Pond Hopper

I have to go to a birthday party tonight.  It's a themed party.  The English love a good theme.  They dress up in costumes a lot (they call it 'fancy dress')  For eight years, I have been able to avoid the whole fancy dress thing, but tonight I can't avoid it!  Tonight's theme is the 80's!  Of all things  I have to dress like I did as a teenager! Crap, I just aged myself!  Anyway, I have a tiny denim skirt, some footless stockings, stilettos and a black lace accented shirt to wear.  My hair will be bigger than it's been in years and so will my earrings.  I'm not at all looking forward to it.  What's really scary is that a few of the party guests were born in the 80s and seem to be mixing up 80's clothes with 70's clothes because they are too young to know better!  This makes me feel old.  What will make me feel older is seeing my self dressed like I would of a million years ago. I'll feel ridiculou...

Yesterday on the way home from picking Ethan up from school, I found a little green die in his book bag.  I took it out, showed it to him, and asked him where he got it.  He said, ‘I got it at school.  I liked it and wanted to take it home.’ I said, ‘But it’s not yours to take, Sweetheart.’  He looked worried.  I explained that its wrong to take things that aren’t yours.  Telling him, ‘Its called stealing and stealing is wrong.  You’re not in trouble this time, but if it happens again, you’ll be in big trouble’.  He said he was sorry, I told him it was okay, but he’d have to give it back in the morning and explain to Daddy what happened when he got home (just to reinforce that it wasn’t a good thing to do).  He asked if he could play with it when he got home, and as much as I wanted to let him, I said no. That night, I had him tell his Dad what happened.  He explained that he liked it and wanted to keep it so he put it in his bag t...

I've been in a real funk for nearly a week.  I've had ups and downs with it, but Ethan starting school has definitely thrown me for a loop.  I'm on day two of my first full week without him.  He goes to school from 9-3 every day from now on and yesterday, I sat around and did absolutely nothing (except feel a bit sorry for myself and wonder how I'd find my purpose if I'm not a full time mom anymore). I haven't had a good workout since Thursday, but forced myself to do it this morning and can't stress enough how much better I feel.  I have to say, if you're feeling low, just move.  Do something - anything that gets you moving.  If you workout - do it and I promise you'll feel better once you do.  If you don't like to workout - go for a walk.  If it's raining, drive to the mall or a shopping center and window shop, but move.  Get up and do something.  Take the dog for a walk, clean the house, dance in your living room - dan...

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I got the idea for this blog while reading a post on a blog called Life With Levi where a heated discussion on Facebook caused a tongue in cheek debate with another Mom about who the worst Mom was.  Every Mom is their own worst critic (well sometimes it's your mom or your mother in-law).  We all want to be the perfect Mom.  We want to do everything right so our children grow up happy, well adjusted and good, but nobody is perfect.  Here is my Crappy Mom List... 10) Sometimes when my son wakes up in the middle of the night and calls me into his room, I take my pillow and snuggle up with him for the rest of the night so I don't have to stay up and try to get him to go back to sleep on his own. The reason for this is because I just want to go back to sleep, don't want to be woken up multiple times and I like to snuggle up with him occasionally. 9) I don't give him any independence - I am a worrier and I'm not capable of letting him learn by getting hurt.  I...

Last week, Emma (one of the girls from book club) invited me to her house for coffee.  We've talked a bit at book club and have always gotten along, but have never spent any time together outside of book club.  I thought I'd be there for a couple of hours in the morning, but ended up staying until nearly 3:00.  We talked all day about anything and everything.  By the time I left, we both knew details about each other's lives that most people can go years in a friendship and never know find out. I spoke of things I don't normally ever talk about.  I found myself saying things out loud I couldn't believe I was saying. Our conversation just flowed.  We both discussed difficult emotional things.  We both shared things that in a normal conversation would never come up.  There are proabably only two or three people in the world (one of them being my husband) that know such intimate details of my life. This sort of thing happened to me only one other t...

I haven't written even a paragraph of my book in over a week.  The wind has been taken from my sails and I just can't get my momentium back.  I'm feeling a disconnect from part of my inspiration for the book as of late and I'm finding it hard to get back to a good place with it.  I've tried to find some resolve, but to no avail.  The problem is, I know if I don't get my inspiration back, the writing will suffer, the story will be flat and lack emotion so until I can get back to that place, I know I won't write. I am also going through 'readers block'. Every book I pick up seems boring, I’ve made it to page ten or twenty of about a dozen books.  I pick up a book and can't concentrate.  I read a page and find myself going back over it because I stopped paying attention half way down. This happens every once in a while when either I've read too many books in a row or after I've read a book I loved.  It's hard to move on to the next b...