Barnmaven

Random Tuesday Crap

Random Item 1: Can you say DEAD CHICKEN? Good! Now, for the really difficult part of the quiz (I bet you didn't know there would be a quiz, did you, or you probably wouldn't have visited today!): Can you say "Dead Chicken" TWICE? I knew you could! Gold star for you! None for the chickens, sadly. The rooster I don't mind much, I've been begging the neighbor to have him for dinner ever since he started attacking any human that crosses his path. I'm pretty sure that's exactly what happened to him, but have to confirm that. On a significantly more tragic note, I found a bunch of feathers out in the front pasture, and the other two hens huddling in the coop. Apparently whatever got the one scared the other two so badly that one of them actually laid her first egg of the year.

Random Item #2: PLEASE for the love of all that I believe in, go here and read a post by Mocha Momma on overt racism and all of the comments that follow. It is a wonderful discussion, sadly it highlights the disturbing and disgraceful fact that racism is alive and well in the 21st century, despite the fact that WE SHOULD FUCKING KNOW BETTER. Ahem.

Not-so-Random Item #3:  My daughter is brilliant. Yes, I am an incredibly biased mama. BUT. Amazon Girl had a terrific report this time around for Parent/Teacher conferences. She got "exceeds expectations" in nearly every category under "Behavior." I realize that for many parents this would be a reasonable expectation. NOT FOR ME. I nearly cried in the meeting with her teacher. I am so incredibly proud of my baby. Everyone please join me in standing on your chair and yelling WHOOP!!!!!! at the top of your lungs! The penultimate, the most wonderful, the INSANELY AWESOME thing about it is to see how proud she is OF HERSELF. I know my mom friends who read this will recognize that palpitation you feel around your heart muscle chest when you see your baby, your offspring, your child, RECOGNIZE that they are good at something and feel joy and pride in themselves. Child A has discovered that she is a WRITER. Her class publishes stories every week, and she is writing above grade level. She wrote a story about the passing of our beloved Lady that actually made her teacher CRY. Then came home and told me about it, grinning from ear to ear. I know. You get this.

Random item #4: Little Man did NOT have to go to school in his PJ's today. By the skin of his teeth. And I didn't even yell at him. Score one for both of us!

Random item #5: My newest foster dog, Rosie, is successfully housebroken! I am pathetically grateful for this, most deeply because my own two dogs came down with an intestinal upset last week and I spent more hours that I want to divulge cleaning up SHITASTROPHES.

Random item #6: *Congratulations to Andria on her new arrival.

Enough randomness for one day. Peace out.

Screamfree mornings

 I recently picked up Screamfree Parenting  by Hal E. Runkel, LMFT.  Why?  I could be coy and say "Why not?" but we both know that's not really the truth now, is it?  The truth is that like a lot of parents, I have frequenting parenting FAIL and I'm open to ways to not do that so much.

I'm hornswoggled on a daily basis at how creatively frustrating my children can be.  They are masters of finding the pain points.  I dont' think they do it to be malicious, they do it BECAUSE THEY CAN.  For years I had immense difficulty with the concept of Original Sin...and then I had children.  Now I understand that they emerge bloody from the womb filled not only with joy and love and innate bueaty, but also with deviousness, malicious intent and willfulness brewing.

Undeniably my children have taught me to have far more patience than I had before they fucked up changed my life for the better.  However, that's akin to saying that box wine is a huge improvement over jug wine.  Sure, one is better.  But by how much?  (Annnnnd there, I've gone and offended 95% of my living relatives and inlaws) 

It is a guarantee in my house that if I need my kids to get ready quickly for any reason, they will move at sub-visual speed.  Quirky scientific phenomenon in which the subject moves so slowly as for all movement to be visually imperceptible.  I watch them for ten minutes and I don't even notice them twitch.  NOTHING.  Even before embarking on a new career as a single mother last summer, mornings were my domain alone.  Before J and I split, he worked an earlier schedule than I did, so the kids were mine to deal with.  I've written before about my struggles with our mornings.  I'm getting better at dealing with them, but they are a continual challenge to me.

In Runkel's book, after he explains to you that yelling at your kids puts them in the position of being responsible for calming YOU down, which is not really their job (hint, it's YOURS, grownup person), he then discusses natural consequences and how instead of being responsible for our children, we are responsible to them.  TO.  THEM. Which means letting them learn that their behavior has consequences. Imagine how differently people who employ this method parent.

As much as I fail and do exactly what Runkel says not to (yelling), I was also a little bit pleased and gloat-ish after reading the chapter on consequences, because it is a technique I have been working on with some success for our morning routines.

I got so tired of trying to wrangle them out of bed and get fed and dressed so that I could get animals fed and dress my own self in time to catch my carpool.  Mornings were a daily exercise in frustration.   I'd ask them to do something and ten minutes later they'd still be staring at the TV, openmouthed, with the half-eaten plate of waffles still sitting in front of them.  It was making me feel insane.  Gradually I realized that I was the one bearing the consequences of their choices not to be ready, and that it was time to change to equation.

I found my egg timer.  (I really have one.  I used to bake.  And cook too.  Then I had kids.)  When I ask them to wake up, I set it for 10 minutes.  That's how long they have to stumble into the kitchen in time for me to prepare their breakfast.  If they don't get out of bed before the timer goes off, they're on their own, because its now MY time to get myself dressed and prepared for work.  No, they won't starve.  But they won't have warm breakfast.  They can have whatever they can make for themselves,which includes pop tarts, cold bagels, yogurt and assorted other prepared items.  After I'm ready for work, Child 1 and I "do meds."  I find if we make a game of it, she resists less.  She takes a pill, then I take one of mine.  She's always happy because it takes me longer (I have more stuff I take).  And she also knows that the consequence is either a beloved toy goes in long term timeout or a planned activity is canceled (birthday party, play date, time with grandma).  So we do our meds.  Then after I have fed the dogs, I go to feed horses.  By this time they need to be done with breakfast.  As I go outside, if they have not already gone and started dressing themselves, I remind them that by the time I return from feeding the horses they should be dressed and ready to go.  When I come back in and put the dogs away in their crates, if they are not dressed with shoes and coats on, then they will go to daycare/before-school care in their pajamas.  And bare feet.  If it is embarassing and uncomfortable, it's only so for them.  Not for me.  I bring their clothes with them, and they can change when they get there.

The nicest thing about this method is that I don't have to yell.  I don't have to get mad, or frustrated.  No matter what THEY do, as long as I follow my schedule, I will be on time.  The unpleasant consequences are theirs to bear.  Sure, I might have to listen to some whining, or crying because they're going to be embarassed in front of their friends or because they really wanted something warm for breakfast and not a cold Pop-Tart.  But I can listen to a few minutes of crying or whining without feeling like I have to make it stop.  It's not fun,but its tolerable.

The best thing?  Its working.

The first day that Child A didn't get out of bed on time, she started to cry and whine about wanting her breakfast.  I forced myself to calmly continue getting ready for work and to let her stew in her own juice.  I gently reminded her once or twice that she was still free to go get something for herself to eat.  Eventually, after about 10 minutes, she actually did!  She got out of bed, stopped crying, went to the kitchen, and looked for food.  She asked me if I would come help her reach the peanut butter, which I did, and then she MADE HER OWN BAGEL.  With peanut butter. 

First best?  She was SO PROUD of herself.  And I was proud of her too.  What started as a potential tantrum instead turned into a learning lesson and a clear example that she was capable of doing big-girl things.  On her own.   Two years ago I guarantee you that she would have still been screaming about breakfast an hour later.  Today?  So much better.  So incredibly much better.

We still have room for improvement.  Little Man has gone to school three times so far in his pj's, including today.  He does not like to comply with requests.   I am learning that I can control myself and not get mad when they don't listen to me.  I'm not 100% successful yet, but I'm better than I was.  The morning stress level is diminishing for all of us and the days that I climb into my carpool feeling like a wrung-out washcloth are fewer and farther between.  Its worth noting. 

I hope I never stop learning what my kids have to teach me.  I am a better person today because of them. 

Getting Them to Launch

I don’t know about you, but I always wanted to have children.  I remember when my niece was born.  I was still attending college at the time, living the life of the young and free.  I had no grand plan for my life, I didn’t know what I wanted to be then and I still don’t know that now.  But  when Sam was born, no, even before then, when she was still a big round bump under my sister-in-law’s waistband, I understood immediately and forcefully that I wanted to be a mother. 

Achieving motherhood did not come for a long time after that.  I was maybe nineteen or twenty when my Sammy arrived.  She is now a mother with another on the way, and my own children are five and eight.  When I recall my thoughts on what it meant to be a parent, I remember that my Mommy Fantasies focused almost solely on being pregnant, giving birth, and diapers.  I didn’t think much beyond that.  My brother had two more children, and each pregnancy and birth fascinated me as much as the first.  I loved pregnant women and babies. 

 

Even the day,, after years of believing that I would not be able to achieve babies naturally, that the two pink lines appeared on the little plastic stick I’d peed on just minutes before, my mind never made the leap beyond watching my stomach move and snuggling my newborn.   How I managed to make it this far as a parent without losing them in a train station, accidentally shutting them in a closet or forgetting them in a grocery store is a miracle.  Honestly.

 

It wasn’t until after my son was a year old, when we were beginning the arduous journey of diagnosis and treatment with my amazing Amazon  Girl, that I started to consider the real job of motherhood.  Sure, it’s the late night feedings, it’s the nurturing and the bonding, the kissing of cheeks, bellies and little feet.  Its bandaids and cupcakes for the school party, girl scouts and dental checkups.  Its playdates and baths, T-Ball and soccer games.  But I now believe that what it ultimately comes to is LAUNCH.

 

I watch them grow and develop, I see the things they do and listen to the words and whispers from their perfect little mouths, wonder at their brilliance, and despair over my inadequacies as a parent.  Because the launch part?  That’s everything.  How, please tell me, can I simultaneously suck up every moment of the joy in raising them and at the same time prepare myself and them for the day that  I inevitably must let go of them?  Now that I understand that they can’t live with me until they are forty, that they will eventually drive cars, go on dates, get jobs (ideally jobs that don’t involve robbing banks or running home-based chem. Labs) and go on to live their ungrateful little lives without ME, I fear that I will buckle under the pressure of my real job, the job of settling them comfortably into the rocket launcher of LIFE and push the “fire” button.

 

 

I woke up one day and my rosy-cheeked stubborn little toddler was eight years old and looking frighteningly like a teenager.  And I started doing math in my head and realized that she’s more than halfway to getting her learner’s permit.  Even closer than that to her first bra.  And I’ve done nothing, NOTHING to prepare myself or even her, for that matter, for this.

 

Our true job as parents is to have them so mature and capable of making decisions that when we turn them loose on an unsuspecting world, they don’t sally forth and blow it up.  If you’re like me and you don’t have well-behaved, compliant children, this seems like a Sisyphean task.  I can count in a few fingers the number of days in a week when I feel like I did a terrific job parenting my kids, where I nurtured their ability to make good choices, select whole-grain bread and NOT light the cat on fire.  Some parents aspire for their children to win the Nobel Prize, to be doctors, lawyers, President even.  Some parents have their children’s life-path mapped out practically as soon as the sperm and egg make contact.  Me, I’m looking forward to the day when they can tie their own shoes.  We already managed pooping in the potty, surely achieving a college degree can’t be harder than that?

 

In all seriousness, I don’t care if my children meet some arcane definition of “successful.”  What I care about is that they leave me with an appreciation for humanity, for our environment, for our country.  That they know how to give and receive love in healthy ways.  That they respect themselves, their feelings, their bodies.  That they find someone who loves them and respects them too.  That they find something to do in life that they enjoy, even if it isn’t what everyone else thinks of as a “successful” career.  I want all those things for them.  And every day I need to remind myself that this is my real job as their mother.  This is what God meant for me to do when He entrusted them into my care. 

 

I’m going to make mistakes.  I’m going to have days where I yell more than I don’t.  Days when I feed them junk food.  Days when they make me want to go hide in my closet with a bottle of vodka and a Xanax.  But this launch thing?  Is inevitable.  So every day I will keep pushing that rock uphill.    Hard as it seems, I’ll keep seeking the balance in my life so that I can be a whole person, both woman and mother, keep reaching for that sanity in between the fear and the panic of everyday struggle, so that someday I can push that launch button.   

Show Some Love

Cecily just tweeted:

Cecilyk

  

I am going to probably cross 10,000 followers in the next week or so. Can I just say that's kinda fucking insane?

Dude.

Insane?  Yeah, probably.  But also?  Coooooool.  In my wildest dreams.  I have FIFTY NINE followers. And about 15-20 hits on this little blog a day.  So.  In terms of the blogosphere, I'm so far from the "A" list I'm not even assigned a number of the alphabet.  But honestly, that's not why I blog.  I blog because I like to write stories.  I like having an outlet for my life.  I'll be very honest, if I had the chance to really make a living blogging, as some are fortunate to do, I wouldn't complain.  I'd love every second of being able to support my children and my life by sitting here writing words that thousands of people read every day.  And really?  NOT LIKELY.

But.

Yesterday, one of my fellow bloggers who comes here all the way from Poland awarded my blog with this:

Mine was one of seven blogs Michelle selected to pass this along to, and I am feeling really thankful for the love.  Really, really touched and thankful.

The "rules" that come with the Kreativ Blogger award are as follows:

1.  State 7 things about yourself.

2.  Pass the award to 7 amazing bloggers. *

*I failed #2.  Read on to see why.

Yay!  I get to do a meme AND tell you about other blogs I enjoy.

Trying to find 7 things I have never posted here on my blog is an exercise in determining just how many brain cells I killed in college with all that tequila.

1. Once in college I got in a drinking contest with a guy at a summer frat rush party.  After 11 shots of tequila he was passed out on the floor.  After 14 shots, I was still standing and managed to walk home by myself.  Needless to say, tequila and I are no longer friends.
2. My favorite stress snack foods are garlic stuffed green olives and cheddar cheese.
3. Weddings, movies, some books and sappy commercials make me uncontrollably weepy.
4. After working in dog rescue for several years I actually have a hard time liking people.  But I try very hard.  After all, not everyone can be as awesome as dogs are.
5. I maintain an extremely prickly exterior to repel the unsuspecting away so that they won't notice my soft, marshmallow filling.
6. I have taken (and passed) the Mensa test.  But I refuse to join.  I want nothing to do with a club that walks around thumbing their nose at people with lower IQs. I detest elitism. 
7. I sing in my church choir.  Really.

There you go. 

And here's the second part, except its not really correct because, well...just read on and see.

1.  Heathenly is my friend Jackie.  She almost never updates this blog, but I note she actually posted something this week after a painfully EXCRUCIATINGLY long hiatus.  So drop by, give her a smooch and laugh at her smart-assedness.  Maybe if she gets a little traffic she'll dust off the thing a little bit and start entertaining us more.

2.  Eternal Lizdom.  Liz is compassionate, articulate, inspiring.  She sings in her church choir too!  She helped inspire my own running program. 

3.  Haiku Mama blogs here about her crazy life with her three kids.  She has high readership and probably doesn't need any attention from little old me to draw readership to her blog, but hers was the blog that started it all for me.  Hers was the first blog I really started to read online and she makes me laugh on a regular basis. 

4.  Audrey probably also doesn't need any help from me to drive traffic to her asylum at 'Barking Mad' but I'm going to include her anyway because I adore her.  I love her writing voice, I love her introspection, I love the way she bares her soul and most of all I am constantly awestruck by the strength that enables her to keep smiling, keep parenting, keep blogging and keep moving forward in a world that has been harder and less kind to her than any woman should have to bear.

5.  Secret Agent Josephine is another blogger who really doesn't need the two people who read my blog every few days to help her stat counter, but I'll send you there anyway.  I found her through a site that existed only to trash other bloggers, over a slightly controversial issue.  Because I like to be fair, I read more than just the one post that excited the hullabaloo, and guess what?  I really like her.  She's funny, creative, *really* artsy and I like reading her.

6.  Just Linda posted a comment to a BlogHer article I was also commenting on, and I read her blog from there.  She is funny as hell.  Articulate.  I imagine she is the kind of gal that doesn't giggle behind her hand like all the genteel ladies do, but like me, when she laughs, she rocks the room with it.  Check it out. 

And now a confession.  There are only 6.  Why?  I FAIL at this.

Many of the blogs I read are big-name blogs.  And because I work full time and have kids and dogs and cats and horses and am doing all of this as a single parent, I don't have a lot of other small blogs on my google list.

So my goal over the next weeks is to rectify that situation.  Find other bloggers to read who are not A-listers.  Or even B-, C- or D-listers.

While a lot of the A-listers are there for valid reasons - they are funny, they are timely, they are observant, and attractive and they write well - there are a lot of bloggers out there who SHOULD be A-listers but aren't for the simple fact that there's just hordes of bloggers out there.  I should be able to find them, yes?   And if you're reading this, and you are a blogger, please leave me a comment or send me an email so I can go check out your blog.  Pretty please. I might even send you an award. 

Where I'm Surrounded by Love

The three of us met about seven years ago,all working at the same miserable job.  Describing life in that particular place as fucked up only scratches a small layer of dust off the surface of it.  In an environment where we were encouraged to distrust one another, compete with one another, spy on one another, lie about one another, there were a few of us who chose to swim upstream.  Sci-Fi Fridays turned into post-work group therapy sessions (and by therapy I mean getting sloppy at the bar and spilling our guts about the terrible secrets of our lives) and toward the end, lunchtime group therapy sessions when the vileness of our employment seemed too much to bear.

Since then, two of us have moved, one stayed but finally moved on from her job, but we've continued to stay together in our thoughts and hearts.  It took some time, but eventually we got our shit together enough to actually plan and implement a long weekend to spend some very needed and incredibly missed together time.  My sunshine girl came from New Jersey, and I hopped on a plane from Seattle, and the two of us came to see our honey bunch.

I've written about her before.  This trip was always meant to happen sooner, and with a little faith and grace it will happen again before too long.  It simply has to, because our friend is pretty sick.  I can't be forthcoming on the details, she's got an ex who seems to make a habit of internet-stalking her.   That and these aren't my details to share.  What I will say is that we don't have a lot of time left, and for that reason, coming here and spending this time was of the highest importance to all three of us.

There are things we all three have in common, and there are traits and pastimes that sometimes only one or two of us share. 

The one thing that the other two have in common?  They are birdwatchers.  Not casual birdwatchers by any means.  These are women who have life lists of birds and Sunshine can still tell you when and where she saw the Scarlet Tanager and that she was jumping up and down in the middle of the path with excitement.  These two have done their best to make a birdwatcher of me, to the point of buying me binoculars and trying to teach me to identify what I see.  Truth is, I like birds but I'm too lazy half the time to go look stuff up, so I just try and remember what I saw and when I look in the book weeks later its all blurry and I end up believing that I saw a Kestrel when what I really saw was an Oregon Junco, or I am certain that I have seen a particular kind of tern when in actuality, the bird I believed was flying near me on the banks of the Columbia is, in fact, never seen outside of a small village in the middle of Africa.  But I do try.  Or I attempt a reasonable facsimile of trying.  Because I want to be with these women, and if they are going to be watching birds?  I am going to pretend I love it watch birds too.

So we watched birds yesterday.  We drove to a place called Goose Island, near Aransas Pass/Rockport Texas.  We saw a Big Tree.  (That's what it's called, really.  Big Tree.  You drive up to the state park and there are one of those signs that point to the park office and the picnic area and the boat launch, and a pointer for "Big Tree."  And then you follow that pointer and eventually you come to a T in the road and sure as fuck, there's another sign for "Big Tree."  These Texans have a knack for taking things extremely literally.)  After we saw the Big Tree, we drove up the road a little bit.  The girls were very excited, since apparently the cow pasture across from where the Big Tree stands is a place that has, during the right season, a constant presence of Whooping Cranes.  So we spent the next two hours driving and parking around a 10 acre field, looking at the same two Whooping Cranes.  I can't BEGIN to describe to you the tremendous feeling of accomplishment that I feel being able to mark "Whooping Cranes" off of my life list. I am WHOLE!  Wait...I don't HAVE a "life list."  Yeah.

It was kind of fun, though.  I got to see a Kestrel catch and eat a mouse.  I got to see some Whistling Ducks and Ibis and some vultures and a couple of birds that they both told me what they were called and I can't remember.  So I'll check them off my list by their formal names:  "Bird."  Check.  "Other Bird."  Check.

We also saw a rotting cow carcass in the pasture since apparently the owners of the pastures don't come look at their cattle very often and since apparently in Texas they don't mind if you have rotting dead livestock in your pasture within 50 feet of your pond.  And they clearly mustn't mind this, because there were at least 15 other cars parked around the field looking at these birds AND a fish & game truck, and nobody seemed too concerned about the dead cow.  Or the other cow who looked like she might end up looking a lot like her dead friend pretty soon.  These Texans are a little strange.

Thankfully there are things they like to do that go beyond birdwatching. In truth, I enjoyed the time.  It was a kind of interesting, and there's not much to complain about being outdoors in the nice weather looking at birds.  Beats the crap out of housework.  Besides, I'd rather be with them than not with them.  Every second that we've spent together and will spend over the next couple of days is priceless to me.

My reward for coming along and being enthusiastic about walking through the woods trying to find an Olive Sparrow was that we got to do the one thing all three of us really love, which is drink wine and cuddle up on the bed watching Sci-Fi.  I brought Season 4 of Stargate SG-1, which contains our favorite episode, "Window of Opportunity."  And we are such nerds.  We still laughed at every part of it, and next time we watch it we will laugh again, just as loud.    Then we watched Caprica and we talked about all the other series we loved and often watched together, and which ones we miss. We fit together in a circle like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle.  Each of us brings something to the party, something that if it were missing, the party wouldn't be right.  When two of us are together, it is wonderful and joyous, but we know there is still an edge left open that requires the placement of a piece to make the puzzle look exactly right.

The hardest part is understanding that Honeybunch is in a lot of pain.  The amount of pills she takes just to keep being able to walk and talk and not be curled up in a shrieking ball of OW OW OW would drop a Water Buffalo.    She's got more cancer in other places, and Tuesday starts Chemo again.  I hate the chemo, I hate how it makes her feel. And yet, I love the chemo because I love that it gives us more time with her.  It gives us more time to hear her laugh, to be on the receiving end of her pranks.  More time to try to plan the next trip to see her.  More time that she is here with us where we selfishly want her to be.

Last night, wearing my pink and polk-dotted pjs and giggling and cuddling with my friends, I felt surrounded by love.  So much so that this morning, while they are still sleeping and I am drinking coffee and thinking about our day, I still feel it.  I want to grab onto that feeling with both fists and not ever let it go.  I pray that some months from now, when the world changes, it will still be with me. 

No Time at All

The years slip away like slivers of sunlight on the dashboard as I drive.  I haven't seen her in more than a year, haven't been to her house in more than seven.  Left her almost twelve years ago to pursue the excitement of new love, uprooted and abandoned everyone and everything.  And sitting at her table, catching up over glasses of wine, everything is both exactly the same and utterly changed.  Children that were children when I left are now grownups, parents.  Marriages have ended, for both of us.  Careers developed.  The lines around our eyes are deeper and infinitely more plentiful, yet comforting because on both of our faces they tell us that despite the pain and struggle in our lives, we have each continued to find reasons to smile.  A lot.  Because you don't get those smile lines from anything but. 

We haven't sat at the table like this, just us, in forever, but it seems like was just yesterday. These are the friendships you treasure.  Where no matter how countless the days or the distance between the last time and this, it feels as if nothing has ever changed.  It is as easy and effortless as breathing.

Still so much in common, and so many shared memories. 

"We have to do this more often" we say as she drops me at the airport.  Yes, we do.  Oh, yes we do.  I feel like I just found something I'd forgotten I lost.

Sunday Scatology

**Don't say you haven't been warned.  If you're put off by discussions of poop, don't read another word.**

We sort of skipped church today.  Little Man coughed all the way there, so I just sat in on my confirmation class, then we headed home before he could cough all over the rest of the congregation and their children.

It has been a beautiful day, sunny, started off slightly chill but has warmed up throughout the day.  Perfect day to catch up on yard work. 

Every parent, at the arrival of their first child, is thrust (often reluctantly) into the role of scatologist.  Poop is a fact of life for everyone, but it plays a monumental role for parents of babies and not-yet-potty-trained toddlers.  If you've got animals, you deal with it constantly as well.  If you're me?  Your life is pretty much full of shit all the time.  Litter boxes here are cleaned daily, stalls weekly, back yard poop-scooped every couple of days.  Thank God the kids know how to handle their own bodily functions now.  (I was so relieved to see the end of diapers.  Both of my children were late bloomers in the potty-training department.  In fact, I had to tell Little Man that little boys aren't allowed to turn four until they can use the potty, so if he wanted to celebrate his fourth birthday he'd better get with the program.  Changing babies never bothered me, but changing toddlers...blech.  When things start resembling something that might come out of an adult, its time to either get them out of the pull-ups or start making them clean up their own mess.)

You can tell a lot about a person or an animal by what they excrete.  You can tell if they're eating too much or too little, if they're eating the right things.  You can tell if they're adequately hydrated.  With  horses you can even tell if they might have dental issues based on how well and evenly the hay or grass is ground by their molars.  Its rather fascinating when you get right down to it.  At the winery we have lots of coyotes and foxes around, as well as badgers and deer.  You can tell when the rodent population gets scarce, because when we're on our vineyard walks at lunchtime we can see the grapes start showing up in the coyote piles.

With the dogs, I can tell what non-food items they've been into when I scoop the yard.  Today was no exception.  I saw crayons, ribbon, bits of plastic toys (Roscoe destroys about ninety percent of the toys that come in the Happy Meals), some (ahem) feminine products (the boxer goes after feminine hygiene products like a junkie chases the needle), and even what appeared to be some blue painter's tape.   Nothing too out of the ordinary for this household.  (Once I had a lab mix with an underwear fetish.  She would get into the laundry and dig out panties, then chew them up.  One time on a walk in the local park, she actually crapped out a pair of green lace thong panties, right in front of several people.  Yeah.  Totally NOT EMBARRASSING.  I HAVE NO IDEA WHO THOSE BELONGED TO.  >.>  That same dog also survived chowing down a Gillette disposable razor.  When I realized she'd eaten it, I called the vet, who advised feeding her heavily to put lots of other product in the system that might help to surround the edges of the blade.  I still have the xray he took of her intestines.  You can see the razor blade clear and stark as the day.  I shudder to think about what could have happened, but eventually she passed it.  It was a relief to have it out of her, plus I was glad to be able to stop rummaging through piles of feces in search of it.)

Cleaning the yard today wasn't as bad as it has been in the past.  I recently started giving the dogs a diet of half raw and half dry food.  The amount they're pooping has been cut nearly in half.  The amount of poop a dog (or anyone, for that matter) creates is directly proportional to the amount of waste products in their diet.  Low-end dog food, which are mostly fillers, give you dogs that create a large amount of poo.  We had a neighbor back in NJ who had a big rottweiler.  Occasionally he would poop in my front yard, and from the looks of it, that dog must have been eating 10 square meals a day.  I've seen smaller piles come out of HORSES for heaven's sake. 

The higher quality food you feed, the less the animal produces in waste matter.  For dry dog foods, I look for anything that has actual meat products as the first ingredient.  The ingredients are listed in order of largest percentage to smallest percentage contained in the food.  Even some of the so-called "premium" dog foods have corn meal or corn fillers as the FIRST ingredient on the ingredients list. Corn is not a natural food for a carnivorous animal to eat, and some vets and researchers attribute the high incidence of renal failure in otherwise healthy dogs and cats to an excess of grains in the diet.  The really high-grade food is also high-dollar, though, and out of my budget.  I look for dog food in the middle price range that lists its primary ingredient as meat or meat by-products.  Recently at the Fred Meyer grocery store (they're a Kroger chain) I was happily surprised to also find a reasonably priced raw food.  By feeding my guys half raw I can afford to incorporate it in their diet for about $8 a week.  The biggest benefit, of course, is that I know I'm helping them to stay healthy longer by feeding them what their system is designed to eat.  I'm not going to complain about the OTHER side benefit either -- smaller poop.  It makes it easier to spot the underwear.

Inspired

Throughout most of my life I've been active.  I was a basketball player in high school, but I also enjoyed volleyball and track.  When I went to college a friend of mine convinced me to turn out for crew, and it ended up being one of the best decisions I ever made in my life.  I rowed at the University of Washington, and after I graduated I continued rowing with the Seattle Rowing Club.  We rowed five days a week, and we rowed in all of the races in PNW, winning a lot of regional and local races.  We even rowed in the Head of the Charles and the San Diego Crew Classic.   I also played competitive co-rec volleyball for a number of years in Seattle, and did a fair amount of hiking, biking and kayaking. Before I got pregnant with my daughter I had discovered the joys of yoga and was amazed at the gain in flexibility - I've never been a very flexible person so when I have even the smallest improvements in my ability to bend and stretch I'm very excited.  As active as I've always been, I've always struggled with my weight and my eating habits. When I had kids, that struggle ventured into the realm of MONUMENTAL EPIC BATTLE. 

Most women gain weight when pregnant.  I gained weight like I was going for the Olympic Medal in GETTING FAT.  I gained 70 pounds with Amazon Girl, much of which I shed before I found out I was pregnant with Race Car Man.  I thought I would do better when pregnant with him, and at first I really did.  I was throwing up much of the first trimester, and I lost 11 pounds.  Then the second trimester I felt better, but my weight gain was OK - 25 pounds. I was walking two or three miles a day and staying very active.  I felt good. The third trimester, it all went to hell.  I got horrible Edema.  I had Fred Flintstone feet - I had two pairs of shoes I could wear, a pair of fake Keds slipons and my birkenstocks.  My office decided that my grumpy pregnant self was more than they could handle and asked me to telecommute until the baby was born, which essentially meant I was planted next to my refrigerator for the remainder of the pregnancy.  Everything was compounded by early contractions.  Whenever I would walk further than a block, I would start having what at first felt like really bad Braxton Hicks contractions.  When I had an incident of spotting and went in to get checked, they put a monitor on me and discovered that I was having actual mild contractions, and ordered to stop exercising for fear it would put me into early labor.   Yeah, having my son born on the streets of my New Jersey suburb wasn't really in the game plan, so I quit exercising and concentrated on eating instead.  By the time my son made his appearance, a mere two days before his due date, my total gain was 65 pounds. 

I managed to lose most of the weight again, but I haven't been as truly active since my kids as I was before they arrived.  I'm what I would consider "mildly fit" with periods of serious intensity.  I have an elliptical trainer that I get on as many days a week as I can stand, I go for almost daily walks during the week at the vineyard with a couple of coworkers.  I ride my horses on weekends, I enjoy exercise videos and yoga. I'm strong as an ox, I can easly throw 90-pound bales of hay (which is helpful when you're the only one there to stack the hay when it gets delivered).

There is one fitness activity that has eluded me most of my life, and that is the ability to run.  I'm not quite built for running - I lack the lean physique that most really able runners enjoy.  I'm built a little bit more like a linebacker - broad shoulders, wide hips.  I'm totally bottom heavy.  Sure, I ran as part of my team sports in high school and college, but I hated EVERY SECOND OF IT.  Bob Ernst, the women's varsity coach at the UW, sent us at least once a week for what he called "altitude training," which either meant running stairs in the football stadium, or if he was feeling particularly evil, running the long hill at Laurelhurst.  SEVERAL TIMES.  I was among the slowest runners on the team, so it always took me the longest.  I HATED IT.  Basketball involved running, of course, but short bursts never bothered me.  It was a sustained pace that I had a problem with.

However, the weather here is getting nice.  I am feeling that I have reached the age where I need to get serious about my fitness level.  I only have a few more years before I will have passed the point where getting back into serious shape is probably not an achievable goal.    One of the bloggers I follow, Liz over at Eternal Lizdom started a plan to get into 5K shape.  Then I found out one of the women in my carpool runs marathons.   Then I saw that Catherine at Her Bad Mother was going to be running a half marathon to raise money for muscular dystrophy awareness in honor of her nephew Tanner.  Yesterday, Kristen and Bill over at Shredheads announced Tutus for Tanner.  The plan?  If you are planning on running a race this year, sign up with them and wear a tutu to raise awareness for Tanner and for MD.  What a great idea.  Except, I thought to myself, I'm not planning on running any races this year.  OR EVER.  Because, you know, I DON'T RUN.  Then I started looking through the website, and I found links to running plans designed to turn a non-runner into a runner.  Like this one at Cool Runnings.  And I thought to myself, "Why not?   WHY NOT?"   I know.  CALL ME CRAZY!

So here it goes.  Today, after work, I am going to the mall to get fitted for a good pair of running shoes (since I'm pretty certain the sneakers I bought at Payless Shoe Source aren't going to cut it) and tomorrow?  I start. 

I'll post progress updates. 

Your job?  DON'T LET ME QUIT.  Cheer me on.  Ask me how I'm doing on my running plan.  Make sure I keep going.  You can do that, right?  And ask me if I've signed up for a race yet, because that's the thing I absolutely HAVE to do.  Not only to have the incentive to reach my goal, but to do something to honor a bunch of really awesome kids who have a really horrible disease.   I know that there is a possibility that my arthritis is going to try and toss a wrench into this, but I think if I manage it well that I will be OK.

Ready?  Set?  GO! 

My own personal Princess

  
  

Some people say they've always known who they were.  Some people say they discovered their true self after they met their spouse, or after they had their children.

I didn' t know who I was until I had a sister.

In November of 1996 I got a call that changed my entire world.  I'd been searching on and off for about three years for my birthfamily.  That winter, I found them.

I've written before about my birthmother and the rather strained and rocky relationship I have with her (or don't have with her, pick one).  But it occurs to me that I haven't logged many posts on this blog about Vicki.  This is a lack that begs remedy.

When I first found Sylvia and the rest of the Crazy People, Vicki wasn't ready to meet me.  Not even to talk to me on the phone.  She passed along to me, via my younger sister, that she was in the midst of a lot of "personal shit" and that she would let me know when she was ready.  Oh, God, that drove me crazy.  I'm not going to say that it hurt my feelings because I would totally be lying.  It just made me nuts.  I was the prodigal child, returning, and Vicki didn't want to come kneel at the altar, drink the blue koolaid.  She wasn't ready for me.   What she tried to explain but that I didn't really hear, was that she was living in a period of personal hell.  She was having the redneck breakup from hell with the man she'd been living with and expected to marry.  She was beginning to remember and have flashbacks about abuse she'd suffered as a kid.  She was a trainwreck.  There was more important shit going on in her life than meeting the Returnee.

It took a year.  A year in which I simmered with resentment, a year in which she tried to heal herself.  Finally, after what seemed like forever, she let me know, again via my younger sister, that she was ready.  Being the vindictive ass that I am, I waited a month before calling.  Paybacks.  HA!  She wasn't home, I left a message.  I can't remember if she returned my call that day or not, but I remember hearing her voice for the first time on the phone.  Every hair on my body stood up.  It was MY voice.  Sure, I don't speak redneck, but take away the drawl and she's me.  The connection was immediate and bone-deep, for both of us. 

Its hard to describe what happens when you meet yourself.  Do you remember the first time you felt that some really HEARD you?  Understood you?  GOT YOU?  All that.  And still infinitely more.  We recognized each other on a soul to soul level in a way that I'd never experienced with another human being.  It was the click that I think I had hoped and expected to find with my birthmother or with my younger sister.  Meeting Vicki was the one thing that made finding my birthfamily worth it (at least up until I met my cousin, but that's another story for another time). 

We burned up the phone lines for a few months, trying to plan a time when we could meet in person.  I was in Seattle, 3,000 miles away, but we finally found a week that worked, and made plans.  I have the most wonderful memories of those few days.  At the time, I was still volunteering for a nonprofit that performed birthfamily searches for terminally ill adoptees, and had been contacted by The Learning Channel to see if we had any cases with upcoming reunions for their new show "Reunions."   There weren't any pending cases that we had a hope of having a find for at the time, so I had turned them down.   I was talking to a producer about the issue of open records and how difficult searching could be.   I described my own search to her and explained that I would be meeting my big sister for the first time in a few months.  When she suggested that I consider allowing TLC to film it for the show, I was hesitant.  Vicki and I talked about it at length and ultimately we decided that we would do it.  To this day I am so glad that I did, not for the privilege of being on television, but because the copies I have of the show they produced are the most incredible mementos I could ever have of one of the most important events of my life. 

Vicki is a pocket philosopher.  She is tough and gentle at the same time.  She is laughter and tears.   She has been through so much in her life, experienced so much pain and so much joy, and as a result has become wise.  She's also crazy as a loon, and not always in a good way, but there are reasons for it.  My sister suffered abuse at the hands of her stepfather and my birthmother that I can't describe or even begin to understand it.  She was not alone, eventually the abuse was carried out on my brothers as well, but Vicki was the first.  The story of it is not mine to tell.  It didn't end until she was a teen.  She eventually ran away from home.  It was on the streets of Portland that Vicki was found by Sandy Barr, a wrestling promoter, back in the day when Vince McMahon's father owned the WWF and Vince was announcing matches.

Sandy took Vicki in, recognized potential in her, and eventually, trained her as a wrestler.  That's right, MY BIG SISTER was a professional wrestler.  Princess Victoria.  She has the coloring of her father (who, if you believe my birthmother, was Native American and also the Wichita Lineman) and so the WWF billed her as an "Indian Princeess from the wilds of Canada."  She was the tag team partner of Velvet McIntyre, they held the World Tag Team belt in 1983, the same year I graduated from high school.  I have hours of VHS tape of some of her old matches, and a lot of footage exists on YouTube.  Wrestling gave Vicki a new life.  She traveled the world for a few years, wrestling, being somewhat famous.  She knew all of the old school wrestlers:  Dutch Savage, Chief Jay Strongbow, Roddy Piper, Jesse Ventura, Fabulous Moolah, Wendy Richter, Leilani Kai, Susan Starr. 

  

 

After Vicki retired from wrestling, she got married and moved to Virginia.  When I met her she was divorced, raising her son and had just finished up welding school, working at an equipment manufacturer.   To this day, she can call on Princess Victoria instantaneously.  Treat my sister and those who are hers with respect and kindness?  She is Vicki.  Cross her, and you'll meet Victoria.

There is no exaggeration in saying that meeting Vicki changed my life.  I was married, working, pretending at my life when I met her.  I was married to someone I was not suited to be with.  There was nothing wrong with him.  He was a nice guy.  But the girl who married him had spent a lifetime trying to figure out who she was, and in those early years, after the rebellion of her early 20's, she was still in parent-please mode.  She picked a nice guy that no one could object to, and proceeded to play house in the suburbs.  By the time Vicki entered my life, I was beginning to understand that the choice I had made was a poor one, but I was grimly determined to stick it out.  GRIMLY.  That's what people did, after all. 

When I met Vicki, I saw myself reflected in her, and I realized that to live a life of crippling boredom would be the most wrong thing I could possibly do.  Now, in all fairness, I might have overreacted JUST A LITTLE BIT.  I could have simply ended my marriage.  I didn't have to get divorced, get tattooed,  pierce my navel, meet a guy, quit my job and move cross-country.  Yeah, hindsight says all that drama wasn't really necessary.  But I did it and its over with.  No use crying over spilt milk, or so they say (I'm not convinced it isn't worth at least a few tears). 

For the longest time we talked every few days at least.  She was with me when I gave birth to my first child.  We still talk at least once a month, communicate on Facebook and email constantly.  And even when I haven't talked to her in a while, she is always here with me.  She is a comforting presence in my mind and my heart.  We know and recognize one another. 

I can't explain why I don't have this connection with the rest of them.  I think mostly because Vicki is the one who is like me not only on the outside, but on the inside too.  I feel a sense of blood recognition with her that I've only felt since with my children.    There is guilt, sometimes, that I didn't respond to the rest in the same way.  I know they look at Vicki and I and they feel excluded.  I can't help it.  It just is.  Whenever we get to see one another, every couple of years, there is no sense of the passage of time.  We come together as easily as if we had just seen each other the day before and every day before that.

We often imagine what life would have been like for us if we'd grown up together.  We laugh and say, "There wasn't a neighborhood that would've been safe."  "We'd be CEO's of our own company."  "We would have blown up a few schools."  We constantly remind one another "Remember, use your power for good, not evil." 

If only.  So many "if only"s.  If she'd been raised with me, by my adoptive family.  If I'd been raised with her, in that living hell of abuse.  I was the lucky one, we all know it.  She forgives me for it.    Thank God for her.

 

Stop Lights and Street Signs and Traffic! Oh My!

In between my years in the lovely state of Washington, I had the misfortune joy of living in The Garden State for almost a decade.  Prior to living there I had been in Seattle for a number of years, so the concept of traffic was not unknown to me. However, Seattle has always had a fairly decent public transit system for those living on the outskirts of the metro area, so commuting wasn't too bad.  New Jersey was like moving to another planet.  Where all the drivers are on crack.  And carry guns. And public transit is nonexistent.

My first job was a temp position at a large corporate office in Woodbury.  I was commuting there from Toms River, so the drive usually took about an hour.  Without traffic it might have been a half hour hop skip and jump.  But the Garden State Parkway, while green and rather pretty in the southern reaches of the state, is aptly named.  Park.  Way.  The only thing worse than the aggressive drivers and the toll booths were the places where a local throughway would merge onto the Parkway, or where the Parkway would suddenly go from five lanes to three.  That was where life got a little dicey. 

Its not hard to imagine why the highways would be crowded, in a tiny state stuffed full of seven and a half million people.  What's amazing about New Jersey drivers is their innate ability to drive twenty miles an hour over the posted speed limit (yes, that would be about 85-90) and weave back and forth, avoiding the right lane drivers and the New Yorkers.  Where it gets truly mind-boggling is when you reach a stopped patch of traffic.  How there aren't MORE accidents is beyond my feeble mind to ken.

After enduring far too many years of snarls and jug-handles and summer beach traffic and middle-fingered turn signals, I moved to the center of Washington State, to work at a winery.  Most people, when they think of Washington, think of Seattle, with mountains and evergreens and lakes and ferries and big islands (Vashon, Bainbridge, Whidbey).  One of the truly great things about Washington, though, its the diversity in both geology and climate.  West of the Cascade Mountains (a/k/a The Wet Side, Home of the Moss People), is green and often gray.  Rain and drizzle are what we natives TELL you it does all the time, but anyone who's visited the Pacific Northwest between June and September knows that we are all really lying.  We just don't want you to realize how pretty it is and actually MOVE here.  The Dry Side of the state stretches from the eastern slope of the Cascade mountains all the way across to Idaho.  Here you will find long valleys, beautiful rivers, stretches of dry, arid desert, bare mountains and wheat country. Trees?  Not so much.  Mostly in the populated areas and planted around rural homes as windbreaks.  The conditions in the Yakima and Columbia valleys, as it turns out, are ideal for viticulture, and so Washington currently boasts hundreds of estate wineries, most of them located within an 80 mile radius of where I now live.

The winery where I work is far outside of city limits.  The closest town is little more than a small  conglomeration of a few houses, mobile and manufactured homes.  Aside from the winery, land for miles around is devoted to farming.  There is an organic dairy, and circle upon circle of onions, corn, mint and hay.  Its a 45 mile drive each way from my home to my office down in the warehouse, and most days I take a vanpool with five other people.   We have pretty good public transit in the Tri-Cities, despite being very rural.  With lots of people working out at Hanford, across the river at the chemical depot in Umatilla, or at many of the area farms, we have a very robust vanpool system.  For three days a week it costs me approximately $50-$60 per month, then one day a week I drive myself in, one day a week I telecommute.

The vanpool takes the "boring" way, down I-82 and then out highway 14 along the Columbia River.  Once we get to the river, its less boring and rather pretty.  But along I-82, there is nothing but dirt, tumbleweeds and sage. Occasionally it is very foggy, but aside from the random coyote sighting, that's about the only variation.  On the days I drive myself, I take the scenic route, up Weber Canyon and through the Horse Heaven Hills.  For the first year or so, I was bowled over on a daily basis by the contrast between my new commute and my old New Jersey commute.  Picture New Jersey.  Picture five lanes of the GSP ground to a standstill for hundreds of feet, waiting to squeeze five lanes through three toll booths.  Then look at this:

  

In that fourth picture you can actually see a semi trailer ahead of me and another semi approaching on the cross street.  That's what I now refer to as "traffic." 

I can't imagine going back to New Jersey, or to any city, for that matter.  Yes, spoiled I am.