Would the Real Betty Please STOP!

My older two children shuffled about the kitchen getting their breakfast as I cut cantelope and packed lunches and snacks, thoughtfully balancing healthy food, enough food, and today a brownie for a treat.  Ok...I will fess up on the brownies because it is actually self serving that I am being such a Betty Crocker Mom. 

I baked brownies for my son's lacrosse team to have after their first game on Sunday.  (Yes, I am trying to get the other kids to hack at his ankles less..shhhh!)  So we, in our cute family cooking way, made a double batch of the family size box. (NO!  I do not ever make brownies from scratch.  And for some of you, no...box-o-brownies is not scratch) Anywho..the game was cancelled!!  I was left with all those brownies!!  I realize this is not the biggest problem one could have.   However, consider the timing.  The sun is out...eventually it will be warm...flip-flops have made their debut.  Do you see where this is leading???  Eventually I will need to be wearing the dreaded, and yet so desired bathingsuit!!!!

So brownies...bathingsuit.  You with me?  Unless you have the self control I completely lack, you now see the problem I am facing and my attempt to combat it.  In addition to the issue of my probable walk-by-brownie-munching, my children (due to responsible parenting on my part) do not do this.  They are reasonable eaters...well 2 out of 3 are.  It would take them a month to eat all the brownines I could scarf down in an evening leaving me with chocolate in my teeth, regret in my head, and a change in bathing suit style.  "Do you carry those fanny hugger kind that take ten pounds off?"

So yesterday was bring a brownie to your teachers day, today was bring a brownie to a friend day...  Keep in mind that the freshness level is wearing off, which means nothing to me in my time of need, but certainly changes who we can pawn them off on.  Suggestions? 

Saturday is now the new first game.  I will naturally be baking brownies again!  If it does however rain, would you all support my cause and graba  brownie as you drive by!!!

Hiding Behind...

Anyone using social networking knows it can be an amazing way to reconnect with people from our past.  I sat at my computer one day, perhaps on a Freedom 45 weekend and her name popped into my head.  "I wonder where Anouk is these days?"  And there she was.  My primary suite friend from the years in Haiti.  The moment we reconnected it was electric.  We laughed and talked and planned how to see one another.  We are only 3 1/2 hours apart!  Her children are the same ages as my older two.  Ahhh another FB wonder.

And that is when she began to tell the story.  It is the kind of story that we all should have about compassion and camaraderie.  She told the tale of being afraid to begin kindergarten all those years ago.  Anouk was so timid she hid behind the piano! (Hardly the woman I now know and love).  She would not come out for the teacher.  She would not come out to play, and she certainly wasn't coming out for a lousy song.  The story continues with a child so compassionate and caring that she too hides behind the piano.  She stays there the whole time until Anouk is ready to come out. And they are forever linked.  She has told this story over and over again throughout the years.  Even her children know of the girl who joined her behind the piano.  Her name was Carolee. 

My mouth drops.  She cannot wait for her kids to meet me.  She cannot wait to tell her family that she has found the long lost friend who gave her the courage she needed to come out from behind the piano.  My heart races.  I mean Anouk and I really click. This is an amazing discovery and I feel that this friendship is busting with greatness.  I see our kids calling each other cousins (as true little Haitians would) and the trips to visit and her intelligence and spirit lifting me up!  And yet in this moment I am terrified, in a most childish way, to lose her...I truly believe that if she knows then she will not want me.

And so I say nothing.  The story will fade and we will just be the greatest of far away friends, I tell myself.  But it doesn't.  It comes up each time we speak.  I arrive at her home for the first time ever.  I am without my children.  The drive was filled with anticipation as I navigated one street at a time towards Anouk.  I arrived and ran to the door.  She opened it and out popped the words; "Wow! You are so tiny."  I never occurred to me that she could be shorter even then my sister.  We hugged forever and it was like no time had passed.  The children came running to meet their new aunt!  The one who had crawled behind- you guessed it- the piano with their Mom.  Their faces lit up. I shriveled up.

The lie was eating at me and I hadn't even told it!  Of course I hadn't untold it either...  How could I risk giving up this greatness?  Perhaps the magic of the friendship would be lost when I told her I wasn't in Haiti for kindergarten.  I joined the class in second grade.  The piano girl was not me.  I mean I would have been the piano girl if I were there!  I definitely would have been the one to notice her need..wouldn't I have?

The weekend is all I could want.  We laugh, we play, we dance!  Oh how I loved the dancing.  We danced until 6 am when my feet completely rebelled against the spiky heels they had so dutifully allowed me to pummel them in.  And then we fell asleep on the couches giggling and  eating spinach pizza.  To any one reading this, I would guess it would seem obvious that my not being that kindergartner is a foolish fear.  But still I worried.

It took all of my courage, as my heart raced to stumble and trip over the words, "I did not go to school in Haiti for kindergarten".  Anouk's face flashed surprised and then she in all of her beauty, burst out laughing.  "Then who was she???"  Relief...and the awareness of my foolishness set in.

I'm sure I don't have to sum up the chemistry of a real friendship and all that blah blah.  So I won't.  Just enjoy a good story and a chuckle at my foolishness.   And don't be afraid to share your own friendship stories.  ;)

Desperately Seeking My Groove

I am recovering from my daughters' illness.  I will spare you the details, suffice to say it was the messy, not pretty kind of sickness.  One daughter was sick for a week leaving me to scramble with how not to be at work and yet how to be at meetings and complete paperwork that needed doing.  Friends and sitters allowed me to steal a few hours and here and there.  Of course technology helped.  But all in all the public relations part of my job suffered and the people I work with had to take on more to make up for my absence.

And in the course of it all, I feel as though I have lost my rhythm.  Especially here.  I have begun to write at least five pieces and have published none of them.  I am generally the type of writer who simply has the words pour out.  If they don't, the piece doesn't usually happen.  I did come up with one very fun idea that will hopefully engage you all. I have the amazing luck having of two brilliant women on my side with ideas..so look for the unveiling of that in the next week or so!  In the mean time.  Thank you for your patience while I locate my groove...and PLEASE let me know if you have seen it!!!

We are following each other...

My family often tells of how as a child I would stroll along the beach or anywhere else, and collect friends.  They say I would have a line of followers playing whatever game I had created.  It seems I was not the bossy leader, but just looking for people to have fun with, and to make some friends along the way.  Some of these friends lasted only the day and some are people who still brighten my days.

This blogging thing isn't so far from the beach of my childhood.  I am bouncing along looking for some people to share a story with, make some friends, and I am looking for them to "follow" me along this journey.  Some of these blogging "friends" are ones I have know for so long, and some...well ok.  At this point, I know you all pretty well.  In weeks to come I hope to bring in some new friends to our beach party. Though I don't so much want to be followed as to walk beside and talk to some great people who know just what it feels like to have to brush the sand off of yourself after taking a digger.  So thank you for "following" and hey invite anyone you want to join us!

Freedom 45

Being away from my children has gotten easier over the years and I guess I won't lie, it is often a great gift.  Ahhh the silver lining of divorce.  Every other weekend I have about 45 hours without making the constant food prep, directing recreational needs, being ringmaster of disputes, listening attentively to all those facts about space that I have almost memorized myself after having taught it and now having 2 of my 3 working through this fascinating topic.  Did you know that the sun is only a medium sized star?  It is just that it is so
close to us compared to the others...

I suddenly have choices about where to go and what time to do anything!  There are times when I sit in amazement in a coffee shop, notebook in my lap creating the tales of all the characters buzzing in and out, that I remember that not a soul in this world knows where I am at this very moment.  Not a friend or a sibling or a parent or my children.  I shiver of fear can spill over me and I wonder if I should let someone know.  I wonder if something were to happen to me how anyone would know who to contact.  I shake the uneasiness and choose instead to breathe in the freedom.  The purest freedom I can feel.  It settles into me and fills me with promises.  What it cannot promise is to last very long and I fight the urge to count hours.  I find myself pondering how much of my precious feedom do I give to the coffee shop?  How much should I use to be productively shoveling out kids rooms, should I find a friend to share dinner and laughs with?

Once upon a freedom 45 I did not speak the entire time. It wasn't planned, but then it did lead to a challenge within myself.  I spent time in the coffee shop and at home cleaning out my daughters' room for the arrival of bunkbeds. I went running and did a little shopping, but I never spoke.  I thought of my mother often with her pleading voice of my childhood, "Carolee!  Would you please just stop talking for 5 minutes!?"  HA!  I did it...finally.  And not 5 minutes, 2700 minutes!  Unlikely she would even believe that.  Of course with chat and text it is not like I didn't communicate with anyone.  I simply did not utilize vocals.

When my Freedom 45 comes to an end, there is always a bit of sadness in me.  Suddenly I will be responsible for others and their, at times, overwhelming needs.  I sometimes wish I had used my time otherwise.  More time with friends or less time cleaning or more time cleaning and less time at the coffee shop.  Whatever the gripe, the last hour slips by.  And at its end come three enormous smiles attached to gripping hugs and sloppy kisses.  My heart races.  They look taller, they look like something is new about them, they look beautiful.  They are filled with stories and have to work hard to take turns with my ear.  Lately, in his ever maturing way, my son takes a few moments to ask me what I did and how my time was.  I want to cry.  When did he become so big?

What Gives?

This is not a new story.  And if you cannot see some of yourself in it PLEASE at least help me be more like you!!  Like any human who has reached adulthood and acquired some level of responsibility, I cannot figure out how to do everything in a day that I need/want to do.  I can't fit it into a week or a year either!  So what gives?  What do I give up? 

You hear all the time, "Your children are the most important thing, they will be gone before you know it".  Yes!  This is so true.  And so I try to do puzzles in the evening on the dining room table, and attend their games and get them to their overlapping practices and read them books at night and have dance parties and tickle fights and I am still responsible for flossing their teeth (or paying the price later).  This list goes on.  And I love this!!  They being me smiles and laughter and arguments and dirty laundry..oh wait I digress.

But if I do in fact let all else go, won't I loose myself or worse my mind?  I mean if I truly forget cleaning will I even be able to stand the place, and let's face it..would any of you really visit?  How many of you have heard that "When your children are young the house will never be clean"  Have you seen an episode of Hoarders? Perhaps they are simply people who never recovered from the kid years?!

I want so many things for my children.  I think that part is coming along nicely.  And, I also want things for me.  Some big, some small.  I want to have a reasonably clean house where the laundry is close to done and the dishes are not falling out of the sink,  I want to do my job well, I want to spend time with family and friends, I want to write, I want to exercise (let's face it that one cannot wait til my kids are grown), I want to travel, I want to run,  I want to finish painting my TV room and fill my home with creative decor, I want to plant flowers and get rid of the intrusive briers in my irises...I want to do it all.  And since I must sleep, something has to give. 

It doesn't have to give for always, but in each day all of this cannot happen. And so I spin my gerbil wheel racing to fit many of them in, cutting this out today and that out tomorrow.  I am surrounded by laundry as I write and I have a young one coming down the stairs with a book and I have an exercise class in an hour.  Then it is off to work..and lacrosse...and the school play... 

Perhaps I could count the gerbil wheel as exercise, that would free up time to...

Join me!  I would love to hear what spins your gerbil wheel.

The Toothfairy

The toothfairy is as real as any of the fairies out there.  She is a more frequent guest in our home than Santa or the Easter Bunny, and frankly she get far less press for all that she does.  I mean she is on call 24/7!  She has very few TV specials and doesn't capture a certain time of year.  I don't see any other fairies or other holiday giving characters working quite as hard.  She is dedicated to each child for perhaps 5 or more years of teeth falling out.  And the cost involved is...WOW!  Must be quite the castle she is buliding.  How is that being financed?  I mean in my own home the price per tooth is somewhere in between 1 and 2 dollars.  She generally leaves a random amount of coins along with a dollar bill.

Remember the excitement of waking in the morning and for the price of a little white tooth you don't need anyway because a bigger and better one is coming in?  And for that you are left money!!  The leprauchans leave chocolate coins, but you have to clean up the mess, Santa leaves gifts, but you have to be a good kid, the Easter bunny leaves a eggs but you have to search for them...Everyone but the toothfairy.  She simply steals into your room and leaves the lute.  No strings attached, unless of course you used the string and door trick to get it out in the first place.  Which brings me to another point!  She is also the most daring of all!  Sneaking right into your room..reaching under your pillow!  It seems like a lot of pressure..my heart would be racing at the thought of being caught and thereby changing the entire childhood perception of loosing a tooth.

My son lost a tooth recently.  It was late at night, about 9:30 and in the morning he found that the toothfairy did not come.  With lightning speed recovery it was suggested that perhaps she was already on her route when the tooth was lost and therefore could not squeeze him in.  Since he is ten, the possibility rung true and his patience allowed him to wait another night.  My 5 year old just explained that what had happened was that the toothfairy was in another child's room when her bracelet went off to let her know my son had lost his tooth.  She had put her bracelet on silence so as not to awaken the other child..smart fairy!   Tales of the tooth fairy trail back to the early 1900's and perhaps earlier with the tooth being protected from falling into a witch's hands.  The price of a tooth has moved  forward too keeping up with inflation if not better. So it would seem that the toothfairy not only has kept up with if not surpassed inflation, she also utizilizes the latest technology  in her efforts to reach our children with her gifts.

The toothfairy as we know her in our house is using the teeth to build her castle.  My son believes the cleaner the tooth, the more money.  My other daughter, with her silver crowned tooth, is certain that this will have the greatest payoff.  No matter the truth, the tooth fairy brings smiles and ease to what could otherwise be an awkward time for a child.  And I am thinking with all she has to attend to we ought to more fully recognize her in some small way:  A day off?  a claymation TV special?  A picture session booth at the mall?  The possiblities are endless!  How about a song? Shouldn't we leave her some toothpaste or floss........

Hey Soul Sister!

My Mom always wanted a sister, she says.  Instead she had two older brothers and a younger one.  The younger one arrived when she was fourteen and was, I suppose a teenager's version of playing babydolls.  The older two, the blonde angelic looking one especially, tortured her as all good older brothers are programmed to do.  They teased and pulled hair, played jokes (not so funny to girls) and looked innocently at their mom as to say, "Could I have possibly done what she is so raged about?   Janice must be over reacting..again!"  A sister she must have thought, would be my best friend.  We could play and ride bikes and share clothes and secrets.  Summer days would be filled with giggles as we would make daisy chains and swing on the swings.  She would be by my side and I by hers.

Ah the dream of young Janice was never to be.  Until...she gave birth to her third child! She had a son, then a daughter, and then on a hot July evening a gift was bestowed upon her and the elder girl...a sister!  She was terribly ugly to begin with, but no matter.  Janice knew that she could now live vicariously through her daughters as they did each other's hair and painted their toe nails.  She could dress them alike and watch them hold hands and skip down the lane.

"Oh the baby is crying!" (whack, whack whack on the back) the older sister called with feigned concern to her mother.  Imagine a baby crying after being pinched by a jealous sibling?  And so it began.  Jan's dreams unraveled.  The sisters bickered. They would not wear the same clothes. They did not share secrets, they did not walk side by side.  They fought. They fought over their clothes and their room and, well....mostly over clothes and their room.

They drove Jan nuts.  How could they not get along when all she had wanted was a sister?  They were both terribly stubborn (eh hem and still are), and as different as can be.  One is bold and oozes confidence, one is dramatic and must be in the middle of any crowd.  One is afraid to hurt someones's feelings, one says it like it is.  One is tall, one is short.  One lives in the city, one in the country.  One has traveled the world, one wants to.  Have I made my point?

So which am I you wonder...I will leave that for you to figure out as the story unfolds.

Flashing through this childhood it seems that we spent more time at odds than as friends.  There was no one who could, and probably still isn't, anyone in this world who can make me feel the intensity of fury that I have felt when she upsets me.  I burn inside.  I want to scream!  I want to kick and scratch! 

But there were those other times... Sometimes I got to iron her hair for her!  (For you youngins that is old school straightening)  Once she asked me to go to a movie with her on a weekend night when she was in high school and I was in 8th grade.  An oh so cute boy talked to us and asked to drive us home.  She said we had already called our dad.  UGH!!  She taught me how to shave my legs on a Saturday morning.  We only got through the first leg before I realized I was going to be late for a babysitting job.  When I came home drunk one night and was battling the spins as I so desperately wanted to sleep, she taught me to put one foot on the floor.  She came to my dorm room when I first moved in and made my bed for me!  (there is even a picture of this somewhere....) When my father was late on my wedding day, rather then leave me to ride alone to the church she drove in the limo with me and told me I looked so beautiful. When my children were born, she was the first one there to greet them. And even now they know if we call Che-Che (pronounces She-She), she will come.  When my marriage ended she an her family were spending five weeks in France, a dream vacation.  She called me EVERY DAY.  For 5 weeks.  From France. 

It occurs to me that the anger that I can at times feel towards my sister is paralleled by the love I feel for her.  Corny I know.  But we are so different and in the end would do anything for one another.  We are inseperable.  Not by location, but from somewhere on the inside.  We didn't walk down the same lane or dress in the same clothes; although she could often be found IN my clothes even if the tags were on them!  She is by my side and I am by hers.  I hope that it has been enough for Jan. And I can only hope that my sister could tell stories like this about me.  I know that it has been more then I could have expected of any one person.

I have two daughters of my own now.  I watch them play and I watch them fight.  They fight over clothes and they fight over their room.  One is blonde, one is brunette; one loves to play sports, one loves to read; one loves to be on the center of a crowd, the other will always help a friend.  But when one has hurt feelings from a friend at school guess who takes her hand first?  And so it continues...

Oh, and dear sister it was I who ripped the but on those favorite jeans with the pockets on the legs back in HS.  ;)