Thursday, April 26, 2012

Boring Nonsense

I've realized more and more that this blog is for me, not so much for anyone else. Do I hope people read it? Sure. Do I hope they like it? Of course. But, it's not for you guys (SORRY!) it's for me. The thing is, we tend to enjoy reading 2 types of blogs: The funny ones like the Bloggess or People I Want to Punch in the Throat (I love both, btw) and the sad ones. The ones with stories of sick babies or tragedy. We have a kind of sick fascination with them, I think we enjoy the emotions it evokes in us, it makes us look at our own life and realize that maybe it's not so bad. Makes us appreciate what we have, if even for just that day.

We do not enjoy reading about people who are happy, who have nothing to complain about, who don't naturally write in one liners and make you spit coffee all over your keyboard on a regular basis. Those blogs...eh, they're boring.

I have a boring blog.
I enjoy my boring blog.
I enjoy writing for me, telling stories or just getting things out there. It's therapeutic for me. It helps me clear my head and often times I find myself writing a post and at the end realizing that I don't even agree with what I've written. It truly makes me stop and think about something when I see it reflected back at me in black and white.

So to my 39 followers, I'm happy you're still here and I'm happy that one or two of you might take the time to read my posts. I apologize that I'm not the funny girl or the sad girl. My life is pretty standard, my marriage is stable, my kids are cute. There are no giant secrets lurking behind my words, no tragedy to over come. It's just me and my computer...writing about the boring nonsense of a stay at home/work at home mom since 2007.

I hope you stick around.

Monday, April 16, 2012

Changes, they are a comin'

I admittedly don't like change. It makes me nervous and when I get nervous I tend to get bitchy. My husband just loves that about me. ;)

Oddly enough, even though I don't like change, every few years I tend to make some kind of major change in my life. Sometimes planned but most of the time not. It's been this way for as long as I can remember. It's like some kind of outside force realizes I'm getting just a little TOO comfortable in my daily life and throws me a curve ball. I've been lucky in the fact that the majority of the changes have been GOOD. Some even great.

Right now I'm taking a huge chance and I left the job I'd been at for the last 3 years. The job that helped pay the bills, gave me extra play money to do stuff on my own and with the kids, the job that let me stay home and not have to pay for daycare and babysitters. I truly liked my job but as it happens with most jobs, it was time to move on. It was time to do something for ME and to take a leap and hope it all works out. I'm now part owner of my own company. My.Own.Company. How crazy is that?! In a lot of ways I still feel like a kid just playing house, playing "work" and waiting for someone else to tell me what to do and how to do it so I don't mess it up. It's a hard habit to break but this is my baby (our baby!) and it has to be up to us to stop playing dress up and actually DO THIS. I'm super excited and scared as hell all at the same time. Oh, and really really bitchy nervous.

There's also talks of relocation this summer. No where crazy far away or anything but a good 40 minutes from where we live now. We'll be moving farther from a lot of my best friends but I have other really good friends that I'm excited to live closer to. The house is really small, which will be a big change and the kids will be in new schools. Oddly enough this change will be temporary, we'll live there for a year or two until we save enough to find out forever house. Again it all makes me really bitchy nervous.

Changes...they're definitely coming. Like it or not.
So, to keep with that theme, changes to this blog will be coming as well. It's time for a makeover!


Sunday, April 15, 2012

I'm not a helicopter mom (or am I?)

My boys are getting older and the older they get the more and more independent they want/NEED to be. Especially the 9 year old. I've always been a pretty laid back mom. I didn't rush to rinse off every dropped toy, I didn't run in every time one of the made a peep and I wasn't always looking over their shoulders to make sure nothing bad happened. I let them do their thing, I wait for the tears or the blood when they fall before I run over with a bandaid. Mom's kisses and a distraction was usually all that was needed to forget about a scraped knee or bruised ego.
Helicopter parenting has been talked about a lot lately. It's not really a term I was even familiar with until recently and honestly, I kind of just shrugged it off as one of those things I didn't need to be worried about because obviously I don't fall in to that category.
Or do I?
I'm 31 years old. When I was a kid you played outside until the street lights came on, you roamed the neighborhood on your bike, you walked everywhere and anywhere and your parents kind of knew where you were. They knew you were usually somewhere in a 4 block radius and if they stood outside and yelled (as my mom frequently did) you'd better be able to hear them and you'd better get your ass home. Yet here I am with a 9 year old boy and I won't let him walk across the street with his almost 4 year old brother to play on the playground for half an hour. Why?
I tell myself it's because I don't trust the neighborhood, which is true. We don't live in a great area...but the middle of a Sunday afternoon? We tell ourselves that times are different, things have changed, strangers can't be trusted. This is likely all very true but my kids know not to go off with a stranger, they know to stay together and to watch out for each other. Why is it so hard to let them just go outside and be kids?! We talk about getting kids away from video games and tv and we want them to go enjoy being outside the way we did...and yet we don't want to give them the independence to go explore, to learn, to make new friends with the kids down the street without us on their heels trying to make sure nothing bad happens.
Today, I told my kids they could go to the park by themselves. I set the ground rules: hold hands crossing the street, look both ways, stay inside the fence at the playground and if there are older kids hanging around just come home (hey, I have limits!). Unfortunately the park was closed...but it was a big step for me.
We ended up at another park later in the day and instead of following Ian around to make sure he didn't run infront of swings, climb up slides or fall off the monkey bars I just sat down at a table, chatted with a friend and watched. Ya know what? Nothing bad happened. Sure, he fell and he climbed up the slide instead of going down it, he stood at the bottom of the slide and got knocked down, he ran and he played. He made other little friends and I didn't need to be on top of him (I will say, I'm usually not, but today I made an effort to just leave him alone). He found me when he needed something and that was that. It was nice!

So baby steps...finding the balance between being the helicopter mom and being the mom that people look at and go "omg, does she ever watch her own children?!"


Saturday, April 14, 2012

Who? Me?

Not long ago I went on a bit of a rant about not being a runner and have no desire to be a runner.

Yea, I'm a liar.

Yesterday I signed up to do The Color Run. It's a 5k. A 5k where you get sprayed with colored powder, which looks pretty freakin' fabulous!

So the girl that couldn't run a mile when she was a tiny little highschooler is going to attempt running 3.1 miles as an overweight mom of 2. Yep. Seems perfectly logical.

In all honesty, I might be setting myself up to fail. I'm going to start Couch 2 5k and see how that goes. I don't know if I'll stick with it or if I'll do it for a week and then find excuses to avoid running. Maybe I'll still hate it as much as I did in high school or maybe something will happen and I'll enjoy it. (okay, stop laughing!)

Bottom line, I need to do SOMETHING and I need a goal. I need some kind of motivation to want to do it. It also helps that I have kick ass friends that I called and they jumped at the chance to join me in my crazy ass ideas. Okay, so maybe they laughed and double checked their caller ID and THEN agreed to go run a race where the goal is to come out looking like Willy Wonka.

Bring it on Color Run!