery.  Tell that to any mother of a preschooler and she'll tell you that it actually destroys worlds.

Every mom wants to share the things she loves with her children.  For example, a favorite song or book or movie. 

I used to love Joan Jett.  I have seen her in concert a few times and always thought of "I Love Rock and Roll" as the summation of my childhood (I was a strange kid).

Lila also loves that song.  In fact, she loves it so much that when I played the CD one time while driving her to the sitter, she "rocked out" through the whole song, then merrily shouted, "AGAIN!"  By the third time, she was singing along to the chorus and "OOOOOW"-ing in that high-pitched voice of hers.  Luckily, it only took 3 times to get where we were going.

But it didn't stop there.  She needed it every time we got into the car.  Some time around the 218th time in a row I heard it (and nothing else) while driving, I told her that I forgot the disc in the house.  A full-on heartbreak ensued and she cried the entire trip to the grocery store and back.  And even though I could have simply put it on because I was obviously lying, I didn't want her to know I was lying and so instead I endured her tears and whining.

Needless to say, I cringe when I hear it now. 

She did the same to my favorite color, which used to be purple.  Lila LOVES purple.  And after painting her room purple, and getting her purple sheets, a purple rug, purple curtains, a purple bookcase and pretty much any toy that contains purple in it, she started to insist on wearing something purple every single day.  We have A LOT of purple socks and underwear and she would only wear one pair of shoes (can you guess what they look like) every day if I would let her.

She has done this with Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which was my favorite Disney movie.  I hate it now.  This happened with Tom and Jerry cartoons.  It happened with a children's book I kept around BEFORE I EVER EVEN THOUGHT I MIGHT HAVE A KID, Ferdinand the Bull, which Lila wore out in a matter of days.  It happens with foods, with games (I was thrilled the FIRST time she wanted to play Candyland.  The 7,586th time?  Not so much.). 

Because preschoolers are nothing if not obsessive.



(Image from  http://www.last.fm/music/Joan+Jett/+images/5113011)

My Taste in Music is Obviously Questionable

I was fooling around with the interwebs again clicking various links from blogs I like and opened up Mama Kats site and found this prompt:

"Soundtrack of your life: Pick 10 songs that you would have on a soundtrack for your life, pick a line from each that you most identify with and write a short statement of why this song made it."

This got me thinking about all the songs that have been very mood enhancing and/or devastatingly depressing at certain points in my life and so I am going to give you a play by play of the songs playing during the movie version of:

Mostly True Fiction:  Why Selena's Life Sucked but Kind of Didn't

Opening Credits:  A sweeping scene of rain clouds over a volatile body of water with breaks of sunshine beaming through in some spots like at the end of a thunderstorm.
Song: Ordinary World by Duran Duran ("What is happening to me...crazy some say...where is the light that I recognize...GONE AWAY")

Childhood:  I consider this any time BEFORE I was 11.  This time is mostly about my family including the drunk Polish side of my family who I spent most of my time with.  I went to Catholic school and was raised watching MTV with my then-teenaged brother and he used to get somewhat protective over me growing up too fast because he was convinced I would end up a whore. (I think he was on to something)
Song: Sister Christian by Night Ranger ( "Sister Christian there's so much in life..Don't you give it up befrore your time is due...It's true." )

Summer of 1989- I discover boys:  My friend who I will just call "Pippie" and I find a skateboard shop in our neighborhood filled with boys who are too old for us and total rebel punk rock types.  PERFECT!
Song: Boys of Summer by Don Henley (or the remake by the Ataris which I will quote here) "Out on the Road Today I saw a Black Flag sticker on a Cadillac.  A little voice inside my head said 'dont look back, you can never look back'...Thought I knew what love was...what did I know? Those days are gone forever...I should just let them go..."

Summer of 1991 - Selena turns into a Hood rat:   We thought we were really cool and all gangsta and all that but really we were just a bunch of stupid white kids.  Around this time, my mother's depression was at it's worst and so to cope I hooked up with a guy who used to slap me around.  I also ended up hospitalized for depression but when summer came around the bunch of us took over a local schoolyard and terrorized the kids there.
Song: Around the Way Girl by LL Cool J ( I can't quote it because it's too cheesy but it fits, trust me).

1997:  Groupie Alert!: I wrote about it a little before and I am not going into any detail other than to say that I really DO need to do a full post about it.
I will just pick my song:  Plowed by Sponge ("In a world of human wreckage...")

From there until 2004 before I moved to Arizona:  Holy shit.  I was crazy.  I am still not sure what my problem was.  But the jist is that I had many MANY boyfriends.  This may be a great place for a montage, where they shoe me meeting a perfectly nice guy, having sex with him and then turning psycho and throwing shit at him and/or stalking him and finding that he actually IS married after all.  Seriously.  It was a fucked up time in my life.
Song: Crazy on You by Heart ("If we still have time, we might still get by...Every time I think about it, I wanna cry...") I do.  I want to cry when I think about that time.

2004-2007 - Move to Arizona: I just up and left.  I had a friend out there and I was unemployed having been fired for Sexual Harassment (I totally didn't do what I was accused of although I admit to plenty of harassment in other circumstances) and the guy I just broke up with thought I was going to be his wife someday.  Seriously.  So I just left.  I spent a lot of time sitting outside in the hot desert air wishing for rain.  And the song really describes what life was like there
Song: No Rain by Blind Melon ("...And I don't understand why I sleep all day, and start to complain when there's no rain.  And all I can do is read a book to stay away.  And it rips my life away but its a great escape...")

2007-2008 - Baby: Lila NEVER slept.  NEVER. NEVER.  And I needed some medication for depression and the unrelenting anxiety I felt because I never slept and was going crazy.  I stayed on the Xanax long after I needed it because it kept me from losing my mind during those nights where I was up and awake after getting up for the 3rd time with the kid.
Song: Mothers Little Helper by the Rolling Stones ("...you can tranquilize your mind, so go running for the shelter of a mother's little helper. And four help you through the night, help to minimize your plight...")

2008 - Move back to Syracuse:  We were broke.  Bens business had gone under and we really wanted our kid to be near family.  It was a bittersweet move because we had both hated growing up here and had left for good reasons.  But here we were going back home. (You shoule know that compared to AZ with its 95% days WITH sunshine, Syracuse has at least moderate clouds about 90% of the time)
Song: Mama I'm Comin' Home by Ozzy Osbourne ( "...and I don't care about the sunshine yeah..cause mama, mama i'm comin home..")

Now: This part would be about dealing (or not really "dealing") with a toddler/preschooler who is strong-willed (a nice way of saying evil).  The song sums up what I do all day.
Song: Shout at the Devil by Motley Crue.