How did I miss Kristen Hannah???

Lately we have been having stormy weather and I have discovered a new (to me) writer that I simply love her. More than that, I trust her.  I don't know how I managed to miss her for so long, but I consider it one of the supreme luxuries of my life that I have found a writer I love who has many books yet unknown to me.  No offense, Stephen King, but I left you for your wife years ago and frankly, I've never looked back.  It was just too long a wait, and I never got over the Gunslinger series that started out so great, only to disappoint me after waiting for years.  I mean, honestly, what the hell WAS that????  It was beneath you, and it was certainly beneath me.  I don't regret walking away because I had just stayed too long.  It was just too much for me.  We had a lot of good years together, SK, but I have moved on.  I know you don't care, and that's fine.  You might spend more time with the Rock Bottom's.  You deserve some time off.

Now that I've got that off my chest, back to the fabulous writer.  Her name is Kristin Hannah and if she wrote it, I will pick it up and read it.  I'm still overly loyal but I've learned to look before I leap.

Last week I found myself in a second hand store and picked up Firefly Lane, I would say that it's light reading but it's really not.  Her style is light but her words go very deep.  I have not-been-hurrying-through-it on purpose, and I'm already dreading the end of the story.  So I looked her up trying to copy a picture from her website, but the keypad remains a challenge for me, so I just put the link if you click on

THESE BOOKS.

To my great surprise and joy, Firefly Lane is the only the first part of the story, soon to be continued with Fly Away.  I highly recommend Firefly Lane for young women as this is the story of a deep and abiding friendship that illustrates beautifully the struggle between staying and home and raising children and having a career.  It has been one of the biggest disappointments of my life to see women turn on each other over this issue in my lifetime.  Get us out of the kitchen and what do we do?  Tear each other apart. Greeeeaaat.  I myself am not too proud of that.  I hope anyone who reads this blog is able to see beyond these trifling idiots and realize that life is better when we are all on the same team.  Divided, we fall.  Any "we".  Think about that and have some respect, why don't we?  Have we not all worn various bodily fluids on our clothes?  Is that not a bonding experience????   What is WRONG with us, anyway????  We could at least try it before we have to sign up in order to have a child grown in a lab, which looks like where we are headed to me.

Firefly Lane is the story of two best friends grew up in the 70's and 80's.  They were "liberated" women who chose for themselves, respected each other's choices, and got to about my age and were very disappointed to discover that whatever choices they had made never felt like "enough".  Which begs the question "what is enough, anyway?" and I could go on forever on that.  I think we all could, actually.  The decades they grew up in were that same decades I grew up in, so for me it's not only a soul searching novel but I was there, I remember all the music and what passed for styles.  The 80's were just so bizarre I don't think they would be  easy to understand if you weren't there but she does a great job.  She just sets the scene and you get it, she doesn't waste words trying to explain "why" things were the way they were.  Who could, really?

You will love this writer, I think. I do.  The first book I read by her was called Home Front, about a woman who flew a Black hawk helicopter in the war AND had a family and husband.  Again, you might think it's a light read.  Her books look like light reads, whoever designs her covers does a very good job at selling to people who don't actually read (take no offense, Danielle Steele fans, but you know who you are*no judgement*) but her stories go right to the heart, with your brain fighting all the way.  She spares nothing, leaves no stone un-turned, and I have found each one of her books to be a gift.

It's almost summer.  Get your reading list made, and pick up one of Kristin Hannah's books. You won't regret it.  If you do, I'll bake you a cake. ;D

Mother's Day, Keepin' it Real

My mother's day got off to a real interesting start. 

Without going into a lot of detail, I was at the end of my rope by 9 am.  The reason that I was at the end of my rope is twofold and really nobody's fault but my own:

1) I have gotten really bad about going downstairs because the boys spend so much time there.  The combination of dog, testosterone, and dust has become too much for me and I am going to have to seriously "hit it" on my next "high energy day".  I pray it hits on a weekend because I only have a couple of vacation days left before July.

2) I have gotten slack in making the boys eat at the kitchen table.  Please remember that these are children number 3 and 4, plus the fact that I spend most of my time these days wandering from room to room looking for stuff I can't find....Plus I was really tired the night before from blowing stuff to Kingdom Come all that day.  More on that later.

My solution for not finding stuff upstairs is yelling downstairs and asking the boys where the lost stuff is, due to reason number 1 stated above.

So, it's Mother's Day, I am trying to fix a brunch so I can feed everybody before we embark on our afternoon plans, and I can't find any plates.  No clean plates, no dirty plates.  Now, I distinctly remember having used plates the night before to fix some kind of frozen food that neither of my grandmother's would have even considered "real food", but boys of the new millenium are thrilled to eat.

Naturally, I look around upstairs, and find no plates.  So I yell down to the Grand Finale telling them to bring me the dirty dishes.  They yell back that there aren't any dirty dishes down there.  Right. 

So I yell louder, (Did I mention what a beautiful day it was?  ALL of our windows were open), asking where the plates are at.  They yell back that they "don't know".  Right.

Everybody knows that you only get 3 strikes, and the Grand Finale is no different.  We all knew it was time for them to get real, but did they move before the third strike?  No. They did not.

Which is why I would like to take this opportunity to apologize to any neighbors who heard some woman yelling (as if they wouldn't know it was me) that WHILE WE MAY ACTUALLY OCCASIONALLY "LOSE" A PAIR OF FINGER NAIL CLIPPERS, BOYS, OR A SCREW DRIVER, IT SIMPLY IS NOT POSSIBLE FOR US TO "LOSE" THE PLATES WE EAT OFF OF!!!"  And then, just to seal the deal, because I was already wanting to just go back to bed, I threw in the old stand-by threat that always, ALWAYS works, because I could hear that the video game was still going and I knew in my heart that neither one of them had moved a muscle, "IF I DON'T HAVE ALL THE DIRTY DISHES UP HERE IN 2 MINUTES, I'M COMING DOWN THERE!!!"

This is the threat they hate more than anything.  It never ends quickly or well when I go downstairs.  Muaaahahahahahahahaha.

Immediate sounds of plates and silverware being gathered up.  It sounded like they had even put the dirty dishes in the sink.  This fact, sadly, and I probably shouldn't even admit this, made me proud.  I know it's not much but it is progress.

At least I didn't have to actually go down there.  That would have meant throwing the fit where you ask them if they were born in a barn and then I would have had to spend the entire day making them sweep and dust.
I thought it went much better this way.  It was Mother's day, after all.......

Hope you had a good one, and if not good, at least memorable.

Throw down over Alzheimer's

All through the long process of losing my mother to cancer, I thought at first that I could not take the stress.  After a couple of years I realized that I could indeed take the stress and wondered if I would ever "go back" to the way I used to be, once it was over.

Isn't that funny?  I don't know if everybody thinks that or not, but if you do, I can tell you the answer.  The answer is no.  You won't "go back" to the way you used to be; not after you start your period, move from home, have a baby, lose a loved one, or go through hard things.  I used to be so amazed at the changes in me and try to imagine the person I was before in the new situation, whatever it was.  The answer was always obvious.  You will never "go back", because what you will be at the end of the process will be just another piece of the total package that will be "you" then.  Now.  At this moment.  There is no "going back" in the course of daily life.  Las Vegas was built to be able to fulfill that wish, within reason and for cold hard cash, for a very limited piece of time.  It's as close as you will ever get, unless you have the misfortune to suffer from Alzheimer's.  In that case, you may not know it, but you will indeed "go back" and experience things with no more wisdom or mercy than you had at the time.  Be careful what you wish for.

A very good friend of mine who I grew up with has a mother, whose home I spent a lot of time in, who is in the last stage of Alzheimer's now.  It has been a long, painful, heartbreaking process for everyone involved.  But what can you do?  You have to go through it.  There is no way around it.  There are the usual defenses, oblivion, denial, rationalization, anger, but none work very well for very long.  What starts out as Mom not remembering your name (and what mother ALWAYS calls you the right name??) gets steadily worse until medications are messed up badly enough to get some attention.  This usually leads to an inspection of the home, which very quickly reveals that things are not as they were, and they won't ever be "going back" to the way they used to be, either.  Things are MUCH worse than they have ever been before.  Whether you are a spouse, a chld, a sibling, or a parent of this person who is obviously not the way they were doesn't matter.  You feel betrayed, helpless, angry and heartbroken.  And that's just the beginning, folks. 
This is a disease that has no time frame for when it will be "over", and most likely their bodies will be in much better shape than their minds for years to come.  It drags on for years, getting slowly, slowly worse until that beloved personality is gone from the body that housed it for so long that you were fool enough to think were inseperable.  You can spend a small fortune on slippers and clothes that just get lost as fast as they are replaced.  I won't even go into what can happen to the teeth.  You learn to make peace with seeing your mother tied up because that way she can't hurt herself.  Or anyone else.  You have to cut your more tender feelings off because they will do nothing but enable your loved one's husk to hurt itself even more, and make you person non grata in the one Rest Home you could stand to put her in!  It is not for the faint hearted, and you don't get invited to join, or a chance to decline.  It comes to you unannounced, unrepentant, and unlikely to leave any time soon.  All you know is that it is going to get a lot worse before it gets better, (what would "better" be, by now?  Don't think too hard about that, just keep moving), and you lower your sights in order to survive it because you already know one of you isn't coming out of this horrible mess alive.  This goes on and on for what seems an endless amount of time.

My friend's mother was a very beautiful and great lady.  She was a wife and a mother to 6 cihldren, and gardened to feed them.  She made many beautiful quilts as well as lots of her families clothes, and had a welcoming home. She was famous for her potato rolls.  She was funny and wise and out spoken, especially if you came into her house in the middle of the night smelling of "beer and cigarettes!".  She scolded you heavily but never without respecting you, and would defend you like a grizzly bear if she thought you needed it.  When she really laughed, she threw her head back and really, really laughed.  I laughed with her many times until I cried.  She held my babies when they were small and adored them, remarking on every detail.  Sometimes I would catch her looking at me and have the strongest feeling that she knew everything I was thinking and feeling as a young woman and I would be so GLAD that there was nothing I could do about that.  She was a woman with whom you felt your secrets were safe. You felt understood as opposed to judged.  I miss her so very much, and she is not even actually gone, except in every way that really counts.  It is a grief that feels premature and incomplete, like a betrayal and so wrong, but when the end finally comes, what will be left to mourn?  It is as she disappears that we all mourn what is gone, and then what has been gone for 1 year......2 years........so long.  And still it does not end.

It is getting rarer that she recognizes anyone, now, but for years I would listen to my friend mourn her mother's gradual disappearing.  At first I offered ideas like crossword puzzles and that Suduko thing, Then it was those alarms you could get for your doors and windows in case someone got out of the house.  Eventually, all I could do was listen and sympathize and cry and search the Bible for comforting passages.  I began to realize how many times in our lives we change and never "go back" to the way we used to be.  I began to see myself not as the daughter in the situation, but the mother.  It was the most horrifying thing I have ever thought about.  I knew that this great lady would rather be dead than ever have anyone see her like this.  I knew that she would have NEVER wanted to put her husband or her children through this.  I knew that she was completely helpless and blameless and trapped.  I wondered if she ever knew it.  I hoped she didn't.

It was during a long phone conversation, which is the only kind my friend and I ever have, :) that I ended up going on a rant and pretty much bawling out my poor wonderful old best friend who I had only ever comforted before.  It was---galling for me.  I mean, I really didn't want to do it but I just couldn't not point out this thing from her mother's point of view.  I had to do it for mother's everywhere.  For WOMEN everywhere.  I had to do let this mother's daughter have it just like her mother would have if she had still been, well, aware. 

My friend calls me and she is mad at her mother.  MAD.  This is understandable and I am sympathetic.  The story is, Mom was MAD at Dad, REALLY mad, and cussed him out like a dog because she said Dad had bought her Brother beer.  (Now, Dad was in his 80's at the time, Brother was in his 70's, and of course could drink all the beer he wanted to, BUT in her mind, at that moment, everyone was apparently MUCH younger and Brother had had some problems with alcohol during his life).  Now, even though everybody involved except Mom knew that she was not "herself", Dad's feelings were hurt to the point that he was really really upset and now Friend is PO'd at Mom because it's not Dad's fault.  I do not expect this to make logical sense, OK?  It's all emotion, that horrible, inconvenient, illogical DOWNER that will not leave you alone.  I was quiet for awhile, listening to her story, wondering if this was an actual, factual thing that had taken place 50 years or so ago or if it just drifted through her mind and stuck.  And then I thought about all the things I could reveal about myself that I probably didn't even remember anymore, and how a person can't really be blamed for that kind of thing, at least not unless it's God blaming you at the end of this impossibly long am sometimes miserable road called life.  And that's when I said "Listen! (finger went into the air at that point.  This is a sign that I have had enough, anybody will tell you) Let me tell you something as a mother!!  (Friend does not have any children of her own)  When you become a mother, you start living your life differently, like a filter, so that your children will have a picture of what a "mother" and a "home and "decent" are supposed to be.  Do you want to do this?  NOT PARTICULARLY, but you DO it, because, you HAVE to, because it's the RIGHT thing to do, because you have to set an EXAMPLE.  But nobody is just a mother, and your mother may be different ages in her mind right now, and she might be fighting mad AT THIS MOMENT about something that actually did happen, and IS happening for her, right then.  It's nobody's fault, but Dad and you, Friend, are just going to have to suck it up!  Because she can't help it!  Do you ever think that at one time in her life she was just a girl, who had yet to meet her husband, and she may have had other boyfriends, and NOW she might just tell that in front of the one person who would be hurt by it even though he has been married to her for over 50 years?!!!  DO YOU KNOW WHAT THAT WOULD DO TO HER IF SHE KNEW???"

By now, I was sobbing.  So was my Friend.  My poor Friend, who had done plenty of stuff when she was just a girl, I happened to know, as all girls do, myself included, and was now remembering (thanks to me) not only that she had to be strong for Dad, but that Mom was a girl and therefore on the same side as Friend, eternally, and deserved a little loyalty too.  You might think that it was a low point for us, but not really.  The thing about Alzheimer's is that it just goes on and on and you just have to cope with it and along with coping comes emotional detachment, if you want to survive it.  It's like war, that way. She knew I might hate this crappy mess we were in but I would not leave her alone in it, even if it meant letting her have it.  Just like a mother!!  She saw it my way.  She saw it Dad's way, and she saw it Mom's way. Talk about your multi-tasking.

If there is any blessing in this, for this family, it is that they are many.  Six children have grown into quite a crowd.  She is a great-grandmother several times over now, although she doesn't know it.  The last time she went to a family gathering she asked her husband "Who are all these people"?  He replied, "Well, don't ask me, you started all this", and she told him she wanted to go home.  I didn't really blame her.  You know how you secretly dread having everybody over when you are young and it's so much work and wears you out so bad,  and it has yet to occur to you that you will ever have Alzheimer's?  Well, someday you might announce that to all of your family, thinking they are strangers who would not be hurt by that information.  Don't worry, though.  Dad got her out of there before she did that, her partner in crime, her keeper of secrets, her hero to the end, whether she knows it or not.  I really love them both and the family they made.  They have much to be proud of.

She is receiving hospice care in the nursing home now.  She is a woman well loved, leaving a life well lived.

Resume? Seriously? I'm a mother--I can do it all

I am so excited that Mrs. G commented on my blog that I'm floating. 
She is a very savvy woman, and she brought up the supreme point that her years spent mothering make a crappy resume for employers.
I know where she is coming from.
But the employers are wrong.
I've had three paying jobs since becoming a mother, and let's just say that while the titles were different the jobs are all about the same.
All the jobs have required me to be pleasant, whether I feel pleasant or not, organization, decision-making, and drudgery.  Most importantly, though, all the jobs have required my mothering skills, especially that last one.
The most valuable skills I learned being a mother were these: distraction, negotiation,and re-direction.
These skills are in constant use due to the simple fact that I work with other people.
I work for one of the few places left in America where you get a real person to answer the phone.  We pride ourselves on this when it's a customer that calls.
Sadly, about 30% of the calls I answer these days are from recordings.  This is not a good plan from a practical standpoint if you want people to listen to you. Most of them come from collection agencies who have been smacked down (by yours truly) for calling a business phone during business hours and don't want to get fined again.  Apparently there is some loop hole that makes it not count if it's a recording that violates that rule again and again.  The others are seasonal and usually from political candidates.  Of both parties.  I have sent all offenders strongly worded e mails.  They haven't seemed to notice.  Yet.  The money spent of these calls and the trash they send through the mail is one of my personal targets to de-fund.  But I digress.

So, with all these calls ringing in, none of which are usually for me (just like home) things can get kind of hectic.  If I hadn't been following up on all those kids all those years, I would never remember to nag remind my "people" of all the appointments they need to keep and calls they may not have remembered to return.
I also try to keep some candy around all the time.  Guess where I learned this?  This way, if someone comes up and is having a hard day you can listen quickly, throw some chocolate at them, and send them on their way.  They are usually so happy to see the chocolate they don't realize you are hurrying them on their way, and if they do, well, the chocolate serves as a happy distraction and they forgive you.  They will be back, it should go without saying, but you are there everyday anyway and you just never know what a day will bring.  Chocolate is never inappropriate.
Also, people sometimes come in the front door.  Not a lot of people who shouldn't but the occasional new salesman.  To my eternal consternation, we now have companies who send people out to find new customers in areas that are already serviced by these same companies.  It is pretty hard to be the one to break it to the enthusiastic new recruit that we already have a representative, yes, from your same company.  It's very embarrassing for them. I have to help them through the moment when they realize they have wasted their time, energy, and possibly money to work for a company who either doesn't know, or doesn't care that they are sending them on a fool's errand.  It's not easy.  Kind of like the first time your child figures out they have been played for a fool.  By a jerk.  Chocolate does not hurt in this situation, but you have to walk a tightrope because clearly you are not being paid to comfort strange salespersons.  A cheerful tone of voice and the assumption that there must have been a mistake is the quickest way to get them moving right back out the door again, hopefull with their pride intact.  The repeat offenders I give the old "firing lasers out of my eyes" look.  I assume you remember this look from your own mother and it need not be explained further here.  It is a universal look recognized by all, not least traveling salespersons.  Hilariously, this works much better on men than women.  Women think they can see my laser eyed look and raise me a business card.  I take it, give them my steel door look and ask if they have anything they would like to leave.  They fold, but not because they are weak, because they are smart, and recognize steel when they see it.  That may just be the last dregs of my hope for women not to embarrass me anymore talking right there.  So be it.  I grew up nurturing that dream and I'll go down nurturing that same dream.  Along the way maybe someone will notice.

With all that going on, I am also expected to do actual work, fitting it in around the phone and various and sundry persons coming through the front door.
Now, anywhere you have people you have personalities.  These are not carefully examined and matched before you go to work (although that is a great idea), so you have to muddle through the best way you can.  My method is to try to just skip along the tops of the waves and not get too involved.  Failing that, I try to keep my mouth shut and keep working.  This is not a hugely popular choice, except for with the people who actually pay you.  I take it as a mark of my mothering skills that I can get up and walk down the hallway, sending people skittering back to their desks behind me.  This is a most valuable skill, and one that all mothers have.
Recently we had someone fall on the ice in the parking lot.  Every mother in the place went to see the victim, checked their eyes, asked if they felt nauseous and warned them to tell us if they felt sleepy.  There was no need to consult a book, we mothers knew what to do.  The victim recovered just fine.
One day the toner broke all over the floor.  Did I stand around and wait for a janitor to clean it up?  Don't be silly, I am well acquainted with the business end of a shop vac.  Years of cleaning floors qualified me to take control of the situation immediately.  It was less mess, if you can believe it, than most of the meals my children flung to the floor.  And I got paid to clean the toner up!  Win-win.
Somebody's in a bad mood, somebody's sick, somebody's sad, somebody's excited and can't concentrate.  Am I talking about my own breakfast table in the morning or work?  What's the difference?  One I not only get paid to deal with--I am not emotionally involved in!

I am telling you, if you want a good employee who shows up most every day, who can and will roll with the punches, who is not above doing the dirty work, and who is used to doing all this for free, hire a mother!  Mothers will not let you down.  Mothers will not shirk responsibility.  Mothers keep a drawer of candy for the bad days.  Most importantly, mothers intuitively recognize the shortest and simplest answers to any question, and are not afraid to implement it, giving you peace and quiet so that you can get some work done.