Ten year old wisdom.

Happy Spring! Or Summer. Whatever, I will take it!

Upside Down? This is how we roll, peeps.

"What do you want for your birthday, my man?"

"Stocks. Maybe a little Microsoft. A little Echostar. And Home Depot. Oh, and I want a riding lawnmower. Stocks and a riding lawn mower, okay?"

Silence. What do you say to those requests for the big ELEVENTH birthday?

"So you get to stay home for a few hours today by yourself? What are you going to do?"

"Vacuum a little. Scoop a little dog poop. Maybe some laundry."

Silence. Then, a hopeful and proud "really???"

Snort. "No, mom. More like Spongebob and cookies. But I will shower."

SLOG

Slog- V.
         1. to work or progress with a slow, heavy pace. Plod.
         2. to work diligently for long hours.

This. This was me tonight.

About a month ago, I pulled my hamstring. Sheer stupidity, and I knew the exact moment that I did it. I ignored this, tried to tell myself that it was just a sore muscle, but I knew exactly what I did.

Cue the countless trips to the chiropractor-doctor-massage therapist. Throw in numerous ice packs and some wicked menthol-eucalyptus-magical ingredient salve. All of this, and I still hurt.

I normally have a very high tolerance for pain, or a high pain threshold, if we must dip into semantics. I can give birth with nary a tylenol in sight. I can have four impacted wisdom teeth removed, with only a local anesthetic and some classical music to distract me. Stitches- I take mine with no anesthetic, thank you very much.

This hamstring has been a different story.

I hurt. Twenty-four seven. I hurt when I sit, when I stand, when I sleep. Mostly a low-level buzzing ache, but with a wallop of knock-me-sideways hurts just often enough to keep me on my toes. (Literally, keep me on my toes, because this takes some of the pressure off of my hamstring. Go figure....) I have become a whiny woman who complains about my arse hurting to anyone within hearing distance. I have become the kind of woman who walks around wearing Eau de Icy Hot, with an ice pack attached to my backside.

This fact annoys me more than Jimmy John commercials.

So, tonight, I ran. Or slogged. My time was embarrassing, but I did it. Three and a half measly miles, with my hamstring hollering the entire time. I may have told her to shut it- she protests whether I stay still or move, so I might as well move. My other muscles were loving me. My calves were stinging. My quads were aching. My lungs were burning. My feet were anticipating aching.

I did it. My hamstring does not hurt any more than the normal at this point, but I did come right home to an ice pack and Old Lady Salve. Any pain that I feel in my hamstring cannot best how good the rest of me feels from my slog. I may well return for more tomorrow.

Kind of like life, if I over-think it while on the trail. Even when it hurts, you move forward. Might as well move, because you are going to hurt either way. Why not be moving forward, in that case?

Peace and Menthol Rubs and sore muscles moving forward, my friends. XOXOXO

Happy Monday!

Happiness is...

A wickedly weird sunburn from six hours on a motorcycle yesterday. And NOT on the back of one ;-) Party tip- don't push your sleeves up while wearing gloves and a leather bracelet cuff in six hours of sun with not enough sunscreen. The four inch swath of red is hard to explain.

The best ribs ever for Mother's Day. And Kale. And More Kale.

Flowers in every nook and cranny, signaling that spring is here. Or summer. Whichever.

Watching my monkey ride his newish Specialized around as I sit on the front porch with my coffee.

Taking Superteen to school with curlers in my hair. I saw one dad laugh out loud, so it was worth it.

Mother's Day Card...

Stalkerazzi listening to his secret recordings of me. Oomph.

Superteen, giving me the look.

Motherhood is a Team Sport

Facebook and Hallmark and Pinterest have really raised the bar on Mother's Day. Cards that sing, rose petals leading to spa treatments at home, hand tinted portraits of the children posing as the words Happy Mother's Day. Platinum rings cast with children's fingerprints for the non- Angelina Jolie mamas amongst us who cannot quite handle putting the latitude and longitude of each child's birthplace on our bodies. Mother's Day brunches done up in a delightful Lilly Pulitzer theme, complete with homemade sodas encased in Lilly Pulitzer prints to match the tablecloth and treats.

This stuff is all a big fat lie. Motherhood is not the perfect floral print wrapped around organic fair trade coconut macaroons. Motherhood is terrible and wonderful and joyful and painful, wrapped up in your favorite shirt that has snot and glitter paint permanently affixed to it. Motherhood is staying up all night with a colicky baby or a croupy toddler, drenched in sweat and tears because you don't  know how to survive on thirty minutes of sleep. Motherhood is hurting when your child experiences bullying or rejection- wanting to go Mama Lion and roaring against the perpetrators even though you should not.

Motherhood is watching your toddler sleep peacefully at night, their chest rising and falling so regularly and miraculously that you can scarcely believe it. Motherhood is catching your teen sneaking out at night, and marveling at their stupidity and lack of forethought. Motherhood is teaching your preschooler the joy of books, whether they choose Curious George or Captain Underpants. Motherhood is nagging your high schooler to study study study so that they have the most choices at their fingertips.

Motherhood is wishing they would wear more deodorant and less kohl eyeliner and bathe more and watch less TV and choose the kale over the Pop Tarts. Motherhood is wishing they would hear you about flossing. Motherhood is ADHD times a hundred, trying to make sure that you are raising PEOPLE who will make their way in this world. Motherhood is hearing your mother's words come out of your mouth, and realizing she was onto something.

Motherhood is learning to hang on tight, while letting go. Motherhood is letting go of the story you wrote for your children so that they might write their own. Motherhood is recognizing the wisdom of all of the other mamas, grandmas, sisters, aunties, and friends. Motherhood is recognizing yourself as both a mother and as a daughter, and recognizing this in your mama also. Motherhood is loving them always and forever, no matter what, even when they are pretty darn unloveable.

Motherhood is a messy miracle. Turn away from your Pinterest and all of the advertisements and expectations that are foisted upon us. Call your mama and thank her for loving you when you were completely unloveable. Call your mema and thank her for the patience of a saint and for all of the chocolate pies. Call your sister and tell her you think she is a fabulous mama. Call or text or Facebook your friends and tell them thank you for being in the thick of things with you- this mama business is a team sport. Hug your kids tight. And realize that the best Mother's Day gift may not come in a baby blue box, but it might be hand drawn on notebook paper.

Peace and love and mush, my mama friends! XOXOXO

Two wheels and a wailing hamstring.

In like a lion, out like a lamb. My arse.

Not a lion or a lamb, just a gratuitous Lucky Humperdink shot...

If I possessed a magic wand to erase both March and April from my thirty-ninth year, I would so use that bad boy to wipe those two months from my memory. Eight weeks of trauma and drama, more tears than I thought I could shed. Countless loveys telling me that I look like shit, albeit in a loving way. Sleepless nights, worrying and scurrying, and feeling helpless because I cannot help those who don't want to be helped. Anger and exhaustion and fear, knowing that my love is not enough to pull someone up. Throw in a wicked cold, a pulled hamstring, the inability to run more than a few hundred feet without my hamstring kicking my arse ( no, literally, seizing up and kicking my arse into stopping that incessant attempt at movement), a couple of biopsies, enough whining in my noggin for a lifetime, and I have been right on the dark edge of despondency.

I hate whiny people. Seriously, I hate people who revel in telling you about their gout and corns and hinky step-cousin and bad childhood. I loathe the people who gain their identity from how things happen to them. And yet, here I am. Whiny and just a step shy of telling the intertubes about my fallopian tubes, family trauma and Redneck-Sopranos upbringing.

So I switched gears this weekend. Literally switched gears.  With this finicky girl.

Notice she is named Pretty Girl, Not Nice Girl with a Smooth Shift...

Call it a bucket list check, but I took a class. To refresh what it feels like to ride a motorcycle. Sixteen hours of counter-weighting and swerving and tight turns and stopping on a dime. FYI, Pretty Girl had the shittiest shifting I could have imagined, and she was pretty herky jerky. And by the end of the class, on a windy, drizzly thirty degree day, I was as herky jerky as Pretty Girl was. So much so that I am going back this weekend for a bit more punishment/joy.

Pretty Girl was kind of a mean girl, but she reminded me how much I like feeling free. When I was shifting up and pulling the throttle, I actually forgot about my hamstring screaming at me and all of the heaviness that  awaits me. I was in the 'right here, right now', with no room to think about anything but the two wheels underneath me.

This might be a love affair. If my hamstring will stop the incessant wailing.

Go to the nest.

I have no reason for this picture, except that I love it. My friend has these HUGE antique flashcards in her office, and I have this urge to be like the bad step-cousin and mentally put a tag on them in case she gets lost in a Paraguayan jungle or the such. This would be highly inappropriate, so I just enjoy them in her charming office.

Go to the nest, peeps. And stay away from our May storm, Achilles. Yep, our storm named Achilles...

I hear you now.

I always took hearing for granted. Warrant concerts, Pink Floyd blaring in Ronda's Firebird, crickets chirping on summer nights, church bells ringing on a Sunday morning, whispers from a friend behind a cupped hand, a cat purring as he stretched out, my baby girl crying in the other room as she awoke- these were all gifts that I did not even recognize.

Until I didn't hear things. I just thought church bells quit ringing and crickets did not exist in Colorado. I thought that our doorbell was broken and my cat was too grumpy to purr.

Lo and behold, crickets do chirp and bells do ring here. When I was prego with Timesboy, I had a freakish case of hearing loss. Hereditary, kicked into high gear with the hormones that often surge in pregnancy (they tell you about stretch marks, but hearing loss???), my ears just quit working.

Amazingly enough, my hearing loss is much more correctable than nerve damage that older people often have. I am blessed beyond compare that I can walk out of my audiologist's office and hear someone's high heels clicking against a cold tile floor. I can hear bells and crickets and music and a child's cry. My ears have actually relearned some things, in that I can hear some things that you won't hear- I can hear your voice in a crowded concert, as clear as a bell's peal. I can hear a dog's tags jangling in the park across a football field, so clear that I will look around and assume it must be something within a few feet. I can hear birds warbling on a vacation morning, and I now know this is so precious that I will awaken at five just to sit and soak their songs in.

Interesting thing about correcting hearing loss. It is a far cry from correcting vision. Vision, when you correct it, you correct to 20/20 and see as well as the guy next to you who maintains perfect fighter-pilot vision. Hearing, you can spend eight thousand dollars on hearing aids (that insurance NEVER covers), and still only hear bits and pieces of what a 'normal' person hears. This piece on NPR helps clarify, for a sentence, what having hearing loss feels like.

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2013/04/06/175945670/the-real-sounds-of-hearing-loss

Listen to it. Please and thank you.

Mushy stuff,  chirping crickets, and bells ringing. XOXOXO