My Blah-Blah-Blog

August 11, 2010

Today

Filed under: Uncategorized — mswiggie @ 8:24 am

One of my favorite poets, Elizabeth Barrett Browning. The more I read her writing, the more I think we would have understood each other very much.

Irreparableness

I have been in the meadows all the day
And gathered there the nosegay that you see
Singing within myself as bird or bee
When such do field-work on a morn of May.
But, now I look upon my flowers, decay
Has met them in my hands more fatally
Because more warmly clasped,–and sobs are free
To come instead of songs. What do you say,
Sweet counselors, dear friends ? that I should go
Back straightway to the fields and gather more ?
Another, sooth, may do it, but not I !
My heart is very tired, my strength is low,
My hands are full of blossoms plucked before,
Held dead within them till myself shall die.

July 28, 2010

Kids – love em or hate em – The End.

Filed under: I Can Be Serious Too, You Know...,Parenting,Ramblings,Rants — mswiggie @ 8:07 am

Well there you go. There’s my beef for today. Non-parents, did I do the wrong thing? Should I have not answered the door? Should I have planned ahead and woke my daughter up and said, “If your tooth falls out or if you break an arm or something happens in the next few hours, please don’t bother me” so that the whole mess could have been avoided?

I know I’m being awful sarcastic here, but I just don’t get what happened.

If you really do not like or care for children that much, then do not place yourself in a situation with kids. Ever. At all.

I’ve had single non-parent friends who – while on a phone call some minor emergency comes up that includes bleeding or puking – respond to my profuse embarrassed apologies by saying “I know you have kids. This is more important right now and you need to take care of them. When you can, call me back.”

Wow. What a relief THAT is to hear. How respectful of me as a parent to have grace and honesty and understanding. To be selfless in their own needs and kind to my kids.

Like I NEED someone’s permission to talk to my kid in my own home.

My children are part of me, part of my life, part of my every waking (and sleeping) moment. If you cannot grasp that, well, I don’t know what to say.

I’ve never asked much of anyone with regard to my kids. I don’t walk around telling everyone how perfect my two are, that they’re the cutest in the world, the smartest, the funniest. I’m quick to recognize my kids’ faults and try to help them through it. I’ve never dated anyone and expected them to act like a potential future dad, (although I’ve been blessed to have some amazing dudes play with and care about my kids just because). I’ve never expected anything really, and quite honestly, I feel like being a single parent is a scarlet letter and every.single.guy will see kids/divorce as baggage and warning signs.

Quite unfair really.

I don’t expect or demand anyone change. I just expect respect and understanding for this situation. I expect my kids to be recognized as half-baked humans who aren’t done yet, and to be treated with respect as to who they are and what they are. And if my kids act up, it’s MY job to come down on them and fix it.

Yes? No?

Kids – love em or hate em – Part Three

Filed under: I Can Be Serious Too, You Know...,Parenting,Ramblings — mswiggie @ 7:58 am

Without sounding boastful, my kids really are good kids, so I suppose I’ll keep them around. Neither of them went through the terrible two’s, although they had a few rough patches at 3. And while we’ve had our issues, we use communication to get through our problems and we’ve made it through some really trying times that have impacted us and could have really made a dent in our personal character.

I treat my children with the respect that any human being, young or old, big or small, deserves. I want them to enjoy their life. On the flip side, enjoying life isn’t just about being treated with respect, it’s getting grounded when you need to be grounded, it’s reprimand, it’s discipline, it’s structure.

So here’s what all the fuss is about:

My kids know when I’m on the phone, some rules are automatically in place. Turn the TV down, keep your voices down, and don’t interrupt unless you have a legitimate emergency.

Hopefully I tell them I’m on the phone. But if they don’t know because they didn’t see me pick up the phone, and come running in from outside “Mom! Mom! Guess what I found!” well then it is up to ME to tell my phone person, “Just a minute please” and inform my child I’m on the phone and will come see shortly. And if that can’t happen, then I can point at the phone and give them the “just a minute” finger and hope they get it.

I don’t think that’s rude. I don’t think it makes my kid rude.  I don’t think ANYONE should be offended, regardless of the tone or seriousness of our conversation, if I have to let someone know I’m on the phone.

Last night I had such a situation. I was on the phone having what felt like one of the most important and serious conversations of my life. It had the potential to blow up easily since emotions were high and vulnerability was evident on both sides. Behind closed doors and late into the evening, I figured the conversation was safe from interruption. I had waited on purpose for it to be a little later so that I could have such an ideal interruption-free time.

Knock knock.

Okay, so someone is knocking at my bedroom door. Whichever child it was didn’t know I was on the phone, and they were respectful of my privacy by knocking on the door.

What exactly should a parent do? Ignore the knock? Or open the door to see if there’s an emergency?

I chose the latter. I informed my conversation mate that someone was knocking to please hold on just a moment while I check to see if everything is a-ok.

Well there was my poor daughter, blood dribbling down her chin, her mouth filling with blood and saliva, her eyes wide open in the dark, and a tooth – what looked like an adult tooth – in her hand.

“Could I please call you back in a sec? My kid is bleedin!”

As soon as the words were out of my mouth, I knew my non-kid friendly phone mate would not be happy, and sure enough their response was an irritated reply that let me know I had offended them, made them feel unimportant and not-a-priority.

I flipped on the light, yanked my kid’s mouth open, realized she’d just lost a baby molar and it was just bleeding more than normal, told her to rinse gently and she’d be okay. I managed to call my phone mate back within a minute, knowing everything was good,

…but that wasn’t good enough for them. It caused our whole conversation to go downhill from there. They were really mad that I got off the phone – that apparently it wasn’t THAT big of a deal to begin with since I was able to call back so soon anyway.

And honestly, it hurt me more than anything. Not because my non-kid friendly phone mate was annoyed at the situation, but that they didn’t care about my feelings for my child. That they decided to use this as a perfect example of my kids interrupting “all the time.”

Do people not realize that children don’t have their shit together and make mistakes? That even the best, brightest, most polite child can do something that will rub someone else the wrong way?

I’ve done everything to shield my phone mate from any potential irritation from kids. Including, to my own shame, tossing them to bed early or allowing extra video game time so that we could have more time to chat or hang out. I  pushed the limits with my kids for my own benefit and selfishness.

And, as children always will do, they reacted to it by wanting MORE of my time.

Kids – love em or hate em – Part Two

Filed under: I Can Be Serious Too, You Know...,Parenting,Ramblings — mswiggie @ 7:44 am

Do you remember being a kid? Do you remember feeling like an eternity was passing by waiting for your mom to get off the phone? For your dad to come home? For the car trip to end? Do you remember getting older and feeling like people didn’t treat you fairly or give you a chance to prove you could be responsible? I did. I tried my best but I remember feeling really let-down when I wanted to prove I’d learned from lessons taught but nobody would give me a chance. I remember hearing family members talk down to me in condescending tones just because I was younger. I’m talking early teen young – old enough to be taken more seriously than I was, but not having a “I know it all” attitude. Not yet anyway.

So being a mom myself, I try to remember how I felt when my parents, peers or adults in my life made me feel small, stupid or insignificant. I HATED asking if I could get something, do something, and the reply was “I’ll think about it” or “maybe, we’ll see.”  What does that mean!? I had to sit and wait it out, minutes, hours, days… it would have been nice to have more information or a flat-out no.

All these things I try to remember with my own kids. I try to give them appropriate information when necessary, so they GET why I say no when I do, or yes when I do, so that if the situation presents itself again, they can already have an idea of this or that is appropriate or possible. It’s helped TONS when going to the store and I *know* my kids want to get something in the checkout lane. I am proud to say my children have never, ever pitched a fit at the grocery store. Sure, they’ve been cranky at the end of a long shopping trip, fussy, hungry and tired, but never something out of my control. I’ve never allowed it to happen, and I’ve staved off such fits by setting standards for them and creating a situation to minimize such risks. For example, don’t take your toddler to the store at nap time or snack time. Duh.

Still wondering where I’m going with this? Read on my dear friend.

Kids – love em or hate em – Part One

Filed under: I Can Be Serious Too, You Know...,Parenting,Ramblings,Rants — mswiggie @ 7:37 am

I wanted to get to a specific point in this post, but I had to sort of set you up with where I’m coming from first. So just bear with me here. :)

I have to admit it – while I’m the mom of two kids, I’m really not a kid person. Surprised? It seems that a lot of women have that built-in mommy-ability to be sweet, soft-spoken, patient and nurturing with children, their own or someone else’s. It’s a trait I see often at the kids’ school: teachers who have that gift to work with and handle children like magic. But for some of us, kids are like untrained dogs who push when you pull and run off leaving you feeling helpless, powerless, and ready to pull out your hair.

The thought of babysitting someone else’s kids usually makes me cringe, especially if they aren’t well-behaved kids. I had an experience once of having a gal come over to play with us and she decided to squeeze glue all over someone’s bedsheets and pillow, and to hack to pieces a $200 Lego Star Wars spaceship. I called her mom to pick her up asap.

Having just that one experience (oh, I’ve seen more, trust me) it’s really no surprise to me when I hear people (USUALLY younger, single boys males) say how kids are little *expletives* and that they’d never want to have kids or be around kids or date someone with kids.  You see the screeching, snotty two-year old pulling on his parents or hitting a sibling at a restaurant, you see a 13-year old girl flip off her grandmother, well you get the point. It’s no secret that there are some spoiled, poorly raised kids in the world.

But if they are GOOD kids, kids who do well and try hard with the occasional hiccup because they have yet to refine their own social graces and manners, or they forget, or they run out of patience after 15 minutes of waiting for something and ask again “are we there yet” or “is it done yet” – well, is that really enough to make you hate a child? To cringe to be around them?

Kids in general don’t bother me. As a matter of fact, I find quite a bit of humor while just hanging around kids. They really do say the darndest things. They’re little people, not yet full of all the information they need to be adults like the rest of us. The only time a kid really bothers me is: if they’re incredibly rude; they won’t listen to ANYONE; they pick their nose and eat it in front of me; they are mean to or hurt my kid (or someone else’s). Even then, I’m not mad at the child. I’m annoyed at their parents for not teaching them and enforcing rules of acceptable behavior. The mother who says quietly “Now Johnny, don’t hit mommy. Now Johnny, stop biting the baby. Johnny we don’t throw knives at kittens” without giving discipline for repeated offenses, well, she deserves to be knocked upside the head. “Now Johnny” doesn’t cut it for some kids.

You probably want me to get to the point already. Ok ok, I’m getting there… read on to my next post. :)

PET PEEVE: I really hate it when I’m talking on the phone with another parent and their child starts talking to the parent. It’s not the child’s talking to the parent that bothers me at all. It’s the parent stopping in mid-sentence when talking to me, chatting with the child for 30-60 seconds and then saying to them “I can’t talk right now, I’m on the phone.” Wait, what? You just talked to your kid – which told them you can talk while on the phone. So telling them that now you can’t probably doesn’t make much sense to them and they will continue to talk to you when you are on the phone on other occasions.  On the other hand, it would not bother me if the parent said to me “excuse me for just a moment”, told the child that they were on the phone to come back later, and got back to me.

July 26, 2010

Hope

Filed under: I Can Be Serious Too, You Know...,Ramblings — mswiggie @ 8:12 pm

Looking over my last few posts, I see that I was really struggling quite a bit with the job loss and all the drama with the kids’ dad. It’s really frustrating, not just because I feel like he does everything he can to make my life miserable, but because he does things that harms the children and there’s not much I can do to stop it. So every day that I can, I try to make sure my kids are happy and healthy and are emotionally strong and resilient.

One way I’ve tried to keep myself strong and resilient the past ten years of difficulties and hardships was to keep my faith. Not necessarily faith in God per se, but faith in something better. Faith in relief. Faith in better times to come. For me, using my faith is like this:

Imagine you are drowning in the ocean. The harder you fight, the more you lose your energy, or the more you are tangled in seaweed or any other thing that could ensnare you. It’s like a losing fight and you are doomed from the beginning.  When teaching Mason to swim in the deep end of the pool earlier this summer, I told him that if he couldn’t make it (swim to) the edge of the pool and started to be afraid, I told him all he had to do was take a breath in and relax his body and go under the water. I told him to do what he was afraid of: going under. Oddly enough, it’s the relaxing, the ‘giving up’, the not fighting anymore that could save you. If you can take a breath and relax in the ocean that can swallow you whole, you can lay on your back supported by the water until you regain your strength or until blessed help arrives.

After a few weeks of fighting I decided it was time to give up. At the time, my giving up wasn’t taking a breath and relaxing or going under to get my strength back. It was the giving up that said I didn’t really care anymore and I didn’t know which way was up or down and would never figure it out. I lost faith in my faith, in my reality, in my self.

It’s obvious that I’m not in the throes of death in the middle of the ocean, so I didn’t drown from seawater and I wasn’t eaten by any sharks. But after I cried it out and pitched my fits, I allowed myself to take a breath and go under and let the water lift me back up to the top.

That’s when my perspective changed. I didn’t see endless waves of ocean without start or finish, I didn’t see the impossibility of my situation anymore. I saw the sky, the bright warm rays of the sun. I heard the call of the seagull and the gentle lull of waves. I know I can float on my back for quite a while.

I’m learning to seek out hope. Not just faith. Hope is like the fuel of faith. We can’t find what we want without hoping for it. And when we start to hope that something might happen for us, we need faith to get us there, faith that it will happen. Believing it will happen. Hope allows me to want something for myself and to feel like I deserve it. It allows me to be selfish in a good way. Hope says I would love to have a bowl of ice cream. Faith is what gets me into the car to drive to the store to see if they have the flavor I want.

I hope for many things today. I hope for my kids to be greater than I am. I hope to give them what their little hearts desire, things that have been for so long withheld from them. I hope they will grow up to be leaders and givers, people who carve their names on the heart of this world through actions of goodness and kindness and love.

It’s also for myself that I’m hope-full today. It feels good to entertain hope. I don’t have to try to figure it out or make it work. I can just lay in the water and let hope take me where I need to go.

June 9, 2010

Oy. Again.

Filed under: Uncategorized — mswiggie @ 4:13 pm

So the kids’ dad mentioned that he may have to come to North Carolina for a meeting. The only meeting he’d be having here is with an attorney. To get custody of the kids. Which means this isn’t going to be pretty. What.The.Hell.

June 8, 2010

Just complaining.

Filed under: Uncategorized — mswiggie @ 9:03 pm

Nothing makes me want to slit my wrists more than communicating with my ex-husband does.

June 8

Filed under: Uncategorized — mswiggie @ 12:23 pm

Another boring and depressing day. Trying to push through but can’t break out of this yucky blah feeling that makes me feel so pointless.

Anyhoo – heading to the pool with the kids. Hoping the sunshine will perk up my mood a bit! Wish I had a laptop so I could write while we’re over there.

May 19, 2010

Getting it off my chest.

Filed under: Ramblings,Rants — mswiggie @ 2:57 pm

Look, we all have THIS kind of day – the kind where you feel so disappointed in the way your life has been, is or will be. The kind of day where you are unmotivated, tired and worn-out. The kind of day where you just really wish you could start over, or worse: never have been to begin with.

That’s sort of the day I’m having today. Yes, I know,  it’s all because of emotional responses triggered by my overloaded brain and none of things I’m thinking are true in reality. But we all know that emotions are powerful things and our brains sometimes can’t help but be ruled by them. Emotions that is.

Today I feel like I really just can’t do this one more minute. I can’t pretend that I’m so strong, that I’m willfully determined to make it through this hard time – this hard  life. I don’t want to be the one to conquer yet another hardship or difficulty. Haven’t I had enough of those? I can sit down and write up a list of hardships – not just a hard day but gut-wrenching, heart-breaking hardships – that have occurred in my life since I was a little girl.  We all experience traumas but Jesus, enough is enough.

The kids’ dad just said he should buy a one-way ticket for them to come live with him since I’ve lost my job.

Is that what this is coming down to? I can’t care for my own children? It’s true – I’m really not sure how I’m going to pay rent for June, how I’m going to pay for gas or electricity. Forget school supplies and new clothes for July. And little man’s birthday? Should I really buck up and just get the job at McDonald’s?

You know, usually I’d say Hell yes, do whatever it takes.

But I’m so.tired. of being that person. I don’t WANT to live a life struggling, doing whatever it takes. Not anymore. I’m tired of being tired. I’m tired of hardships sucking out my soul and energy and passions. Oh, Atlas I know how you feel.

I’m 36 for God’s sake. I’m not supposed to be unemployed and a single mom and wondering what the hell is my life going to look like in a week, a month, a year.

Yes, I know there are others out there who are suffering. There are dying, starving, hurting people all over the world.

Usually I’d be thankful my situation isn’t *that* bad. But you know what? I’m going to be completely selfish here for once and stop thinking about everyone else and everything else. I’M the one who is hurting right now. And it’s so strong and overwhelming that I’m starting to think crazy thoughts like maybe the kids would be better off with Hitler and Eva their dad and his wife. I mean, they’d have someone around all the time, they can go on vacation. They can have new clothes that (gasp) weren’t bought at Goodwill or even WalMart or Target. They can have an endless supply of food to eat, munch on, graze on. They can go on field trips and get yearbooks or Scholastic book orders or school photos. They can go to birthday parties because they’ll be able to buy a gift to take with them. They can go camping in the summer and skiing in the winter.

It’s getting harder to get out of bed in the morning. My determination and drive and enthusiasm and gives-a-damn have all dwindled and faded and I don’t know where they’ve gone. I do know apathy is slowly taking their place. And anxiety. And headaches and stomach pains and wanting to cry all the time but not even having enough energy to cry about anything. The voices in my head chide me for being silly, dramatic, giving in so easy.

But really, after spending 26 years fighting my way through extreme difficulty all.the.time, I think I’ve used up all of my resources for this whole “you’ll make it through” thing.

For now, anyway.

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