…has arrived and it’s time to cut the grass,
or take a nap…
or just relax…
we’re all feeling a little grateful for spring.
Spring…
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Category Archives: life
Getting Older is a Pain
After not going to my family doctor for six years, I thought it was time to stop in and say hello. Did you know if you haven’t been to the doctor for six years they make you fill out new patient paperwork? They also give you an extra long appointment time so the doctor can get to know you – or in my case get reacquainted. (Yes, I do see my OB/GYN for my yearly pap and mammogram, and although that appointment is very physical, it’s not a physical, so off to my doctor I finally went.)
I was grateful for the extra “new patient” time, as I had so much to catch him up on! There was the pain in my foot, my knee, my shoulder and even my neck. He asked if I was experiencing any menopause symptoms, so I told him about the power surges as well as how I’m also having a hard time losing weight, but no problems gaining it. (I may have suggested he check my thyroid – you know, just in case it’s that and not the ice-cream runs.)
Due to tendinitis in my shoulder and plantar fasciitis in my foot, exercise is going to be tricky over the next several months. I need to be on an anti-inflammatory and take it easy on that shoulder and foot. So today I ordered this to ensure that my activity level doesn’t suffer. Being told I can’t run or lift any weights for 3 – 6 months quite honestly made me a little giddy! (‘So to be clear, you are medically ordering me to not run or lift weights?!’ I had to hold myself back from hugging him!)
Getting older is a pain…but I’m grateful to be getting older. When I was younger I would have taken the medication given and kept moving. This time I asked what else I could do to help my body age as well as possible. He gave me some printouts of some exercises I could do that would help my back (which put me in the hospital last July), as well as my foot. I told him he would find me to be more compliant in my late forties than I was in my late thirties.
He also told me smaller portions might help with the weight gain. Well, now he knows why I only come in every 6 years! I’m just kidding. Well, he really did say that, but I do really like my doctor a lot and I promised not to wait six years to see him again. We’ll see what the labs say about that thyroid.
Mom. mom. mom. uh…mom.
A mom is never off duty. It doesn’t matter if she’s across the room, across the hall, across the street, or as I witnessed recently, even if she is across the country. My sister-in-law, Kalie, left her awesome husband and three great kids behind to fly out and spend a week with me. The purpose of the trip was to spend some time together, but also to work on a scrapbook for my son. Zach will be graduating in a few short months and Kalie, who has awesome scrapbooking skills, helped me put together an album for Courtney when she graduated a few years ago, and so she came again to help once more.
Kalie’s kids, ages 14, 12, and 9, kept in touch with phone calls and text messages while she was away from them. Here are some of the messages she received while she was 590 miles away from them…and awesome dad was NOT 590 miles away.
“Hey mom, I want to make Jello, there’s a big package and a small package, how much water do I use?”
No answer.
“momma?”
“Hey mom, can you tell me the iPad code”
“so..”
“huh..”
“mom, can you tell me the code”
“hey mom, we need some oranges”
12:09 AM
Jared:
“Mom, my stomeck hurts bad”
Kalie:
“Go tell dad, hon. Feel better”
Jared:
“He’s in bed”
“Mom”
“Mom, Jared’s bus drove by and didn’t pick him up.”
Seriously, I don’t know which one cracks me up more! The we need oranges one is hilarious – so random! But the stomeck one is so funny too ~ mom is 590 miles away, dad is across the hall! And the bus one…dad, who was in town, did not receive a text, but mom did. That’s just funny.
Apparently sometimes (or a lot of the time) our kids feel like they need us – and no one else will do. That’s an honor, right?
With all the scrapbooking I’ve been doing, I wrote “Don’t untag yourself from your life” over here. Its about about keeping yourself in the picture – no matter what.
The Weekend Arguement
Who doesn’t look forward to the weekend? The weekend means breathing a little deeper, sleeping a little later, and if you’re a married mom with young kids, it also means going to the grocery store sans kids.
In our days of car seats, diaper bags and whining, going anywhere without little ones in tow brought refreshment. It meant I could actually think while accomplishing errands, and even listen to big people music while doing it! Also, what would take me hours with my crew on board would take me minutes without them. Some errands I would save for the weekend just so I could go by myself.
As much as I was always looking forward to the weekend, Kevin was also looking forward to the weekend ~ a time of uninterrupted time and focused places where there weren’t littles trailing behind. ‘Finally, time in the garage, time to work on the car, mow the lawn, a trip to Lowes’...or whatever else he had been holding off all week.
I might get a baby down for a nap, make a menu, create a grocery list, find my coupons and grab my purse. When I would call out that I was leaving, suddenly I would learn that Kevin had his own agenda for that time. “Well, I need to go get groceries.” I might say with a huffy breath in a complaining voice. “Well, I need to change the oil”, might come the determined retort. It was different needs, various errands, and clashing expectations that carried us through a few tough years.
In retrospect, it makes sense that we argued each weekend for a few years, we weren’t really using tools, just felt needs. Then I honestly don’t remember where I picked up this tool, it was likely from a speaker at my Mothers of Preschoolers group, but I learned the obvious…we each had a plan for those weekend hours, and neither of us was sharing that plan with the other. We separately made our To Do lists, mapped out the times we would get our own stuff done, but never communicated this plan to each other. Silly, really…verging on stupid, and certainly not very mature. But it was where we were.
One Friday evening after the littles were in bed, we sat at our kitchen table and I said, “What are you hoping to accomplish this weekend.” And he told me the matters on his mind; it was that easy. I then told him what I felt like I needed to get done and a rough estimate of the time segments I would need without kids. We then mapped out our weekend. It was that simple.
We haven’t argued about weekend time since that Friday evening in our tiny kitchen, many, many years ago. Suddenly we were no longer opposing each other in the time without kids game; we had quickly, and easily, become partners.
It seems ridiculous that we felt so defeated all those weekends prior to this strategy. But I believe we were so focused on boldly protecting our own interests (and lists) that we weren’t looking to help each other. Even though it wasn’t working, we just didn’t know how to do it any differently. I’m grateful that we’ve grown in communicating – because really, that’s what it came down to. Well, and trust ~ we had to trust each other to deliver on the time periods we set up on Friday evenings.
Communication and trust – fundamentals (and basic tools) of marriage, yet so easily pushed aside in the stress of every day life. Grateful those tools made it back into our hands so we could make something different.
Random thoughts that cannot seem to be contained
I’m just having a hard time today with the killing of these children and teachers in Connecticut. These are the things swimming in my head today ~
I’m thinking about all the violent, personal warfare video games (and the insistence that it’s fine for kids to be playing these types of games). I’m having a hard time with the efforts that have been spent on legalizing marijuana; this thought courtesy of an article in the paper this morning (in the same section as the many articles on these killings). Why is this something our culture values?
The passionate plea to end ANY mention of God in schools, the expulsion of our church youth leaders from the lunchrooms of our schools, Christmas trees in public places now being called “Holiday Trees” or “Celebration Trees”. We all know they are Christmas trees. You can call them what you want, we still ALL know what they are.
The mocking of Christians & Christian beliefs in mainstream media – and yet the prominent pictures showing up today in mainstream media of people praying, and mainstream media displaying images of the hundreds and thousands of people in churches. We mock it, then are grateful for the peace and comfort these images create within us. I’m grateful mainstream media shows these pictures, I’m just confused by the constant mocking.
My mind can only think about all of this in small bites, then I have to divert my mind. In a chorus of a worship song this morning, I dropped to the floor, with tears splashing on the tile on behalf of these families. When I got up I had to move my mind to a different place – I could not think about it any longer.
I’m horrified for the parents, families and communities who don’t get to divert their minds. I’m just aghast by the families drowning in sorrow today.
Listening to worship music, and praying, praying, praying….
A good article by Rev. C. Emily Heath in the Huff Post. Dealing with Grief: Five things NOT to say, and five things TO say in a trauma involving children. Read it here.