A Day of Nothing

   With flu season banking down on every family outing, each day at school, and leaving our hands cracked and dry from over-washing, I have been terrified someone in our house would get sick.  I've been trying to stay ahead of the laundry just in case the vomit-fest begins and the pile of dirty linens and towels pile up in the laundry room.  The horrific week-long cycles of flu-ravaged parents trying to hold it all together have been flooding my pages of social media.  I remember the first time it hit our house after we became a party of three.  I was in my first trimester with Baby Girl and had spent the last three days in the hospital assisting the nurses with breathing treatments and deep suctioning for my Little Girl.  We celebrated our hospital release with squeals of delight and a dozen donuts on the way home.  I couldn't wait to crawl into my own bed or take a shower long enough to make my husband wonder what I do in there.  But the flu had other plans for us.  A few hours in, when all three of us were incapacitated at the same time, I called my mom crying, "So, this is what happens?  Is this what we'll go through every year now that we're parents!??  And you just try and survive it?  And no one can come help?!?!"  As bad as it was, I must admit that now I sort of wish I would come down with the flu so I could catch a break.  Yeah, it's a lot of pain and vomit, but I would get to lay in bed and watch tv and drift in and out of sleep as I please, without anyone asking me for anything.  Instead of the flu, I caught a cold.  And it's fantastic.

Cloud-hopping

   This past week has been busy.  Every week is busy.  Every time I turn around, something pops up on my calendar that I forgot about or gets added that I didn't know about.  With one daughter in preschool and one in kindergarten, opportunities to make new friends, fulfill new goals, or pursue little daydreams constantly present themselves. 

   When some of life's questions have been answered and you feel a change in the winds or the sky opening up, you release all the previous tension with a mighty exhale and your shoulders feel lighter and younger.  No longer do those sentences end in a question mark.  You have replaced it with a period, an exclamation point, or even five exclamation points.  And it's over.

   However, as suddenly as you stare into the clouds in ways you never could have imagined before, it seems as though you're faced with an entire new paragraph of questions.  Which cloud will I pick to ride?  Which ones will I duck and ignore?  How many will I stop to smile and enjoy before sending them on their way?  As for the ones I sent away, did I rob my heart or my family of something that would have fed us in an entirely new way?  Or did I protect us from something that would drain us dry, only to prompt the hunt for a new cloud?  I've been daydreaming and cloud-hopping.

How to Feed a Firefighter [Who Doesn't Cook]

   I wrote the other day about new year's resolutions and protecting your goals.  Last year I tackled a fault of mine and am pleased I was able to turn things around.  What was my problem?  Cooking at home.  I have always enjoyed experimenting in the kitchen.  When I was first on my own, I had a dozen of go-to recipes I loved.  Of course, when I met my husband he didn't like any of them.  Spoiled from a decade plus as a fireman, who is served warm meals three times each shift cooked with love and passion by the resident chef, and a consummate bachelor, dining at a different restaurant on each of his days off, he wasn't much help in the kitchen.  But he knew what he didn't like- anything I made.  Last year I decided enough was enough.  I had to get creative.

Me (and my mom) getting creative in the kitchen.

Dining at Disney with Picky Eaters

   

 

 

   If your toddlers and preschoolers are anything like mine, they're picky eaters.  Most of the time, one is uninterested and the other is crying (pictured left).  As babies, I never left the house without enough snacks to trick their tummies into believing they'd just eaten an entire meal.  Since they were always snacking and we were always accommodating them, they're a tad spoiled.  It's easier to manage when we're home.  All I have to do is shop at three different grocery stores and always be in the vicinity of a Chick-Fil-A.  Ha.  Needless to say, planning a trip to Disney threw a wrench in our normal eating habits.  I viewed this as an opportunity to teach them flexibility and a chance to try as much food in the parks as possible.  (Eating is one of my favorite pastimes.)  I started researching the restaurant menus in each park like a mad woman.  I wanted to have a handful of meal choices on hand so that no matter where we were in the park, everyone would be satisfied.

 

Goalkeeper

   It's on our minds and in our conversations this time of year- resolutions.  I am one of those chronic non-conformists who usually yields after quite a bit of squirming and scoffing.  I have lists for my lists but I never make one for my new year's resolutions.  I am a goal-oriented person but am not so great with the day-to-day tasks.  And I love discussing solutions, but I usually don't talk about my goals.  I quietly made a few mental notes last January and am pleased with my results.  But it wasn't the list of ambitions that helped me, it was a new tactic- playing goalkeeper.

A Healthy Fear

   I don't know what parenting was like with phones anchored to the wall, with the only social interaction existing in person, when drugs weren't accessible in high school bathrooms- before demands like children's sports team costs that rival the mortgage, Christmas cards that are works of art, and hard-core porn being accessible from the same device that provides valuable education via apps recommended by their elementary school teachers.  I almost can't imagine it.  My parents tell me stories about the first time they ever had a slice of pizza and how the most troubled kids drove their cars too fast and got into too many fist fights.  It sounds like a movie to me.  The world has changed.  Parenting has changed.

Planning and Packing for Disney with Small Children

   If you had told me I would survive a week in Disney World with a 4 and 2 year old, I would've tried to smack some sense into you.  It was vacation and financial suicide if you ask me.  But my husband visited Disneyland many times as a kid with his grandparents and wants our children to share the same priceless memories.  And, as he pointed out to me, we have a very small window in which to fully enjoy the "Disney Magic" with our girls.  I didn't know what this magic was he spoke of.  I first went to Disney World when I was 17 and, while it was fun, I didn't remember it being fun enough to risk my sanity and brave it with a double stroller.  It's a good thing he was right about the magic, or I'd still grimace at every mention of anything Disney.

The Spontaneous Idealist

   I've been approached in the middle of the Vegas strip for a psychic reading, I sought it out once in New Orleans at the Bottom of the Cup Tea Room, and I've been entranced by a rowdy Irish woman reading my palm in an Americanized, strip-mall version of an Irish pub.  I'm a seeker.  I'm continuously searching for more.  I always ask why.  I always want to talk about it.  I'm pretty irritating.