My mother is extremely sick and has been so for over a year now. It started right before we left for North Carolina and when we left we knew that it might be the last time we saw here. But luckily she has survived longer than the doctors anticipated and since we came back I visit on a weekly basis.
The funny thing is that I would like to go more, but there isn't much to talk about and she doesn't want me to do anything when I am there, although I do offer. Perhaps I should go and just watch the TV Food network with her. Watching television was one of the only things we did together. Okay I am wrong, we did do a lot of shopping. In the summer when I was home from school, I was lucky enough to go out with her on her weekly errands. My mother was (and still is)a thrifty shoppper. As a family of 7 on one income, she had to be. She would check all of the grocery stores in the area for their loss leader sales and stock up. She also stopped in weekly to Bradlees and Caldors and other medium box chain stores for good deals on things like clothing and housewares. I would usually tag along, annoying her in some way or another. Be it going to the bathroom at every store we stopped at or accidentally spraying myself in the eye with perfume. Sometimes I would even con her into buying me something. I think she would buy it just to shut me up from all my whining. I owe all my good shopping skills to her.
I can't take her shopping since she has so much trouble moving around at all. She hasn't left the house in months. While her body is now emaciated and hunched, and she looks to have aged 15 years, she still doesn't really talk much. I am sure that she is in tons of pain. She has pain medication patches on her body and she takes the occasional pill if she feels she needs to. She feels free to answer all questions about her condition, rather matter-of-factly. It is something she has come to accept. My father is with her and takes care of her every need which means helping her do everything from getting out of bed, to dressing, to eating, to going to the bathroom etc..He is such a good man and it is beautiful to see him joyfully and lovingly take care of her.
I miss her. I miss her bustling around the kitchen so eager to take care of everyone. I miss seeing her do her search a word puzzles with her reading glasses at the end of her nose while she sits in her rocking chair. I miss her wise crack corny jokes. I remember her telling me of a time when her and my father we first married. She loved jokes, so she slyly filled the insides of my fathers shoes with shaving cream. She said "You should have seen his face when he put them on!". And Jesse thinks that I am trouble? I miss her baking. She baked some delicious treat at least once a week for as long as I can remember. Cookies, bars, cakes, any good recipe she found in her magazines was tried. Now I am passing on the tradition to my kids. Just this week, Huckleberry, Fiona and I made huge cookies that we decorated with frosting and leftover Halloween candy. Thanks mom.
Wednesday, November 19, 2008
Tuesday, November 18, 2008
Little Bear
Let me just say that I love Maurice Sendak's Little Bear. The story books are simple and sweet. But the shows and movies are so very comforting. The cast of characters is wonderful, full of innocence, curiosity and respect. Sometimes it is just plain fun. Sometimes when we have had a bad day, I pop in one of the movies and we all snuggle down and smile while we watch. The stories and the music are so very comforting.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
Myers- Briggs
We have had the "Do What You Are Book" by Paul Tieger and Barbara Barron-Teiger and have tried to use it as an oracle of sorts. Jesse and I have always had this family thing down. But making money has been a constant struggle.
As a sales executive, I meet people everyday that run small business and they have always had a talent or like of a specific trade or service. Such as the mechanic I met down the street that has been working on cars since he was 16, or the restaurant owner that practically grew up in a restaurant. The closest thing that Jesse or I have to something like this is the bakery. Jesse has worked there since he was 16 and most of the work was full time and managing. The thing is there is no where to go there. The bakery owner isn't interested in selling and managing some of the people isn't enough to satisfy Jesse.
Sales is an extremely hard job for me. I am such an emotional person that it is tough building up a thick skin to all of the rejection. But it has been good because when I first started selling, one rejection would push me over the edge into a crying depression. Now it only takes about 40 :) Also, I find the lack of relationship or trust, very unmotivating. Now, I am in a new industry and it will take time to build a trusting relationship with a business owner. But I am not making any sales so I don't know if I have the time. And third, I really miss working with a team of people. Working out of the house definitely has advantages. I can call customers in my pajamas, I can work when convenient to my schedule and I don't sit in traffic for hours. But I really miss hanging out with the others in the office, talking about our experiences and pumping each other up. One thing I really liked about my last job in sales support was learning about each account manager's sales ability and style, and working with them to find ways to help them reach their goals.
This leads me to my next discovery that I am an ISFJ according to the Myers-Briggs test.
ISFJs have two basic traits which help define their best career direction: 1) they are extremely interested and in-tune with how other people are feeling, and 2) they enjoy creating structure and order, and are extremely good at it. Ideally, the ISFJ will choose a career in which they can use their exceptional people-observation skills to determine what people want or need, and then use their excellent organizational abilities to create a structured plan or environment for achieving what people want. Their excellent sense of space and function combined with their awareness of aesthetic quality also gives them quite special abilities in the more practical artistic endeavors, such as interior decorating and clothes design.
The thing is, I was trying to change myself for this job, instead of using my abilities. I figured that since I wasn't making sales, my style was failing. And while that may be true, I really haven't explored what my style is. Reading about ISFJ has helped me clarify what it was exactly that I liked about the jobs I have had and what I don't like about the one I am in currently.
As a sales executive, I meet people everyday that run small business and they have always had a talent or like of a specific trade or service. Such as the mechanic I met down the street that has been working on cars since he was 16, or the restaurant owner that practically grew up in a restaurant. The closest thing that Jesse or I have to something like this is the bakery. Jesse has worked there since he was 16 and most of the work was full time and managing. The thing is there is no where to go there. The bakery owner isn't interested in selling and managing some of the people isn't enough to satisfy Jesse.
Sales is an extremely hard job for me. I am such an emotional person that it is tough building up a thick skin to all of the rejection. But it has been good because when I first started selling, one rejection would push me over the edge into a crying depression. Now it only takes about 40 :) Also, I find the lack of relationship or trust, very unmotivating. Now, I am in a new industry and it will take time to build a trusting relationship with a business owner. But I am not making any sales so I don't know if I have the time. And third, I really miss working with a team of people. Working out of the house definitely has advantages. I can call customers in my pajamas, I can work when convenient to my schedule and I don't sit in traffic for hours. But I really miss hanging out with the others in the office, talking about our experiences and pumping each other up. One thing I really liked about my last job in sales support was learning about each account manager's sales ability and style, and working with them to find ways to help them reach their goals.
This leads me to my next discovery that I am an ISFJ according to the Myers-Briggs test.
ISFJs have two basic traits which help define their best career direction: 1) they are extremely interested and in-tune with how other people are feeling, and 2) they enjoy creating structure and order, and are extremely good at it. Ideally, the ISFJ will choose a career in which they can use their exceptional people-observation skills to determine what people want or need, and then use their excellent organizational abilities to create a structured plan or environment for achieving what people want. Their excellent sense of space and function combined with their awareness of aesthetic quality also gives them quite special abilities in the more practical artistic endeavors, such as interior decorating and clothes design.
The thing is, I was trying to change myself for this job, instead of using my abilities. I figured that since I wasn't making sales, my style was failing. And while that may be true, I really haven't explored what my style is. Reading about ISFJ has helped me clarify what it was exactly that I liked about the jobs I have had and what I don't like about the one I am in currently.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Rotten eggs
My latest self-project is working on my laziness. I am a spoiled brat to the core and understanding that fact has brought about great insights to my personality.
I was the last of 5 children and came as a surprise to my middle class, 40-something parents. I'm not quite sure why or how, but they gave me lots of stuff that my older siblings never got. Piles of presents for holidays, tons of new clothes, freedom to go to public school instead of parochial school. There were situational benefits, like being able to have my own room at such a young age because my older sisters had moved out. The best way for me to get attention was to wine and pout; something that I still tend to do (my poor husband!). I never felt I needed to apply myself because I was well taken care of. Why should I work when everything I needed was already here? My parents said to not worry about money, just keep being good. So here I am at 33 hoping that being good is going to bring me some sort of reward. UgH! If only I could throw out that card of my playing deck.
My parents were not always middle class. They were born right after the great depression and remember everyone having food stamps. They got jobs in their early teens to help out with the family, or babysat siblings so Mom could go to work, and went to parochial schools were all they spoke was French and Latin and the nuns would hit you with rulers if you didn't follow the rules. They understood what hard work meant and never let their emotions rule their actions (or at least from how the stories are told).
But when you grow up spoiled, which seems to be easy to do these days, all you do is react to your surroundings however you want to without the worry of negative repercussion. What you need to survive is readily available. Food, fridge and cabinets full, a place to live, and people that care about you and want to give you those things and want you to be happy. Most of the time they give it to you, just to shut you up- as in my case. But I see it in my children as well. The ungratefulness. So how am I passing this ill fate on?
My husband, on the other had, grew up in poverty with only a brother and an unstable mother. He remembers his mom bringing home a grocery bag full of brown rice one day and that is all they ate for weeks. He was constantly moving from apartment to apartment, from state to state until the age of 7 when he went to live with his grandparents. He started making his own money early with a paper route. In high school, he sold sodas out of a cooler in the band room, and worked almost full time at a bakery. While I sat on my fat ass and tooled around at a dumpy discount clothing store at minimum wage and no desire for anything more. Lazy.
Fast forward 18 years and here I am sitting at a desk in my home office, fighting the lazy thoughts of "why bother". "Why would I want to do all that work anyway?". It is as if I keep waiting for something to happen so that I don't have to do work. Ya know, the stuff that needs to get done but you don't want to do it.
The situation has changed, I have changed. Yet, these thoughts still force themselves into my tiny little brain and sabotage all my motivation.
I was the last of 5 children and came as a surprise to my middle class, 40-something parents. I'm not quite sure why or how, but they gave me lots of stuff that my older siblings never got. Piles of presents for holidays, tons of new clothes, freedom to go to public school instead of parochial school. There were situational benefits, like being able to have my own room at such a young age because my older sisters had moved out. The best way for me to get attention was to wine and pout; something that I still tend to do (my poor husband!). I never felt I needed to apply myself because I was well taken care of. Why should I work when everything I needed was already here? My parents said to not worry about money, just keep being good. So here I am at 33 hoping that being good is going to bring me some sort of reward. UgH! If only I could throw out that card of my playing deck.
My parents were not always middle class. They were born right after the great depression and remember everyone having food stamps. They got jobs in their early teens to help out with the family, or babysat siblings so Mom could go to work, and went to parochial schools were all they spoke was French and Latin and the nuns would hit you with rulers if you didn't follow the rules. They understood what hard work meant and never let their emotions rule their actions (or at least from how the stories are told).
But when you grow up spoiled, which seems to be easy to do these days, all you do is react to your surroundings however you want to without the worry of negative repercussion. What you need to survive is readily available. Food, fridge and cabinets full, a place to live, and people that care about you and want to give you those things and want you to be happy. Most of the time they give it to you, just to shut you up- as in my case. But I see it in my children as well. The ungratefulness. So how am I passing this ill fate on?
My husband, on the other had, grew up in poverty with only a brother and an unstable mother. He remembers his mom bringing home a grocery bag full of brown rice one day and that is all they ate for weeks. He was constantly moving from apartment to apartment, from state to state until the age of 7 when he went to live with his grandparents. He started making his own money early with a paper route. In high school, he sold sodas out of a cooler in the band room, and worked almost full time at a bakery. While I sat on my fat ass and tooled around at a dumpy discount clothing store at minimum wage and no desire for anything more. Lazy.
Fast forward 18 years and here I am sitting at a desk in my home office, fighting the lazy thoughts of "why bother". "Why would I want to do all that work anyway?". It is as if I keep waiting for something to happen so that I don't have to do work. Ya know, the stuff that needs to get done but you don't want to do it.
The situation has changed, I have changed. Yet, these thoughts still force themselves into my tiny little brain and sabotage all my motivation.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Connecticut
We are back in New England and have been since September 1st. Everything is still so very up in the air. I guess that is the way our life is. Always wondering if what we are doing is the "right" thing for us as a family. Somehow managing to keep a float financially, although usually to my surprise.
The ride back from North Carolina was one of the most stressful experiences in my life. This from a woman that has had four births! I thought I had planned it well enough, the same old route up I95 that everyone always told us not to take. "There is always so much traffic." "It is just so stressful with all those big trucks." "It took forever just to get across the George Washington Bridge."
Well, all I have to say is YES, they were right in every respect. Of course, it was Labor Day weekend, so we saw so many many cars from just about everywhere. It really was amazing how many people we saw.
The the thing that really pushed me over the edge, (well besides the 21 month old, the 3.5 year old and the 13 year old in the car with me and for some reason we couldn't get the adapter for the laptop to work right so they couldn't watch movies), was Jesse and Huckleberry following directly behind me in a huge 24' long Budget truck with our Buick on a dolly. Now, it was Jesse's idea to take this route instead of the scenic route that we took down. He was hoping with all of his might that it would be quicker, at least somewhat. But how fast can you go with a truck that large, filled to the brim with furniture and such, with a car on a dolly? At most, 70 miles per hour, and only if you are going downhill and your wife driving in front of you isn't going slower because she doesn't notice it is a hill and she is busy trying to keep kids occupied and stop them from yelling and crying. UGH....Just thinking of it is making my palms sweat.
It took us 16 hours. Yes, we are friggin crazy.
But the nice part is that we are home. Well, sort of. We are living IN a home. A nice house with 3 bedrooms, a 2 car garage, a nice driveway, a huge yard and even an inground pool! We are even back in our hometown where we know all of the stores and a lot of the people. The awesome libraries (yes there are 2!!) where everyone knows our family. Our old homeschool community that is full of good old friends. We have even gotten to see my dying mother which is amazing because we didn't think she would necessarily make it this long.
I have to tell you though....it just doesn't feel right. Perhaps it is just the time of year. Perhaps it is the time of man. But, it just feels....heartless. There is no thump thump. My blood has gone cold and we are wondering where we went wrong.
Should we have stayed in North Carolina? It is just because of the up coming election? What are we trying to do anyway>?
Good question.
The ride back from North Carolina was one of the most stressful experiences in my life. This from a woman that has had four births! I thought I had planned it well enough, the same old route up I95 that everyone always told us not to take. "There is always so much traffic." "It is just so stressful with all those big trucks." "It took forever just to get across the George Washington Bridge."
Well, all I have to say is YES, they were right in every respect. Of course, it was Labor Day weekend, so we saw so many many cars from just about everywhere. It really was amazing how many people we saw.
The the thing that really pushed me over the edge, (well besides the 21 month old, the 3.5 year old and the 13 year old in the car with me and for some reason we couldn't get the adapter for the laptop to work right so they couldn't watch movies), was Jesse and Huckleberry following directly behind me in a huge 24' long Budget truck with our Buick on a dolly. Now, it was Jesse's idea to take this route instead of the scenic route that we took down. He was hoping with all of his might that it would be quicker, at least somewhat. But how fast can you go with a truck that large, filled to the brim with furniture and such, with a car on a dolly? At most, 70 miles per hour, and only if you are going downhill and your wife driving in front of you isn't going slower because she doesn't notice it is a hill and she is busy trying to keep kids occupied and stop them from yelling and crying. UGH....Just thinking of it is making my palms sweat.
It took us 16 hours. Yes, we are friggin crazy.
But the nice part is that we are home. Well, sort of. We are living IN a home. A nice house with 3 bedrooms, a 2 car garage, a nice driveway, a huge yard and even an inground pool! We are even back in our hometown where we know all of the stores and a lot of the people. The awesome libraries (yes there are 2!!) where everyone knows our family. Our old homeschool community that is full of good old friends. We have even gotten to see my dying mother which is amazing because we didn't think she would necessarily make it this long.
I have to tell you though....it just doesn't feel right. Perhaps it is just the time of year. Perhaps it is the time of man. But, it just feels....heartless. There is no thump thump. My blood has gone cold and we are wondering where we went wrong.
Should we have stayed in North Carolina? It is just because of the up coming election? What are we trying to do anyway>?
Good question.
Saturday, August 23, 2008
Cacophony
Being a mother of four has produced a variety of experiences that I have never had before so I have needed to expand my vocabulary in order to describe them. Here is the latest.
Cacophony- noun-loud confusing disagreeable sounds
This can easily be produced on a beautiful Saturday morning at the local farmers market. It starts out nice and quite with Shillelagh in the sling, Fiona holding my hand, and Athena walking alongside holding the bag. We casually stroll through and view all the wonderful goods for sale and stop for a few moments to enjoy the live music. We stop and pick a few good looking eggplant and also find some lovely cherry tomatoes. Shillelagh decides that since cherry tomatoes are her absolute favorite food, she must twist and lean out of the sling to reach them almost knocking the entire container out of my hand. At that point Jesse and Huckleberry arrive. (This many kids means we take 2 cars) Shillelagh is kicking and crying to get more tomatoes for herself, unhappy with the speed that I am trying to shove them in her face. So, Jesse offers to take Shillelagh and I take her out of the sling to hand her over. BUT, she then grabs my index finger and proceeds to pull very hard saying "Pull, pull!!!" meaning she wants me to go with her. So I follow the child that has a death grip on my finger while the entire family follows behind closely, all seeming to talk to me and each other at the same time.
We make our way over to the candy store, which, by the way, is the main reason the kids wanted to come. We all pass the store and while Shillelagh has taken notice of a teddy bear in the store window, I get a chance to ask why they aren't going to get the candy they are so anxious for. That is when we become a cacophony. The older kids immediately start to argue while Jesse is trying to talk to me and Fiona is in her continuous 3 year old ramble, while Shillelagh has again decided to move along immediately with her death grip on my finger and our entire group is blocking the sidewalk so that no one can pass by.
So you may ask, why are we here, in this evil mix of chaos and pleasure? We thought that perhaps we could all get along for more than 5 minutes to enjoy our last Saturday at the Farmers Market. Stroll, enjoy some free samples, great live music, and pick up some candy as a special treat. But you just can't do these things with 4 kids. It is physically impossible because your brain is fried before you even think about why you are there in the first place.
The big kids went into the candy store, Jesse sat to talk with Fiona and answer some of her questions, while I struggled with Shillelagh, trying to keep her from running into the street. In the end I think we stayed for a total of 15 minutes. The last 5 minutes of which I was in the car with Shillelagh feeding her tomatoes while she was buckled into a car seat. To top it all off, the gang strolls over to the car after their jaunt to the candy store and Huckleberry and Fiona both step into an enormously soft pile of doggy doo doo. It was so large that Fiona had a huge chuck on the toe of her sparkly pink princess shoe. Thank goodness she didn't try to get into the car!
We are home and exhausted and don't plan on leaving the house with children until the move next Sunday. And perhaps not even that soon!
Cacophony- noun-loud confusing disagreeable sounds
This can easily be produced on a beautiful Saturday morning at the local farmers market. It starts out nice and quite with Shillelagh in the sling, Fiona holding my hand, and Athena walking alongside holding the bag. We casually stroll through and view all the wonderful goods for sale and stop for a few moments to enjoy the live music. We stop and pick a few good looking eggplant and also find some lovely cherry tomatoes. Shillelagh decides that since cherry tomatoes are her absolute favorite food, she must twist and lean out of the sling to reach them almost knocking the entire container out of my hand. At that point Jesse and Huckleberry arrive. (This many kids means we take 2 cars) Shillelagh is kicking and crying to get more tomatoes for herself, unhappy with the speed that I am trying to shove them in her face. So, Jesse offers to take Shillelagh and I take her out of the sling to hand her over. BUT, she then grabs my index finger and proceeds to pull very hard saying "Pull, pull!!!" meaning she wants me to go with her. So I follow the child that has a death grip on my finger while the entire family follows behind closely, all seeming to talk to me and each other at the same time.
We make our way over to the candy store, which, by the way, is the main reason the kids wanted to come. We all pass the store and while Shillelagh has taken notice of a teddy bear in the store window, I get a chance to ask why they aren't going to get the candy they are so anxious for. That is when we become a cacophony. The older kids immediately start to argue while Jesse is trying to talk to me and Fiona is in her continuous 3 year old ramble, while Shillelagh has again decided to move along immediately with her death grip on my finger and our entire group is blocking the sidewalk so that no one can pass by.
So you may ask, why are we here, in this evil mix of chaos and pleasure? We thought that perhaps we could all get along for more than 5 minutes to enjoy our last Saturday at the Farmers Market. Stroll, enjoy some free samples, great live music, and pick up some candy as a special treat. But you just can't do these things with 4 kids. It is physically impossible because your brain is fried before you even think about why you are there in the first place.
The big kids went into the candy store, Jesse sat to talk with Fiona and answer some of her questions, while I struggled with Shillelagh, trying to keep her from running into the street. In the end I think we stayed for a total of 15 minutes. The last 5 minutes of which I was in the car with Shillelagh feeding her tomatoes while she was buckled into a car seat. To top it all off, the gang strolls over to the car after their jaunt to the candy store and Huckleberry and Fiona both step into an enormously soft pile of doggy doo doo. It was so large that Fiona had a huge chuck on the toe of her sparkly pink princess shoe. Thank goodness she didn't try to get into the car!
We are home and exhausted and don't plan on leaving the house with children until the move next Sunday. And perhaps not even that soon!
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
Grandmother
Jesse and I decided to take Shillelagh out to Target the other day. She had tons of fun playing with all the different sorts of balls in the toy department as well as running through the clothing section! We had finally gotten her back into the cart and decided it was time to check out. While we were in line she decided that she wasn't going to be patient and started fussing and straining against the belt. So, instead of letting her get into a fit, I decided to start playing some hand games with her. We started out with the classic Patty-cake which she absolutely adores. (And is quite adorable herself while she is clapping and singing along :))
When it was our turn, the cashier said, (specifically now, this is her word for word)..."It's asking for your date of birth." Now being the semi-intelligent person I am, I realized that while she didn't actually acknowledge my existence with a "Hello" she was speaking to me and although I probably look old enough to purchase the beer she scanned, the register won't move along unless she types in a birthdate. So, I give her the date and continued my game with my lovely little toddler which had progressed into the Itsy Bitsy Spider.
The cashier then says to me, " Grandmother?".
Now, I wasn't quite sure if she was talking to me or not. Perhaps she just remembered something that made her blurt out the word Grandmother. Perhaps she is a grandmother and wanted to share in her pride. Perhaps she thought that their should be a grandmother in the Itsy Bitsy Spider.
I stared at her with a questioning look while these thoughts spun around my head. Sort of like a dog will look at you when you are calling it's name and has no idea what you are trying to communicate.
She then says, "Oh, I'm sorry, it's just that usually when their young only the grandmother has time for silly games. You usually don't have time for that when they are young."
Now, that seems like a logical train of thought, sort of. But I had just given her my birthdate which makes me 33. While it is possible that I had a child at sixteen and then my child had a child at 16, it is highly unlikely. And then again, do I look like a grandmother????
So while I stood there dumbfounded and searching for reason, Jesse comes to the rescue with "Yes, we like to play silly games. We think it is a lot of fun. We don't mind being silly at all."
So I have officially been grandmothered! Now, I really don't have a problem with getting older. Actually, I like being in my 30's. There is a sense of accomplishment and I don't have so many silly and petty thoughts running through my head. But I hadn't realize that I could be considered a grandmother to some. It always amazes me how other people see things and how their standards for judgment, like this cashiers' judgment for what a grandmother is and does, is so very very different from mine. I truly appreciated the enlightenment she gave me that came from her assumption.
Jesse also so lovingly put it, "You are the sexiest grandmother I know!!:)"
What a sweet and endearing husband!
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