When C. wanted a pair of boots for winter, I thought a $20 pair of rain boots would be nice. No. She wanted UGGs. Of course, she did. Everyone wants them. So Santa brought her a pair of $165 boots. Yes. That’s right, I spent more on her boots than I did for either of my wedding dresses.
A week or two after Christmas, I was invited to a fancy cocktail party and realized, due to all my dashing around the city, I wouldn’t have time to stop home to change out of my sneakers into my one pair of stylish (Aerosoles) boots, so I ducked into a store and bought myself a pair of boots. The store I went into was K-Mart and those boots cost $18.
What happened to me? I wondered then. And I’m wondering now. How did I get in this rut of spending so much on my children and so little on myself? I think I am not unusual.
All parents want better for their children than they have themselves. Parents sacrifice for their children.
Basically, I realize, too, I’m jealous. My kids are more stylish and have nicer stuff than me. By being aware of this, maybe I can change it.
And I do have one consolation: C. will grow out of those boots and then I can have them. I miss getting those nice sneakers from my son.
I am proud (and a little embarrassed) to be the guest speaker at the Resource Center for Women in Ministry at New York Theological Seminary next Tuesday, February 21, 2012 from 4 pm to 6 pm in Suite 500 at the Interchurch Center. Please join me. It’s free.
We will be talking about and practicing Writing Your Spiritual Autobiography. The workshop is inspired by Dan Wakefield’s book, The Story of Your Life.
Here is the sign in the elevator at work promoting the event!
I have led this workshop a dozen time and every single time, it’s different and the stories are brilliant. Seriously.
We write about and share how small, quiet, ordinary events shape our lives in unexpected ways.
Yes, the big events — the weddings, births, divorces, funerals — are important, but so too, are the ordinary days when nothing really seems to happen. The extraordinary is found in the ordinary. And we discover a pattern, a meaning — our own awesome-ness. We just need to take a moment to write down our stories and share them.
I am always blown away by the stories that I hear. There is a magical and healing power to writing and sharing your story. Just come to the workshop. You’ll see what I mean.
We’re not really into Barbie but the girls and I were picking up some hula hoops at Toys R Us and one of my girls wanted to visit Barbie’s Dream House.
I liked seeing all the professions a girl could choose for her Barbie, including architect and art teacher.
As we were walking out of the store onto Times Square, one of my daughters said, “You know Barbie is never shown as homeless, so it’s not really real.”
My other daughter said, “Real girls are never perfect and perfect girls are never real.”
And just for a moment, with a hula hoop over my shoulder, I felt like I was doing pretty well as a mother of girls.
This is totally embarrassing. I had been doing a lot of stash and dash at my desk at home – work papers, teaching ideas, bills, notes for blog topics, kids’ school papers, my art projects.
I posted a picture in a closed Facebook group, 2012 – Out With the Old Declutter Group. The group, founded by Alison, is a way for about 30 eclectic friends and acquaintances to hold one other accountable for making and keeping our home organizing goals.
And one Saturday in January I posted this picture:
I saw what I needed to do. I told the group I would clean my desk. So, little by little, throughout that one day, I organized. I found things I had been missing, like my wedding ring. I also found a still life of a pear that I’d painted and thought was pretty good, so I framed it.
To organize my papers, I grouped like with like. I filed some papers in my file cabinet, started a binder full of curricula, threw out papers, Christmas cards, my art.
And then I posted a pic of the finished, decluttered desk:
It felt so good to make my home space pretty and functional. And I didn’t need to hire personal organizer. I just needed social media — my online accountability group and my camera phone. Priceless.
The WordPress.com stats helpers prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
A New York City subway train holds 1,200 people. This blog was viewed about 4,900 times in 2011. If it were a NYC subway train, it would take about 4 trips to carry that many people.
I love a daily discipline of writing. I loved doing NaNoWriMo in November. Writing is a solitary experience. So a shared blogging platform, like PostADay2011, made writing a communal experience in 2011
work in progress, my book for book of days
Today I signed up for 365 Grateful and Book of Days for 2012. I like a push, a reminder, shared misery, and shared joy.
I respond well to a gentle and encouraging nudge.
If I’m creative on a daily basis, then I have a vessel in which I can dump my creativity when something really cool pops into my head.
It’s good to keep practicing. Writing is a practice. I love that Buddhism is considered a practice, not a fixed religion. The practice of a religion or creativity is not idolizing an icon, but living creatively and staying open to the creative spirit.
Somewhere in my brain there’s a quote about the reason that firefighters shine the pole in the firehouse every day. It needs to be smooth for that one day a year when there’s actually a fire. That is why I write daily, for that one day a year. That”s why I practice.
It took three days hours to switch our phone service at our nearby Radio Shack.
The reason it took so long was that I could not authenticate myself. See, I gave them my license and credit card and passed the credit approval, but then Johary, the clerk at the store, handed me a phone and the operator asked me a series of questions, which seemed easy enough, like, “From which state did you receive your Social Security number?”
Maybe I was too breezy with my answers. The kids were tugging at my sleeve and the store was noisy. We had to get to the airport. And one of the the first of the three multiple choice questions I didn’t really hear.
In one question, the operator asked, “Where have you lived?” And rattled off some cities, to which I replied, “None of the above,” although one of the choices was my sister’s city.
Finally, the verdict. I was not authentic. I asked to speak to the supervisor on the Sprint authentication line. This is when my son began shushing me. Apparently I was becoming ticked off a little loudly. Janet #2233 in Colorao, the supervisor, apologized, but said, “You did not pass the test. You got two out of three questions wrong. Try again in 60 days.”
Janet was kind enough to suggest that before my next attempt, I should get a copy of my public record from my local county court. Presumably, I could bone up on myself.
Really? Really?
Me? I am the one who seeks authenticity in everything. But apparently I do not know myself well enough to get a new fricken’ phone.
The matter of the new phones finally got resolved when I called my husband who, apparently, was able to authenticate himself. (I had to head out of the store for the last couple of hours to get to my creative writing class.)
We did get new phones, but were not able to switch all the phone numbers and the data. The sales guy who was helping us, his daughter was in the hospital, which made us all feel bad for taking so much time.
our new phones
And any way, we did have a plane to catch. And as you can see, it was fun to play with the new phones as we waited in the airport lounge.
This month we met at our house and we discussed the House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. We were five moms and six daughters, in 6th and 7th grades. We had these comments:
the language is poetic
the daughter feels ashamed of her home
all women and girls feel that they are different
the women keep the families going
every man is suspicious
it’s not so great to be pretty
names and naming are important
The next book we read is Home for the Holidays: Mother-Daughter Book Club by Heather Vogel Frederick.
I have signed myself and the girls up for Girls Leadership Institute in March. It’s expensive and I have to save some money in the coming months from my writing and teaching to pay for it.
As I was sitting in the circle last night, talking about this book with my book-loving friends, old and young, I felt we are already in a leadership group. Sharing the truths found in books is a way to talk about yourself, your values and girls’ leadership.
I love to like. Do I over-like? I wish there was a love button. Then I could crank my love into overdrive.
I think everyone needs a boost; everyone wants their stuff to be liked. My friend Amy once told me everything we do or say is either one of two messages — “I love you,” or “Please love me.”
On Facebook , there’s the handy-dandy like button, a thumbs up. And on Twitter, you can retweet a tweet to show your favor. On a blog post, you can like or comment.
Best of all is the cheer button at 43 Things. Here are my 43Things.
You get only 5 cheers a day. Once you start complimenting or cheering others, you don’t want to stop, so once you hit your 5 cheer limit, you have to stop cheering people online and start cheering them IRL (in real life). Being a positive person is contagious. And you’ get back as many cheers as you give.
I love making New Year’s resolutions at 43 Things and one of my resolutions will be to admire, to like, to comment, to praise, and to cheer more — online and IRL!
I cannot get a thing done around here. Just since I started this blog post, I got:
Child 1: Mom, where is the blank paper for the printer? In this box of office supplies.
Child 2: Mom, where’s your credit card? I need to update my XBox name. You really need to? How much? $10. Here, Mom, I will pay for it myself. Here’s the money. (He hands me $10.) Okay. Now where’s the credit card? Here, take my credit card.
Child 3: Mom, I can’t find my Spanish text book. Where is it? I will help you look. (We cant’ find it. She’s upset.)
Husband: Mary Beth, how come Google is telling me I’m timed out? What does that even mean? All right, I’ll sign you out, now you have to sign back in.
Seriously? I cannot buy a freakin’ vowel around here.
But to cope with the demands, I did what I had to do. I plugged in some headphones (thanks for the tip, queenbeetf) and began writing.
I visited Dr. Wicked’s Write or Die site. There, you set a goal — mine is usually 500 words in 10 minutes, which I’ve yet to achieve. You must keep writing for the committed time, because if you lift your fingers, even for a few seconds, lights will flash, car horns will start honking, and I don’t know what else happens, because I start moving my fingers on the keyboard so that Dr. Wicked will not yell at me ever again. (Fear=motivator.)
So with the prodding from Dr. Wicked, I have broken the halfway mark on my NaNoWriMo novel. I have written 25,012 in 20 days. I have 10 days left to hit 50,000. My NaNoWriMo stats page informs me that I must write 2,272 words per day to hit my mark.
If I hit 400 words in 10-minute increments, five times a day, I should be able to finish. All I need is one extra hour every day.
Riverside Park is so beautiful lately.
I want to keep writing. The novel has taken a dark turn, following our crazy (or is she?) mother of three into the subway where she finally gets some relief from her parenting responsibilities sleeping in a secret room under the subway. But when she sleeps, she enter another world where a Corporation is trying to take over souls, forcing happiness on everyone. Our protagonist knows happiness is overrated. Hardship is necessary. Well, that was the plot from today. Who knows what will happen tomorrow? Not me.
The month will be over in a week and a half. I’ll get back to my regularly scheduled life. So until then, people, leave me alone, I’m writing!
Wait, this just in — Child 3 just found her Spanish book (it was on her desk, of all places!). So, there you go. This story ends like most good ones with a happily ever after.
All parents want better for their children than they have themselves. Parents sacrifice for their children.
100 Days of Poems and Pics 