Our First Year Part 2 or "Wagons West!"

  It could have been an uneventful trip. If we had taken other people's kids. If we hadn't taken a jittery cat. If we could have sedated our kids for the entire 2600 miles. But we all know none of that happened. =)
  We pulled out of Millry, Alabama (where's that? you ask. My daughter, Bekah, will tell you, "First you get out your map of Nowhere. It's right in the middle.") 4 hours later than we planned. The trailer with all our worldly possessions (not counting the house worth of stuff we left in storage at my in-laws) was smaller than we anticipated so we had to pack a few more things in the back of our SUV than we'd initially planned. Bekah and the cat, Jeff,  were supposed to have the whole third row to themselves. But we put one of the seats down and all our electronics in the "way back" and the space formerly occupied by the seat. That left Bekah in the smaller of the seats and the cat in his carrier on top of the TV in the back. Oh yeah, and our luggage. And a box of pillows and throw blankets. Sounds comfy, huh?

All we needed was a rocking chair on top for Granny...

  We stopped for dinner at a restaurant by the freeway in Meridian,Mississippi. Since the cat had been cooped up for about three hours, I decided he needed fresh air and probably had to pee. We put a harness on him and hooked a leash to it and attempted to "walk" him in a vacant lot by the restaurant.  Did I mention he was jittery? Did I also mention that I'd only put the harness on him once or twice before and then only to make sure it fit properly? Did I mention as well, that we had lived in the country for most of his life and he wasn't accustomed to the sound of eighteen wheelers whizzing by on the freeway? Furthermore, the harness was for small dogs. I remember thinking it was stupid that the pet department of Walmart didn't sell harnesses for cats. How else was I supposed to take him out for a wee? As he jumped around at the end of the leash and somehow worked his way out of the harness and under a conveniently placed brush pile in under thirty seconds, I realized that they don't sell cat harnesses because there's really not much of a market for them.
  The brush was really thick and it being Mississippi in July, I was wary of snakes, so I didn't just reach in and try to pull him out. I don't remember now who took the kids in to eat and who stayed outside to try to coax the cat out of the brush but we traded off at some point. I do remember that JR was so upset, he couldn't eat his dinner and that he took the bag of cat food over to the brush pile so the cat wouldn't starve immediately. Despite the fact that we lived in the country, Jeff didn't venture far from the porch. I never walked out on the porch in the morning to be greeted by dead mangled critters.  Survival was not his strong suit. Before we left, we decided to try once more to find him.  JR and the kids went toward a ditch further away from the road and I went back to the brush pile. I heard a rustling noise and went over to the food bag. I fully expected to find a badger or raccoon but there was Jeff with his head in the bag! Talking softly to him, I eased over and was able to grab him before he could disappear back under the brush pile. I was so thankful, I almost cried.
   Apparently the truckers had failed to communicate to one another that there was a frightened cat at mile marker whatever and to find an alternate route because they were still racing by noisily. And Jeff wasn't over his fear of them. I held him in a death grip as I tried to get JR's and the kid's attention to let them know Jeff was safe. There was much rejoicing and Jeff was more than willing to get back in his carrier once we got to the truck.  Thus went the first three and a half hours of our trip.

I Heart Mom

     Today would have been my mom's 63rd birthday. On April 8, 2011 she died of a blood clot following quintuple bypass and heart valve repair surgery. I was going to write a well researched piece about the fact that heart disease is the NUMBER ONE KILLER of women in the U.S. and go into all the signs and symptoms, like unexplained fatigue, shortness of breath, dizziness, cold sweats, indigestion/ nausea/upper abdominal pain, and pain in the throat, jaw or arm (especially the left), but my kids needed me tonight. My six year old, Lia, fell on a play structure this afternoon and her shin was hurting so I had to put a warm towel on it. My son's hamster died yesterday and as Ian went to bed tonight, I tried to discreetly remove the cage from his room so he wouldn't see the empty cage and get upset all over again. Turns out removing the cage was what upset him and led to a (very short) crying spell. So, I sat in the room with him, hugged him, told him it was normal to want to keep your loved one's things just as they were and not change anything and we talked about grieving. Bekah sat around and talked about her day, derby practice, something funny someone posted on Tumblr, and other things for a few minutes before hugging us and going to bed.
   I was going to list all the normal values for total cholesterol (less than 200), and the various components of total cholesterol such as LDL, the "bad" cholesterol (less than 130)  and HDL, the 'good" cholesterol (38-94) and triglycerides (35-135). And then I was going to explain them (look it up). I was going to cite lots of research but when I typed "Women and Heart Disease" in my search engine, I was overwhelmed with all the information. So I'm urging you to educate yourself. Learn what high blood pressure is (anything greater than 120/80) and the connection between high blood pressure and heart disease. While you're at it learn about normal blood sugar levels (70-110) and how abnormal levels can affect your heart. There's also a menopause connection. Researchers have noticed that women are more susceptible to something called Microvascular disease or MVD that affects the small blood vessels of the heart and is not detected by the usual studies that focus on larger arteries. So your heart goes for a long time without receiving the oxygen and blood it needs before you ever realize you have a problem and you've already sustained damage to the heart muscle. This seems to be triggered by the drop in estrogen after menopause
   But, I'm not going as in depth into these matters because I was busy with my kids. I was getting irritated because they just didn't understand that I was missing my mom. Then it occurred to me that I was being selfish and that they needed their mama, too. I started thinking about my mom and the good, the bad and the ugly. My mom wasn't perfect and she made some mistakes along the way but most of her parenting was motivated by her love for me and a desire for me to turn out to be a decent human being. She always loved me and believed in me and as I'm writing this, I'm tearing up thinking about the times in high school, when anxiety would get the better of me and she would stay up until early in the morning listening to me and encouraging me and, above all, to never, ever give up. For my mom, life was to be explored and lived as an adventure. She liked to talk about people grabbing life "by the horns". I didn't realize how much I still depended on her until, suddenly, I couldn't call her to ask her opinion on something or tell her about something funny or great the kids had done. And I realized I want to be a mom like my mom was. I want to be a mom that my adult kids WANT to have around. And I want to be the mom that they really miss when I'm gone because I made their lives so great.
     So, I guess I would summarize these somewhat disconnected thoughts with this advice: if your mom is still around, love her and appreciate her. If she wasn't such a great mom or your relationship hasn't been so great, love her anyway. Try to focus on just one good, happy, positive thing you share. Or just call her and tell her you love her and you appreciate her efforts. You'll both be glad you did.  And then, if you have kids, be the best parent you can. Even if your kids are grown and you have a weird relationship, just tell them you love them. You don't have to see eye to eye on everything. Put in the effort and FIND something you can agree on and go from there. If your kids are young, start making memories now. Your kids will appreciate the attention. And lastly, do what you can to be there with them for a long, long time.
       And, so I don't get in trouble, here are a few websites you might want to check out:http://symptoms-of-heart-attack-in-women.com/, http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/heart-disease/HB00040, http://abcnews.go.com/Health/HeartDiseaseNews/top-symptoms-heart-disease-women/story?id=14009993#.TzTWBsU7WAh.

feng shui and hoarding

    I'm having a get together this weekend and am frantically trying to get my two households (my mom's and mine) worth of clutter junk stuff under control. The basement in my house is finished off and divided into three rooms, what we call "the big room" that's at the bottom of the stairs and affords no privacy and two other rooms with doors.  One is my older daughter's room and the other is a library/spare room. Since we've moved in, the big room has just been a big storage room but the library/spare room has been set up and used by company twice. The other night, my daughter and I moved the boxes into the spare room (one with a door) and the futon and chairs out into the big room. The big room looks so nice as a family room- which it will be some day. It was so nice to be able to close the door on the stuff I haven't been able to go through yet. I thought of all the other stuff that I'm still trying to find a permanent home for and for a brief moment, I entertained the idea of using that room for a junk room.  Then I realized I would have to give up my quiet library and any overnight company would not have any privacy. Plus, I don't want to be a person who has a junk room- that room you just toss everything into and don't ever deal with again.
     That got me thinking about the claim that clutter creates negative energy and how some people feel  Feng Shui creates positive energy flow.  Most people who de-clutter their space will testify to feeling so much better mentally and emotionally.  When I was purging our stuff to get ready for our move from Alabama to Oregon, I had a great time getting rid of stuff. Our local thrift store put up a "No Vacancy" sign and I gave my friend's daughter two pick-up truck loads of stuff for a yard sale and I still have a room full of stuff at my mother-in-law's house I need to get rid of when we go back to visit.  I brought you through all that to bring you to this point- my clutter-energy connection theory.  I'm just wondering if it's not that the stuff creates negative energy but that being the person who holds on to things past their usefulness drains your positive energy.  Is it possible that being concerned with the management of your belongings brings unnecessary stress into your life and closes up your world just a little bit?  Maybe letting go of your junk frees up your time and energy for you to go places or pursue other endeavors that will move you further toward being WHO you want to be instead of being WHAT you own.

Dinner's ready

  I hate to be busy. I know a lot of people who seem to manage 3 or 4 activities in one day but I'm not one of them. Lately, my life has gone into overdrive. Or, as some people would put it- out of neutral. 4 nights a week, we have something going on in the evening which wouldn't be a big deal except my husband works nights and has to leave the house by 6:30.  I'm not terribly domestic to start with. When we were dating, J.R. took pictures of me cooking so he'd have proof that it did happen. Nobody would have believed him otherwise. I really thought that if God had intended for me to cook, He wouldn't have put so many take out places between my job and home. But, I digress.  
    Being busy in the afternoon/ early evening made dinner hectic to say the least. Not that the kids minded Ramen for supper. They thought they were on vacation- for the first couple of days. J.R. could only pretend it was Pho for so long.  So, today, while the kids played in our snow storm  squall flurry near miss, fought, drank cocoa, caught up on homework, fought,  went to derby practice, fought wrestled fought and watched The Flintstone's, I cooked. I made a double batch of pancakes this morning and froze the leftovers then got started on dinner. I made double batches of 3 dishes everybody likes and put them in the fridge and freezer.(I have no idea what I'm going to do next week because that was my whole repertoire of "stuff all 3 kids like") So now, we can either heat up the whole pan and all have the same thing or everyone can just pick what they want and eat buffet style.  Whatever they wanna do. Just so I'm not tearing my hair out at 5 o'clock.
  Of course, Sneaky Mom paid a very brief visit. She added flax seed meal to the pancakes for some extra omega-3s and encouraged me to try to find a way to incorporate more fiber and protein without making them dense and unpalatable. (If this makes me sound the least bit schizophrenic, don't worry, my kids think I am, too)  Then we ground up some carrots and kidney beans and mixed them with the ground turkey that I put in the Taco Mac- which I made with homemade cheese sauce.  She was going to puree some cauliflower into the mashed potatoes for the shepherd's pie but J.R. made them and she forgot to mention it until he was putting the cheese on top. I also made this chicken and noodle stuff that tastes a little like chicken and dumplings. We call it Chicken and Noodles (pretty clever, huh?). The original recipe calls for Velveeta (it's a Southern thang. Don't judge) and, sometimes, sour cream. But tonight, we used leftover, homemade cheese sauce and Greek yogurt. It was less processed, anyway, and that's one of Sneaky Mom's big goals. Now that that's done, I'm off to make matching clothes for the kids from some old drapes.

A good week

  My house would usually not be described with such vague, subjective adjectives as "neat" or "tidy". I do try but I get pretty busy with the kids activities, JR's activities, PTA, my other  activities, church, the cat, grocery shopping, Facebook, staring out the window to make sure the guy walking his dog has a baggie and isn't afraid to use it. But, I digress. Today, my sister-in-law arrived from Southeast Asia where she teaches English. Since we knew she was coming ahead of time (just popping in has proven tricky in the past), we decided that was as good an excuse as any to clean it. I spent a lot of time developing the most efficient strategy for decluttering and organizing all of our things so that all I would have to do would be to dust and vacuum the day before she got here. Like many great planners, my husband and I spent all day Thursday and  Friday putting up clothes, toys, books and every piece of paper that has ever entered our house. We also managed to make fliers for the PTA Holiday tree recycling fundraiser that I naively volunteered to coordinate, coach Ian's basketball team both afternoons, take Bekah to a poetry reading for her English class, help the PTA collect food for the holiday food drive and distribute those tree fliers, dance every time a really good song came on the radio and laugh our butts about my "mommy voice" off at dinner. I'm gonna get mushy here but my husband rocks. He worked off Wednesday morning, took a nap and got up and started working on a few projects around the house. When we went to bed Friday night, I could see my kitchen counters and the floor in every room of the house (except mine. Well, you can see the floor but not the top of my dresser). It was a blissful sleep.

normal everyday weirdness

  Things in our house get a little...silly,weird, crazy (take your pick). JR and I have very irreverent senses of humor and we're fluent in Sarcasm. We're also both nurses who talk about "stuff" at the dinner table. Combine that with a few cases of unmedicated  ADHD and it's a small wonder that our kids say some slightly outrageous stuff. Like today. My 14 yr old and her brother were having some sort of verbal play battle that always results in one or the other quoting The Cat in the Hat and shouting, "I will end you!". Bekah then told him she would cut him up and put him in chili. All I could picture was 1000 cops milling around my house, botching a crime scene, news cameras and my hubby and I tearfully protesting our innocence. So I said, "Do not do that. Do you know whenever a kid goes missing, the police never go looking for him. They just interrogate the parents and blame them until all the leads go cold."
    She offered to confess. I told her we couldn't let her do that because then we would be accused of coercing her to confess and take the rap for us. Then Lia cried,"No! I'll miss you when you go to jail!" ("when", not "if". Thanks, Lia.)
   At this point, Ian piped up and said, "Hellooo! What about  me being dead?" Is it any wonder he has "Middle Child Syndrome"?
     Then there was our trip to the grocery store today where Bekah and I were hip checking each other down the aisles. Somehow we ended up threatening violence (I'm not sure how we got there, either. But I assure you it was all in fun.) There was a woman with 2 preschoolers picking out chocolate chips next to us as Bekah said, "See this fist?" To which I replied.,"See mine? You won't in a minute!" Chocolate chip lady threw a bag in her cart and told her kids,"We're gonna go this way." and turned around. After we finished giggling, Bekah pointed out that it was a little disturbing that the woman heard me threaten to punch my child and turned the other way (hmm...future rant post?)
  Additionally, our overuse of the internet provides much mirth and merriment. There was the Google search for "Cooking with soy flour" last night. I typed in 'cooking with' and a list of possibilities popped up. The first one, Cooking with Dog, caught my eye. It made me a little uneasy but the train wreck factor kicked in (you know- when you can't NOT look?). Turns out it was a Japanese cooking vlog narrated by a poodle that sits right there by the prep area. I was right. I WAS grossed out. But, it was too good not to share, so I called Bekah over to witness the silliness. When I typed in "cooking with", to show her how "Cooking with Dog" popped up, she said, "Look at the last one. 'Cooking with cannabis'" (why do kids always notice what you DON'T want them to?) TRAIN WRECK! Sooo, we pulled it up. Aaannnd, of course, one of the first entries was an article by The Portland Mercury. (gotta love this town!)
  Last, but certainly not least, is my lovely daughter "outing" me on Facebook today (before the grocery store). I get SMS updates on my phone and got a '[someone] commented on your status' text. It read "are you sharing something? lol". I was trying to remember what I had posted yesterday when another update popped up reading "congratulations." I suddenly remembered that I had just exited the web without signing out earlier in the day and that Bekah was sitting at the computer trying to ignore me. I pulled up FB on my phone and there it was. I made some sort of unintelligible noise as she burst into laughter. It was such a great hack that I left it up. ( I am, however, a little confused about the number of people who "liked" my status...) The two younger kids wanted to know what all the commotion was about and when we told them, Ian said, "Mom's not gay. She's married to Dad! She can't be." And sweet little Lia chimed in with, "Mom can't be gay. Gay people are fun!" as if that settled it. If only the chocolate chip lady had been here then. She might  have understood.

Making a mess in the kitchen and a free miscellaneous rant

  I'm learning to love to cook again. Yay! A few nights ago, I found a really easy recipe for Alfredo sauce ( http://allrecipes.com/recipe/quick-and-easy-alfredo-sauce/detail.aspx) and it was a hit with all 3 of the Leprechauns and my hubby. Tonight, I set a small amount aside and blended it with a little bit of spinach. I used canned because that's what I had but would have preferred fresh. It was pretty good but,  because of the color and consistency, I couldn't shake the feeling that I was eating baby food. Next time, I'll play around with the fresh stuff until I get it right.
  I had a good bit of spinach left over and didn't want to freeze it and play the "what's this?" game in a few weeks so I decided to make chocolate muffins with it. I know some slightly well known comedian who had a little show in the 80s' wife has a book about the same thing but I'm older than her and lots of moms have been sneaking stuff into spaghetti sauce, meatloaf and muffins for quite a while now. I found a recipe, (http://allrecipes.com/recipe/chocolate-muffins/detail.aspx) that had a lot of positive comments, read and noted the comments, and got to work. I put a little too much cocoa in them for my taste but with a little Nutella, I think my kids will eat some of it...
  I'm begining to think you can only put so much nutrition into one muffin. I hoped the extra cocoa would mask the spinach and it did- a little. So I'm going to reduce the spinach in the recipe and the cocoa because it's really too chocolate-y (yes, I think maybe there is such a thing). I traded the 1 cup of sour cream for 1 cup of plain yogurt and the all purpose flour for whole wheat flour and some oats that I ground finely. Since I didn't have enough white sugar, I substituted some brown sugar. In all, they weren't bad. The whole wheat flour isn't as fine as the white so there's a little grainy feel and, again, too much cocoa made them not as sweet as my kids might like. But the yogurt didn't make them taste weird and the whole grains didn't make them dense. since my kids have ADD and protein in the morning has been shown to be beneficial (and lots of other reasons- like stabilizing blood sugar), I want to experiment with replacing some of the wheat flour with soy flour
  Here's the recipe I ended up using
1/2C ground oats
1 1/4 C Whole wheat flour
3/4 C cocoa
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp baking soda
3/4 C white sugar
3/4 C brown sugar (do I have to tell you to pack it?)
1/2 C chocolate chips (because my kids would eat dirt if I told them it had CCs in it)
     Mix all this into a bowl
3 eggs, beaten
~1/2 C spinach, pureed (don't lick your fingers if you get any on them)
1 C plain yogurt
1/2 C water
1/2 C milk
     mix this in with the dry ingredients. bake at 325 for about 20 minutes.
Serve with milk, because that's what you eat with chocolate cake.

I'm sure if anybody reads this, they're going to have some comments about their perfect nutritional habits. To them I say. "So?" If this isn't something you'd eat, Move on.  My kids have developed bad eating habits over the years,largely while I was working 12 hour night shifts and my husband was commuting 2 hours one way to school (and STILL pulling the highest GPA in his class while trying to raise our 3 younger kids while I was at work) and I'm trying to improve them. I was a little bummed I couldn't fit a whole serving of veggies and protein into one muffin but I realized I was still getting a little extra veggie, whole grains, protein and calcium in. And a little bit here and there is better than none at all. This fits in to two philosophies that I really love but tend to neglect. The first being "Baby steps", whereby you accomplish great things one small step at a time. The second is "good enough mothering". I heard the concept ( the Good Enough Mother) a few years ago but never read the book so I'm probably way off from the author's original concept but I don't care. It's my life, I'll do what I want. Anyway, I remind myself that everything doesn't have to be perfect all the time and I don't have to do everything that all the other moms are doing. If it doesn't work for my family, it's not good for us. Enough said. Life is too long to stress about every little detail. If the fate of the free world doesn't hang in the balance, then do a good enough job and move on. When you're old, you'll wish you'd played tag on that sunny day instead of cleaning the carpet.