(it's what makes me me)

We are FULL of events! ZOMG has it been a busy few days.

Okay so I don’t even know where I left off. Babywatch?

Lily had her baby. She ended up with a planned C-section so I drove out to pick up her kids early Monday morning.

Her name is Pearl Bella, which of course is so special to all of us because it reminds us of Grandma Pearl who just died last year.

Then the week passed in a total blur. I had FOUR KIDS and Scott was gone at his Mastermind conference. The dog kept looking at me like, “Can we please go on a walk?” and I kept telling him, “Later,” which my kids know means “Probably not.”

But he survived. We all did, though with exhaustion!

My sister’s older two kids are four and one. Her one year old is very active and mobile. Her four year old is very able to behave and follow directions, but she IS a four year old. So anyway….it was a busy, hectic time.

Mo the dog loves babies. He goes out of his way to be gentle. I don’t know if you’ve ever seen a dog tiptoe, but it happens. I first witnessed Mo tiptoeing when we took him to rattlesnake training. After he’d been trained, they tested him by having me call to him and he had to walk past a rattlesnake. An inner war was waging (“My master is calling me! And yet there is the smell of pain!”) and he eventually settled on tiptoeing very carefully as far from the snake as he could. That’s kind of how Mo was with Charlie.

Also when Charlie was toodling around the living room, Mo sat very carefully resting his face in his paws, purposely putting himself low to the ground, and just hung out, making sure Charlie was okay. He also stole a lot of Charlie’s food, but extremely delicately.

During the days while my girls were in school, my niece and nephew and I did things like go to Walmart, go to Target, and go to the park. That was about as exciting as it got, and believe me, it wiped us all out.

So now Lily has three kids under the age of four, two of whom are in diapers. On the plus side, her kids are amazing sleepers. I am very envious of how well they sleep. She is going to cherish that nap time, that’s for sure.

Everyone has a different answer to this one, and for me, it is connection. I treasure solitude and without a hefty daily dose I start to go a little crazy, but in the big picture, it is connections to friends, family, and the entire world (hello, world!) that fuel me.

Avoid cliches. Avoid overuse of metaphors.

I am writing-writing these days and have been trying to follow these two rules. But anyone who reads my blog knows I love and use a lot of cliches and mix my metaphors up like a crazy kaleidoscope pudding.

Jane’s school had grandparents day this week. Our kids have four living grandparents, all of whom are vital, vibrant, and active. What kind of an amazing blessing is that?! (I don’t have a single picture of grandparents day; sorry! Parents were welcome to attend but Jane told me politely but firmly that she wanted it to be a grandparents-only affair. I am told there were pastries, lunch out at Daphne’s, Painted Earth pottery, and smoothies. Also her school, like most I’m sure, cleverly schedules the spring book fair during grandparents day.)

So we had Grandpa Bill here. He inaugurated our guest room and new bed. (King sized! Come visit; we’d love to have you!)

Grandma Penny and Grandpa Phil are heading off to Russia next week but they took a break from trip preparations to come out too.

My sister Lily is on Babywatch 2013. Her family lives two and a half hours from here and I am waiting for the call to come get her kids. Zsi Zsi is easy because she’s ready to start kindergarten in the fall, but Charlie is…well, Charlie is an almost two year old boy. An active boy. You literally cannot turn your back on him for a moment. His hobbies include running into busy parking lots and eating choking-hazard foods.

But I am excited that the kids will have cousin time. I treasure memories of cousin time as a kid, especially over-nighters. Sometimes in summer we’d stay in Grandma Edna’s attic, which had all kinds of interesting things tucked into boxes and trunks. She was a florist and we especially loved those fake birds you can attach to flower arrangements. She had boxes and boxes of them in every color.

So there is family time. We’ve been doing a fair amount of tag-team parenting lately, too. The girls have a mandatory number of Friday night and Saturday morning temple services they need to attend each school year. I won’t even mention the exact number because it’s embarrassingly low considering neither girl has met the minimum. Scott took on the task of getting them to their services, which you’d think wouldn’t be too hard, but we have been go-go-going constantly since approximately forever.

Then there is friend time. I wish for more friend time. There is hobby time, such as golf, tennis, yoga, knitting, reading, writing, clubs, and the folks I do those things with are friends, so I get that time, but then there are friend-friends, people I rarely see until I bump into them somewhere and we realize it’s been eight months or four years or however long since we’ve gotten together.

As I’ve been writing more lately I’ve also been thinking, as I sometimes do, about the eternal blogger question: Why blog? Why? What is the meaning of my blogging life?

I keep looping back to this idea of connection. Family and friends are 99% of my readers. The other 1% are looking for instructions for making a pinata filled with balls.

Someone got his ass handed to him on the 15 the other day. Check out this story in the sports section of our local paper.

Yes, I am linking you to a story about our local high school’s boy’s golf team’s underwhelming finish to the season. Bear with me.

The true story is an enticingly brief quote from the Murrieta Valley coach.

No one broke 80 for Murrieta Valley — Jordan Reed’s 81 was the best score — and Nighthawks coach Greg Ireland was unhappy enough with his team that he did not allow them to stay until the final results were announced.

“This game teaches you how to be a man — honestly, integrity and hard work creates rewards. And I somehow let them down as a coach, because I haven’t taught them that.”

Whoo, boy, bet that was an uncomfortable ride home. And I love how either he doesn’t specifically say in the interview what the kids did, or the reporter left out further explanation. It’s like when my cat Peppy swats Frankie for no earthly reason. The look on her face is pure: “She knows what she did!”

Adrenaline junkies  are born, not made.

Early.

We are spending the day with Scott’s parents and sister for an early Mother’s Day celebration (and also a late birthday celebration for Eva, whose 11th birthday was last week.)  I’m looking forward to trying True Food Kitchen, which is a new restaurant from Dr Andrew Weil.  (We’re going to the one at Fashion Island in Newport Beach.)  I am expecting kale and kombucha; I’ll report back!

I already have big plans for the real Mother’s Day:

yoga in the morning;golf in the afternoon;drinks in the evening

Yoga:

In January I decided to challenge myself to go to the next level in my yoga practice.  I wanted to push myself to try new things, plus do yoga regularly and more days each week.  I found an intermediate/advanced level class at a yoga studio in Rancho Bernardo that fits perfectly with the kids’ Sunday school schedule.  I drop everyone at 9:30 a.m. and head over to the studio, and I’m done in time to grab my Lara bar and piece of fruit and pick up the kids.

I also added two other classes during the week, both at Gold’s Gym.  Every week I take yoga and toss my weight lifting gloves in the car vowing to do some strength training after class, and every week I remember:  yoga IS strength training!  I’m way too tired after these challenging classes to head into the gym.  The great thing about a yoga class with a good instructor is it’s totally customizable.  You can make it just about as easy or difficult as you want.

My RB Yoga class is definitely challenging, and 90% of the challenge for me is more mental than physical.  We do poses that are about floating or flying and I love it.  I feel powerful and limitless when I accomplish these things and that’s what keeps me coming back week after week.

Golf:

I have been encouraging the girls to find a sport they can do for a lifetime. I’m also talking to them about eventually trying out for the high school team.  Eva likes tennis and golf and I think she has settled on focusing more on golf.  I signed her up for the “Birdie Club” at Redhawk and she can play $5 rounds.  When she’s a grownup I hope she realizes how good she had it as a kid! 

Jane wants to learn golf too but at age seven she has a short attention span.  We went to the putting greens the other day and after about five minutes in the midday sun she was done.  She found a shady bench to lay down and take a nap.  She has great hand-eye coordination so I hope her attention span catches up soon because I could see her becoming a talented golfer.

For Mother’s Day, we’re playing nine holes, and we’re going as a family so each of us can take one kid and a cart. Jane will probably be a “rider” so she can hang out in the shade of the cart with drinks and snacks and give color commentary to the three of us.

Drinks:

I still love gin and tonics and am so happy to have discovered them.  I am thinking of branching out into martinis.

So that’s the plan for an ideal Mother’s Day.  You have a week’s notice; go buy a card!

In my “real” job as Marketing Director of The Grossman Law Firm, I am constantly reviewing website statistics.

I have been lax on checking out my blog stats, though, and out of curiosity I took a peek the other day.

By FAR the two biggest search terms that bring people to my blog (we’re talking hundreds and hundreds of people, people!) are:

1) baby cologne; and

2) pinata filled with balls.

Sigh.

I hope I don’t leave them too disappointed.  I am just being me, writing not to fill any particular niche but rather to just put a little piece of myself out there a few times a week and keep in touch with far-flung friends and family.  With a little oversharing thrown in.

Shorts?

Bikinis?

Ah, spring.  It’s that time of year when we are inundated with articles and blog posts filled with fashion dos and don’ts.

Some are great, like the funny one that goes around every year about getting a pedicure before unveiling your feet for the first time after a long winter’s hibernation.

Others are…well, not so much.

The genre of rules that bothers me the most are the ones that go:  “You can’t wear X after age 40 (30, 50.)”

The rule breaker in me reads that and yells, “Oh, yeah?  Why not?  My (toes/waist/boobs/butt/thighs/muffin-top) are in pretty damn good shape and I WILL wear (crackle polish/shimmer eyeshadow/Daisy Dukes/sleeveless tops.)”

I HATE a hard and fast rule, because…well, just because.

The worst is the apologists for these articles.  They are well-intentioned women of my own age (i.e. the intended audience of these articles) and they say things like, “I just wouldn’t want you to be embarrassed.”  (Thank you for looking out for me.  You must not know me very well because if you did, you’d know I’m pretty much un-embarrassable.)

Or they say, “Dress to flatter your best features and hide the ones that aren’t so great.”

So if I have big blue eyes but cellulite on my hips, I have to cover up my hips (completely!!!  make sure NOTHING shows!!  or puppies and kitty cats somewhere will die!!) and only wear colors that make my eyes pop.  Because, you know, if a small child catches a glimpse of my hip cellulite their eyeballs will bleed.

I understand dressing to flatter your best assets, but really?  So what?  Is the flipside true, then?  If I have a body part that hasn’t been featured in Fitness Magazine, do I have to hide it under a burkha?

My two biggies are:

1) shorts; and

2) bikinis

First, shorts.  I live in Temecula.  Temecula!  We all wear shorts here.  And I’ll just come out and shout it from the mountaintops now: we are wearing Daisy Dukes here in Temecula.

“But you are over 40,” my helpful Greek chorus says.  “Your knees are probably drooping.  Your legs have age spots.  Have you checked what those shorts look like from behind?  You might have cellulite.  Take a picture of yourself from all angles to be sure.”

The “rules” articles talk about Bermuda shorts, walking shorts, or capris.  Um, no, people.  Temecula!  Fifty year old women in line at Costco in Daisy Dukes.  That’s how we roll.

And what about bikinis?

I am supposedly (according to the rules of fashion for pruney-legged women like me) supposed to be wearing a tankini or “fashion forward” one-piece.  A maillot, I believe this style is called.  You know, like Esther Williams.

What’s next, a polyester ruffled skirt?

No, here in my patch of So Cal we wear bikinis.  Again, how we roll.  Want me in a “cruisewear chic” maillot in tasteful off white or slimming black?  You are going to have to pry my Billabong bikini off my cold, dead body.  (Billabong bikinis are great.  Costco!  Such an amazing find I went back for a second one to wear in the red mud at Glen Ivy.)

And that, my friends, is what I think of that.