Basically, what I want to say is that Mother’s Day is a hard and complicated and potentially painful holiday, and I want to explore why.

This topic was sparked in my head after reading what a friend of mine had to say about Mother’s Day on her FB wall. She has given birth to 4 little people–2 girls, 2 boys. She relinquished her first daughter, however, for adoption, and her daughter, now almost a grown woman herself, was raised by adoptive parents. An open adoption plan didn’t work out the way it was supposed to, and my friend has spent almost 2 decades trying to wrap her brain and her soul and her heart around the whole thing. It hasn’t been easy for her, and in direct contrast to what she was told as a young single pregnant teenager, time has not healed this wound. As you can imagine, she looks forward to Mother’s Day almost as much as a root canal.

Another friend of mine found out when she was a teenager that she is physically incapable of having children, and while she is an awesome step-mother to her husband’s son, I’m sure that Mother’s Day isn’t an easy day for her, either.

I know a lot of women who simply don’t go to church on Mother’s Day sunday, because it’s too much for them. And I know that bishoprics spend months in advance trying to figure out what to do on Mother’s Day Sunday, with full knowledge that anything they do has the potential to offend or hurt somebody. My cousin, a former bishop, told a story of how his brother, a full-time stay at home dad, was asked to speak on Mother’s Day, and he got up and said, “Mothers, I feel your pain.” My cousin said that as a bishop, Mother’s Day is THE hardest Sunday to plan, and he said he wished he had such a slam dunk speaker as his brother in HIS ward.

Mother’s Day. Complicated for men AND women.

It seems like a simple idea–yay for moms! We are awesome! Look at us! Look at how we sacrifice and slave and work and do everything we can to make sure our children don’t grow up to be lazy jerks! We are mothers and we rock the cradle and that means we RULE THE WORLD!!!! Bow to us, our minions!!

(Okay, maybe nobody says that, but c’mon, you know minions would be cool.)

But even I, who came from a stable family and have an awesome mom feel squirmy on Mother’s Day. Like I’m not good enough. Like I’m not doing enough. That there is something I’m missing, and that if THEY ONLY KNEW, I wouldn’t be getting that wilted flower from the young deacon that passed me the Sacrament just an hour before. They would take my flower from me and say, “Dude, you let your 4 year old watch “My Little Pony” for hours this week, and you KNOW there is all KINDS of inter-relational aggression messages in that show, and you are just priming her to grow up to be a Mean Girl, and that if you were a better mother you would have been teaching her Latin instead. NO FLOWER FOR YOU!”

And though I’ve never talked to her about it, I wonder how my mom feels about being honored. She raised 6 kids and we all turned out okay, with only a mild amount of craziness (but what family isn’t a little insane–i mean, really). I asked her once what she did to keep her family intact and active in the church and generally void of massive self-destructive behavior, and she and my dad both look at each other and shrug and say, “We don’t know.” See? Even SHE doesn’t know the secret, and not a single one of HER children EVER stuck playdough up his or her nose, which is not something I can say for my offspring.

Anyway, my allotted time is up. I have to go be the mom who takes my kid to swim practice, although I must admit that I’m also the mom who will be late for swim practice because I was blogging.

Yes, I am that mom. NO FLOWER FOR ME!

Mother’s Day–discuss.

It started out okay, and I was determined to make it a good day. I got up early-ish, and spent the morning snuggling with my son before he bounced off to school.

Then I spent the morning with Little Sister, and I got her all ready for preschool and me ready for a run. I’m making slow progress with my foot and leg, and managed to push myself to 3 miles yesterday. They were slow miles, interspersed with walking and some skipping (I’m trying to strengthen a leg that has some serious atrophy issues, and plus, it’s kinda fun. Don’t judge me.). By the time I got home, sweating and feeling triumphant at the distance I managed, I felt like the day was going great.

And then came the voles.

I was digging in the front yard, working on reclaiming a space that has been taken over by weeds, when I came across a furry little nose. I knew immediately it was a vole. For those of you who don’t know what a vole is, it’s a cross between a mouse and a mole. They look like mice, but they have sharper faces, and little mole-like feet. They are notorious for ruining gardens, and we have felt the effects of their appetite. They ruined a gorgeous lavender patch we had growing, and I’m convinced they also ate our lovely lilies bulbs that were my pride and joy last summer. They make their own small holes through the lawn, or jam on mole holes (which can ruin a lawn by their burrowing, but tend to leave plants alone).

I am not a vole fan.

So when I saw the furry nose, I called my dog over. She’s a lab, after all, and caught a mole once. So I was confident she could dig up this sucker.

And she didn’t disappoint. She stuck her head down and got to work, paws moving furiously as she chased the vole.

She didn’t just find one vole. She found SIX! And they were BABY voles. The adults were too fast, but she dug up all six of these tiny little things no bigger than my thumb. And while she demonstrated again her amazing soft mouth by picking them up in her teeth without hurting them, she quickly dispatched them with her paws, which cut through paper thin baby vole flesh quite easily.

In case you were wondering, vole guts are gross.

I was beside myself, especially after I saw the momma vole come sniffing out of her hole, looking for her babies. I felt like a murderer, a barbarian, a lumbering human who rejoices in throwing nature out of balance.

I made DH dispose of the little bodies, and had the heebie jeebies the rest of the day.

Strike #1 on my beautiful day.

Then I was cleaning the kitchen, and felt something crawling on my leg. I tried to shake it off, but then the feeling stopped, and I wondered if I was just feeling itchy and crawly because of the vole death. A little while later, though, I felt something bite me behind my knee. I pulled up my jeans and I FOUND A TICK SUCKING MY BLOOD. Yuck, blech, aaack, NOOOO! I quickly pulled it off and threw it in the sink and turned on the water to flush it down. Usually I burn them with a match, not for any scientific reason but because it’s so dang satisfying to see ticks sizzle. But this time I was so totally freaked out that I just flushed it down with water.

I turned to my husband and said, “NATURE IS GROSSING ME OUT!!!”

Strike #2 on my beautiful day.

To get myself back in a good head space, I started working on some strawberry jam. We picked 3 gallons of strawberries at our local farm on Saturday, and I had already canned some jam. But I wanted to get some more done. Plus, I had bought a new cool little canning basket that looked like it would make processing the smaller jars I use for jam much more convenient.

I must not have been in the greatest space, though, because I forgot a step. But, hey, when you have 8 cups of strawberry goo boiling on your stove, you just push forward and hope for the best (and remember not to give this batch away as gifts). I got everything ready, put the jars into the canner to process, and heard a tell-tale “crack”. I ignored it–after all, the jars COULDN’T be cracking–I had heated them properly and everything. And who has ever heard of a jar cracking while processing in a canner? Not me.

I set the timer for 10 minutes, went back to check on the jars, and found strawberries floating all over the canner. I still hadn’t put it together—maybe one of the jars had come open? I pulled the basket up, and found that not one, but TWO jars had cracked completely, making one giant hot sticky strawberry mess. And 28 ounces of delicious strawberry jam was lost. An evening’s work lay melting all over my counter and stove.

Strike #3. Done. Out. I give up.

I cleaned up most of the mess, but left the boiling cauldron of strawberry stew to cool and face in the morning. It’s now morning. I haven’t faced it. I haven’t faced anything, really. I’m almost afraid to leave the house, for fear of what will happen to me today.

But I’ll tell you one thing. I probably won’t be making any strawberry jam for a while. And I’m not sure I can look at my dog the same way again.

And if you can see through the itchy eyes and breathe through the snot generated from all the pollen, all the better.

I actually have a secret for that:Breathe Right strips. It sounds super dorky (which they are) and they don’t do much for your sex appeal, but they work really really well for the nighttime sufferer of allergies, especially for people who aren’t keen on taking lots of meds. I have had a really hard time sleeping at night, just because I can’t quite breathe. And I don’t sleep deeply because I’m not breathing very well. I finally broke down and got those strips (they aren’t cheap, which is a bummer), and for the past 3 nights I have had the best night sleep all season. I can finally look in the mirror and not see huge giant bags under my eyes. The bags under my eyes are now only normal sized.

They are also an excellent alternative for the pregnant woman who wants to avoid taking even more Benedryl (I just assume ALL pregnant women take Benedryl to curb the constant puking, but I may be projecting from my own experience a little here.).

In other news, my son walked into my bedroom this morning, fully dressed for school. He was wearing a blue and grey striped shirt and green camo pants. It hurt my eyes to look at all that pattern clash. I looked at him, pointed to his outfit, and said, “This doesn’t work.” He looked down and said, “What? What doesn’t work?” I just shook my head and said, “You can not wear stripes with camo. You just can’t. Pick a different shirt, or pick different shorts.” He sighed and stomped off to his room, but returned wearing grey shorts that nicely complimented the grey in his shirt. I gave him a thumb’s up, and as he rolled his eyes and left, I chuckled to my husband, in a “boys will be boys” kind of way. He said, “I don’t get it. What was wrong with his first outfit?”

This is what happens when the color-blind father supervises the fashion oblivious son. Someday I won’t be there to save them from themselves.

Little Sister learned to make toast this morning. I painstakingly explained to her how to do it, then hopped in the shower. I could smell the toast from the bathroom, so I assumed she was successful. How successful became evident when she greeted me in the shower with SIX pieces of toast. “Look, Momma, I did it!”

Yes. Yes you did, child. And I’m so glad it took a half a loaf of bread for you to do it.

No random crap post would be complete without mention of my dog. Poor dog, she’s struggling a little. Her hormones are all wacky, and she’s having trouble with her bladder control. And when a 105 pound dog loses control of her bladder, well, it’s a LOT of pee. She’s usually impeccably housebroken, but didn’t quite manage last night, and we woke up to a large puddle in the playroom. We did our best to clean it up this morning, and I sprayed some Febreze around the house after I sprayed the spot with Nature’s Miracle, just to freshen up the place. I had to run out this morning for a bit, and when I came back, our house smelled like pee and Febreze. Well done, Febreze.

I took Little Sister to J’s school today for their annual Walk-a-thon. After the walk-a-thon, we strolled through the school, while I pointed things out to her. I took her over to the Kindergarten rooms, just so she could see where she would be going next year, as we will be registering her next month. Yes, my daughter is going to KINDERGARTEN next year. I felt the irrational desire to carry her back to the car, to pretend she still needed me to do so. She squawked in protest, and then we turned it into a game, with her trying to escape and me trying to hold her. It was fun, and we laughed, but it made me want to cry.

I always made fun of those women who cry when their children go to Kindergarten. Boy, what a soft shell I’ve turned out to be.

Happy Spring everybody!

I posted here a while ago that we should all be like weeds. Forget “Bloom where you are planted”, go for being tenacious and strong and hard to destroy no matter what kind of soil you’re in. Flowers are wussy. Be a weed.

I thought Crab Grass was the ultimate in weeds. We battle crab grass every year, and it ALWAYS comes back. But this year, I have a new favorite winner of the tenacity prize.

Mint. I just had no idea.

I mean, I *thought* I knew. We planted mint in our old garden, the plot we bought within a community garden, and a neighboring gardener just shook her head and said, “You will NEVER get that stuff out. That stuff just takes over.”

She’s right, of course. It does. When we moved here, we decided not to fight it and gave an entire bed over to the mint, because we like the idea of mint so very much. It smells good, it can quench your thirst if you suck on it, and it tastes great in lemonade. And after spending some time in Israel, where they make these awesome mint lemonade smoothie thingies with fresh mint, I was even more grateful we had access to our own mint supply.

We tried to play it safe, though. My husband dug a hole big enough for a terra cotta pot, and put the mint IN the pot, then sunk the pot. The idea was that the roots wouldn’t escape the pot, so the mint wouldn’t take over so fast.

Funny, funny gardeners, thinking that controlling mint’s roots made a hoot of difference. I wonder if the mint actually laughed at us as we did it.

Over the years, I have largely ignored the mint bed, letting it be. But then this season, I decided I wanted to build some honest to goodness flower beds, and my MIL suggested I add pineapple sage to the mix, a lovely green plant with an awesome fragrance that blossoms with beautiful red flowers in the summer. I decided to clean up the mint bed, and add the pineapple sage to do battle with the mint.

Oh. My. Gosh.

That mint was everywhere. Under our deck, creeping into our grass, growing up the gutter pipe. Screw the terra cotta pot, it was like the plant said, “Contain me? Yeah right, sucka!” I spent at least an hour just pulling it out, pushing it back. And all the while, it graced me with its lovely fragrance, and made my hands smell like a happy piece of candy.

We have also found mint invading our vegetable bed, as we often mulch with grass clippings, and I have been known to mow over a stray mint outreach in the lawn. Seriously, do you know what that means? It means that an entire plant grew from CLIPPINGS. We pulled it up right away, of course, not letting it take root, but really? Clippings? Clippings that had been shredded in a lawn mower and strewn out on top of beds to DRY? You can take root out of THAT?

So, to sum up, this plant can grow in the dark, climb up a damp tube, and propagate even when its roots are contained. It can be shredded, dried, and spread out for mulch, and still thrive. It can be dug up almost entirely by a black lab’s furious paws and mashed by said 105 pound lab’s body ROLLING through it (I guess mint is offensive to dog’s noses?), and still thrive. It can live through under-watering, over-watering, and flood conditions, heck, even a freakin’ HURRICANE and still thrive. And all the while, it smells delicious. And we haven’t even gotten to the various claims of mint’s medicinal properties, but I can tell you first hand that peppermint oil does great things for poison ivy.

So forget trying to be a delicate rose. Forget trying to even be a tenacious weed. Be mint, letting nothing get in your way but spreading joy and sharing your talents with others while you do it.

Or, you know, something like that. It’s late, and I may have pushed this garden metaphor a little far.

Tomorrow I’m making some mint lemonade smoothie thingies.

I get what Rosen is trying to say, I do. Ann Romney comes from privilege and is married to a bazillionaire. It’s not unfair to imply that the Romneys might not understand the financial struggles that the average American faces, particularly in these tough economic times. Bottom line, Ann Romney is rich, and being rich is easier than being poor.

But the line that “she’s never worked a day in her life” and implying that such a lifestyle means that she doesn’t understand how economics works, well, that gets under my skin.

I have worked more than a day in my life. When my husband started law school, we were solely dependent on my income to live. It was stressful, particularly on those weeks when my promised 40 hours of work ended up being closer to 30, or, one terrifying week, only 24. I looked at my time card with that scant 24 hours written in, and I thought, “I hope we can pay rent this month.” And when I got pregnant, we had to make the very difficult decision about what we would do in terms of income–pay for day care while I went back full time, or have me stay at home and bite the bullet with student loans? In the end, we hobbled together a compromise. I went back full time for a short while, then cut back to per diem work, and we took out student loans to make up the difference.

Throughout our marriage, my husband and I have constantly been re-evaluating our financial position. I went back to work briefly a few years ago when money was tighter than we were comfortable with, and then again, we had to make the decision to return to one income when my husband changed jobs. Every year we revisit the idea of me working, as we evaluate where we are financially, and what our financial goals are.

I don’t think we are unique.

Most families I know where the mom stays home, the mom is involved with financial decision making. I know many mothers who are solely in charge of the household budget, making daily decisions about allocating funds. I have one friend who sheepishly admitted that she took $1.99 from her grocery budget to buy more tokens for an game she was playing on her iphone. Another friend laughed and replied, “Way to sacrifice the eggs!” We all laughed, but it struck me that we were laughing because we all know the intricacies that go into forming a household budget, and WE ALL KNOW HOW MUCH EGGS COST. Economics at its basic level, if you ask me.

I don’t know if Ann Romney ever had these kinds of conversations with her husband, but dismissing her skills as an economist just because she’s a stay at home mom is unfair and ignorant. Ann Romney might not understand the necessity of accounting for $1.99 in the grocery budget, but I have no doubt she understands the cost of clothing for her children, missions for 5 boys, and college tuition. It would surprise me greatly if she and her husband didn’t counsel together about how they were going to pay for these things, even if the questions were different than the ones my husband and I ask each other.

And while being rich is easier than being poor, being rich can get complicated. How does Mitt Romney manage his millions? What funds does he invest in? How does he balance cash flow, liquidity, and retirement benefits? How does he make sure that his money works for him? The man is richer than God, so clearly he has figured these things out. If he figured these things out without consulting his wife, I’d be shocked.

I know there are mothers are there on the front lines who are hanging on by their fingernails, wondering how they are going to do it. And Ms. Rosen is right that Ann Romney has never been one of them. But that doesn’t mean Ann Romney doesn’t understand economics, or the challenges or raising children, or that staying at home has made her stupid.

Just because stay at home moms don’t make the money doesn’t mean we don’t understand how it works.

And an attack on motherhood from a woman doesn’t help anybody.

That’s all I wanted to say. We will return to our regularly scheduled program with posts about my garden shortly.

Biking. Why is it always biking?

Biking is not my favorite way to exercise. It makes your butt sore, if you’re on a stationary bike it’s even more boring than a treadmill, and it doesn’t get my heart-rate up as fast as running. I also have an unreasonable fear of crashing on my bike. No, it’s never happened, but still, road rash? I think I’d rather take another fracture. (Okay, not really, because fractures are seriously of the devil and holy rollers on a cheese stick do they hurt, but you get my point.)

Anyways, I’m now faced with the long road of coming back. I’m healed, basically, but now I’ve got to trudge my way back to where I was, only this time it’s even farther than it usually is because it isn’t just a matter of not exercising and getting out of shape, it’s coming back from an injury that caused actual atrophy. Add on top of that the week I spent halfheartedly in bed (yeah, it was weird–I was exhausted from the bronchitis and the lack of sleep from coughing all night, and yet it felt grotesque to lie down. It was like my body went, “No way, we are NOT doing this again!”), and you can see where the title of the post came from. I mowed the lawn yesterday, and my arm still hurts from having to pull the start cord so hard.

I’m seriously considering joining the seniors yoga class at the Y. These days, it seems about my speed. Or maybe I should work up to that? Because I know some 87 year olds who could seriously kick my butt.

I also tried to take a break from FB. My goal was a week. I made it about 4 days. But seriously, how am I supposed to stay away from FB if I can’t sleep? It’s like FB was made for this kind of stuff–lonely people who are a little bit bored. No wonder FB is mentioned in 1 in 5 divorces.

Also, at night, defenses are down, people start getting honest. Or goofy. Or both.

I remember a date I had with DH when I was still trying to figure out how serious I wanted to be. I spent the day (it was a long date) going back and forth in my head about how much I liked him. Then we played cards late into the night, and he started talking about some goofy in-flight movie he saw as a teenager that involved a parakeet and the theme from “The Andy Griffith Show”. He laughed so hard about it, he almost fell off his chair. I remember thinking, “Yeah, I can’t date a guy who gets this sloppy after midnight.”

(He still gets sloppy after midnight. And that stupid parakeet story still makes him giggle like a little girl. And I’m not using the word “giggle” as hyperbole.)

Thinking about all of these things as I mindlessly trolled through all of the things I’d missed out on FB (4 days is like a year in FB time–what if somebody has said something funny and I MISSED IT???), it reminded me of the few times I’d been under anesthesia or involved with morphine. I’ve never been drunk, but somehow I think it wouldn’t be all the different.

The first time was when I was being prepped for my first D&C. I’m not sure what they gave me, but some kind of pre-anethesia, or something. I had been having a conversation with the nurse about my old boyfriend, a doctor who worked at that same hospital as an anesthesiologist, but who had moved on to a pediatric specialty. I asked her if she ever saw him, and when she told me that she did, I told her the next time to say “hi” for me. It was a civilized, normal, non-humiliating conversation.

Minutes later, some other doctors showed up. And the stuff the nurse gave me kicked in. I’m kinda fuzzy on the details on who these other people were, but the nurse mentioned that I knew my ex. We’ll call him Dr. Jones.

Dude with a lab coat: Oh, you know Dr. Jones? What, did you date him?

Me: Oh YES! We DATED! I was cuuhRAAAAYYZEEEE about him!

Labcoat dude: (laughing) Really?

Me: “Yyyyyyyyyep!”

Labcoat dude: But, you’re married, right?

Me: Yessssss. I’m married. To my HUSBAND.

Labcoat dude: So, do you love your husband more than you loved Dr. Jones?

Me: (tearing up a little) I LUUUHHHHVE my husband. He’s just so… so…I just love him.

Labcoat dude: (laughing heartily now) Well, that’s good to know.

That’s all I remember.

I’m really glad I love my husband more than Dr. Jones.

Sometimes I think these people ask these questions on purpose, just for kicks.

The other time, it was my second D&C. They had just shot me up with some kind of pain killer, I think, morphine maybe, right before they discharged me. A nurse was sent in to dress me.

Um, let’s just say that if she was ever asked about Mormons and how they feel about their underwear, she’d have a lot to say.

I also remember my husband brought me some soup to eat after the surgery, thinking it would be easy on my stomach. It was shrimp gumbo soup, or something, and it *wasn’t* easy on my stomach. I threw it up almost immediately after eating it, which, as every pregnant woman knows, means that the food was mostly still recognizable. I remember sitting on the floor of the bathroom, leaning over the toilet, examining my vomit, and thinking, “Whoa. Look at those COLORS!”

Seriously, I think it’s a really, REALLY good thing I don’t drink.

Do you have any fun anesthesia stories?

This week, I decided to pull back from FB, just to take a break. It wasn’t anything specific, I just felt myself getting sucked into things that probably weren’t healthy for my spirit, and definitely not healthy for the small child I was ignoring.

To fill the FB void, I turned to the blog (yes, I can fully appreciate the irony of filling one internet addiction with the other, and understand how silly it is. Please don’t point it out to me). I checked on what I was doing 6 years ago in March.

I was pulling away from the blog.

Granted, I was in the middle of selling my house, recovering from my 4th miscarriage, and, unbeknownst to the blogging world, had been diagnosed with PKD just a few short months previous. My stress level was as high as I think it has ever been in my life, and as I read the posts from back then, I practically taste the terror that filled my soul at the diagnosis, the weariness of bone as we moved, the despair as I recovered from yet another disappointment, wondering if I would ever have any more kids.

But maybe it’s also that spring makes me want to leave the computer, get some dirt under my fingernails, and watch as the now permanent spring residents of chickadees make their home in our bird house on the back porch.

Right now I am watching as Little Sister hauls water from one bucket to the next. She’s been playing happily on the back porch with the hose for about an hour, now. The chickadee parents screech at her, scolding her for getting near their nesting site. She doesn’t notice their chagrin, and just happily continues making a giant puddle in our backyard where grass is supposed to be. (Does anybody have some fool proof tips on grass? Tomatoes, I can do. Lawns, I don’t have a clue.)

I had pie for breakfast this morning, and for St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday we’re going to make unicorn poop cookies. (Google it. They exist. Don’t look if you’re adverse to food dyes, though.)

Spring. I don’t know why it always takes me by surprise every year, but it does. It’s almost as if I think, this year, maybe it won’t come, but it always does. And it’s always so, so, SO very welcome.

Anyway, super sexy Type 1 Diabetic from season 2, fan favorite Sam Talbot, has put out a cookbook for diabetics.

How could I NOT get it?  (I know, the same way I don’t buy everything else, but still, it was kind of required for me.)

I am not the cook in the household, that honor belongs to my husband, but there were some things I wanted to try. And of course, I had to try them TODAY. And Sam is supposedly all about simplicity and real food. So I made a list and my husband and I headed out the door.

Our culinary adventure takes us to 5 different stores, including Trader Joe’s, Sunflower Market, Whole Foods, An Asian market whose name will mean nothing to you, and Walmart. 

Annoying, yes, but keep in mind I live in booney-ville AZ, and not NYC.  Plus, we knew these ingredients would be tricky, and thus we were undeterred.

Let’s take a closer look, shall we? Pay no attention the the dirty burner in the side of this picture.

Do you know what those things in the bowls are?  25 zillion points to anyone who can tell me.

BTW, the granola it made was delish, but the white can? Cacao nibs. Super hard to find, eventually Whole Foods had it.  But it added a bitterness I was not fond of.  Next time, the cacao stays out.