Giving the kids something to talk about in therapy.
Yesterday was a busy day of laundry and cleaning. Not only did it need to be done, but I am expecting the landlord to come by today for our annual inspection to make sure that our apartment is still intact and that we aren’t housing any pets like dogs or the regular city sewage rat. Thankfully, we have neither. Children are enough of a necessary hassle to be tended to without adding an animal to the mix. And this was even more apparent when I heard something drop to the floor in the bathroom, and an “oops” out of my daughter. She rushed into the kitchen and grabbed some paper towels, and then disappeared around the corner.
“Everything ok?” I asked her.
“Um, fine,” she said. “Except I might have spilled some nail polish on the floor…” Engrossed in my work, I told her to just use some of the nail polish remover on the linoleum. “Uh, ok,” she said. “But it’s not coming out of the carpet.” (more...)
When I was a kid, I was so embarrassed about my hairy legs. It wasn’t like the blonde, almost invisible body hair of my friends. I had thick, dark, Italian hair. And it was very noticeable. As a young tween, I was at an age when every single blemish on anyone’s body was noticed and made fun of, and my hairy legs had already been pointed out to me. There really was no question about it. I couldn’t wear pants in the heat of summer for the rest of my life.
It was time to shave.
Of course, I was afraid of shaving. I had been told that if I started shaving, I’d never be able to stop. What if I decided afterwards that I really wasn’t ready to shave? I’d be a prisoner to the razor for the rest of my life! I was told that the hair that would grow back would be even thicker and darker. I imagined my legs covered in big, black polka dots of hair that I would have to chisel off to keep my legs looking bare. And then there was the question of how MUCH to shave. Do women shave their legs AND their arms? When shaving their legs, do they shave all the way up to the hip? Is a woman’s body supposed to be completely free of hair altogether? (more...)
“They just lifted the ban on kids in hospital,” my friend, a local nurse, informed me. “And let me tell you, it’s madness.” She went on to describe situations where people were crowding hospital rooms, bringing the whole family to visit their loved one who had the misfortune to end up in the hospital. “With this economy, there are no private rooms,” she went on. “Families are coming into a shared hospital room, crowding up the whole place. And that person’s neighbor has to also share a room with all these strangers. People are trying to get better, attempting to get some rest, and there are screaming children in the rooms.” Just this past week, a mother had left her crying baby in the hallway while she visited. A patient in another room pulled my friend aside, pleading with her, “I just need to get some rest.” (more...)
We have several local girls all coming to compete, and they are hoping to have lots of fans cheering them on, especially since this is their only local event.
52nd Annual All Arabian and Half Arabian Show
March 26,27,28th 2010
Held at the Sonoma County Fairgrounds, Santa Rosa
Free Admission
Time: 8am till its over
So imagine this. You’re out to eat with your boyfriend. The two of you are enjoying the spring weather at an outside table, sharing the dessert from one bowl as you gaze into each other’s eyes. You’ve just said something witty and start to laugh, when you realize he isn’t laughing with you. His attention is elsewhere for a second before he turns back to you.
“Hmm?” he asks, realizing that he’d missed something.
He may have missed something, but you sure didn’t. A quick glance over your shoulder and you see exactly what caught his attention – a girl walking by on the street in her little short spring dress, walking her tiny rat of a dog and smiling in the direction of your man.
Jealousy. It’s rampant in relationships. From the tiniest twinge over a night out with the boys leaving you at home alone, to the myriad of texts your girl might be receiving and you have no idea who they’re from. Some experts claim that twinges of jealousy might make things a little more exciting in a relationship. I’m not so sure about that, however. But what I do agree with is that jealousy exists in every relationship out there, whether it’s just the little twinges, to something that is way more consuming and causes loss of sleep (or loss of control over resulting actions…) (more...)
As a comment in my last blog about Jealousy, Chris wrote in to talk about his own problems with a lying girlfriend, and the suffering he endured while knowing she was being dishonest. It definitely is not a good feeling to be lied to. And most of us know when we are being told a fib. “Lies are a slippery slope. If you’re capable of lying just because you can get away with it…where are you going to end up? 4 marriages & 10 male role models later, you’re going to wonder why your kids don’t respect you.” I agreed with just about everything he said, except for the part where I’m a cheerleader for man haters (I’m not, I promise!), or that my friend is someone who can’t be taken at face value because she told a lie. In her defense, and in the defense of all humankind (men and women), we have all been guilty of omitting the truth at some point in our lives. Does that mark us with a Scarlet L for LIAR? Emphatically, no! Does it mean that my friend Jen chose a really immature way to deal with an uncomfortable question? Sure it does. (more...)
“My boyfriend left the house and I don’t think he’s coming back,” Jenny told me the other day on the phone. I listened sympathetically while she sobbed, relaying the whole story. A year ago she’d had a few too many at the bar while out with friends, and had ended up going home with one of her guy friends. Their friendship crossed the line quickly, but stopped after a heavy make out session when they had sobered up enough to realize that where they were going wasn’t somewhere they’d want to be in the morning. They stopped it short and promised to never speak of it again.
Several months later, Jenny’s new boyfriend asked her about her past relationship with this friend, and true to their agreement, Jenny denied that anything had ever happened. It was when she was still single, and she decided that telling him would only make him uncomfortable as they were all mutual friends. And mostly, she knew that he would be pissed that she had hooked up with a friend of theirs. Keeping mum about the situation was the only thing she could think of doing.
But as time wore on, Jenny felt guilty about lying. So she fessed up. What resulted was a yelling match, a slammed door, and Jenny on the other line with me sobbing into the phone. And as she wondered what she was going to do, I couldn’t help but feel my anger seethe at how the blame was being placed entirely on her.
(more...)
When my sisters and I were small, my dad was adamant that appearances went hand in hand with being considered a good kid.
“You’re representing our family,” my dad would say to us gruffly whenever we were out of line, or when we decided that the wrinkled clothes on our bedroom floor were perfectly acceptable to wear to school. I still remember the look on my dad’s face, and the way he couldn’t speak to me for days, when I shaved the bottom of my head for a more punk look. I was only trying to find myself, to separate myself from the drones of prep students who I didn’t fit in with anyway. My mother was irritated at the action I chose to took, but decided that it was just hair, and that it would grow back. My dad, on the other hand… “You look like a butt,” my dad said when he could finally talk to me. (more...)
Dieting. It’s in every woman’s vocabulary. And the meaning of this word varies.
1. Killing yourself slowly.
2. Starving strategically.
3. Skipping foods you like only to eat them later when no one’s looking.
4. Being really good for weeks (or days) on end and then bingeing like food is going out of style.
5. Trying every damn diet that is deemed popular until you give up because it’s not working. (see #3)
6. Losing the same 5 pounds over and over again.
7. Gaining more weight each time you introduce a new diet to your system.
8. Cutting out pictures of fashion models as motivation to keep from eating that leftover piece of pie in the fridge.
9. Thinking murderous thoughts about that fashion model as you eat that leftover piece of pie in the fridge.
Can you tell I’ve been on the dieting roller coaster? (more...)
Wine Country Mom 