Confessions of a Former Mommy Snob ...

Mommy snobbery is not a new subject in my blog ... but I don't know that I've ever dedicated an entire blog to it ...

There are a lot of things involved in mommy snobbery ... the mommy wars definitely are a large part of it ... for those that don't know ... the mommy wars are the arguments like breast vs bottle, co-sleeping vs crib sleeping, baby wearing vs detachment, spanking vs not spanking, etc., etc., etc., ... but my main issue with mommy snobbery and the kind of mommy snob I used to be didn't have much to do with any of that ....

I married young ... had my oldest when I was barely twenty-three ... none of my friends were married ... none of them had kids ... they were in their early twenties ... living it up ... drinking ... partying ... bar hopping ... they invited me for a while ... but after I pretty much flat out said something like "don't you understand I'm a mother now, I have a baby, I don't have time for those childish things" ... they stopped inviting me ... it was funny because in the season finale of How I Met Your Mother Marshall and Lilly have their baby and suddenly they tell their friends they don't have time for them unless they have something to say that is ranked "an 8 or higher" ... I looked at the lemon man and said "see mommy snobbery" ... they even talk about it in sitcoms ... I digress ... for a while I was glad my friends had stopped inviting me ... but then two more kids later I started to realize some things ... and I give credit to a speaker

Living With A Hoarder ...

This post I'm about to write is part of why I started an anonymous blog ... and I still don't know if I'm going to say it all in the right way ... or in a way that people will remotely understand ... but here it goes ...

Many of you that have been reading me know I live with my mother ... I've lived here for almost two years ... one of the many problems with that is that my mom is a hoarder ... she isn't at the level that the people you see on the shows are ... there aren't dead animals ... or at least there aren't any missing animals so I assume there aren't ... and she isn't accumulating more stuff by going to garage sales or digging through people's trash cans or other things you see in the extreme cases they showcase for entertainment ... but she doesn't get rid of anything ... so here we go ...

 

This is a picture of my mom's/our dining room ... the backpacks up front do belong to my children ... but obviously there is much more than that ...

Negativity & Misery ....

This post was absolutely inspired by Robin and her post Misery Loves Company ...

This is something I have actually contemplated a lot ... when I am most inspired to write it's when something has me fired up ... emotional ... angry, sad, frustrated ... whatever it is the negative emotions drive me to write ...

I often wonder if people who read my blogs think I am this crazy, pessimistic, negative person ... because I'm really not (really ... I swear ... I don't spend my whole life bitching about my living situation or my friends or family) ... I am blessed ... I am blessed that I had a mother who could and did take me and my kids in to her home ... I am blessed that I never have to wonder where a meal is coming from ... I am blessed to have an amazing man in my life ... and those three rugrats that I pushed out of my vagina ... yeah ... I like them too ... I am healthy now ... that is a blessing ... I have a job (not one that pays enough to move out ... but I do have one) ... I'm in school, finished my prerequisites and I get to apply for nursing school ... I am an

Memorial Day ... Remembering What it's Really About ...

While branded a holiday about barbeques and drinking many people forget what Memorial Day is really about ...

When I was seventeen my father and I took a trip to Washington DC  ... the first horrific thing that I saw there was the Holocaust Museum ... I don't think that what Hitler did registered with me until I walked through that museum and watched the bulldozing of bodies ... saw the personal stories ... that experience is something that will resonate with me forever ...

Later that same day we visited the Vietnam Memorial Wall ... where my dad broke down and cried when he found the names of friends from high school ... and I think it wasn't until

The Struggle ...

I am caught in a struggle ... well several ... but the biggest of which is whether or not to stay true to myself ...

My last post provides some context for this one ... but basically I am an only child with only three cousins ... two of them are close in age and always lived very close to me ... I considered them more like siblings than cousins ... I'm sure they didn't feel that way ... but being an only child I guess that I definitely had a different point of view ...

Throughout time they have found various ways to exile me ... at my girl cousin's wedding there were reserved tables for "all the family" ... my dad (and his then girlfriend) ... sat at the head table ... by the time my ex-husband and I made it from the church to the reception hall with a four year old, two year old and five week old in tow and then made it through the receiving line ... there was no seating left in the banquet room ... and amongst

Black Sheep ...

 From my archives ... originally posted December 10, 2010 ... this blog offers context for an upcoming blog ... but also needs some itself ... in July 2010 my father evicted me from a house that he bought for me and my kids to live in post-divorce ... his reason for evicting me was that me living in that house was "bad for our relationship" ... I had to quit the job I had at the time ... move three hours away ... and into my mom's basement ... when I first moved in there I had no money ... I was reliant on her for everything ... she had a great deal of control and she exerted it ... the part of this blog that is needed for context for an upcoming blog is the part about my cousins and extended family ... but this has been a short synopsis to understand this blog ...

... so I'm going through one of those times right now where blogging is both my best friend and my worst enemy ...

I have feelings I can't explain ... feelings I can ... and then of course this blog is not anonymous .... so I have to be somewhat careful, guarded if you will, about what I say about certain situations, people, etc.,

The holidays are very hard for me for multiple reasons ... but mostly it's the pressure and the tug of war of both myself and my children .. and then I come off as uncaring and not wanting to spend time with people, which isn't true ... but I've spent a lot of time as a black sheep, and I emphasize a lot ...

I went through a phase right around my senior year of high school where I felt much the same way I do now ... but basically it comes down to this ... I play a very good black sheep from the sidelines ... so what is the purpose in joining a game, where further injury will inevitably be the only result? ... the bulk of my extended family has made it very clear

There Once Was A Blogger Named Sperk* ...

I was very honored when Kimberly Speranza over at the blog Sperk* honored me with a Liebster Blog award.

I love reading Sperk* and all her parenting opinions and her Listicles!

I think it's amazing how much the blogging world can and does support other bloggers and this is part of it. I am definitely "plugging" Kimberly's blog and I highly recommend people that don't know her writing check it out!

I came to Sperk* through a blogging network/community called YeahWrite. That community has made my constant blogging feel much more rewarding and much more friendly than it had in the past. I highly recommend YeahWrite to anyone who wants to enter a network of other bloggers and blogs that exist to support one another.

Sperk* also narrowed the field of my possible nominations when she nominated four other blogs at the same time as mine in her Liebster Blog post. Thank you so much to Kimberly and all the other amazing bloggers that I've found out there!

When you get a Liebster, here's what you do:

1. Thank the blogger who nominated you for it.  
2. Link back to the nominator blogger(s).  See above.  Then click the links!
3. Display the Liebster Award Logo.  Proudly.
4. Nominate 5 bloggers with fewer than 200 followers - actual followers, not Facebook friends or Twitter followers.
5. Let your nominees know so that they can do the same and keep the awards rolling.

My Nominees 

(I highly recommend you visit these blogs)

PS ... I had several "runners up" ... this was kind of hard lol ... and I'm only mostly sure they meet the 200 follower qualifications

Abby Gabs

Absurd Grace

Clay Baboons

Mockingbird, Don't Write

Thoughts and Reflection, My Lovely Disaster

Scared ...

This is something I don't talk about a lot ... and it's probably something I should be talking about ... I don't feel comfortable with the subject because, quite frankly, it scares the living shit out of me ... so I don't talk about it with my closest friends ... or my family ... but for some reason ... today ... I'm going to share it with the people that read this blog ... the bulk of which are strangers ...

I think I don't talk about it because I don't think people realize how much it really scares me ... how much I avoid it ... and then I finally do say something ... and nobody responds ... leading to me posting about how it actually hurt my feelings to have no responses on Facebook about it ...

So here it goes ... my kidney is slowly failing ... I say kidney because they already took

Why I Actually Like Working the Night Shift ... And Why it Works For My Family ...

People tell me all the time I'm crazy ...

Maybe that doesn't have anything to do with my shift though ... but we'll pretend it does ...

I've always been a night person ... I've always detested alarm clocks ... and I've always, always had insomnia ... that alone explains part of why I like working nights ... my current shift is midnight-7am Monday thru Thursday nights and then 7pm - 7am Sundays ... although my position is PRN (basically on call so a lot of weeks I don't work all those nights) ...

But ... the main reason I work nights ... the reason I seek out night shifts ... is that it is

Being Enough ... The Thing About Being Cheated On ...

Edit: ... I think I say the word "enough" ... way more than "enough" times in this post ... =p

Recently I was out to lunch with a friend and we were talking about things from our distant and not so distant past ... and the subject of cheating came up ... kind of ... she was talking about how it felt like cheating to her when her husband had looked at internet porn ... now this is where you need to hear me out ...

I think that the thing about cheating ... is the feelings that come out of it in the long run ... there is initial anger and sadness ... the feelings that come from the betrayal ... from being lied to ... but in the long run the insecurity that is built is what will make or break a relationship ...

It's this insecurity that is relationship breaking that makes even things that seem mostly innocent an issue ... flirtatious emails, texts, phone calls ... looking at porn ... and of

Ummm ... Hot Tuna ...

Background context may be necessary ... so here it is ... the short version ... post-divorce I live in my mom's basement ... I work nights ... I usually do okay until about Thursday picking the kids up from school and still maintaining my sanity from exhaustion, but then it starts to get me ... but at least Thursday nights are my Friday ...

This is an example (capped off by my daughter's amazing version of "the things kids say") of the little annoyances that build up living with my mom ...

Since Monday she has been talking about making "tuna cheese dreams" for dinner ... this is basically a tuna melt with a fancy name that she decided to give it when I was a kid ... well, Monday we ate out because it was an insane day ... Tuesday we ate with and stayed at the Lemon Man's house ... Wednesday their dad took them out to dinner (per

It's In The Eyes ....

Lately I've received an outpouring of compliments on my eyes ... it's weird ... because that normally just doesn't happen ... walking through a store ... going to work ... random people telling me that my eyes are pretty ... people that know me telling my eyes look brighter and clearer ... I can even see it in pictures of myself  ...

Maybe it's as simple as I haven't been working that much lately ... or that school is over for now ... maybe it's more ... maybe as they say the eyes are the windows to the soul ... I have been happier lately ...

I can't even say exactly why ... there are things in my life that are better ... but there are

Is it all Just Another Popularity Contest? ...

I've been thinking lately ... okay well I think all the time ... but I've been thinking lately about the world of social networking, the blogosphere, the way we use information these days ... and I know for the younger generations it's just an extension of the drama ... the bullshit ... of junior high, high school and maybe even college ... I have seen work drama unfold on Facebook ... I have seen family drama unfold on Facebook ... but I've noticed some things ...

I have a friend that has now had the same issues with different people four, five times in the last two years ... major issues ... life changing issues ... and everyone is always there to offer twenty ... thirty ... comments on her Facebook page about how sorry they are she

How North Carolina Helped Make Barack Obama A Two Term President ...

Whether you are an Obama fan or not ... whether you think he is the lesser of two evils or the epitome of evil or the best gosh durn thing that ever happened to this country ... he made history the other day by coming out in support of gay marriage ... that being said I actually believe that what he was responding to will have more of an impact on the upcoming election than his own statement ...

Top GOP pollsters are reporting that if the Republican party does not back off in the fight against gay marriage that they will marginalize themselves into "insignificance" ... and I agree ... 

Every few generations there comes an issue that just can't be overlooked in the grand scheme of our country ... the end of slavery, women receiving the right to vote, "colored" people receiving the right to vote, the ban on the segregation of schools, workplaces and government facilities, the Vietnam war ... and now we have gay marriage ... in all of these situations what the "conservative" party never understands is this is almost a generational

Relief ...

I work in a field that some nurses and healthcare workers are afraid to work in ... I work with the people society rejects ... sometimes those that the CDC puts in quarantine ... I work with people who have infectious diseases ... mostly non-tuberculosis mycobacterial infections (in other words bacteria that pretend to be tuberculosis) ... but I also work with people that have tuberculosis ... people that are HIV+ and those that have full blown AIDS ... patients that have Hep C and C Diff and a whole slew of other things the public has never heard of ... I work with people that have MRSA that can't be stopped ...

I hate what society does to these people ... I hate the lack of education that the general public has ... and I don't hate a lot of things ... but still I find this weakness in myself ....

I know ... logically ... I know that I take every precaution, follow every rule (and still do my best to make sure that the patients still feel a human connection) ... I do everything to protect myself ... yet every four months when I come up for testing ... I am always relieved to get the negative results ... despite knowing I was never at risk ... to see the negative TB test ... I can breathe easier for a while ... the silver lining of course is that it always is negative ...

Moderation ...Rising Above Being a Child of an Alcoholic ...

I remember it clearly ... sitting in a meeting with my peers ... none of them I went to school with at the time ... but one I knew from church ... and all of them would eventually become schoolmates in middle school ... and when we saw each other in the hallways in the sixth grade ... we pretended we didn't know each other ... our eyes would meet ... and we would quickly look down or away ... it was a mutual shame we all felt ...

Children of Alcoholics ... COA ... we met in a small room at a counseling center in the middle of the mountain county where I grew up ... we spent an entire school year ... all of us in the fourth grade ... nine/ten years old ... talking about what it was like to grow up with an alcoholic parent ... what it was like when they were either recovering or kicked out of our houses ... and how we could avoid the same fate ...

The experience scared me ... 

**************

Probably in some blog down the line I will talk about what it was truly like living with my father up until he stopped drinking ... the abuse ... the car accidents ... the puking ... the

Trying to Forget ...

I want to say it's a "girl" thing ... but in all honesty I don't think it is ... while I totally believe in the theory that the male and female brains are very different ... I think that the flashback is a unisex trait but more common in women than in men ... I think men require the right circumstances in order to hit that point ...

So what exactly is the "flashback" I'm referring to? ... it is the sudden onset of emotional, mental and physical reaction to something that happened a very long time ago ... something reminds you ... something triggers you ... and all of the sudden you are reliving something you would rather forget ...

Something happened in the foundation of my relationship with the lemon man, before we

Every Once in a While ....

Every once in a while ... when I'm writing my blogs ... and I'm grateful that in a sense there is a journal of me ... a permanence of my being ... until the interwebz disappear anyway ... I wonder what my kids will think if they ever come back and read it all ... will they think I was crazy? ... will they be proud that I'm their mom? ... will they have kids of their own and relate? ... I love those little munchkins more than anything else in the universe ... and I hope that when they get truly inside my head ... that they don't think less of me ...

The Stepparent Errr ... Issues ... ??? ...

Okay, so this is going to be a hard post for me to write ... but I feel like I need to write it ... my lemon man is basically a stepparent ... two of my most faithful readers are stepparents ... so I am going to do my best to not be offending or disrespectful in any way ... and I am also going to say up front that my situation may be very different from other people's ... and other moms and dads may feel very differently than I do ... okay ... so that's my disclaimer ...

My kids have a new stepmom ... that's okay ... that I can deal with ... not a big deal ... for a long time through my ex's and her engagement we got along perfectly ... things were going well ... I figured she would be easy to co-parent with ... until the first issue actually came up ... my oldest daughter hadn't completed any of her homework the first month that they had custody of her ...

So, I emailed my ex ... and I could tell that there was some influence from someone else in his responses ... and these conversations are difficult ... it's hard when someone is

Promote What You Love ...

I could go on and on about how this picture ... the quote "promote what you love instead of bashing what you hate" means in the world of politics and religion ...

I have written paragraphs trying to express what this little ten word phrase says and means ... but today I'm not going to talk about politics and religion ... I am going to talk about the effect this saying has on personal relationships ... balance in romantic relationships and friendships ...

Many people have probably heard the "how full is your bucket" theory ... it started as an adult theme and turned into a popular children's story ...

Basically the point of the theory is that you add drops of water to a bucket with positive things and you take water out of the bucket with negative things ... the people that we love

Rest in Peace MCA ...

The death of Adam Yauch of the Beastie Boys (aka MCA) hit me harder than any celebrity deaths have in a very long time ...

I think there are several reasons for this ... age being a major part of it ... he was forty-seven ... he was still old enough that technically he could have almost been my father ... but his picture hung on my wall as a teenage girl ... along with the other Beastie Boys ... I thought they were all cute ... all within reach ... another part of it is that he died from cancer ... from something that made him just as human as the rest of us ... and something that he didn't bring on himself ... he didn't die from a drug overdose, like so many young celebrities do ... he was also a very good person ... philanthropy was a huge part of his life for the last two decades ... he started foundations and contributed to others ...

I think my own sense of mortality kicked in ... my own sense of the people around me being vulnerable ... the phrase "the good die young" went through my mind when I first heard ... what I do know is based on several of my friends' responses through social networks that I am not alone in feeling this way ... I am not alone in being deeply affected by the loss of such an amazing artist, philanthropist and person ...

He will be missed ... and many in my generation grew a little bit from the news of the last two days ...

Flinching & Cringing ...

I kind of expected ... correction ... I always expected it ... but I remember the first time it actually happened ...

I was at a school function with my younger daughter ... it was a field trip ... and the kids were outside doing their thing ... eating lunch ...

Another mom who was chaperoning started making small talk with me ... little questions here and there ... and then there it was "what does your husband do?" ...

"Well, I'm divorced, but he's a drafter" .... "Oh, I'm so sorry" ...

And then she turned and WALKED AWAY ... she walked away ...

Maybe she was embarrassed by the fact that she asked the question ... maybe she didn't know how to respond ... but she, in that moment, symbolized all my fears about telling

Surprising New Love ...

I've always been into sports ... okay not always ... I used to think it was funny though that my dad would fall asleep "watching" football every Sunday ... it wasn't football time ... it was nap time ...

I started playing basketball in the third grade ... it was the first sport I fell in love with ... but volleyball in the eighth grade quickly took over as my favorite ... in high school I was a cheerleader ... I didn't know what a down was ... but one of the guys I went to school with sat down one day and explained football to me in a way I understood and cared about ... and I became a football fan for life ...

I love live baseball games ... the stadium ... the smell ... the excitement ... I love live basketball games ... neither am I a big fan of watching on TV but I will sometimes ... and

Finality ... The Sense of Being Reborn ...

“I think it happens to everyone as they grow up. You find out who you are and what you want, and then you realize that people you've known forever don't see things the way you do. And so you keep the wonderful memories, but find yourself moving on.”   ~ Nicholas Sparks

My ex is now married to someone else ... I've had people come to me with condolences ... worried about how I'm doing ... and really ... I don't care all that much ... and the part of me that does care ... is extremely glad and relieved ...

His marriage gives me a sense of finality and closure that I didn't have before ... when I first found out he was engaged my first thought was "thank God, because now if I do it I won't be the bad guy" ...

Maybe that sounds cold and uncaring to some people ... but they haven't walked in my shoes ... it amuses me because less than a week before his wedding he told me that I needed to "move on and worry about (my)self" ... I moved on long before he did ...

I remember standing in a parking lot after exchanging the kids and he was yelling at me about finding girls that were hotter than me ... telling me that he could have them ... I

If It's Possible ...

"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage" - Lao Tzu

I think I'm falling in love with him all over again ... not that I ever fell out ... but I think I'm just seeing him again ... in the ways we sometimes don't see people who have walked the same path as us for so long ... he would think it was cheesy to say that to him ... so I'll say it here ... but I love him more everyday ...

The Moment of Clarity ...

I received a gift about six months ago ... a gift that nobody plans on giving ... a gift that nobody plans on receiving ... but one that forever changes you ...

I received the gift of peace with death ...

A spiritual concreteness flushed through me in a way that nothing ever had before ... at this point in my life I am more spiritual than religious, however I stand by the religion I have been part of all my life, because I believe in their philosophies on people ... on issues ... on everything non-biblical ... and then as much faith as I can put in the bible I believe in their philosophies on it too ... I believe in walking by faith not by sight ... but at the same time there are holes in the bible that I can't wrap my mind around ... but that being said ... I spiritually grew that night in a way that I probably never would have without it ...

It was a fateful evening ... my previous employer had taken me off the schedule ... I had unplanned time off ... then my dad called ... then my cousin called ... both of them with