Time for Some Oxygen

A few months ago, I was working on my novel when things came to a screeching halt.  Sure, you can call it Writer’s Block, but it was much more serious than that to me.  Here I was, about 50,000 words into it, and the whole thing just kind of shut down on me.  Like a machine that stops working.  And then I realized that maybe this machine had a faulty design from the start.  I put it down.

Simultaneously, my parents asked me if I would be willing to do some painting in their house.  For various reasons, they just didn’t want to have someone they barely knew working in their house for an extended period of time.  I really love to paint, normally.  I find it therapeutic, and love seeing the physical progress of my hard work.  It was just what the doctor ordered.

I sang all the way through the first couple of days.  But things started to deviate from the original plan a little.  A color was wrong, and the entire room had to be re-done.  In another room, the semi-gloss betrayed brush strokes in a most offensive manner.  Redone, of course.  Trim and doors were not part of the original contract, but were added.  Due to my inability to just go over there for eight hours per day for days on end, this project was taking an eternity.  The joy of painting had become drudgery.  I made mistakes and had to clean them up, over and over.

Yesterday, as I put the last bit of marshmallow latex on a door frame, I said, “I just can’t handle it anymore.  I’m so sick of painting.”  I had been pushing myself along, almost through tears, thinking, This is not the talent that God blessed me with.  This is not what He created me to do.  Writing is.  I can’t breathe.

So this morning, I knew I would be getting back to my real occupation, my life’s work, my passion.  As I made breakfast, I realized I was literally dancing and singing around the kitchen.  Just the thought of doing what I love gave me a new boost of energy.  The oxygen had already returned to my brain.  As I have spent the day where I belong (in front of the computer, tapping away), I have remembered who I am.  I am me again.  I feel good in my own skin.  And it doesn’t have any paint smudges on it.

What activity is like oxygen for you?

Does It Get Easier?

I remember when my son was a tiny newborn.  It seems like yesterday, but it was four and a half years ago.  He was a sweet, easy little baby to have around.  I didn't know that at the time, though.  I was so overwhelmed by the feelings associated with first-time motherhood.  Things that dominated my mind were such as:  "Am I doing this right?"  "Is the formula too hot?"  "Is the formula too cold?"  "How long has he had this dirty diaper?"  "What if I drop him?"  "Does he know who I am?"  "Is he still breathing?"

I bumbled along, wondering, worrying, and going one hour at a time.  When my son was almost a month old, my best friend arrived for an overnight visit.  I had never been so glad to see her.  Having a six-year-old and three-year-old herself, I knew she would be able to shed some light on what I was doing right or wrong.

"You're doing fine, you know," she said halfway through the visit, sensing my uncertainty.  Those words of reassurance made a haze dissipate and the sun shine down into my living room.

Toward the end of her visit, I was reflecting on the lack of sleep (which really wasn't an issue for me, since my baby started sleeping through the night at 11 days old. However, the complications after my C-section made up for it.), the stress of not knowing what I was doing . . . well, I can't even remember now what it was that I thought was so hard.  But I thought this motherhood thing was tough, and in retrospect, I want to laugh at myself for asking her that question.

But my friend didn't laugh.  She thought for a moment and said, "It gets different.  I won't say easier.  As soon as you get everything figured out, something new will come into the picture."  Bless her heart, she didn't want to scare me.  What I have realized over the last four and a half years is that it gets both easier and harder with each passing year.  She was right - it's just different.

I never thought I would be such an emotional basket case over my child changing schools at age four, but I have been.  We have said goodbye to the wonderful preschool where he has been for the last three years, and are gearing up for "big kid school" in the fall.  The adjustment for me will be having him away from me for a full school day, five days per week.  It will be a big change from our three day per week, 9-12 routine.

On the other hand, I think he will thrive, and I would never want to hold him back.  I'm excited for him, but it's just breaking my heart that he will turn FIVE at the end of this year and leave behind the "little years."  For years now, we have woken up in the morning whenever we felt like it (usually sunrise for him). The years where we hang out in pajamas while we read books or watch Curious George, eat snacks and play with toy cars, or get in the car to go putz around in Target at 10am . . . are over.  I know we still have this summer, and other summers.  But it feels like more than just a new chapter in the book.  It feels like a whole new volume in the series.

There were days I thought this time would never end.  There were days I prayed for school to come sooner, so that I could go about my business and get other things done.  But while it seems to drag day by day, the years are flying past us.  Where did they go?  While I would never want to re-live him getting his little 20-month-old head stuck between wooden rods in a chair back, the scary ER visit with the high fever, or some of the harrowing potty training moments, I wish I could go back and visit earlier times just to drink in his littleness and his sweetness.  And I wish I could take back the times I yelled at him in frustration.

But, I can't.  And as my friend pointed out to me so long ago, I have found that it never really gets easier, just different, on a good day.  And yes, sometimes it is harder.  She just texted me a few moments ago and said, "Hang in there!  I'm not going to tell you it gets easier, because it doesn't."  I know she's right.

Today, I feel that complicated motherly conundrum: simultaneous joy and mourning.  I am mourning the end of a "little" phase of his life.  My baby is no longer a baby.  But I am joyful and amazed by the wonderful little boy he is becoming.  I would never, ever want to hold him back.  But it sure is hard to say goodbye to the "little years."

I'm going to inhale every moment of this summer with him like it's the last breath I will ever take.

Keep It At Home

“Buy American,” friends and relatives have told me over the years.  Nodding my head in agreement, I would think to myself, If only I had time to look.  When you’re in a hurry, it’s not usually a good time to start a new habit.  But even during times when I wasn’t that busy, I would forget to check to see where merchandise was made.

Until recently.

The recalls on dangerous products made in China have been mounting over the last several years.  Our economy is still in the gutter.  People are still losing jobs and homes.  Crime is on the rise as more people become desperate.  A  comeback will rely, in part, on putting Americans back to work.  Decreasing our imports and increasing our exports would be a great start.  But major retailers here need to get the message first:  We want to buy American.  I think many people are like me:  they think buying American is a great idea, but don’t have the time to stop and think about something else in their hectic lives.  But I have resolved to do my part by buying more American goods.

I was shoe shopping recently.  Here is what I found:  Made in China, Made in China, Made in China, Made in China, Made in China, Made in China, OH! Made in Italy!, Made in China, Made in China, Made in China, Made in China, Aha!  Made in India!, Made in China . . . you get the picture.  Not one pair made in the U.S.A.  Now, shoes made in America are a bit harder to find than some other products.  But walk into any big store and look for most any product.  Wal-Mart, Tuesday Morning, or any other, and just walk around and take inventory.  What you will find may shock you.  It shocked me.

I recently did this when shopping for toys, clothing, bed linens, towels, picture frames, scrapbooking supplies, gift items, greeting cards, and a few other things.  Almost everything I picked up was made in China.  There were a few things made in India, Pakistan, or Thailand.  There were a very few made right here in the red, white, and blue.  We are literally pouring our hard-earned paychecks into other countries (mainly the communist People’s Republic of China).

Please understand that I am not anti-China, nor am I saying we should not buy any products made outside the U.S.A.  That would be pretty much impossible, or very difficult.  Check out one man’s mission to use only American products for 30 days here:  http://www.usa30days.com/

I just think, in this instance, that we should take care of our own before we take care of others.  I understand that products from China are much less expensive, but nine times out of ten, the quality is also inferior.

Trying to go “cold turkey” on American-made items is overwhelming, though.  Pick one or two suggestions from the list below to ease yourself into the habit.

1.        When shopping online, add “Made in USA” to your search terms.

2.       Pick one or two categories.  For example, tell yourself you will only buy toys or clothes made in the U.S.A. 

3.       If you have time while shopping, start checking products before you place them in your basket.  Make an effort to put more “Made in the U.S.A.” items in your basket than items made in any other country.  You might pay a little more, but it’s worth it. 

4.       Buy from local artisans.  Even if they use some materials from another country, the labor is still local!   

5.       Buy from neighbors with home-based businesses (like Premier Designs Jewelry, Thirty-One Gifts, Partylite, etc.), even if some of their products are made in China . . . you are still helping an American company, and helping your neighbor who is working hard at her home-based business.

That’s a start, and you are helping a fellow American keep his or her job for another day.

Americans will work hard.  We just need the freedom to do so.

Need a few resources to help you get started?

www.americansworking.com

http://www.madeinusa.org/

http://www.toysmadeinamerica.com/

http://www.squidoo.com/toysnotfromchina#module90925701

How about you?  Do you try to buy American?  Do you have any favorite American-made products?

Chalk Streets

One of my son's favorite activites is drawing "chalk streets" on his little portable blackboard.  He creates intersections, lines down the middle of the streets, trees, and buildings.  He then asks me to label the buildings (since he's only in 3K and can't spell all the words yet).  Fire and police stations are first, of course, because he's a boy.  We fill in the rest of the blanks with things like stores, banks, gas stations, churches, and schools.  We draw little houses, too.

It's so much fun to imagine and build a little town!  The point of it all, of course, is that he puts Matchbox cars down on the streets and drives them hither and yon.  "This one has to go to the bank," he will say, and add "bbbbbbrrrrrrrooooommmmm" as he drives the car over to the bank.  "The fire truck has to get to this house, because it's on fire!" is heard almost every time.  Traffic jams sometimes ensue, with honking, beeping or shouting about being in a hurry.  There's an occasional crash.

As grown-ups, we have to map out our courses every day, don't we?  At least we should.  When I realized it had been nearly a month since I last blogged, I knew that was the result of a lack of mapping.  Sure, I see the big dot on the opposite coast where I would like to go, but I have to see what roads are in front of me first.  Whether I turn right or left may affect how long it takes me to get to that big dot, and I don't want the wind to just blow me any old way it pleases.  Lately, I have been doing lots of spring cleaning and taking care of all the "other stuff" that comes up.  But in buckling back down on writing, I have to draw some chalk streets of my own.  Where will I be able to stop for fuel?  How far will I make it today?  I need an alternate route in case I hit a traffic jam.

I'm going to start setting some new weekly goals and boundaries for how much time I spend doing various tasks, like marketing, working on my novel, blogging, yoga, laundry, mopping, etc.  Don't get me wrong . . . I'm glad I did all that spring cleaning, and I'm not even finished with it yet.  But life marches on, right?

Since organization and time management have never been my forte, I'm open to any and all suggestions and advice.  What do your chalk streets look like?

Pollen Fever . . . not as much fun as Boogie Fever

So it's that time of year again.  The flowers are popping out all over town.  Unfortunately, so is the yellow pine pollen, which can be seen billowing through the air in yellow clouds.  With a strong breeze, it gets knocked loose from the trees and covers everything (cars, houses, roads, people, and anything else exposed) with a yellow dust.  It makes some people sicker than others.  Unfortunately, my son and I both fall into that first category of "some people."  Benadryl, nose sprays, cough syrup, eye drops, cough drops, and tissues can be found in pretty much any room of our house.

The worst part (besides the difficulty breathing and being up all night coughing) is being a prisoner in my own home.  My son, after playing on the school playground the other day, ended up with red eyes.  I'm sure he probably rubbed his eyes with his little yellow-dusted fingers.  Days later, here we are:  cooped up and going crazy.  A simple trip to Target in the car can set us back a whole day in terms of progress we have made with all the previously-mentioned medicines.

Every now and then, when the meds are in full effect, my son starts acting like himself.  He jogs around the house in hot pursuit of an imaginary pirate stealing a treasure chest.  He breaks out in song.  Or he dances with whatever music happens to be streaming from the tv.  In those moments, I am tempted to take him to school or leave the house again.  But if I do, we will lose a whole day of progress and be as sick as we were at the start.  Coughing through the night, nose dripping, eyes red and running.  The Boogie Fever I see in the family room would become the same Pollen Fever that prevents the whole house from getting a decent night's rest.

So I have an idea.  I think we need something like HazMat suits for pollen.  Can you imagine people walking around in baggy white space suits over their clothes?  It wouldn't be everyone . . . apparently some people are immune to the point of even having their windows open this time of year.  But those of us affected could yell muffled messages through our clear helmets.  We would fumble with purses and wallets through awkward, bulky, gloved fingers.  Arriving home, we would stand at our back doors and be sprayed down by a garden hose before entering the back door.

I think I'm onto something.  In the meantime, here's an article about preventing bringing the pollen inside the house:  Keep the Outdoors Out

Valentine Adventure with a Knight on a White Horse

Being single until I was 33 years old added up to a lot of lonely February 14ths. Now, there are plenty of single people who have a healthy, positive attitude toward the day, but I was not one of them. I had some good Valentine’s Days, sure.  I had some boyfriends along the way who spoiled me with flowers and love letters and the like. But most February 14ths were gloomy for me. I won’t bore you with my sob stories, but literally, my chest used to tighten when I would walk into a Target or Wal-Mart after Christmas and see that heart-shaped things were being stocked on the shelves.


In 2006, all of that changed for me. Let’s just say I was very interested in someone special in the early part of that year, and had pretty good reason to think he was equally interested in me. That “someone special” turned out to be my husband, Chip. We had shared hours of deep conversation, a long walk back and forth across the Arthur Ravenel Bridge, and had even prayed together. So when he called me in early February and asked me out for “February 14th,” I said I thought I was probably available. Then I tried not to breathe heavily into the phone, since I was bouncing up and down with excitement.

When I left work on February 14, 2006, I raced home to get ready. Because Chip was working into the early evening, we had agreed that I would cook dinner for him at my condo. Simple enough, right? I’m not sure how, but somehow I managed to char the stir-fry in my fancy Le Creuset pan. (See my earlier post about a small fire that was later set in this pan.) The stir fry was still edible, just a bit on the well-done side. But the smoke that filled my condo was overwhelming, setting off the alarm. It smelled awful. Well, this was a dilly of a pickle. Chip had never been to my place before, and his first impression of it was going to be clouded by a stench and a fog so thick you could barely see your hand in front of your face. He was due any time, and I panicked.

Throwing open the sliding glass door, I placed a box fan in front of it and tried sucking the smoke out of the house. I sprayed Lysol. I opened my front door and stood there swinging it back and forth like a madwoman. The freezing cold air rushed in from outside, and toasty heat disappeared. Cold and stinky. My home was now cold, stinky, and made my eyes burn. Well, he’s a fireman, I told myself, so maybe this will make him feel right at home. I changed my smoke-tainted clothes, sprayed perfume on my hair, and prayed for the best.

Thank the Lord, Chip called to say he was running late. He had been detained at work.

So by the time he arrived, I am pleased to report that the condo was back to normal. Warm, decent-smelling, and non-allergenic, at any rate. I was able to open the door calmly and play the hostess who has it all together. He came bearing a big bouquet of flowers and sincerest apologies for being late.

I had chosen a Pinot Grigio to accompany the meal, and pulled it from the fridge. I smiled to myself. Just a couple of hours earlier, I had noticed that I had inadvertently purchased a bottle whose label pictured a knight on a white horse. I hoped that this was God’s way of foreshadowing that my knight on a white horse had finally arrived. I knew one thing . . . this was already the best Valentine’s Day I had ever had.

We chatted in the kitchen as I opened every single drawer and fumbled through them all . . . unable to find a corkscrew. Chip began helping me look. “Maybe you don’t have one?” he offered. But I knew I did. I had more than one, and told him I had just used one recently. After a few minutes, I handed him a good, sharp knife and he proceeded to dig, pull and push at the cork. He was successful, and we had our Pinot.

As we sat down to eat, I told him why his late arrival worked out perfectly, describing in full humor the reason I almost called to tell him to bring an oxygen mask. Then I found out, to my delight, that there are some foods he actually *likes better* when they are slightly charred. Stir fry qualified. He cleaned his plate, emptied the pan for seconds, and proceeded to eat what was left on my plate, as well. Count me starry-eyed. I was impressed by his good table manners, and he by my collection of baseball cards. We picked little pieces of floating cork from our glasses of wine as we drank. We talked and laughed. When he said it was late and he should go, we walked to the door. There, we ended up sitting on the floor and talking for another two hours.

In the weeks that followed, we would find six corkscrews in my kitchen. We still laugh about that.

The Mouse's House! Tomorrowland Speedway Lives On.

We made a trip to Walt Disney World last week.  Out of the four times total that I have been, it was the best, by far.  My four-year-old son's excitement was like nothing I have ever seen.  He knew where we were going, but he had no idea what it would be like.

So when we arrived at our hotel (one of the Disney properties) with its giant statues of Mr. and Mrs. Potatohead, a Mickey telephone, and Baloo and Mowgli, he thought THAT was IT.  And he would have been perfectly happy if we had never left the hotel.  Had we known that, we could have saved hundreds of dollars on passes to the parks.  But we had the passes, so we decided to go ahead and use them.

Of course, a lot has changed since my first trip down there as an eight-year-old in 1981.  Magic Kingdom was the only thing there back then, and the Contemporary Resort with the monorail running through the lobby was the only hotel "on property."  But the Disney property has so many parks, attractions and hotels now, it is like its own county.  Forget about zip code.  I'm pretty sure our hotel (with over 3,000 rooms and about 4 pools) had its own zip code.

But a few things remained the same from my very first visit over 30 years ago.  The Tomorrowland Speedway has the same little race cars.  I was entertained, while waiting for my husband and son to make their way around the track, by watching the people finishing the ride.  A teenage boy, in particular, edged up behind an old man who was alone in another car.  The boy was making small surges in his advances, peering carefully over the front end of the car.  He would get very close, then the old man would move up.  They danced like this for a bit, until suddenly the boy went pouncing forward like a cat and gave the old man's car a good BUMP.  The old man's car jostled forward and his head whipped back a tad.  A smile crept across the boy's face.  He laid back for a while.  But when the cars started moving forward again, he leaned up and began peering over the front bumper again.  Reprobate!  The sign clearly says "No Bumping."

Stay tuned . . . more Disney vignettes to come in the near future.