Tag: humor

Going Running

Published on by mbcoudal2 Comments

How do you psych yourself up to go for a run? I tell myself, “Come on, girl. You can do it.” I talk to my body like it were a beloved family horse. “Yes, get moving, Ole Paint. Get out of your easy chair.” (I know that’s a mixed metaphor: horses don’t sit in easy chairs! Hey, it’s my blog. Write your own blog and mix up your own metaphors!)

There are a million reasons NOT to run. Here are a few:

Florida flower1. My feet hurt.

2. I am slow.

3. No one else is running. (Everyone else is going out for breakfast, in fact.)

And here’s why:

1. It will feel good when you’re done.

2. You will see some new things.

3. You will model fitness for your kids.

4. When you’re done, you can have a big breakfast.

Maybe I’ll go wake up one of my kids and see if they want to go with me.

I am writing this from a rocking chair on the porch. The kids and I are on a four-day trip to Siesta Key, Florida. It is our third day and inertia has set in. After a few days of vacay, especially in a warm clime, inertia always sets in. I must beat back inertia as if it were a horse sitting in an easy chair. (That’s a horrible image. But there you have it. As I’ve said, inertia has set in and I am mentally lazy, can’t come up with a better image. I could, if I really tried. But I have to go running.)

Come on, girl. Let’s go.

Oh No, My Mother Just Joined LinkedIn

Published on by mbcoudal3 Comments

My mother just requested to join my network. What should I do? Soon she’ll be telling me to change my profile picture, get a hair cut, rewrite my status update, stop cursing. (I tell my son that last one!)

On the other hand, I may need a job recommendation and we have worked together. Seriously. I was a guest lecturer in her college classroom. And she’d be there if I needed her. It’d be a way for us to be linked if our phones went down.

I’m not sure. I’ve just felt that social media was my realm, my playground. And I’m doing great without her. I’m growing up, Ma.

I know Facebook is not far behind. Facebrag has a competitive edge. Who has the cutest kids? The most friends? The wittiest comments? Me, Joanne Woodward, Lou Stellato.

Yes, she’d get to see a lot more photos of her grandkids. And read a lot more of my writing, including this post. So I better stop writing now.

I do write to be read. And I do love my mother. So, yes I’ll accept her request to connect to my network on LinkedIn. After all, their tagline is: Relationships matter. Yes, they do. Especially the online relationships between parent and child.

The Ephemera in My Purse

Published on by mbcoudalLeave a comment

You used to find cookies in my purse, cheap, crumbly, little chocolate chip cookies wrapped in a paper napkin.  Always ready. I never was good at packing the hand gel cleanser or even Baby Wipes when the kids were babies.

But I was always good at having a little something sweet tucked in an inner pocket of my bag. I was always ready to plop a little sweet thing into one of my darlings’ gobs – if they got hungry, restless, noisy, whiney, needy. So imagine my surprise at the office yesterday when I reached into my purse to grab a tube of  lipstick, not to find a tasty cookie but to find a boy’s sport’s cup.

I remembered how it got there. Hayden was fingering it while we were waiting for dinner of burgers at the West Side Brewery on Monday night.

“Gimme that!” I snatched it out of his hands and shoved it into my purse.

This must be one of those undocumented Mother’s Rights of Passage, when the cookie is replaced with the kids’ sports paraphanelia. At least I could eat the cookies myself. At least the kids’ stuff in purse had a purpose for me too.

Now, it’s just a reminder that the kid has an 8 am game this weekend in Central Park. And that’s really not as sweet.