Life As a Scale

I am a Libra.  As a Libra I am often drawn to the scales.  I have realized in many ways, life is a scale. Each and every event or action in your life affects its balance.  You can not live a perfect, balanced life, unless you experience both success and failure. You can not have a balanced love if you have not experienced the pain that often comes along with it.

Life as a scale is kept in balance with a series of memories and dreams. Each memory and dream or wish for the future is a weight that gets added on to one side or the other. Negative and positive.

When I found out my father was dying, I had to face that scale head on. The good times and happy memories were overshadowed and outweighed dramatically by the bad times and the harsh realities of life.  I had been through a lot with my father, I had a great childhood but my teen years were very rocky. He had no idea how to raise a teenage daughter. And with my mom working all the time, I felt like had no one to turn to many times.  In college, I made some stupid decisions, which he gave me a “told you so” attitude on. Once I got married (‘to someone not good for me’) and became a parent, he was constantly telling me I was doing it wrong. ALL I could see was that scale was sliding to the negative.  And at one point, I even found myself saying, I wished the cancer would do its job faster.

When I said those words aloud, I was smacked in the face. Literally, by a good friend of mine. She reached up and bitch slapped me like I have never been smacked before. Even left a hand print on my face. I was a scrapper as a teen, and my normal reaction would have been to lay her out. But I was in utter shock.  After I was able to regain my speech, I asked her what the fuck she had done that for. Her explanation was simple.

I would regret saying it. If she had had the chance to get her mother back for even 5 minutes, she would be happy. Because it would give her a chance to say all that was left unsaid.

Her mother had passed away about 4 years prior. She explained, at first she had no regrets. Her mom had been horrible to her in her early childhood and teen years. But, she found herself missing her mother every day. I did not understand why, and she told me,  after she had children of her own, she found herself doing things with the kids her own mom had done with her. Happy things.  She also found herself parenting her daughter in a completely different manner. She was more positive.  She began to see, the power of a negative thought can be so much stronger than the power of a positive one. I ruminated on this for days after our talk. It was hard not to think about it with a sore jaw.  I had a revelation. I would sit down with my father and talk to him. Try to release those negative thoughts.

The bad side of my life scale was being added on to by resentment, regret, anger, fear, repression. I was going to calmly and nicely tackle those head on before he died!  On a visit down to see him, before I was quite ready, he challenged my parenting style one time too many and I SNAPPED. It all came down to feelings.  Those emotions took on a whole new meaning for me. I opened my mouth. I told him every last thing that had ever been on my mind.  How if made me feel to be in good shape but be told I was fat. To get on A/B honor roll and be asked why I did not get all A’s. And more intimate arguments I won’t air out in a blog.  He offered me a glimpse into his childhood I never knew before then. And I realized why he chose to raise me the way he did. The balance shifted. It was not how I intended to approach him. In the end it was a raw, emotional experience. But it hurt about the same as that slap in the face had!

Once you put FORGIVENESS, love, strength, accomplishment, and openness on the side with the happy memories, even if few and far between, the scales become balanced and the weight of your life just…slips away.  I found that happiness and joy far outweighed  those negative emotions once I was able to let them go.

Be thankful every day, no matter what, for the people and the experiences you have had in your life. No matter WHAT the outcome, without that past, you would not be who you are choosing to be, nor do you have the same future.  Sometimes the scales slide out of whack. But without that past and without some forgiveness, I would not have the most important things in my life. I would not have experienced a life worth living IN not just for. I would not have my husband, my son. My entire world. Thanks for reading.

Famous Quote: Resentment is like taking poison yourself and waiting on the other person to die…

No guts, no glory…but is that really what I want?

I had to think about this for a long time. Do I really want to use this as a place to open my heart and soul up? I have made some great new friends since I started this wild ride. I never thought I was very funny, but when I started my Facebook(tm)  page I suddenly had this outlet. And it was fantastic! And I went from a handful of people and pages who found me amusing to nearly 3,000 fans in 4 months. All I can say as I watch those numbers slowly creep is HOLY CRAP! On my page, I let my guard down. I have my “real identity” locked down, so not many people even know who I really am. So I feel free to just be ME. Over the top, hyper, crassy, and sassy. I speak my mind. I have a set of balls on the internet. So…why can I not find them right now?

I have always, as I mention in my first blog, wanted to be a writer. I spent my life scribbling in journals a la Harriet The Spy and thinking about how awesome it would be to see my name on the cover of a book.  What it all boils down to is this… I am a giant chicken. Huge. Wuss. I am such a HUGE chicken I make the big red hen on a certain kids TV show look like a Peep.

You know the show…where the little girl has a talking map instead of a GPS, who runs around with a monkey for a babysitter. She is obviously sniffing her parents cleaning supplies or huffing whipped cream. A talking backpack that has anything you ever need? Where the hell was that when I was a kid? I could have used one.

But this morning I found my guts. I was sitting in the can, reading a book by a fellow mommy blogger. She is fast becoming a friend of mine, both online and, after a crazy day of ginormous inflatable monkey camel toe crotch fuzz excitement, I am thinking we might be able to become “real life” friends. 3 hours between us be damned. She found those guts. And I am so insanely jealous of her bravery. Perhaps the elevated toilet seat I have recently been relegated to was lifting my confidence as well as my lard ass.  But I am going to put it all out there. I think. Maybe….I might.

Do I really want to do this? My closest friends are the only ones who know a lot of what happened to me in my past. I managed to keep my problems a secret for 20 years and counting. My family has never heard about most of the stuff I have been through. My dad took most of my secrets to the grave with him. Yeah I know, I said we hated each other. But he also was my confidante. Nights with his insomnia we talked. A lot. He found out when I was 15 about my being attacked at 13. He found out lots of other atrocities I am still debating discussion of. He bailed me out of jail. More than once. If I  put all this out there…It may explain a lot to my family but it also may cause them grief. Will they even believe me since I held it all inside me for so long? Do I want to relive the details and pain or keep it all in my head?

It is going to take some time for me to truly get the confidence I need to put it all out there. But a LOT of my experiences in my life are why I parent my son the way I do. He is the most polite, intelligent, full of “fuck you” attitude kid I have ever met. He will hold the door open for a woman then fart as she walks by and break into peals of laughter. He always says “Yes please, no thank you, excuse me, please may I” but they often superseded by “Give me my damn toy back” “Mommy I am really pissed off at you right now!” and other things that make ‘typical’ moms gasp in horror.

I get compliments all the time on his manners and his advanced speech and vocabulary. I also get comments on his bad attitude and eye rolling sarcasm a-la a future teen. What the hell kind of a ride am I on? How did he get to be this way? So full of sugar and venom? And then it hits me like a ton of bricks. He may look almost exactly like, and have the quick temper of his father. But inside, he is me. 100%. He talks too much and at all the wrong times. He never stops to think about his actions  as he goes in at 500 MPH and deals with the aftermath. (Which is why for blog purposes I call him Hurricane.) And he is who is he because he is me. My sweet side, my scared side. My need to be all grown up and my desire to be snuggled and be a baby for just a little bit longer. My emotional and overly sensitive side. My naturally lacking of self-confidence side. This is a journey I am living again, through him. So maybe by putting it all out there, I can keep him from at least a little of the pain I often felt and still feel. OK. Confidence here I am. Lets do this thing.

Is TV really the root of all evil?

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I will have to get back to you, I am watching TV……
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OK sorry… lets chat while there’s a commercial …I get this question all the time from fellow mommies and daddies. Why do “experts” insist TV is so bad for our kids? Limit the time every day? Well if I do that….OH LOOK Press Dough! I should buy that for him for his birthday, then we can spend some time together and make cool cookies!….Sorry where was I? Ok, so I need to limit my sons TV time each day. I can sort of understand how the “experts” feel. But at the same time…Nick Jr is “like Pre-School on TV” and it totally buys me time to…..OH….check that out! I did not even know they made Snuggies that have sports teams on them. Maybe I can buy my husband one of them for his birthday….. Ooops sorry… hang on while I turn the volume up so he can hear his show…… Back to the TV debate. I get the experts being concerned about the amount of TV we let our kids watch. Kids today do NOT get enough time outdoors. They do not have as much imagination or creativity as they used to. Right? I mean the fact my son watches 2 hours a day is apparently akin to murdering him… OH murder…I almost forgot…I need to program my DVR to record that special on serial killers….

This Box will kill our children....

On to the serious part of this conversation. Look, I totally understand why people may look down on TV and kids.  The above is an almost exact commentary from an ACTUAL conversation I had on the phone with a friend of mine a few nights ago. Between the two of us we were distracted by the shiny box about 30 times. I DO understand the controversy. Here is what it boils down to….

Letting your kids watch TV is not the end of the world. If it were not for the Qubo channel I would NEVER get anything done. EVER. With my husbands work schedule, and mine (I am a working momma) our house would NEVER get clean. EVER.  I can do what needs to be done courtesy of Nick Jr or Qubo. The  thing is, you have to watch what they watch and see what they see. Is it helping or hurting? As I have stated in the past…I do use TV to help me babysit my kids. But at least it is Qubo not FearNet. (and as an FYI to all people with Verizon FiOs, it should be channel 491 for you. You are welcome) 

My son’s newest obsession? Rescue Heroes. And as a result of that show he never ever fights me on using his seat belt. Thanks to that Moose thing in between shows on Nick Jr, he turns off lights and likes to help me sort the recycling. Thanks to Sid the Science Kid he got his last round of shots without a lot of fuss. Because the shows reinforce what values I, as his parent, am trying to teach him. My own mother in law used to get frustrated with TV. THEN she saw what I am letting him watch. And she started to ask him, where did he learn things… “Oh well I talked about it with mommy and daddy after we saw it on Diego.”

He knows all kinds of insane words and has a vocabulary of a 9 year old, at age 5. Why? Because I never ever tolerated baby talk with him, and because of a little show called WORD GIRL. He is learning his letters and life lessons from me. And a little reinforcement from Super Why is not going to hurt a thing. Thanks Alfred the Hedgehog for showing him to “deduce”. We made him a detective kit and went out and collected clues to find his missing Spiderman. I can not begin to thank the Jim Henson company and Children’s Television Workshop enough for a little invention called Sesame Street. It opened the doors to a whole new world of programming. All of which, if you keep an eye and ear on it, is really NOT so bad. Some of it is nothing but mind numbing horror and madness. Pointless drivel. But not all of it.

So this is what I say to the experts:

Dear Experts,

While I appreciate your concerns that my child watches too much TV, I respectfully ask you to shut the hell up. If I see he is not getting enough exercise or starts having behavioral problems I will re-evaluate my parenting skills. But to tell me TV is the cause of all his problems? You are full of shit.

Sincerely,
Mom-troversial

Life is and other $#!+

Life is what you make of it,(right)?  Every cloud has a silver lining, but the sun will come out tomorrow. (But once the sun comes out the cloud goes away, and so does the lining)  Every dog has its day and the grass is always greener. (Unless that dog has his day on your lawn. Then the grass is green with urine burns) But you can not get mad because DOG is a man’s best friend. Misery loves company. (So dogs are misery…I guess after they ruin the lawn that would make sense.) But we love our dogs in spite of the misery. And ALL we need is that love. If all we need is love, and all’s fair in love and war, we need war to have love, right?  And both love AND money make the world go round. But money is the root of all evil. (So evil makes the world work and love and money are the same thing. I think I  GOT it.)

Oh and let us NOT forget that time is money, and people have money to burn. (Meaning we can burn time. That one makes sense. Enter the inventions of the internet and even more specifically, Facebook.)

I am sure that one gave you a chuckle, and I am so glad because laughter is the best medicine, and a spoonful of sugar helps that medicine go down. (So next time you are taking your kid to get vaccinations make them laugh like a maniac and fill em full of sugar before the appointment) Sometimes you need to give someone a taste of his own medicine. (So doc, after you give my kid all those shots hand me the needle) But doctors are saving lives. Those doctors are worth their weight in gold! (So that means yesterday they were  worth 1650 but today is only worth 1645) And there is a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, which is ‘as good as gold’. (So its a pot of him and should be as good as gold. I would rather have the money?) Silence is golden. (Meaning silence should cost about 1650 which explains WHY my son never shuts up)

The day after that…

Its always the day after that the real feelings come out. I wish when we were having a fight I could just skip the bullshit and name calling and move right to the part where we actually talk to one another and communicate.  Its always the next day or the day after that when we start to actually talk again. I almost died of shock though. I saved it just because I do not think anyone would believe it. A text message saying “I know. You are right. Lets talk about that tonight” Say WHAT? I saved it. I even forwarded it to my best friend who did not believe I had actually gotten that text. She was there when the fight began. So she figured it would be me to concede. WRONG. I am like a pit-bull. I do not give in. Period. If I did give in I would not have become who I am today…a cynical, sarcastic, twisted individual.

Welcome to my world. I was asked by a good friend of mine to share a little about what makes me “Mom-troversial”. First and foremost, I am a mom, but I am doing it MY way. Which may not be the right way. I get told all the time “You should not talk to a kid that way” “You should not spank” “You should not let him do this or watch that” I seem to start drama and contreversy with every parenting decision I make. Mom-troversial.

But I get told all the time that my kid is a great kid, so I must be doing something right. We recently moved into the neighborhood and every single neighbor has told me I have the smartest kid with the most attitude and funniest personality in the whole ‘hood. And he got to be who he is because I am that mom. The one who takes her kid outside and gets nose to nose and tells the kid to the kids face “you are acting like a shit, you are embarrassing me, and this is going to stop. NOW”  I am that mom who tells my son to get dressed because we are leaving in 5 minutes, and when he decides playing is more important, takes him out of the house, in the cold, in his pajama pants, no shirt, one sock, and no shoes. I am the mom who has friends watching to make sure he is safe, but tells him we are leaving right now, and if you are not in the car I am going without you. Then proceeds to get in my car and pull away. (Only around the block, but I did come back and he did learn his lesson, now when I say I am leaving he gets right into the car)  I am that mom who gets so frustrated I just give up and burst into tears. I am even that mom who told a friend of hers that is a policeman to take me away and tell the kid he  was getting a new mommy since he could not listen to me.  (True story, scared the hell out of him for awhile. Now he tells me when I say no to things to have the cops give him a new mommy who says yes all the time, so that one, kind of bit me in the ass)

I will be sharing lots of randomness here. my TSOTD (true stories of the day) which for the most part will make you laugh or cry. My best advice as a mom and career nanny. (Yes people pay me to raise their kids. I have not screwed any of them up in 15 years, so my own should be a cake walk, right? HA! A lot of the time my posts will make little to no sense because I will fire them out as fast as my brain can let them go. And THAT will be a train wreck. But I am out there now. Time to fly.

So you think you can blog…

So I did it. I am out here in the world. Writing my first blog. It feels weird. Surreal. I sort of wondered about this whole blogging thing. I was not even sure I could write shit interesting enough to keep people’s attention. Then it hit me. Start a facebook page first. IF people pay attention there, you might just do ok at the blog thing. I broke 2100 fans on facebook, so here I am. Writing my first blog. I am not sure what to write about though. See I am a fan of so many amazing wonderful blogs. Ones that just blow my page out of the water. I am not sure where to start, I do not believe in the whole “Hi my name is Mom-t I am from Anytown, USA and this is my life with my wonderful husband and wonderful son” Because its BULLSHIT. If you have the perfect life and the perfect everything you have no need to write. Unless, of course, its just to shove your perfection in the faces of those of us trying to get there, but I digress.

I wanted to be a writer. My whole life I have wanted to write. I wrote poetry, stories, and more. I worked on projects for friends and got a degree for Journalism. And that was the ONE thing my dad and I always were in agreement about. I should be a writer.

That can be my subject. My dad. See it was ONE year ago today I lost him to cancer. Lost. Like a dog? No that is not right. Because I can not put signs up saying “Lost Dad, reward if found”. He is GONE.  I am about to say something totally selfish and horrible. But my father in law passed away at the beginning of last month. And I was devastated. But in my brain, as everyone grieved and surrounded my husband in support, I was pissed. Because it was unexpected to lose my pop, so he got an outpouring of support. But I was not in need of as much support. I had time to prepare? Since the cancer was killing him slowly?  Hell, my dad died, and I went to work at my new job 2 days after his funeral. And I am a mom. When am I allowed to grieve? Never. Because I have to stay strong for my son, strong for my husband, strong for my mom. Its been a year. And I have barely had time to cry. So I cried. A LOT for pop. But it was more for my own father. My husband, he understood. But some people said I was a bad person for being like that.

My dad and I had a volatile relationship at best. We were best friends and worst enemies. I would tell him everything but would run to my mom for the “serious stuff” like when I got arrested. Again.  My father taught be almost everything there is to know about cars, and woodworking, and more. I had a strange connection with my dad because he was a stay at home daddy. He was the one who would make me lunch and taught me to cook, who would help with homework, or play games with me. He also was a hard ass and an alcoholic. I grew up in bars on pinball machines. But I learned a lot on those bells and lights. And as a teen I hated him. And as an adult he made me feel like a bad parent. But one day, right before he died, I woke up. And I decided I was not going to be one of those people with regrets. He called me at his sickest point, and said some really hurtful things to me. On my birthday. And I laid him out. I told him he was one to judge for me being a bad parent. I called him every name I had held my tongue on for over 28 years. My mom got mad. “Its just the medication talking he did not mean what he said” I told her, well, I meant what I said to him.

I told him the same thing I am now telling myself. You are both a terrific success and miserable failure as a parent and as a person. You can hang on to the negativity and be dragged into hell by it. Or you can choose to get off your ass and enjoy your life, whatever may be left in it, and KNOW  that as long as you turn out a great kid, like that, you are doing just fine. Thats about all I got for now.