Jealous ? heck yeah..

                 
                           Jealousy is a horrible emotion. It is mentioned in the 10 commandments as "not to covet thy neighbor's wife" , it is one of the 7 Deadly Sins and quite frankly, it just isn't NICE. I have succumbed to this emotion many times in my life, and every time I was jealous of things that were beyond my control.
                            In my childhood I was jealous of all my friends who had siblings because I was an only child. There was nothing I could do to change that situation, my parents only wanted one child.So the jealousy was a wasted emotion. As I got a little older I was jealous of the kids who could excel in math with their eyes closed, and never have to study in school. I always had to "apply myself" , damn those kids who could skate right on through. I made it through school fine though , and learned a lot of study skills along the way, so really nothing to be jealous about. As I got even older I was jealous of those women who never had to exercise to stay thin. This is unfathomable to me, if I didnt exercise I would be on an episode of  Springer because they would have to break a wall to get me out of my house. So I would see these thin women, some of which are my friends, and say "so, where do you work out?" Their answer of "nowhere" would leave me green with envy. This is no longer a jealousy issue for me because I workout to live longer and keep my heart in shape as I have a family history riddled with just about every disease known to man.I have given up on abs of steel, I am purely looking for longevity.
                             This is the point in my blog where most of you are probably like," what is your point Krista?" Well I have a new jealousy now. It involves parents of children who do everything perfect. I blame Facebook for this. It reminds me that my child has not received his early acceptance to Harvard, or hit 3 home runs in one game, or has a 5.0 GPA. I have 3 children and currently none of them are doing any of these things. In fact the older one has a D in his honors math class , the middle one talks back to me ad nauseum, and the little one is never allowed to go to specials on Friday but instead goes to "social skills" and writes me a letter explaining his bad behavior for the week. This is my reality, people! So, when I peruse Facebook and see nothing but shining reports of children, I get a little twinge of the green eyed monster. However , the years of being jealous of things beyond my control have taught me that maybe something good will come out of all this...maybe Zach will learn to reach out to others for help and figure out a way to boost his grade so that is teaching him there is more than one way to learn.Maybe Mikey will learn to not talk to his neighbor in class or make fart sounds with his armpit in the middle of reading time by experiencing the shame of "social skills"class, even if as he says"all my friends go there anyway".Maybe Sophie will learn to hold her tongue and walk away before digging herself a deeper hole, thus teaching self control. (stop laughing at this:))
                  I am glad that when I was growing up there was no social media for my mother to read and realize that quite possibly I was socially stunted or never going to amount to anything because that would have made her think she's a bad mother and be jealous of those around her , and she was not and she had no reason to be.Just like me...hopefully...

Krista Who?

            Sophie had to write a poem in language arts about someone in her family , she chose me. I thought I would share...
                                        Krista who works like a robot,
                                         and asks what's wrong?
                                        Who is generous and sincere,
                                         Who is a freeway and a chauffer.
                                         Whose heart is made of gold,
                                           is too tired to play today.
                                         Who tells me to eat my dinner,
                                          Who tells me I've crossed the line.
                                            Whose green eyes are careful,
                                            can't make it to all my sporting events.
                                            Who sleeps in pitch black to get her beauty sleep,
                                              who used to be all fun and play.
                                            Is a terrific person,
                                             is a true friend.
                                            Who doesn't trust life anymore,
                                              is sweeping away her feelings.
                                              Who talks to her kids like it's the last time,
                                                 is the dock that keeps the boat afloat like a strong soldier.
                                              Ask who respects her?
                                               who respects her? who? - Sophie Davidson age 12

Someone should tell you..it never gets easier

                                  Being a mother is hard. This , to my fellow mother friends, is a very obvious statement.  I always expected as the years passed , and kids graduated from diapers to pull-ups to needing privacy in the bathroom, things would get less hard.  It hasn't . It is a different kind of hard, though. It is no longer the physically exhausting, manual labor (dragging 3 kids and a stroller through the grocry store )kind of hard. It is the mentally draining, when do i interfere , when do I let them fail , and how do i allow all that to occur kind of hard. Believe it or not, there are days I miss the Pull -Ups.
                                    I love all my children , but they all require very different things from me as a mother. And usually , they are all requiring it at the same time. I feel there are days I am doing a shitty job, sometimes these days string together and begin to turn into weeks... My oldest is a great person, but requires a lot of pushing and motivating from me in the school department of his life. So I push. Then I see the look of strain on his face and i stop . Then he fails a test.  See, shitty job. But , he is 15 years old , and can take the reins himself now  , and the question of how hard to push comes into play. See, I told you Pull -Ups are easier to deal with:)
                                     My daughter is a bright , outspoken, extremely funny girl. She wants to experience everything , and she also wants to buy everything . I have to say no to her...a lot. Due to her outspokeness, she lets me know that these are the days I do a shitty job, because no is a word she doesn't digest very easily. It was way easier to say no to the 4 year old Sophie who would ask for 3 Peppermint pattys before dinner, put up with 5 minutes of screaming and move on to the next thing. But saying no to the 12 year old Sophie who wants to go to the mall or Busch Gardens with her friends proves more painful..for the both of us. Yet, I am the mother and though it is hard and I am probably a model for a voodoo doll in her room, I must say no.
                                        The child I question myself the most about , however, is my sweetest ,most easy going one...Mikey.  he is his father in a 9 year old form. I love his father, but I didn't have to raise him (well, not REALLY). Mikey is complacent at best, when it comes to school and will do the minimum required of him. He gets no A's on a report card , just B's and C's. There have been emails and conferences and questions to all the educational professionals at his school , because face it I'm type A when it comes to education. They all say "he's fine" , "he'll do just fine". I, however , think his attitude was created by me. Did i spend so much time helping the two older ones with their stuff , that he fell to the back burner? Was I just too tired at night to monitor how much and if he was reading?  So, now we have implemented some rules , here is where the hard being a mother thing comes in. I took away Xbox during the week, so he must only read and interact with his family at night. Crazy, huh? You would think I put him in a Russian prison by the way he reacted, and I heard him say , under his breath "shitty job" . Well, maybe i imagined that but I could read it in his big blue eyes.
                                             So I guess what they view as a "shitty job" and what I view as a "shitty job" are different, but the feeling is the same :Never good enough, and never quite sure what the right decision is. But i am their mother and I will continue to be here everyday to help them (or hinder, depends who you ask) and I am sure this job will remain hard until the day I die. 

Happy New Year (yet again)

                  Every year at this time I sit down and try to figure out what aspects of my life I want to change. What I want to be, or not be any longer. I am a lot like everyone else, the first 10 days of January are always a new beginning but then I slowly return to my old ways. Whether that be eating sugar(come on , no human can actually last through that resolution..) or going back to my daily Starbucks after a promise to save 100.00 bucks a month( my sanity is more important than that measley 100 bucks), I have always managed to be back to being, well, me. A high strung, caffeinated opinionated person who really would love to change. Maybe I (or all of us) have been going about this the wrong way.
                    Maybe instead of the seemingly negative things about ourselves ,we should focus on what we like about ourselves and improve on those qualities. This is no easy task, because I am sure everyone of us can rattle off what the hell needs to be improved about ourselves with no problem, but have a much harder time making a list of what is right with ourselves. I am sitting here struggling right now with this. I really can't think of too many positive things to improve on, and that is really sad. When did the negatives outweigh the positives in myself? Did it happen when I had children and realized I truly don't know anything and everyday I fly by the seat of my pants and hope to God I am not screwing them up? Did it happen when I began to look at myself in the mirror and find the flaws (which increase exponentially every year) full well knowing there is no reversal to aging? Did it happen when my older son began testing me almost daily, exhausting me and making me question my entire course of parenting? Who knows? I just want to change this, and maybe 2013 will be the year. I want to focus on myself a little more , maybe start to like what I see in the mirror again- not just physically-but inside. I dont know how I will go about this change, but I guarantee I will have a Starbucks  and some sugar while I find out.
                      Happy New Year and here's hoping your resolutions(no matter how big or small) last past the 10th!!!

I was Pretty Muddy , that's for sure

                                             Today I did the craziest thing, something I have not done in a long time and something that was long overdue: I had fun. Usually my life is all about other people having fun, namely my 3 children. I am always making sure they are happy, healthy and having a great "childhood", usually at the expense of my happy,healthy "adulthood". I put myself last 90% of the time, and that is ok because I am a mother and a pretty good one at that! But today , with a few close friends I did something that was just about ME.
                                              A month ago, my friend Mari sent me an email about a mud run coming to our area. She had it on her bucket list, and asked if I would do it with her. My first instinct was "has she actually MET me?" Mud, dirt, extensive running early in the morning on a Saturday (my widely known sleep in day BTW), that was just a "hell no! trifecta". But I answered her in a matter of minutes and said "ok". And immediately thereafter I was thinking I was crazy. But what made matters worse was my husband thought I was crazy, and so did my son. (the teenage one who knows EVERYTHING). They laughed at the thought of me running in the mud, hurling myself over obstacles and getting "dirty". I  then knew my decision to join my friend was the right one. I was not a person that did that stuff, I did not get "dirty" , I did not have actual fun that doesn't involve my children and their friends. I was now all in, and it was on my bucket list too!
                                              So today, decked out in our homemade puffy painted shirts my friends and I ran a 5K mud run. I have run 5K's before , and made pretty good time but there has never been obstacles or mud, so i wasn't sure how it would all go.  I wasn't trying to finish it record time, I wasn't there for a medal. I was there to run, play in the mud and take in the beautiful scenery as I did those things. I found the mud to be liberating after the initial shock of it being all over me, and I didn't mind it under my manicured fingernails after a while.I truly enjoyed the whole experience, and I don't enjoy "whole" experiences that much anymore. But it is time for me to try, to get back to doing something every once in a while that is just about me and what I want to do. As I washed away the mud in the shower, I realized there was no reason to have ever worried about being dirty and nasty , it all washes off and doing something outside of your comfort zone is cleansing in itself.

Housekeeping Realiztion

                                          I spend a  lot of time keeping my kitchen floor clean. It is a very thankless job, the sweeping, dustpanning, subsequent mopping . it looks good for a few hours(this number fluctuates with the time of the sweeping , dustpanning and mopping in relation to when my kids will be bursting through the door). Then, tomorrow it will need this all over again. Or not, depending on my dirt tolerance level that day, which if it is close or during my period, the floor can just absorb all the brownie crumbs falling from my mouth until I feel better. I hear all of you saying, "what the hell is her point to this?"I do have one, I swear.
                                          You see, today as I was sweeping under the kitchen table(not an everyday occurance-biweekly at best) I realized I am a lot like this high maintenance friggin' floor. At first glance, people visiting would say"it's very clean", and at FIRST glance it is very clean. Because on the surface it is kept highly presentable. However, if they spent some time looking around, they would see some small reminants of dog food in the cracks by her bowl. If they continued exploring my kitchen floor, they would see the grout is old and discolored in spots, a victim of time and too few pressure cleanings. Look a little further, under the kitchen table and it is a mess(crumbs, pencils, napkin shards, and an occassional vitamin discarded at breakfast by a sleepy child). No one ever climbs under the table to examine this, but the mess is there. It's just hidden by a seemingly clean rest of the floor.
                                          So, it is  a lot like me, this constantly work inducing floor. I try to always look presentable on the outside , which is a daily chore. but no amount of sweeping and mopping changes what is really there hidden throughout. I am aging like the grout I hope no one ever stares at too long, and the mess under my table reflects the condition of my mental state most days. Some days cleaning the floor is simply about me pushing the mop , but today I took the time to think about it. I dont know why , but I felt the need to share this correlation with you all, who I hope to GOD have a hidden mess under their kitchen tables too......

A few words to my friends...

                                     This blog is a tribute to my friends , who I feel very lucky to have in my daily life. Even if I dont see them daily, I think of them and use their advice,wisdom or sense of humor to get me through things. I have a lot of acquaintances, and people I know and respect that wont be mentioned on here just because I cant type all day:))) So if I mention you it means I have thought of you lately, you have helped me through things, are still helping me through things , or you are a friend I have had for a long time. If I dont mention you, I still probably think about you, and value your friendship just as much. because if you have the ability to see and read my blog you ALL are my friends. Here's my words to my friends chosen this time:
              Tiffany Ragsdale: Always helpful, and always there to listen. A great mother, extremely patient. Most important lesson learned from Tiff:stay away from sting rays:)
              Peggy D: Someone who will go to battle for her friends, even if it means getting a few scrapes herself. someone I know I can call and just "bitch"to and my favorite quality...someone who uses the F word as much as I do.
              Penny Goldman: My college roomate, has seen me at my absolute worst ,caught me in many compromising positions and I wish we saw more of each other.but when we did see each other after many years of being apart, it was like we never left.
              Megan McNeil: Most unlikely person I would be friends with, doesnt like to shop, drinks beer(when she isnt breastfeeding:)) , wears plain , non revealing clothing..see total opposite. BUT oddly, she is one of the people I love to talk to the most, laugh with and give and get advice with. She's sweet and smart and we dont hang out enough, but I think of her daily.
               Tracy Spahman: Another unlikely match for me, very sweet, never talks about anyone, calm and patient. Lives 3,000 miles away and I miss just walking down the block and hanging out in her kitchen talking about our kids or our husbands...why did you have to leave me?:(
                 Molly Feltner: Our kids were in cheer together for many years, and the things discussed at 8 hour/week practices definately cover the spectrum. she's pretty, a great mom and skinny without ever working out-i actually hate that about her:) But she will do anything for you, and is always doing it with a smile.
                  Mari Blank: Friends for 14 years , through MOMS club, PTA, Relay for LIFE, and my personal training partner. I love Mari, she embodies what a true friend is. She's also getting old (like me) and we can discuss our various ailments together and totally understand each other:)
                 Melissa Fenton: we used to be neighbors, then lost touch. FB has kept us updated on each other and her statuses and views on motherhood make me laugh so hard. I will always remember stumbling throught  t he first 2 years of motherhood with her, as we would walk our babies, around our block and try to hold on to our sanity.
                  Patty Coviello: Ok, she's not going to see this unless one of her kids read it to her but she is a truly good person. A few years older (and definately wiser)than I am, I always look to her for guidance with Zach-he's my oldest who is best friends with her youngest. she knows a lot, always listens and will do anything for you. she has raised 4 great kids and in this world that is a hell of an accomplishment.And she makes baseball season a little easier to get through!
                  Ok, so this list barely touches the people in my life I cherish, but it is a start. I wrote it with the intention of letting people know how important they are because we dont tell each other enough, as I was reminded by another friend of mine,Kelly Doyle, earlier this week...she got me thinking that I should start telling people what they mean to me, before one of my various middle age ailments gets me and its too late:)