Category — Life

The month of December was a very stressful month for my family. It wasn’t the usual stress that the holidays bring, it was my family. My MIL has not been expected to live since the beginning of December. While I wasn’t around much of the month I was constantly thinking of blog posts. Once I get my head together and pay some bills, I will be back with the following posts:

1) My Brother In-Law The Sociopath
2) Going To The Mall, It’s Like A Beach In Mexico
3) Children, Are They Worth It?
4) Dementia and Adolescence

I am sure there are many more swarming around my head but I can’t catch them at the moment. Glad to be back, See you soon.

Kim

I thought I’d share my favorite quote of all time. I love, love, love Anne Lammott. I like some of her fiction but I adore her nonfiction books. I fell in love with her when I read Operating Instructions shortly after the birth of my second daughter. It made me feel like a more normal mother. There is nothing like having children to make you feel completely inadequate. She normalized some of my experiences and my favorite quote is from Operating Instructions and it goes something like this:

“My mind is like a bad neighborhood I shouldn’t go into alone.”

After reading that, I immediately went into therapy. Happy Sunday!

I thought I’d share one of my faorite songs from one of favorite all-time bands, U2. Who cannot relate to their songs? Not to mention that they are bigger and better than they were when I was in high school. I was blasting this on my Ipod today after a particularly hard week, it made me feel better. Enjoy!

I know this is a bootleg copy, probably from the same Russian guy who was next to me at the Rolling Stones concert. At this moment, I don’t care.

I found this new tool called Google Language Tools when I was trying to figure out how to communicate with my new house cleaner. She is a lovely woman but we cannot understand one word of each other beyond Adios. This tool allowed me to translate my entire list and get this, we understood each other! Apparently, you can translate from Latvian to Hebrew. They offer translations in about 30 languages. Check IT out. You can thank me later.

“It was a well known fact that the richness of buttery foods led to moral ruin and confusion of the intellect” this is a quote from The Shadow Of The Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon. I have wondered for years what happened to my intellect but I never guessed that it was lost to fried okra, buttery green bean casserole and cornbread. I spend my days running errands, running my house and taking care of my family with a few hours here and there that are for me. I am a well educated woman, I worked for years investigating food-borne illness outbreaks as a Microbiologist. However, I have never felt like I have done enough with my life. Have you ever felt like you didn’t live up to your potential? By most measures I am successful: I own my home in a nice neighborhood, I have a good stable income, good family, good friends and I am able to pay for my children to go to a good school….it may look good on the surface but it isn’t enough. What is enough? I struggle with this question all the time. Will I look back on my life and think I didn’t do enough to fulfill myself? Or does this have nothing to do with my accomplishments? I am determined to move out of this state of inert this year. Yes, I operate on the school calendar year. Do you feel that you have done enough with your life?

Okay, in reference to my previous post #10 this is the conversation I had with my five year old cousin 22 years ago. Let me set the stage, I grew up in Virginia and was home from college in Michigan for the summer. I picked him up from kindergarten and this was how it went down:

Me: Hey, Duckbill. (He wanted to be a paleontologist and is now a bomb detonator in Iraq)

D: You are supposed to call me Duckbill Platypus.

Me: Sorry, what do you what to do?

D: I just want to spend time with you before you leave again. Where do you go to school?

Me: Michigan, it’s another state.

D: Well, I’ll miss you again too but where do you go to school?

I have kept a record of this conversation for 22 years. I don’t know if it is as sweet as a “real” adult but at the time I loved it.

I promise to be back posting this week. It has been a very, very busy week and I now have my head above water. While I love summer, I also hate it. My house is a constant mess, there is a never ending pile of laundry and for some reason I decided this would be a good season to purge all unnecessary belongings. Why, you might ask? Well, my cleaning person had a baby and is off for the summer and I thought it would be a good time to have my house in a perpetual mess. You see, as most women I know we tend to “clean” before the cleaning person comes and this way I wouldn’t have to “clean” for more than two months. I could take my time cleaning, sorting and purging…what a disaster. I get distracted and this takes me far longer than the average person. I relish in the memories of the thing I am about to throw away, I meticulously clean every inch of every cabinet and try on every piece of clothing to see if it still fits (yeah, that makes me feel oh so good!). So the point of this rambling post is I will be back this week with many far more interesting posts than this.

Okay, I will be off-line until the 13th, I might be able to post once or twice but I am not counting on it. Chris and BigMama be prolific!

Okay, I am headed out of town tomorrow for just over two weeks. We are headed to the East Coast to see family and friends. It is now the day before we leave and guess what….I have not shopped for THE BATHING SUIT. That, of course, was meant to be said in a demonic tone. I will not, should not, could not go shopping for a new bathing suit. I have a resigned myself to the faded boob suit and the brown blob tankini. Yes, I have a miracle suit that is turquoise on top and black on the bottom and has a faded boob. Don’t ask me how it happened but I know it appeared three days after the purchase. The brown blob covers my stomach but does nothing for my thighs. Think of me as I am lying on the beach trying to look cool but failing miserably. Does it help if I acknowledge to faded boob? “Hi, I am Kim. No, I am not leaking milk. It is just my faded boob, can you see it?” This assumes that everyone will be looking at my chest. They will be, right? If supported correctly the girls can be amazing, this usually involves duct tape and strong underwire. I’ll let you know how it goes.