Not that I need to explain myself, but...

Several years ago I created a Twitter account to follow along with the "behind the scenes" news on some of my favorite shows and follow some of my favorite artist.  In the past year or so as Twitter has become more popular and my friends have gotten accounts I have had more personal interactions.  Some of my friends children whom I am close to, realized it was my account and followed me and recently I have had a few more of my children's peers follow.  My account does not have my picture or my name, not because it is anonymous but just simply because I wanted to.  Twitter can be a place for very "off the cuff" remarks as opposed to Facebook, in my opinion.  And I can be a very "off the cuff" kind of girl.  Anyway, back to my point... because I am not private anyone can see it and until today it had a link to my blog. 

I created this blog several years ago at the prompting of some girlfriends.  My blog is quite simply the way we talk when we get together and the way we talk when we get together has made for some sincerely fun, honest and endearing friendships.  On the rare occasion I do blog, it is because something has triggered a thought and for those of you who have read the posts I can have some wayward thoughts.  I am an adult.  I am married.  I am over 40.  Here's a shocker for you....  I have sex.  My friends have sex.  We talk about sex... and that has made some of us very good at sex, so I hear.  I am sure some of you are like where in the heck is this coming from. Well, someone sent me a twitter post that they thought could be about me.  It said "If you're a mom and you blog about sexual activity, you might wanna reconsider all the shit talking you do about others."  It could be about me since there have been 33 new page views just today.  Now I don't know this person and she doesn't know me because if she did she would know that I don't "wanna" reconsider anything.  The assumed "shit talking" I do, I can only assume are my "off the cuff" twitter opinions. I call it as I see it.  And if you have proven yourself to be someone I don't care for by hurting someone I do, then I probably have an opinion. I don't follow people I don't like, I really don't fool with people I don't like.  Again, if you have read my entire blog, you would learn quite a bit about me and why I feel the way I do about many things.  I am who I am.  I make no apologies for that.

There are many thoughts I keep to myself (believe it or not) for the sake of a loved one.  If I had no restraints on me, I could really provide you with some interesting creeping material.  My restraints are self imposed because of the people I love that's why my stories never have any names not because I am hiding anything.  As I have said, through the years of learning about myself... "the ones I love and care about and who love and care about me get my effort.  Life is too short to waste that effort on the ones who don't." 

So, to that creeping young lady, you are still a child.  If you are lucky, you will have many years to grow up, learn about yourself and what you want out of life.  It won't happen in your teens, and probably not in your twenties, but it will happen.  Those friendships you think you have now, will be good memories but only a few, if you're lucky, will last you through marriage, becoming a parent, raising children, losing a parent and all the trials and joys that life will bring you.  If you are really lucky you will grow into a person who believes in herself and loves herself.  Maybe you will find a way to accept yourself, flaws and all. If you are wise, you will learn from your mistakes.  If not, you will always make them, you will always blame others and you will never be happy with yourself.  Either way people will always be "shit talking" because speaking from experience, it's always easier to fix others than it is yourself.  Good Luck to you! Bygones :)

Stop. Think. Breathe.

Once a week I get an email from a site that tells you how often your blog has been viewed in the past week.  I never check it.  I have so many emails, and such a long to do list, that I never get around to checking that email or much less, this blog.  For some reason I did today and I cannot believe it has been a year since my last post.  I could lie and say I have had some traumatic family crisis or a major health scare but the fact is, I've just been living life at its hurried pace and haven't taken the time to stop and write.

Stop.  Think.  Breathe. We may do this for a second when we are running late for something and suddenly can't find our keys, or cannot remember what we did with the vital information we needed.  We find it and then we are off again.  I have found a comfort in this pace of life because it doesn't give you time to realize you've gained THAT much weight, or that your children are THAT much closer to adulthood.  You don't want to slow down and realize your parents are aging and that soon you may be caring for them and taking on the parenting role for them.  When I slow down, I think.  When I think, I realize the things I need to remove from my life, but don't want to.  I wonder how I am going to pay for college for my soon to be senior, or a car for my nearly new driver.  I slow down enough to want to put the brakes on and go back in time; back to when my children's tears were because one stole the others toy or locked the other out of a room... things I could make better instantly.  Unlike the tears of a broken heart, or the fear of what the future holds, or the loss of a grandparent, which are tears only time can dry.

In a few days I will be heading to the beach with a friend, our daughters and a few of their friends.  The last time my friend and I went to the beach together we were 18 and 19 years old.  We didn't have anyone to be responsible for but ourselves and we looked damn good in bikinis.  Now we are struggling to find a "tankini" we can live with and worrying about feeding six teenage girls and keeping them safe.  Time marches on... across our faces, our bodies and our wallets.  I never stopped to think about being where I am in life and although I realize we need to stop, think and breathe, life is going to keep happening.  There will be more gray hairs, more wrinkles, more flab, more tears and fortunately, more happiness still to come, I guess the only reason to stop, think & breathe is to take in all in.  Appreciate the moments that got us here.  Look back, but smile.  All that brought us all this; it made us who we are and I don't know about you but who I am is pretty freaking fabulous.

The Fixer

A friend of mine told me once “you can’t fix everything.”  These words still ring in my ear like I am just hearing them today instead of 7 years ago.  Maybe it is just me repeating it over and over, like Rainman.  I didn’t sleep well last night thanks to the shock of how much it cost for my child to play AAU basketball.  My mind was trying to decide where the money would come from in the midst of other things that needed those funds, like our vehicles that seem to be forever running on empty thanks to the fact that gas prices are going up as quickly as the numbers on my scale.  So I found myself headed to the kitchen at 4 a.m. to work on the dishwasher that seems to be dying a slow death.  It was a desperate moment.  I needed to fix something.

I always thought being a fixer meant I just wanted to help… that I was just a good problem solver.  If I saw a problem between two people as maybe a misunderstanding or just lack of good communication, I couldn’t help but want to offer up ways to make it better.  I remember talking to a friend about his marriage one time and for every negative I would come back with “well, at least she does this or that”.  Trying to get him to look at the positive.  In retrospect, he was right, she was/is a crazy bitch.  However, I just wanted him to be happy.  There was a time I even sacrificed that friendship in the hope that would fix it… it didn’t.  I know now there was nothing I could do to fix it, because although it wasn’t my problem to fix, I was believed to be the problem, but when the problem is within a person, they are the only ones who can fix it and the only person who can help them fix it is God. 

I came across an article:  http://www.livestrong.com/article/14696-overcoming-the-need-to-fix/  and was surprised to realize how much my need to fix seemed to be a need to control.  I have always seen it as a desire for peace and happiness for others.  Not every point in the article stepped on my toes, but a few did.  Most importantly, the realizations were things that I had already come to see.  They were lessons I had been learning since the day my friend told me “you can’t fix everything.”

As I have gone full blast into my 40’s I have become proud to look back and not see the mistakes I made, but what I learned… the difference in me.  I recently lost all my photos (over 16,000) I had saved on my laptop.  When I told my husband the next morning, he could not believe that I had not had a come-apart and woke the whole house up with my distress over it.  He just stopped and looked at me like who the heck are you, when I said “There’s nothing I can do about it but try to fix it.  Getting upset isn’t going to change it.” I’m calm.  My feathers don’t ruffle quite like they use to.  I think before I act or speak… most of the time.  Sometimes I don’t even recognize myself!  I still offer advice and “fixes” to my children on their relationships and decisions.  I can’t help but give it to others too, when they ask and sometimes when they don’t.   But now I know, I can’t fix it.  All I can do is tell the lessons I learned and let it fix itself, because by now I know, in time, it always does.

True Friend?

So I am one of those moms that will accept friend request from my children’s friends and classmates because I want to know about them.  I want to know about the people who are part of my children’s lives day in and day out.  It is an eye opening way to see whom you want and don’t want your children hanging around with.  I have seen so many post these days about “true friends” and the lack thereof.  It makes me sad for them and makes me wonder what happened.

Have we risen this generation to be so competitive, self-centered or untrusting that they don’t know how friendship works?  Are their requirements so rigid that they are not accepting of others personality traits that may be dissimilar to their own? 

A “trust no one” stepfather influenced my husband during part of his youth.  You can’t trust anyone has been a resounding theme I have heard often over the years.  Truthfully, as we age, it is easy to understand why we feel that way but is it fair to put those feelings on our children?  We want to protect them and keep them from making the mistakes we did, but haven’t many of those mistakes made us who we are today?  We tell our children, a real friend wouldn’t do such and such.  But they are all kids learning how to be real friends and some of them learning from people who never learned how to be one themselves.

I love that I have been blessed with more true friends than my fair share and I hope that they would say I have been a true friend to them.  I wish there was a tried and true method for friendship, but it is a gift, not something that happens because you want it.  I want it greatly for some of the youth in my life and pray that in time it will come to them for there is nothing better than a true friend.  They are everywhere you look, looking for the same thing.  I don’t know how we as parents can help, but I hope we are indeed helping and not hurting.

Just a thought. 

“Friends can help each other. A true friend is someone who lets you have total freedom to be yourself - and especially to feel. Or, not feel. Whatever you happen to be feeling at the moment is fine with them. That's what real love amounts to - letting a person be what he really is.” – Jim Morrison