We Are All Just Mommies and Wives

I think she was my first REAL best friend.  We met in 6^th grade but I can’t remember where…..maybe band?

We both had the same dorky glasses, dirty blonde hair, and ugly nerd coats.

We were going to be archaeologists or the next Lewis and Clark.  We would go on great adventures looking for ancient artifacts or trekking through what we thought was uncharted wilderness. We were too young to care about boys and it didn’t matter anyway, because neither of us owned a bra yet.

We used to play and camp down by the river near her house.  Looking back I am surprised we didn’t die.  Making fires, severe dehydration, and seeing how deep we could go into the river before nearly being swept away……what were we thinking?

Then, in 7^th grade or so, she had to move. No more covering ourselves in mud down by the river.  No more dancing to our Madonna tape.  No more buying any more Shetland ponies at the school carnival without asking our parents. (Yes we bought a pony…at a silent auction…for something like six dollars. Our parents weren’t super excited about that one.) 

Life went on.  We wrote a bit and even got to see each other one more time, but we were twelve when we said goodbye.  Junior high, high school, boys, college, marriage, kids….etc.  And life just went on.

Suddenly, it was almost 25 years later, and I decided to look her up on Facebook.  And there she was…..my dear friend.

Like any good stalker would do, I Googled her.  What if she has play dates with Julia Roberts and I am a stay-at-home mom with butts to wipe and my hair in a ponytail?  What if she is a celebrity and I am….just me?

Turns out, she wasn’t a famous movie star or anything like that.  Oh no no no….it was much worse than that.  In different articles I found out things like she was a “former US female paragliding champion signing autographs as her equally famous husband looks on”, and also has a “PhD in Biochemistry”! 

Dang.  Really?  I am really going to ask her to be my Facebook friend?  With my heart pounding, I hit “send friend request”.  (Along with a little note that said something along the lines of, “Hey, this is Lynn….you know Lynn, and we loved the song, “Like A Virgin”, but I’m not sure we knew what a virgin was?  Lynn….that one girl who shared your wigwam or Hogan/teepee with you on that archaeology field trip?  Lynn, your best friend forever and ever that ate a LIVE minnow with you down by the river? )    

So there I was.  Three kids, a partial degree in Anthropology, and a US champion of nothing, except for maybe Elementary School Bake Sale ideas……and she accepted my friend request.

I was IN!!!  Whoo hoo!  I scanned her profile, scoped out her hubby, and lined up our children, cute to ugly.

Hmmmmmm.

Okay, my point really is that she is wonderful!  She is my old best friend, except all grown up.  Her baby girl is beautiful and she is obviously an incredible mommy! Her husband has to be awesome just because she picked him, and I am pretty sure she would give me her autograph if I asked for it.  Turns out, we both ended up as a mommy and a wife....just a different path.  No better, no worse.  Okay maybe if we are counting medals and diplomas, hers is better.  But if we are counting diapers changed and preshool graduations...I totally win.

Beefcake(using an old nickname here), thank you for being my friend so many years ago.  I am very proud of all your accomplishements and happy that you are well.  I hope someday we can meet face to face again.  I hope we can go running in a race together.  I hope my kids can babysit your kids while we go out on a double date with our husbands. (I mean why else did I have all my kids so much earlier than you?) I hope you never make me go paragliding with you because I would piss my pants.  Mostly I hope, while I drag my kids all over the world, that they meet people like you along their travels. 

Oh yeah…..not only is my friend a champion and a doctor…..she is a talented metalwork artist too! http://www.thesilverpearl.etsy.com/  Aren't these earrings AMAZING?

 I wrote this post for Mama Kat's Writer's Workshop......you should go there too!

 And I found a Flashback Friday!

Writer's Block With a Side of Brown Rice

Geez!  I have really dropped the blog ball…..haven’t I?  It’s been something like 10 days since I have posted anything.

My mom is wondering where pictures of her grand babies went.  I have had four of my friends tell me they don’t want me to blog about running anymore…..they just want the naughty recipes back.  Even my husband asked, “Whatcha blogging about lately?”

Hmmmmm…..I don’t know.   

I think I am in a blogging vortex.  What I mean is, I have a mass of ideas (in the form of a liquid) with a whirling or circular motion that tends to form a cavity or vacuum in the center of the circle……and the mass is just swirling into nothing. 

I’ve got NOTHING!!!!

So, I asked my three girlies, “What should mom blog about today?”

“Tell em’ about your haircut mom.  Its kinda cute.” said Abbey, age 12.

Kinda cute?  Ouch.

Let me explain…….I was in the shower, trying to get though my mass of crazy curly hair, and I became angry.  So, I climbed out of the shower without even drying off, dribbled down the hall to find the scissors, and went back to the bathroom even angrier.  I was cold and wet with crappy hair.  Now I know how my dog feels when we give her a bath.

Anyway, I took those scissors to the back portion of my hair, made the cut, and when a four inch hunk of hair landed in the sink I said out loud, “Oh crap.”

Now I have a curly shorter do……..that’s kinda cute.

When I asked Allison, age 10, what I should blog about she just asked me when she could start a blog.  Allie wants to start a blog about photography.  She steals my camera ALL the time, goes outside, and takes hundreds of pictures of whatever she finds, until the battery runs dead.  About, one out of every 200 pictures turns out really good.  I need to get the girl in a class.

Finally, I asked Amber what I should write about in my blog.

“You could write about brown rice.” She says.

“What?”  I was confused.

“You know mom, that brown rice that is really good, except for the mushrooms.” She was now jumping up and down the way a seven year old does when they think they have a really great idea.

Ah yes…..brown rice.  This is for all of my friends (or maybe just for my friend Theresa) who miss the naughty, bad for you recipes that I was posting back when this blog started.  It is easy and a really yummy side with chicken or steak.  Enjoy!

Brown Rice

I bring the butter and soup to a boil, add rice and then cover and simmer on med low, stirring every 15 minutes.  I add about ¼ of a cup of water when needed.  Sometimes I need it, sometimes I don’t.  Go figure.

Links to this post!

1000 Miles in 2011 - Day 16

The first 10 days or so of this running challenge, I actually thought that I may have shot too low on my mileage goal.  Like maybe I should have went for 2011 miles in 2011 or something like that.

Then the past week hit me and guess how many miles I ran?

Five.  I ran five whopping miles.  A little shy of my 20 mile per week goal, dontcha think?

I had meetings, three kids, and a husband who likes to see the vacuum lines in the carpet when he comes home from work, and then there are the crows.

Crows?

Yeah crows.

Big, black, dirty crows.  They have glossy eyes that watch you as you run past them, while they pick away at dead bunny carcasses.  They look intently into your eyeballs.

YES……INTO your EYEBALLS!!!!

And then, they make that loud, scratchy, spine tingling, crow sound.  “CAWWWWWW!  CRAAAAAAAAW!”  And in that moment, you KNOW that they want to peck out your eyeballs, or get their nasty claw feet all tangled in your hair.

If you do not know what I mean, you need to go rent the movie, The Birds by Alfred Hitchcock.  My parents never let me watch it when I was younger, but one day we were snowed in and my husband and I happened to run across it on TNT.

I am forever scarred……and now too afraid to run, outside with those crows.

Seriously though, sixteen days into my New Year’s resolution of running 1000 miles in 2011, and I am already coming up with some pretty good excuses.  So this week I am going to work on getting caught up.  Enough of my silly excuses!  Excuses are the nails that are used to build a house of failure right? 

I am not a motivational speaker, but I play one on TV.  What excuses do you have that are keeping you from reaching your goals?  Make a commitment, accept no excuses, and you will see results.   I am pretty sure that crows won’t pluck out your eyeballs in the process but just in case, I am going to sprint from my car to the gym so the crows can’t get me.  Maybe you should too.

I am tying this post into Mama Kat’s Writers Workshop for this week. I obviously chose the prompt, “Scarred.”  Try one of her prompts……it’s fun!

I Am Going Crazy...Again

I love being a mom.  I love staying at home.  I love being a stay-at-home mom.  Sometimes though, you can get a bit crazy.  Admit it. Staying at home 24-7 can randomly send you spinning out of control.  I should know….I have occasionally spun out for 12 years now.

How out of control, you ask?

Like the time I decided to become a Stampin’ Up demonstrator.  My husband was in dental school, we had two kids, received a $950 stipend and our rent was $700.  We didn’t have enough money for things like nice toilet paper and brand named cereal, let alone a $150 demostrator kit.  But I was hooked, and I was going to be top SU demonstrator, and I was going to win the pink Cadillac.  (Or wait, maybe it was a tote bag.)

Then there was the time that I had randomly found Hand Painted Mosaic Tiles on eBay.  What the…….????? My idea was born and it was sweet.  Everyone would have kitchen sink backsplashes containing my creative musings. I bought oodles of ceramic paint, cleared out Home Depot of little tiles, and got to work.  I actually sold some of them and possibly even paid for my supplies.  But then we moved to Germany, my paints dried up in storage, and so did my dreams of being a world famous mosaic tile artist.

It gets even better. One day I went to a bead store with my mom.  I’m creative and artsy.  I did some research and bought a book called “How to Get From Where You Are To Where You Want To Be”.  So why couldn’t I purchase a couple of thousand dollars in beads and start a jewelry business?  My husband rolled his eyes as I slowly began to amass my stash of BEADS and Three Girlies designs was born.

Amazingly, within about 3 months my bridal and bridesmaid sets took off.  I could not make them fast enough.  In year one I made a little over $10,000 and was sitting in my trendy uptown design studio at my kitchen table, creating unique Hollywood worthy jewelry for the stars making the same boring necklace and earring sets over and over and over. I was an assembly line worker and a packaging company. Instead of figuring out how to outsource to China, I threw all my beads in a couple of plastic totes and shoved them up into a closet.

Fast forward a few years and I start this blog.  I definitely need a new camera and I NEED to hire a blog designer.  I have no idea what I am doing but I am pretty sure that I could be world famous. For reasons I can’t comprehend, my husband is hesitant about buying me the $800 camera.  I wonder why?

What is wrong with me????  If I had stuck with it, could I have been top demonstrator for Stampin’ Up?  What would have happened if I responded to the e-mail from a custom tile company who loved my designs?  Was there something to the idea I had of making a pitch to David’s Bridal, to create a line of jewelry for them? Again I ask, what is wrong with me????

So here I am once more, at the precipice of greatness……okay maybe not greatness, but I can tell it is somewhere important.  It is somewhere important, because I can quit blogging and let it swirl into my ever spinning out-of-control tornado of unfinished projects, or I can just keep typing.  And it doesn’t matter that my husband won’t let me buy an $800 camera for a few foodie posts.  And it doesn’t matter that I get sick of cooking sometimes and so I blog about running or going out of my mind.

It doesn’t matter because this is me.  I am a crafty stamper, an artsy painter, and a classy jewelry designer.  I am a runner and oh I forgot to mention, a licensed hairstylist.  I am a wanna-be graphic designer, a mommy blogger, and my husband’s biggest cheerleader. 

They may seem like crazy endeavors, but there is a reason behind all that madness.  I actually haven’t went insane all these years of staying home doing laundry.  He might not know it quite yet, but my husband will love me MORE after he buys me the camera. (Heck, he might read this…I had to try.)  For my girls, I am an endless example of, “You can be whatever you want to be when you grow up.”…..and I think that’s a pretty great kind of mom to be.

Hmmmmmm…..I wonder what I am going to be next?

Reviewing 2010 via Facebook Status Updates

Everyone is doing reviews of the past year on their blogs….the best posts, the most popular posts, my cute kid every single month in my post posts. (I really saw that.  It was called, “Twelve Months of My Uber-Cute Kid”.  Whatever.  I might put up too many pictures of my cute kids.  But my kids really are cute.)

My point is, I wanted to do a review of the year but I didn’t want beat you over the head with my old blog posts or an overload of kid pictures.  Instead, I have decided to try to review the highlights of 2010 by……drum roll please…..

My Facebook status updates! (Just a few…there were 84 total so I skimmed it down to just a few a month.)

Since most of you will never be my real-life Facebook friend but probably want to be, I hope you enjoy this glimpse into my private, and personal Facebook space.

January

·        Lynnie says, some say the glass is half empty and others say it’s half full.  I say, “Are you gonna drink that?”

·        Lynnie is sending out good luck vibes to Brian.  He is defending his master’s thesis today! Great job baby…you are one step closer to finishing 26^th grade! I love you!

·        Lynnie is grossed out.  There is a pile of dog poo on the sidewalk where I run…it has been there so long that this morning it had mushrooms growing out of it!

·        Lynnie is a teenie bit sad.  Today I flushed a baby bunny down the toilet. L

February

·        Lynnie is sublimawesomeinal.

·        我々は日本に移動している！……that’s right folks!  That says we just found out we are moving to Japan!

·        Lynnie is going to give up Facebook for lent….this is going to be rough.

March…..no status updates this month, gave Facebook up for lent.  It was the only way I could break off of my addiction to Sorority Life.  Hey, it worked.  I no longer am losing sleep over the cyber outfits I should buy.

April

·        Lynnie loves cooking with wine.  Sometimes I even put it in the food.

·        I think when you die, if you get the chance to choose regular heaven or pie heaven, you should choose pie heaven.  It might be a trick but if not, mmmmmmmm, boy.

May

·        Lynnie hates her new fake nails but hopes she can use them to lure Brian to the Mexican place tonight for Cinco De Mayo and margaritas!

·        Lynnie <<<<<< Cinco De Headache!

·        Lynnie is off to Club Bed featuring DJ Pillow and McBlanky!

June

·        Lynnie is very very very disappointed in herself…..I decided to go to Wal-mart.  Enough said.

·        No, I didn’t buy her the cheese balls.

·        Be the kind of woman that when your feet hit the floor each morning, the devil says, “Oh crap, she’s awake!”

July

·        Time to start freaking out!  Four weeks until we move to Japan!

·        My husband thinks I look like a zebra in my new profile picture.

August

·        Lynnie just discovered the Bandini.  Girlies, if you don’t have one, go buy one.  Guys, if  you have one then….ummmmm?

·        It is better to have had a HUGE wonderful kitchen and lost it then to have never had that kitchen at all.

·        Happy Anniversary Brian! 13 years of adventures and we aren’t stopping now!  Six hours until we board the plane to Japan!

September

·        Lynnie sent all three girlies off to 6^th, 5^th, and 2^nd grade today, and cried like a big fat waa waa baby.

·        Lynnie thinks she is tall, blonde, and not Japanese.

·        Lynnie found the Sake factory!

October

·        Lynnie just bowled a 63 beating Amber, who is 7, by only 5.

·        Lynnie got free massage with hair cut and fix.

·        Lynnie feels green this Halloween.

November

·        Uh oh!  Amber wants the Cake Boss to make her next birthday cake.

·        URGENT! FACEBOOK VIRUS ALERT!  An email recently went out asking women to post the color of their bra.  THIS IS A VIRUS.  To fix it, you must remove your bra, then go to Settings>Enable WebCam>Record Movie.

December

·        Lynnie is pretty sure she saw the REAL Santa tonight at the commissary.

·        Lynnie would rather eat shards of glass ornaments than ever make gingerbread houses again.

·        Lynnie doesn’t have time to update her Facebook status anymore because she has a blog.

That’s it.  The year 2010 in Facebook status updates.  What was your most memorable update?

Fo' Sho'....You Can Learn To Speak Slang

Are you a nerd? Dorky, unpopular, or simply not down with cool people?  Well, it is time to jock some fresh and try SLANG!!! I’ve compiled a few words,  definitions, synonyms, and examples with my own pictures. In mere minutes you will be speaking street....and be one of the most representin’ bustas on the block.

grip noun  : a considerable quantity, degree, or extent – syn BEVY, LOT, GANG, MESS

Natalie had a grip of wiener in her lap at the concert.

hot mess noun : an attractive individual or thing marred by a disheveled or down-at-the-heels appearance – syn HAM, TRAIN WRECK, FUGLY

The beach was a hot mess with the load of seaweed that had washed up.

hella adverb : to a high degree, exceedingly – syn MAD, WAY, WICKED, STRAIGHT UP

The Yokota Stingrays swim hella fast.

whip noun  : a car – syn RIZ, RIDE, HOOPTY, FLOAT
mobbin’ verb(inflected form)- driving around with friends, esp. while playing music and to attract potential romantic partners –syn CRUISING, ROLLING, RIDING DIRTY, RIDING TURBO DIRTY

Most of my girlfriends are jealous of my whip and they wish I would take them mobbin'.

off the chain adjective : fun, enjoyable, referring to an event or thing rather than a person – syn SICK, TIGHT, BOMB-DOT-COM

The Ax Murder House in my husband’s hometown was straight off the chain.

steez noun  : style, charisma, esp. that which is uniquely one’s own – syn STEELO, SWAGGER, MOJO, SWERVE

The Three Girlies brought out their maximum steeze on the first day of school in 2010.

wylin’ verb(inflected form)- acting crazy, strange –syn BUGGING, FLIPPING, WACK, ACTIN' A FOO

My husband is wylin, but I love him anyway.

dun-zo  adj 1.finished, completed – syn FINTO, WRAP CITY

This blog post is beyond dunzo.

Wanna learn more? Just go here to buy your own slang flashcards! 

1000 Miles in 2011 - Day 4

I busted out a whole whopping mile this morning on a run. 

It wasn’t pretty.  I was underdressed and thanks to giving birth to three 8+ pounders….I peed myself the entire time.  So, I decided to turn around and walk home with pee chaffing and freezing on my thighs.

Too much information?

Running isn’t always pretty, but just when you think you might stop….something happens.  Maybe you win a pretty medal for being a finisher or reach a new PR.  Maybe you get some much needed quiet time away from kids.  Maybe you meet a new friend or you get an old friend to run with you.  Maybe you think it’s going to be a bad day and are having a pathetic run and you look up and see this…..

Mt. Fugi…Jan 4^th, 2011 running the flight line on Yokota Air Force Base, Japan

What happens when you go running?

1000 Miles in 2011 - Day 1

I made a New Year’s resolution to run 1000 miles in 2011.  Not to be left behind, my husband has decided to tag along.

So yesterday, 1-1-11 we headed to the gym to run our first three miles on the dreadmill treadmill.

We ran and it was tough, but my resolution was now in full swing, and I was feeling pretty good walking out of the gym…..until my husband saw a poster for a kickboxing class.  It had a girl on it, who sort of looked like this…..

“Hey can you do that?” he said sort of teasing and amused.

“Sure.” (Geez, I may not be 19 but I’m not 40 either.)

“Uh yeah, let’s see it.”

So, I sort of braced myself in the middle of this brightly lit gym hallway and kicked as high as I could.

Dear sweet blog readers....for the love of the muscles that run between your thighs and through your right butt cheek, don’t try this maneuver unless you are a professional.

I feel like I had a baby and then rode a horse for the last 24 hours.  I wish I could use some icy hot “down there”, but I’m thinking that might be a worse idea than doing the kick in the first place.

You know what though?  I am still going through with this resolution.  I miss running and what running brought into my life.

I have made best friends and we get skinny together.(Me the tall one, and Melissa at the Rock-n-Roll San Antonio Half Marathon...she's still skinny so I don't like her as much now. :P )

We paint our fingernails black for races.

I have been cool places.

I win medals. (Melissa, Jen, & I...doin' Dallas!)

I get free beer. (Me with my bestie Natalie in San Antonio.)

For some reason I left running behind in 2010.  I just have to bring it back.  To put it simply, running makes me happy.  And maybe just maybe at the start of 2012 I will be able to do this……



Only 996 more miles to go.