Shut The Front Door

An interesting thing happened to me a few days ago. There I was perusing facebook to find out what my kids were up to when I encountered the dreaded, “what my kids were really up to”. 

Without getting into specifics ,(1. Because I don’t want to embarrass my kids. 2. Because I don’t exactly know that I am entirely sure what the post means) I stumbled into something that I wasn’t sure how to handle. So, in trying to handle the situation, I tried posting lightheartedly to their facebook comment. In the past, I have tried to respond in a “cool mom” fashion to things they post on facebook, only to have them be removed immediately, if not sooner). I get it. I am not supposed to be on facebook nor will I ever achieve coolness on facebook. I am their MOM.

I asked for said child to remove their post. It was inappropriate. I got an email to me from said child, saying that they should be able to say what’s on their mind. Facebook is just fun and, gulp, are you ready for it???? “EVERYONE IS DOING IT.” Flashback: High school, popped colors on polos, rolled pants, Aqua Net propelled bangs, comb in the back pocket and my Mom saying I am not going out looking like that and the famous, “Everyone is doing it” response that bounced off my lips like pebbles skipping across the water. It didn’t work. At least when I walked out the front door to get on the bus, I looked one way, and when I got off the bus, I looked another.

So there I was, smack dab somewhere in the middle of my Mom’s voice saying, “I told you so,” and my own voice saying, “What comes around goes around.” What to do?

An email discussion ensued where I put out all of my concerns on the post in a list. As you can imagine, they all were responded to (I have to admit that the creativity in the refuting was quite outstanding-a little pride here for said child) and then the subject came up about swearing. I do it. I can’t refute that at all. There it was-in black and white-I was a bad example for my kids. 

Now, I have to say, I have been creative in my swearing so as not to swear. Shut the front door. Jesus, Mary & Joseph, WTF (spoken letters, not words) and the list continues. I could offer all sorts of excuses: I am an adult, I make mistakes sometimes, the swear jar money pays for fun things so it’s for a good cause, but in my heart I know, I need to change.

It is a conflict to me. I don’t know why, but it is. I like to be able to express myself sometimes in a rebellious way, if you will, and certainly, I don’t know what my driving would be like if you took my questionable vocabulary away. I keep telling the kids that you shouldn’t be saying or writing anything or listening to music that you wouldn’t feel comfortable playing in front of your Grandma. Does this rule now apply to me?

The question is still unanswered.

Animal Kingdom

So, with the big “move in” of the fiancée came some living creatures-two dogs and two cats. I already have a cat, Kenny, so now we are a party of five…PETS. I have always claimed to be an animal lover. I love them at the zoo, I love them in the yard, I love them when I see them playing with kids in a yard, I love them on the leash and I love them at someone else’s house.

Yes, I already know that I said I have a cat. Kenny was just sooooo cute when he was found in the engine of someone’s truck by a co-worker. He was sooooooo cute when we were taking care of him at the radio station until he found a home. He was soooooooooo cute that I brought him home. The kids loved him. I was border-line in how I felt. Kenny (first named, Zorro) was into everything. Nothing was off limits. My clean house was a world of discovery for Kenny and out of the humans living in the house; I was the only one cleaning up after him. When he came to live with us, I also had a rat terrier named, Button.

I must have issues with naming pets (the kid’s names came fairly easily to me) but not the pet names. Button’s full name: Button Merry Jane Ladwig. Button because Dylan thought her face looked like a button, and B.J. wanted to name her Belly Button, and Merry because Lauren wanted to name her Merry Christmas (we got her in October-makes sense as a three year old, though) and Jane because then Lauren wanted to name her Mary Jane. I lost Button in the divorce, so I was the proud owner of Kenny (who has mellowed out a good bit in the last few years). Enter Bill’s pets: Gordon-dog, Lola-dog, Malcolm-cat and Pickles-cat. Bill must have issues with pet’s names as well as he has multiple nicknames for them all-I can’t keep up.

We have had to ease the pets into my house. I was not ready for all the animals. I was worried about the smell (I don’t want to live in that house that smells like pets that no one wants to come over or let me know that my house smells); I am worried about the pet hair and the litter boxes. That is a lot of poop.

I have had my moments: the day I came home to Gordon taking everything out of the garbage and chewing it up, the day that Lola got startled and jumped on my face while I was lying on the couch, the day Pickles licked my bare leg for the first time to rub herself on it to clean herself (cringe here) and the day that Malcolm scared me by not only finally coming out of the basement, but rubbing me while I was watching TV in the dark.

So, there have been adjustments, but none like the ones that I have encountered while Bill is gone traveling for the week for work. You see, our deal was with the entrance of all these pets that he was the sole owner of any messes that they made and he was in charge of taking care of them. Did I say he is gone for a week???? That means I am scooping poop, walking dogs, picking up dog poop, and doing a lot of talking to the animals. I am not comfortable carrying on conversations with pets and trying to figure out what all their complaining sounds really mean. 

Today, I am leaving for Iowa. I had to get up early, pack bags, eat breakfast and TAKE CARE OF THE ANIMAL KINGDOM. 

Here are the events of my morning, broken down.

I get up early and start hauling things downstairs…only to discover this:

I clean that up and went to take the dogs out. Seems that Bill never told me that Gordon doesn’t do rain. He stood huddled under the garage roof in a standoff. I didn’t win.

I come back in needing to break into my Secret Santa stash.

I wash it down with this.

I am shocked to see the cat that never comes out of the basement, Malcolm, is at the top of the steps meowing annoyingly at me. I get it. It means come downstairs, something’s up. Malcolm, it seems has stopped covering his poop up in the litter box and is distressed that the pile of diarrhea he left me is not covered up. So, I cover it up. He stops making all the racket and I realize that I might just have become a kitty whisperer. 

I load up my vehicle, by myself, in the rain.

I come back up to discover that Kenny is planning yet another great escape by the back door.

I continue to try to go to my happy place:

I end up making breakfast at work.

Luckily, I am leaving for Iowa and my son, Dylan, will stop in to take care of the  pet care. I have a break from my animal kingdom!

Step....Off!

So, imagine this...I get to step class early. I decide after speaking with the teacher not to use a step because of my major surgeries last year, she wants me to take it easy at first. (I had an incision that went from right under my boobs to my pelvic bone so I have no stomach muscles. NONE). She tells me to use my imagination. I pick a spot in the back. Class starts. Basic steps. No problem. Then we up the anti with stepping up and over and doing kicks...already sweating. I note to myself that I really like the music a lot. In my mind, I am singing along. I am essentially going to my happy place. Shit. She switches up what we are doing and I am back thrown in to trying to follow along, using my imagination. 

My motto becomes, just keep moving. I do. I move and pretend that the floor to ceiling mirrors are not there staring at me. I am reminded that I don't like to sweat. Pace is really picking up. We are flying all over the place doing the pony, the chacha, the meringue (that is a dance step and not a dessert, right?!). Um. I make the mistake of looking at the clock. ONLY 1/2 hour in. Sigh. I start thinking about how it is Tuesday and if I make it another day until Wednesday, I could quite possibly go to the bar where Danielle's bartending and have a beer...or two...which makes me think of bar food. Now I am hungry and sweating and dare I say, confused. I have not a clue what the hell we are doing on the step now...that's right, because I DON'T HAVE A STEP. I somehow, make it to the end. Great. We have to get a floor mat out and lie on it in our own pool of sweat and work on our stomach muscles...that I DON'T HAVE. I keep pulsing up but I realize that is just the sound of my heart rate pulsing in my head.  Finally. We are done. I take a deep cleansing breath in. I will be back. I will.

Thee Question

So, here goes...I am just going to write without stopping...I think this will be therapeutic since there have been quite a few emails to me stating that this all might be a mistake or too soon, so here goes.
Bill and I have been talking about happily ever after for quite some time-actually since the moment we realized that we might be more than just friends. Things clicked. More than clicked. I saw myself wanting to be surrounded by him and the feeling that I get when he looks at me, talks to me or listens to me. I feel like I am at home with him, no matter where we are. I love me with him.
I know in my mind, that love at first sight is not really in existence, or is it? The butterflies only last for a short time. Life overtakes the love and the love fades. That's what every one tells me. This is the one time that I strongly am going to go against the popular belief and hang on tight to what is my reality. Every night when I go to bed, I think to myself that I really can't see myself loving Bill more than I already do. Every morning when I wake up, I think to myself that I can't believe that I love him still more. This is something that I quietly note and secretly treasure. It is something that I don't want to explain to anyone as if I say it "outloud", the bubble might be burst by someone else's well meaning advice.
Sunday, I went with Bill to his Mom's house for lunch. Now, Bill's Mom is the wonderful 83 year old woman just bubbling over with energy and life and hope and faith. She will never be my mother-in-law, not because I am not going to marry Bill, I am going to do that for sure, but because she became my Mom by accepting me and my children as if they were indeed her family. She became the "grandma" that my children have been waiting for their whole lives. My children are me. Accept them, I accept you. Having kids is the first time your heart walks outside of your body. I know this to be true, so when they haven't built relationships with their "blood" grandparents for various reasons, not of their choosing, I hurt for them. I ached for them. Grandma Alice has quickly become a household name and a loved woman.
So, back to lunch, we get there, and I knew we were going to be looking at a ring of hers-actually a ring of her Mom's. When Bill's grandma died, over 10 years ago, she left jewelry for Alice. Alice in turn picked out jewelry to share with her son's significant others. Doug and Jim received their pieces of jewelry awhile ago.  (I explain the significance of this in a little bit). So, there I was, in Alice's bedroom,  programming her new answering machine (it can be confusing for me, let alone an 83 year old woman) and the next thing I know, Bill is on one knee in front of me. Here is where it gets tricky-I think the world literally stopped turning. My ears seemed to start humming and I felt like I was going to burst at the seams. When Bill stopped talking, I nodded yes, or maybe I even said it out loud, I am not even sure. I felt like I needed to take a picture of that moment in my mind to add to the most significant moments in my life. This man, on one knee in front of me, loved me enough to share not only his Grandma's diamond ring with me, but to share his life with me. Heart and soul. As hard as this is to believe, I felt like I had never been asked those words before. I had never been connected to someone like this ever before and I could never imagine a world without this person in front of me. I held back tears up until now. Alice walked back into the room and started to cry as she described how she wanted me to take care of myself because there were four people that needed me more than anything in the world. (floodgates open here).
So, I accepted the ring, but more importantly, I received a part of my heart and soul that I really believed didn't exist.
Back to the ring. So gorgeous. Such a treasure. I wear it with pride and with the knowledge that it signifies a new person. ME. A person who felt lonely and alone at many points. A person who felt (I still deal with this) that they weren't worthy of love. True love. Bill changed all of that and helps me to be myself.  The question more than the ring changes that for me. I know from the bottom of my heart that this is it. This is the dream in real life form. One more thing about the ring, Bill's ex-wife never got any of Grandma's jewelry, for whatever reason, the ring was waiting for me. The "right" Bill was finally in my life.


For the record, I did have to ask Bill later what he said to me when he was on one knee (seriously, I had no idea!!!). It was amazing and perfect and just between the two of us. Hope you understand. 

Itty Bitty Bike Moment

So, picture this. Last night I am driving down a dark side street in Beaver Dam and out of nowhere comes a big kid on a little itty bitty bike. I almost hit him. So, I (usually calm) get totally riled because my heart was just racing, decide I am going to roll down the window and yell at him (and his three friends who now appeared out of the dark as well). I forget what I said, but he yells something back about how I should "keep driving, old lady, mind your own business." Let's just say I snapped. It's bad enough that I find myself not being a cool Mom anymore and letting some punk kids piss me off, but the fact that he called me "old lady,", now that was just opening a can of something very unpleasant. I stop the car in the middle of the road and proceed to let him have it and then told him to go home and get a big boy bike, that riding that little bike makes him look like a child molester. I don't know where all the anger came from, but all of a sudden, I snapped out of it, rolled up the window, drove away and looked over at Bill and asked what he thought he was going to order for dinner. You should have seen the look on his face. Later he told me he was proud of me. To be honest, I don't have the slightest clue of where I went to in that moment. Sigh.