Rockin’ Girl Blogger Awards

Cris and Lora both awarded me the Rockin’ Girl Blogger award. Why, I have no idea. They’re just into me, I guess. And call me crazy, but I like it when people like me. So, I’m flattered. Thanks girls! *waves energetically*

Apparently, I have to pay it forward and award five other Rockin’ Girl Bloggers. Here goes:

Sharon at s.m.ART: She gets the award for SO many reasons. Hers was the first blog I ever read on a daily basis wayyyyy back a few years ago before I knew her “in real life.” Generally, when I stop writing on my blog for weeks at a time, it’s because I realize I’ll never be able to write like her so, why try? Which grieves her no end. But it is meant as a compliment. Another reason she gets the award is because she’s my best friend, my cosmic twin, and my favorite person to drink margaritas with.

Eunice at As Life Flutters By: Eunice rocks! She has a beautiful, chubby-cheeked baby daughter and she posts pictures to give me my baby fix. Because, you know, it’s all about me. I am always so impressed by Eunice. She is genuinely a good person and it shows in her posts.

Pam at Pammiecakes: Pam is one of my favorite bloggers. She is so funny, without even trying. I love her monthly mastheads for their colors and patterns, but also for the witty taglines she incorporates into them. Pam is great and she totally doesn’t know how great she is. She’s very humble. I thoroughly enjoyed getting to know Pam as she went through nursing school and it thrills me no end to read her posts about nursing and see her becoming a competent and caring nurse — despite all of her worries that she would never get the hang of it.

Monty at The Daily Bitch: Monty and I share a brain, it seems. We write posts about the same subjects on the same days and we share a lot of similar experiences. I am so impressed by her strength and stamina and her goodness and her kindness. Really, I am. I heart her. I pink puffy heart her.

Jellyhead of Jellyhead Rambles: Jelly is one of my dearest friends. We met via our blogs and clicked right away. A lot of people read and love Jelly’s site but they don’t understand that she is even funnier, even sweeter, and even more charismatic when you get to know her. She is one of my favorite people. Period. I am so glad to have Jelly in my life.

So, thereyago. I was honored to be chosen as a Rockin’ Girl Blogger and I am even more honored to recommend five more rockin’ bloggers to you. Go see them. Go now.

candid

My cell phone has a bad habit of calling the last person on my call list whenever I happen to slip it into my purse without locking the screen.

A couple of nights ago, it called Sharon, several times actually, whilst I shopped, completely unaware. She giggled when she listened to the message on her voice mail (as she gave up answering the phone after the second time it called and she realized she was talking to my purse).

At the time of the rogue phone calls, I was unsuccessfully trying to convince my youngest son to stop sliding his feet and falling down on the concrete floor of the home improvement store. The message on her voice mail went something like this:

Crash, stand up.

pause.

Crash, please stand up.

pause.

Crash! Stand up.

Stand UP!

I SAID STAND UP!

*pitifully* Brad, make him stand up.

As sheepish as I felt at having my harried attempts at discipline recorded, the incident made me think about what we would see if we could listen in or sneak a peek into the lives of our friends and family. A wiretap into their lives, if you will.

If I offered you a candid glimpse into my life, you’d see that I wake up and give my puppies a belly rub first thing in the morning. You’d see my youngest son jump into my arms (despite being far too old and far too heavy) and give me a kiss and begin jabbering with great animation when I walk sleepily into the kitchen.

You’d see me hurriedly throw a load of towels in the washing machine on my way out the door to work and you’d hear me telling the babysitter to call if she needs anything while I am gone, despite the fact that she’s worked for me for over six years and knows she can call anytime.

You’d see that my husband visits my office sometimes during his random wanderings through the hospital and that he pulls my hair off of my neck and kneads the muscles in my neck that are always tense and sore as he talks to me about the day so far.

You’d probably see me smiling as I lie back against my couch cushions and talk to Sharon on the phone or as I sit cross-legged on my bed chatting with Jellyhead. You’d see me frown as I read the news and fret that there seems to be so much anger and hostility and senseless hatred in our world.

If you’d been here tonight, you would have seen me dabbing at the youngest child’s face with an alcohol-soaked cotton ball in an attempt to remove the bubble gum that stuck around his mouth and nose as a result of his great fondness for his newly acquired skill of bubble-blowing.

And at the end of the day, you might see me sitting cross-legged on the couch, wearing my favorite old, worn-out nightgown as I wrote a post. You’d see that I often fall asleep with my husband’s arms around me despite the fact that I push him away in my sleep.

But most of all, you’d see that the real me, the part of me that is loving and calm, playful and passionate, concerned and involved, is the me that you can only see during those candid moments throughout the day–the moments when I can be me because no one is expecting me to be anyone else.

rating and spelling

I Scored a 100%!

floating

I waxed my eyebrows tonight. In and of itself, that’s not necessarily interesting. The thing is, I waxed my eyebrows in preparation to have them waxed again by someone else.

Yes, much like one tidies the house so as not to be ashamed for the cleaning lady to see the mess, I tidied up my eyebrows so I wouldn’t be ashamed when the beautiful Asian woman, who appears not to be plagued with unruly and excessive eyebrow hair, stands back to assess me with a critical eye only moments before I pay her to torture me.

I’m not sure but I may be pleased enough with my job of tidying up that I will skip the professional waxing after all. Sadism has never been something I enjoy but masochism comes easily to me. I might as well be the one ripping my body hair out by the roots.

I can assure you that I don’t extend the same favor of tidying up for the aesthetician who does my bikini wax. The only time I attempted that one on my own, I saw stars and felt waves of nausea. Nope. The bikini wax is to be left to the professionals.

My oldest son is away at camp for five days. I’ve never been the type of mother to hover or to worry excessively that my babies will suffer in the care of anyone but me. But I dunno. This camp thing has been kind of hard. I miss him.

I walked through the family room yesterday and, as usual, nearly killed myself tripping over his ginormous tennis shoes. Instead of cursing (again, as usual), I picked the shoes up and wondered that the feet I lovingly kissed and counted the toes of on the day of his birth could possibly fill them.

The six-year old and I are having a grand time, though. I’ve fixed some of his favorite foods for dinner the past two nights and he held court at the dinner table, talking mine and his father’s ears off. We snuggled together on the couch last night and watched The Fantastic Four on the big screen TV and repeated the scenario tonight with another movie, Cars.

We went swimming this afternoon. I’ve been teaching him to swim this summer. I noticed he was wearing himself out swimming on top of the water and taught him to glide across the pool with his face underwater and his arms stretched out before him.

I spent some time trying to teach him to float on his back which, in my experience, is far harder than teaching a child to swim. It is not human nature to relax the body with the head back in the water and the arms and legs outstretched. The tendency is to tense up the stomach muscles, causing the rear end to sink straight to the bottom.

I kept my fingers lightly beneath his spine and coached, “Point your belly button up! Look at the clouds in the sky!” He would float along effortlessly until he realized my fingers no longer made contact with his skin and then he would tense up and sink.

I told him, “It’s important to learn to float. If you ever find yourself too tired to swim to the shore or the side of the pool, floating will conserve your energy and keep you from drowning.”

And I guess that’s what I’ve been doing with this unexpected hiatus: floating along, conserving my energy, enjoying the weightlessness, watching the clouds roll overhead until I had the energy or the desire to swim to the shore.

PostSecret

I want this PostSecret book rilly, rilly bad and I can’t bring myself to buy it. And I don’t know why.

That’s my secret. 😉

three years later . . .

Today marks three years since I started my blog. Three years! Who’d have ever thought I had so much to say? Well, actually, there are quite a few people who would definitely have thought I had three years worth of things to say. But, other than them, who would have thought!

I’ve been thinking today about the image I’ve unwittingly projected through the blog. I think most of you think I am a confident, cool, and poised woman who’s a little bit air-headed and wildly in love with her husband even after eleven years of marriage and two children.

I guess some of that’s true — to a certain extent. I am definitely air-headed. I won’t even try to disabuse you of that notion. I am very much in love with my husband and happy with him. I could tell you that it isn’t as easy as it seems and that we have all of the same stressors that plague other marriages, but what would be the point? I long ago decided that to air my marital woes to family or friends is generally a bad idea. Come to think of it, that may be the secret to our happiness.

But it really does make me feel like quite the con artist that anyone believes me to be confident and poised. Or maybe I feel like a sham because I realize that I am confident and poised . . . until I’m not. Therein lies my feeling that I have duped you all. But not on purpose. I promise.

When I’m not being confident and poised, I am being emotional and unreasonable. It would be nice to have a personality that falls somewhere in the middle of such a broad spectrum most of the time rather than careening wildly between two extremes. But I can’t help it. I’ve tried to be different and I just can’t.

When I feel betrayed or injured, I lash out. You know how they say Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned? Trust me, Hell hath no fury like me when I’m scorned. It ain’t pretty. That much I can tell you for sure.

Fortunately for me (and unfortunately for them), the only people who are witness to the very worst of me are the people I love and trust the most. In a way, it requires a certain amount of security within a relationship to be able to let go and let loose with an honest, uninhibited display of emotion. It’s messed up, I know, but it would sort of be a compliment to bear witness to my rage — if only it weren’t so uncomfortable. And really, it is messed up because, why should I put the people I love and trust the most through the wringer with the least hesitation?

I never said I was proud of it. Just that it’s true. It’s the way I am. I hate it and I’d cut that part of my personality and character out if I could; but I can’t.

Luckily for me, the people who’ve seen me at my worst are the ones who love me the most, too. I could give you several names, right here and now, of people who know exactly what I am on about when I try to describe the withering rage and raw anguish that accompanies my pain or disappointment. You could ask them about it and, most likely, they would say, “Heather? Why, she’s a darling! Whatever are you talking about when you refer to her temper?”

That’s because they love me and they allow me the freedom to completely fall apart from time to time. They batten down the hatches and weather the storm and, if need be, slap me around a little bit when it gets to be a little too ridiculous . . . but they never hold it against me.

So forgive me if my image comes across much purer and tamer in text than it does in everyday, real life. Who in their right mind really wants to admit their flaws and foibles in their online journal, anyway?

Not me, necessarily, but I do want it known, once and for all, that I know there are times when I behave badly and I know it’s not right and it is not easy for anyone involved. I am so very sorry about that.

But I’m thankful for those few who still describe me in glowing terms, given the opportunity, even after they’ve felt the smothering force of my fury. Yes, I am thankful for the ones who know that I am confident, cool and poised . . . until I’m not.