Bus time

Big Brother's bus for preschool comes a little after 12, and so I like to get them bundled up and to let big brother and little brother play outside while we wait for the bus to come. Today, they decided to go across the street, which is not unusual, since Grandma and Grandpa live there (and yes, I know it's like Everyone Loves Raymond.) Big brother decided to ring the doorbell, which I figured wouldn't hurt, the cars were all gone so everyone was probably at work. Surprisingly, Grandma was actually home, so we had a brief conversation before she went inside to work on her homework, and I determined I wouldn't let the kids bother her again.  They went around the side of the house to see the doggies, and everything was just peachy.

Then I see little brother leaning down towards something not so nice. A big plastic (open!) container of motor oil. Then it was like a slow motion play.

(All done to the music from Chariots of Fire)

Mommy starts running towards the baby.

Baby keeps leaning down.

Mommy starts to shout, "Nooooooooooooooooooooo!"

Baby keeps going.

Mommy gets closer.

Baby keeps leaning.

Mommy grabs baby, just as he sticks his whole left hand in the oil.

Time speeds back up and music stops.

Mommy picks up the baby and pulls his hand out away from his body. "Ewww! Looks like Grandma is going to get bothered." Because of course the bus will be here any minute and the oil is dripping all over the place and getting on the babies clothes and shoes, and damage control is needed! Thanks Grandma for the towel!

My job

I have been taking a lot of surveys lately, trying to build up my Swagbucks to help pay for Christmas (which worked really well btw) and I noticed something that started me thinking.  All the surveys asked about my work, usually in two stages. The first one asked if I was employed and had a list of options like, part time, full time, retired, student, etc. The second stage had a list of jobs, such as clerical, administrative, retail, and so forth.

Now, most of the time the first stage had stay at home parent as an option. But the second stage never did. The option that seemed to be there for stay at home parents would probably be "I don't work" although occasionally they had "Other." I'm ok with "Other," but not with "I don't work." I do work. I work all the time. I have a lot of different jobs that fit under the description of stay at home mom. I thought I'd like to do a list of some of those jobs.

I am a cook.

I am a dishwasher.

I am a maid.

I am a travel planner.

I am a photographer.

I am a chronicler.

I am a laundry worker (bigtime!)

I am a milk-maker.

I am a mediator.

I am a translator of strange languages.

I am a mind reader.

I am a scheduler.

I am a student (and teacher) in the school of patience.

I am an owie kisser (I still can't believe that actually works!)

I am a nightmare antidote.

I am a tear wiper.

I am a nurse.

I am a nose wiper.

I deal with toxic waste.

I am an accountant.

I am a chauffeur

I am a storyteller.

I am a decision-maker.

I am a researcher.

I am a teacher.

I am a disciplinarian.

I am a cuddler.

I am a problem solver.

I am a policy maker.

I am a personal shopper.

I am so many other things that are hard to put in words.

And I am always on call. 24/7. I never get a break from being mom. I can be wakened at 2:30 in the morning by a child with croup or baby that had a nightmare who needs soothing. No one else can do my job. I am Mommy.






* I want to add that I am in no way excluding working moms from this list. They do these things while also having to go out and work away from their children. I was a working mom for 9 months, and it was much worse than being a stay at home mom.

Trust

My mom tells me that when I was a little girl, I was very outgoing and self-confident.  I used to walk up to random people and start talking to them. One of my earliest memories is when someone stole my tricycle and me finding it and simply taking it back. I was fearless.

But then that all changed in just a few short years.

I started elementary school in a small town in New Mexico. I don't have many fond memories of that school. I don't remember many specific people there. But I do remember that I didn't have many friends.

I was too young to really understand what was going on, but my mom clarified things for me when I was a teenager. She reminded me of a girl I made friends with in second or third grade. She was physically and mentally handicapped, so she walked funny and talked slurred. Most of my classmates made fun of her, but I liked her. We were friends the whole time she was in the area, but then she moved away, and apparently the kids started making fun of me after she left. I guess they needed a new target. Kids can be mean.

Anyway, after a couple years of constant teasing and mocking, I lost my self-confidence and became extremely shy. Kids can be pretty fragile. And I didn't even realize what was happening. It wasn't until I was a teenager, in a different state, with a completely different group of people, that I realized what a problem I had. I was at a dance wearing some new shoes, which I absolutely loved. I have big feet, so having cute shoes is something rare for me. A girl I knew from school came up to me with some friends and was talking to me, and told me she liked my shoes.

Seems like an innocuous statement right? Only, I didn't see it that way. I was convinced she was lying to me, and mocking me, and suddenly my pleasure in my shoes was ruined.  I hardly wore them after that, even though I was beginning to realize that there was something wrong with me when I couldn't even hear a compliment without seeing a double meaning behind it.

Not only that, but my shyness was crippling. I realized my senior year of high school that there were people I had been going to school with for SEVEN years, that I hadn't talked to until that year.  I used to think that people thought I was stuck up or something, but I still couldn't bring myself to talk to people. I remember the relief I felt when I heard at fellow student telling someone else I was shy, relief that someone understood me.

The one thing I was confident in was singing. I was in choirs all through school, I remember a teacher in one of my elementary schools (I went to 5 in all, 4 after we moved to Idaho from New Mexico) being surprised when I tried out for a part in the Lewis and Clark musical we were putting on. She said something along the lines of, "I didn't know she could talk that loud, let alone sing." Somehow, when I sang, I regained some of my confidence. But only during the performance, and even then, my shyness kept me from trying out for things I would have enjoyed.

That was years ago. It's taken a lot of time, and positive thinking, but I have come a long way from that shy girl who wouldn't look people in the eye at school. My husband and his family have trouble sometimes believing I was shy. I still feel awkward in social situations, and don't have many friends, but then, I've never felt like I need LOTS of friends, and I can hold my own at church functions. And when it comes for standing up for myself, well, I'm back to being that kid who stole back her tricycle. I have no problem with calling an company who I feel is overcharging me and being assertive, though I try to stay nice. I'm not a pushover.

What's the point? I felt like I should write this to those who are suffering from a similar problem. Specifically the trust issue. It took me a long time to understand this, but most people aren't out there looking to insult others. Most people aren't trying to offend. I had been treated badly for so long, that I just assumed most people outside my family (and let's be honest, even some of my family members) were going out of their way to insult me. Even statements that weren't aimed at me, I would assume they were, and that they were meant to offend. But now I genuinely believe that most people aren't like that. Especially because I am one of those people who tends to say something stupid and offend others, without meaning to. And I wonder if trust issues aren't making for some pretty unhappy people out there. I know I was miserable in high school. Absolutely hated it.

I just want to say, to those of you out there and struggling with trust, that you can trust people. Most people are not trying to hurt you.  Be open with your feelings, and I think you'll be surprised to find that those who offended you truly meant no offense.

Self-control?

I was thinking today about a series of books I read by an author aimed at young teenagers, and there is something that one of the characters does that really bothers me. Each series eventually leads to illicit sex on the part of the main characters (which in my opinion disqualifies it from being classified as teen fiction) and one of the characters does something I find disturbing.  She is debating whether or not she wants to sleep with her young man and they have an episode where he shows up unexpectedly and they are making out in the tent on the verge of going farther when someone shows up, interrupting them before they take that step. Later she is thinking about the episode and goes out to buy a charm to prevent pregnancy and thinking that she would decide some things for herself.

Ok, so basically this implies that she feels that she doesn't have control over her hormones and her body and she will eventually end up having sex with this young man, but at least she can decide not to get pregnant.  There are two major problems with this I can see. The first is the idea that you can't control yourself and you might as well accept that you will end up having sex.  That is an insult to our freedom of choice. You can choose to be chaste and wait until marriage, and there are a whole host of reasons to do so, starting with spiritual health and ending with unplanned pregnancy and STD's.

Second, no matter how reliable those magical charms are in the magical book world, there is no such thing as a 100% guaranteed form of birth control. . . apart from abstinence. Many women can testify to that. I know a woman who told me that 4 of her 6 children were born when she was on some form of birth control. So this book is suggesting that birth control will allow you to at least choose not to have kids, which is just not true. This idea leads to teen pregnancy and abortions, neither of which are happy situations for the people involved.

I married my husband when I was 28 and he was 25 and neither of us had slept with anyone until our wedding night. We aren't paragons by any means, we just decided when we were young, largely for religious reasons, that it was more important for us to wait until marriage. I'm not trying to force my religion on anyone, but our youth need to understand what sex is and what it isn't. It is not a way to "prove you love me." It is procreation, not just recreation.

Studies have been done that indicate that during sex, the "Love hormone"oxytocin is released in to the bloodstream, causing people to bond, the same thing which happens with breastfeeding mothers.   Dating is hard enough for teenagers without adding that kind of emotional bond to a relationship that probably won't last.

I know that many will dismiss all this as "old-fashioned" and say I'm behind on the times.  But just because things were always done a certain way doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong. There are time tested methods of living that are being thrown out the window for experimentation. Well fine, people have the right to make their own choices. But let's stop experimenting with our children's lives by making this kind of behavior seem appropriate for them.

Traffic fun

My husband came home the other day complaining about traffic on the way to work aggravated by an accident, and I just couldn’t resist a little sarcasm to help blow off some steam.

“Yeah traffic is bad here I can see that, and we’ve been sitting in line here for awhile, so I can see why you might be in a hurry. Go ahead, jump into the empty lanes that are closed up ahead. Yeah, I know, you are so much more important than the rest of us, you’re the only one late for work, I’m sure they’ll understand that at the end there and let you in front of them.”

“Oh, so sorry, am I in your way? You want to get over? Yeah, I see your lane is closed now, really inconvenient huh? The thing is, there was a sign 200 feet back, you see it there? You see how it says ‘Left lanes closed ahead’? Did you not notice? Oh, I can see how that might be hard. And it’s so hard to see the big sign with the lights pointing to the right. And the 4 other signs posted for the previous 2 miles warning you that the lane was going to be closed. But I can see how why you didn’t figure it out until you got to the cones closing the lane. But I don’t think I’m letting you in. Better luck next time.”

“Oh wow, sorry, am I going the speed limit? Sorry if that’s too slow for you, I know you are in a hurry. And getting up really close on my tail like that is a good way to let me know that. But you do realize this is a school zone, right?”

“Oh, that’s a really nice car you are driving. I can see you like to drive fast, I probably would too if I had a car like that. Oh, oops, gotta be careful there. Cutting off that semi probably wasn’t the best idea, lucky there was room to get out of the way.”

“Oh sorry, I didn’t know you wanted to turn there. But next time you could let me know, there is a little stick on your steering wheel the turns on a neat invention called a blinker. Cool, huh?”

Ok, maybe I’m being a little harsh, but it’s all in fun. Better than yelling obscenities and flipping the bird.