Monday

Quick Reminder... Be sure to thank a veteran today. Well, really, you should thank a veteran every day. The reason we are all here, all typing away, going to work, driving cars, speaking (mostly) English, and have the freedom to say just about whatever we want about anyone is because of someone braver than you or I decided to stand up and protect all the things we hold dear. These United States of America are truly exceptional. I, for one, am so proud to be an American!

That being said, I dropped the ball on NaBloPoMo. I really wanted to be able to say, after almost a year of not writing more than a status update on Facebook and Twitter, I posted every single day for a month. Now that I missed a day, it's a slippery slope and I can see myself falling back into my old, non-writing ways.

All's well, though. This past weekend was one that was 100% free of commitments. I mean, we had NONE. No where to be on either day. No family to attend to. Just the three of us. It was wonderful. Until... It was wonderful until I decided to get a pedicure. At a place that serves free wine. With a good girlfriend of mine. Of COURSE that did not go well. Because of COURSE it wouldn't.

Here's the timeline:

Friend comes over after dropping off her daughter at a birthday party. It's 4:30PM. The University of Texas kicks off at 6PM. Nail place is near my home. Get to the parking lot of where the salon is supposed to be. It is gone. Call. Drive 5 more minutes to the correct location. Arrive at 4:50PM. Immediately get seated in a chair, feet soaking, and handed a lovely glass of wine. Soak. Soak. OMG! My feet are shriveled! Look at the clock and it is 5:15. I start to worry. They refill my wine. Finally the pedicure begins. They are slow.

I then get a text from my husband, "XXX and XXX are coming over for the game." Then I get a text from another good friend, "We are on our way to come over and watch the game." Then I text the hubs to let him know about that and he texts back, "It's a party. XXX and the kids are coming, too."

PANIC ensues. On my part. I can literally feel the anxiety sweep over me. I snap at the sweet little pedicurist. I tell my friend that we GOTS TO GO! She tells me to chill. She is getting a manicure, too. OMG. I was dying. Finally. FINALLY. The pedicure is over. My toes are gorgeous. It is 6PM. Texas has kicked off. I decide to go to the Mexican Market next door to get ingredients to feed our growing guest list while my friend gets her mani. And another glass of wine. I do my shopping and get back as they are finishing up. On the ride back to my house (it's 6:30 and my house is FULL of PEOPLE), I determine that probably, I should drive to pick up her daughter from the birthday party.

So it's in, say a rushed hello to everyone, apologize profusely for being a terrible hostess, and rush back out the door. We have 14 minutes to get to the next town over and pick up the daughter. We go to the wrong place. Because of course we do! 7:30, 30 minutes after the party ended, we get to the right place, and pick up little miss. We then have to run by my friend's house and finally get back to my home at around 8.

If you're counting, my pedicure took 3 and a half hours. Made stressful only by the fact that for the first time in months and months we actually had a large amount of company. Oh well. For what it's worth, it was really nice to have a little "girl" time. My toes are gorgeous. And I know I'm an anxiety-riddled fool. Once I came down from all that adrenaline and drank a little more wine, it was all good. Except, well, at 11PM, with my house still full of people, I go into my bedroom to charge my phone. And that's all I remember until I woke up, on top of the covers of my bed, fully dressed.

I'm sure glad my friends like me. Because I suck at parties.

Ahh... Fitness... And Women Are Effing Mean.

So. This.

I work out a lot. There. I said it. I also have a difficult time controlling my food. I am quite certain that if I didn't work out as much as I do, I'd be much less happy with what my body looks like than I currently am.

I've finally hit that metabolism-slow-down that I've read about. I'm 39 years old, staring down the barrell of 40 and dang it if my body didn't decide to stop burning those Reese's Peanut Butter Cups! It's frustrating.

I've always led an active life and that, coupled with some pretty terrific genetics (no apologies here), has always enabled me to eat like shit (Yes to the Big Mac, Whataburger, Fries, and powdered sugar donuts!) and still remain relatively slender. Cry me a river, right?

We, as women, are so mean. We are so judgmental. We love to look at other women's bodies in pictures and in person and both silently and vocally judge their choices. It truly doesn't matter what they look like, either. If they are toned and in fantastic shape, they must be bitchy. If they are overweight, they must be lazy. No wrinkles? Must be surgery or Botox. Wrinkles? Why doesn't she take pride in her appearance and get some Botox?

We are also pretty much bitches about anyone who makes choices about their lives and their families that don't mirror our own. It's such bullshit. I'm so sick and tired of us being mean to one another. We have such a special club, don't we? We can do such amazing and unique things. And yet, we are so damned sensitive and insecure that we cannot bear it if someone makes a different choice than we do. We internalize it, then we externalize it. Those feelings. And we try so hard to blame someone for making us feel badly about ourselves. Damn, that's a lot of power we are giving up!

Being offended is a choice. And a low self-image is also a choice. I don't care what gossip rags, and Hollywood present as a physical ideal. In my home, and in my life, I choose my physical ideal. I don't care for the extra layer of blubber that has popped up around my middle, seemingly out of nowhere. It has nothing to do with media or that woman with three kids and washboard abs. It is MY choice to decide to do things that will make me happy. Part of that is being content with what I see in the mirror.

So yes. I will go get my Botox in a few days. And yes, I will go work out. And yes, I will try to make healthier choices and forego some of the massive amounts of Halloween candy that is residing in my pantry. Don't judge me and I won't judge you for having the extra Snickers. Fair?

So, Um, Yeah

About all my concern about my preshus wittle baybee not getting his recess? Heard back from the teacher. Seems he may have been exaggerating a tiny little bit. And also? Not turning in his classwork. Ugh. So glad we cleared this up!

Crime and Punishment - 4th Grade

My friend, Jessica wrote this piece a few days ago and it struck a nerve in me.

My son's teacher has been punishing their "rowdy" behavior by withholding their recess time. Seems to me this is counter-productive on so many levels, but the main one would have to be the energy levels of kids. They NEED time to run around and have some unstructured time in their day.

He is already bringing home an hour or two of homework just about every night. So when he comes home from school, he goes straight to work. Then he goes to Taekwondo or Baseball. He has lots of energy and is extremely active.

Let's just remember that we are talking about 10-year-olds. I see little value in the work he brings home to do. Lots of busy work and "Independent Study" projects that, from what I have experienced, require lots of parental supervision.

At the elementary school level, our children need to be introduced to the love of learning. Not the rigorous study time associated with secondary education. They need to be fascinated with the world around them, not spending every waking moment practicing for a stupid standardized test.

And they most certainly do NOT need to be justifying their need for a recess by writing an essay about why they think they "deserve" to have one. In perfect cursive.

Attitude

For those of you who know me on Facebook and Twitter, you probably already saw my morning drama. You see, I had a run-in with a woman who was, like me, out walking/running her dogs this morning. She felt 100% that she was in the right and had the right of way, and so did I. Oh well. She reacted badly as did I.

I am proud of myself for not going off the deep end and saying all of the many horrible things I wanted to spew and felt like spewing out at her, though. I think that if I had said all those things, I would most likely not be feeling as fantastic as I do right at this moment.

I am a knee-jerk reactor to situations, with the emphasis on "jerk" sometimes. Probably more often than not, if I am to be completely honest with myself. But it's really a choice, isn't it? Our reactions are our choice. We can't fairly say, "That woman made me so mad!" Or, "Look what you made me do!" No. We CHOOSE our actions. Sometimes, they are instictive and so ingrained in our DNA that we have difficulty with the self-control piece, but it is always a choice.

I woke up this morning early and on my own. It's one of the things I adore about Daylight Savings Time ending and Standard Time beginning. Waking up before my alarm. Rested. Ready to go. I decided that today was going to be a great day. And then the run happened. The thought went through my head, My day is now ruined! But I stopped myself. My day would only be ruined if I allowed it to be. So I shook it off, ran hard and fast and got the frustrations out of my system (with the aid of a couple of Twitter rants and a nice long diatribe on Facebook). Today is great. It is great because no matter what happens, I woke up and got to enjoy some fresh air before the rain came. I got to love on my dog and then wake up my boy and love on him.

Life is good.

Enjoy your day!

Fantasy Football

So, I'm playing fantasy football for the first time. My team sucks. I dropped a player who just scored a bunch of points on one play. Ugh.

Day 2

I almost forgot. But then I didn't. That's two consecutive days of blogging for me. Not too shabby. It feels good to write again, even if it's just a bunch of bs. :)

NaBloPoMo

Well, it's November again. The last time I completed a National Blog Posting Month was too long ago for me to remember. Time to dust off the old blog and take a stab at writing again. It's been a very long time. I'm not adding myself to any registries or attempting to get page views. It's just that I have a lot to say and normal channels of social media just don't seem to do the trick. Let's see if I can make it a month. ;)

Well, I Made It Further Than I Figured I Would

Due to zero posts this past weekend, my NaBloPoMo effort is ruined.

Oh well.

I Am Writing This on 11-11-11

Because they fought.

Because some died.

Because some came back broken.

Because they were brave.

Because they did what I did not do.

Thank you, Veterans, for all you do and give and have done.

Thank you.

Who's At Fault?

I have been devouring every link with a story about the Penn State nightmare. It's bordering on obsessive at this point, but it has taken over my obsession with mocking and being angry at the "Occupiers." Turns out, I only have enough anger in me to direct it at one group at a time. Pennsylvania wins!

Aside from the obvious, who is at fault here? Certainly the rapist. That's what he is. A rapist. A child rapist. There's no glossing over this. He's been a known child rapist and predator since 1998, but truth be told, and assumptions being made, he was evil long before 1998.

So, who's at fault for allowing this to continue? Certainly all those currently named. And while I dream of some enraged father or mother going "Old Testament" on his ass and exacting a painful, bloody revenge invloving the removal of certain body parts with a rusty knife of one specific perpetrator, I would like it to be known, for the record, one thing.

When one witnesses evil and does nothing to stop it, one is allowing evil to continue and is, therefore, evil as well. I stopped wondering how that former graduate assistant, now Penn State assistant coach lives with himself and looks at himself in the mirror every day. In 2002, he watched a grown man rape a 10-year-old boy. Instead of yelling out, or jumping in to stop this, he walked out and called his dad. Not the police. His dad. He never called the police. No one did. Evil.

Now, it is coming out that this charity, this place of refuge for troubled boys, was allegedly involved in something much deeper, much more sinister (if that's possible) than one sick and evil rapist. It has been reported that the CHARITY and the RAPIST made these boys available to other rich Penn State donors. If this is true, if it is even true that ONE child was pimped out to a rich donor... I can't even form words at the thought here.

I know that there is evil in this world. I just didn't expect the faces of it to be what they are.

And to those of you out there who are enraged that Joe Paterno was fired, even though he "broke no law" and "followed protocol." Um, no. Let me break it down for you.

There are legal statutes that REQUIRE you report susupected abuse to the proper authorities. A university president is NOT that authority, you addlepated dumbasses.

Secondly, we all, each of us, has a duty and resposiblility as HUMAN BEINGS to protect innocent lives from harm. I wasn't in the locker room that night in 2002, no. Thankfully, I have never had to witness that kind of evil personally. What I do know is this. I would not have walked out of that room without doing something to protect that boy.

I'm starting to ramble a bit. I just cannot wrap my head around this. Indefensible acts. Immoral actions AND inactions. Evil.

Evil.

Day Nine

I don't have much time to blog today. I'm too busy scheduling chemical peels and Botox/other injectables.

It is safe to say that I am clearly NOT embracing these wrinkles on my face. They do not, to me, testify to the life I've led. They testify to my AGE. And I don't feel as old as I look.

8 Consecutive Days

I remember a time when I started blogging and I would barely miss a day. It seemed that the words just flowed freely and I had to get them out.

Yesterday, I spent a lot of time going through my archives. I remembered that I had removed quite a few posts (they're still in there, just unpublished now). I look back on some of those posts and remember that person. I've been doing this for almost 7 years now. I can't believe I've had this blog for so long. I used to have regular readers, too. But when my posting, blog reading, and commenting slacked off, often for months at a time, so, too, did the few readers I had. It's okay.

I forgot how soothing it is. This process of letting my fingers go and just type whatever thought runs through my head.

After doing NaBloPoMo for two years, I never quite managed to make it through even the first few days these past four or so years. I consider it quite a personal victory that I made it through the first week and today is my 8th consecutive day of blogging.

I guess the process of living life has gotten in the way of me writing about it. I'd gotten out of the habit. And when you are not in the habit of writing every day, then the aspirations of, oh, I don't know, writing that novel? Well, the aspiration seems daunting, exhausting, and unrealistic.

Today? Not so much. I'm not saying that I'm going to start that novel yet. But it doesn't feel so far off this morning.

Sheltered

When I was in the 5th Grade, I remember looking down and seeing a bad word written on a classmate's shoe. This boy had written the word "DAM" on the side of his Vans, thinking, I'm quite certain, that he was cool.

What I distinctly remember about that moment, though, was the fact that he had misspelled the word, which still makes me giggle to this day. Being the sometimes arrogant, annoying, goody-little-two-shoes that I was at the time, though, I am still surprised at myself for not 1) Telling on him and 2) Correcting his spelling. It's quite obvious, isn't it, that I was meant to major in English and teach it later in life, right?

My parents, for the most part, sheltered my brother and I from foul language. They'd quickly turn the volume down on the radio when The Devil Went Down to Georgia got to that bit about being a "son of a gun" and instead of "Shit," I remember my dad correcting himself just in time and saying, "Aww sh-ut!"

That does not mean that my brother and I were unaware that the words existed, and apparently, we also knew how to spell them properly, we just did not encounter them in our everyday lives. I think the ban on hearing the words has led me to a life of cursing like a sailor. No, not really. I'm just foul-mouthed and ill-tempered most of the time. ;)

After we became parents, Dr Pop and I didn't really try to curb our language all that much. That is, until the fateful day Boy Pop, at the tender age of 2 and a half, started parroting us. There isn't much that is more adorable and simultaneously horrifying than one's toddler running around happily sing-songing the words, "Oh shit! Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit!"

We try to curb our proclivities toward the "bad" words, but sometimes, more often than I care to fully admit, we slip. The radio slips. We just don't censor ourselves or our company or our lives, for that matter. We have friends who do. Friends who would love for their children to believe that they are sainted and would never think of utterring the F-word and wouldn't even know what it means. We do look down on them a little. Mainly because we know their children. Trust me, they KNOW.

Sorry. Got off on a tangent. Will probably happen again.

So. The other day, we were listening to some song on the I-pod while in the car. Boy Pop pipes up, "That's the second time I've heard that word in a song this week!" I told him it was a bad word. A very bad, BAD word. Probably the worst word a person can say out loud. It is an offensive description of certain people and he should never, ever say it. I told him that sometimes people use it in songs about themselves, but we could never say it. I thought he understood.

When we got home, Dr Pop reinforced the ban on the word and its use.

A while later, that evening, we had some friends over. When it was time for them to leave, one of their boys asks Dr Pop what the word "x-x-x-x-x"* was. We stood there with our mouths open in shock. In horror. Dr Pop asked him where he saw it. The boy said that our son had spelled it into this talking robot program on the iPad to get the robot to say it. Needless to say, we stumbled our way through the incident and the family left.

I feel like a failure. I thought that it was unrealistic to shelter our son to the point that he thought certain words didn't exist. I thought it was enough to explain to him that there are certain things we don't say. Certain things that, when said, make the person speaking them look bad (I'm including myself) and uneducated (yes, the former teacher of the English language has no imagination when it comes to expressing my frustrations most of the time).

This child of mine, this super-smart little boy, found a way around the rule of never speaking the word... Just type it into a computer program and have the computer say it! Won't that be funny! Ugh.

So the program has been deleted from the iPad and the priveleges on said system have been removed for the time being.

I think it's time to re-think our approach here.

*The word, naturally, was misspelled. I didn't correct him. Some words, I've decided, don't need to be spelled correctly.

Sunday Funday

I am so happy the clocks turned back! I love waking up early and feeling well-rested, which isn't a normal thing for me on any given day... Except the first Sunday of Standard Time. Here we are at 11AM and we are already back from breakfast.

Today is my closet clean-out day. Wish me luck!

Success!

Today is the final work day of Daylight Savings Time.

I made it.

I love fall and love "falling back" each year. Ever since they extended Daylight Savings Time, however, the month of October has been OFF for me, though. And each October, at some point prior to the time change, I oversleep. I don't oversleep just a little, though. Oh no. I oversleep by exactly one hour.

For the first time since DST was extended, I made it. I made it through all of DST without my usual hour-long oversleep.

This is not to say that I don't oversleep every day of the work week, though. It's just that is a different story and it isn't the fact that my internal clock insists that Daylight Savings Time ends the final Saturday of September or first Saturday of October.

And that, my friends, is VICTORY!

Three In A Row

I am actually getting this one in early and it's a crappy post. Sorry. But I'm dealing with idiots from all sides this morning and I don't see it getting better.

Yes. I take the stupidity of others personally. I am trying to work on that. But when someone else's stupidity imapcts MY day to day life, I can't help it. It angers me.

So. I have this feeling based on yesterday's post and today's post that this NaBloPoMo theme will be "Things Mrs. Pop needs to work on internally to be a more pleasant person."

So far, we have:

1. Stop dwelling on how angry I am at people who have hurt me and live in the present.


2. Stop taking stupidity personally.

I wonder what tomorrow will bring...

Aspirations

I would just like to use today's NaBloPoMo post to point out how very proud I am of my son. He's preparing for his belt test mid-term, which is approaching in a couple of weeks, and he has really shown determination in learing all the new material for this cycle. Not that I am surprised.

Lately, I've been missing some of his Taekwondo classes for various reasons. Once per week, his class starts before I can make it home from work. Twice per week, his classes are at a time when I should really be home preparing dinner. There's also another reason for me missing the classes...

Over Labor Day Weekend, I had a falling out with his best friend's mother. It was fueled by alcohol and insecurities (hers) and she lashed out at me with a venom that I'd never in my life had directed at me before. I won't get into the gritty details, but as I've rehashed the scene over and over in my head, tried to look at things objectively, tried to see where she was coming from in her attack, I simply cannot see it. The worst of it all was not that she was so ugly to me, but that she chose a moment, as we were leaving and taking Boy Pop home, to say venemous things about my child. Untrue things. Things he could hear. She semi-apologized for the event, but she never apologized for the things she said about my child within his earshot.

Her son, my son's best friend, is in the class immediately following Boy Pop's on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I have neither seen nor spoken to this woman since that moment, in the wee hours of the morning of September 5th. I have also not forgiven her. The thought of seeing her makes my skin crawl and makes me start shaking a little. I get this sick feeling in my gut.

They say that to forgive is divine. I'm not so sure. If someone brings harm to you or those you love, how do you forgive that? How do you forgive someone who is seemingly unrepentant? I have always had a difficult time with forgiveness. I dwell on it. I stew in it. I think it is such a natural part of my existence now that I don't know how to live without that chip on my shoulder. Ultimately, though, it makes me less of a happy and involved person.

So it is time. Not to mend fences with this person or forgive her bile, but to stop dwelling on her hatefulness. It is time to stop letting her affect my life. It is time to stop letting my fear of what might happen should I run into her ruin my ability to be present in my child's activities.

It is time to let go of a lot of things that poison my soul, actually. It is time to live up to my own aspirations and start behaving like the wife, mother, person I think I am.

And So It Begins

I have not participated in NaBloPoMo in years. I think I'll try again this year. It'll definitely get me back to regular blogging and I think I'm more content when I spew out loads of words on a regular basis.

November 1st. Wow. There are two months left in this year that was to be so monumental. I look back at my list of resolutions from the first of this year, and I realize that I haven't made much of a dent. While I know it is never too late to start something, well, there is just something so daunting about it, too.

I think it's my "To-Do" list that I made for myself:

• Clean out junk cabinet


• Clean out junk drawer


• Clean out closet under the stairs (otherwise known as the junk closet)


• There is a theme here


• Sort through my clothes


• Purge unused toys and clothes from the house


• Possibly participate in neighborhood garage sale this Saturday*


• *But we have a wedding and a HUGE rivalry football game this Saturday, so that's probably a no-go


• Set up 1x1s at work


• Find a new job at work


• Prep for Thanksgiving, Skiing, and Christmas


• Oh and all the rest of the day-to-day routine that we call life up in here

I think that I ask a lot of myself and then stress out when it is too much to handle, rather than admit that I'm asking way too much and maybe I should slow it down and just enjoy the world around me for a bit.

Yeah. I think I need to do that.

But first, there are a ton of Halloween decorations that need to be taken down...

Well That's Done

So much for NaBloPoMo. Missed yesterday. Oh well.

Moving on...