If I were a Simpson

Get Simpsonized

TV

5 Minutes For Mom is giving away a flatscreen TV... go give it a shot!

Thanks Best Buy!

Canadians welcome, go Mama D, GO!

Winner!

Being a parent in catastrophic situations can change a human being for the better, if that human is open to that kind of change. By catastrophic, I mean.... the toddler experience. When Pearl was born...Birdie was three and LaLa was not yet two. For those of you who have never done anything like this, or lack imagination... I am talking about procreation that rates about an 8.75 on the Richter Scale. The entire month of May this year was another form of a catastrophic event in parenting. Day to day living with a narrowed scope of ambition, is also a form of erosion to my creative heart.

When I think about the ways that I am changing, I think in terms of a rough and shattered lump of stone; interesting yeah, but uncomfortable to hold in your hand, especially if you grip it hard. I think I am that stone, and motherhood is water. Oceanic water, river water, dripping water, rolling me and tumbling me and eroding the parts that stick out. Sometimes I miss those stick-out interesting parts, sometimes I miss my passions and pursuits. But I'll tell ya, my HOPE is that in the end, a heretofore unrevealed inner beauty will be revealed by way of this tumbling and polishing process. A vein of purple, speckles of green? Is there gold in my center? Maybe. But it is entirely possible that in the end, I will be left, a round, smooth and completely unremarkable bluish grey rock. Maybe by the time that happens, I'll be OK with that kind of end.

One of the best ways that this experience has changed me is by loosening my death grip on stuff. First thing to go was my body, and, while the longer I go on this way, the more I suspect that I wasn't quite as clever as I once thought I was... but, I'm pretty sure that my mind is slipped a few notches as well. Maybe a LOT of notches. Whatever degree of coolness I had achieved, was sucked away by the four millionth spirited rendition of Eensy Weensy Spider, or maybe it was the time I looked up the lyrics to the theme song for Scooby Doo at the behest of a two year old Birdie. So long.

Material stuff. Like furniture, DVD's and clean walls. It's a lesson I have to relearn every so often... but for the most part I get it, and when I encounter someone who is learning it the hard way, or insisting that their "stuff" is sacrosanct... sometimes it's amusing and sometimes it's down right annoying. Whatever. I'm just trying to get by with the minimal amount of destruction to... well, everything!

All in all, this has been an annoyingly pompous way of announcing that the quilt that I am giving away? Has a new new home! The winner is the lovely Jennifer of The Road Less Traveled

Congratulations!

Freebies

I finally figured out how it works, and I decided not to do it.

Don't get me wrong, it's a cool idea, this giveaway thing... but if I put a linky up at Rocks in my Dryer, then everyone and their pet dog would have a shot at winning this blanket, and I had envisioned this going to an actual reader of this blog. Again. Cool idea, so do go and check out these rockin' bloggers. I will just not be one of them. I'm still giving the quilt away, but it will be to someone who gets here via a more traditional manner.

I am trying to be a little more loosey-goosey about material things, but I really like this quilt... it's soft. And I really like my readers. So here is the deal:

1. If you got to my bloggy giveaway, it is via a traditional means so BY ALL MEANS, sign up!

2. You do not have to have a blog to win, just an email address.

3. Family and real life friends, please join in! Heck, y'all are some of my favorite readers!

4. I am going on a little vay-cay... so this post will stay at the top of this site, and you have until friday at noon to sign up.

5. Leave me a comment with an email addy down in my comments OR... if you are squeamish about being public, drop me an email at the following address.

bon(type in a period)mama(type in an @ sign)gmail(type in a period)com

follow the instructions in the parenthesis... sorry to be cryptic, but spammers have software that picks up email addresses and spams the hootie out of them!

6. Sit back and enjoy a week off from my whining, and tune back in on Friday noonish to see if you've won.



* again... since I'm footing the bill for shipping, only in US or Canada.

Sunday Pic: Pink

Another hard workin' week capped off with some Deathly Hallows does not make for a mucho-posting Mama. I am sure we will all survive.

With the kid-watching skillz of my sister and niece, I managed to paint the girls room a lovely shade of pink that Kwal Paints likes to call "Sacred." The first time I saw the color, the name of it was upside down to me, and it read like "Scared." I still like to think of it as "Scared Pink."

Chaos is in an ecstasy of little girl proportions. Now, you too can witness all that is pink and TDF, To Die For.

Who Loves Ya, Baby!

So Rock In My Dryer is hosting a sort of blog party. It's for everyone who wants to have a giveaway on their bloggy, and everyone who wants to get some free stuff from those who are giving... check out the nifty doggy button in my sidebar. At some point she'll be linking to everyone who is giving stuff away, so even if you don't score my gifty, you could, maybe pick up some other offering. I will be trying to get some freebies m'self.

Once I figure out how this is working, I assume that you tell me via comment or email that you are interested, and I enter your name and put it in a hat. I'll be giving away this handmade (by me) baby rag style quilt. Stay tuned.

*since I will be footing the bill to ship it, I will restrict winning to just the continental U.S. and Canada. And YES, Canada specifically in case Mama D wins. If you live somewhere else you may petition me to soften my crabby old heart.

Stigmas and Chaos

Lest there be any confusion... my Birdie is not fat. Perhaps by some sicko, anorexic definition she could be considered such, but people with that definition do not interest me, except that I wish them all the thinness they treasure. May they waste away to nothing.*

Wow. Usually I try to keep it a little more upbeat than that around here.

Pirate hit it on the head in her comment...

..."No matter what, I think it's important that you learn to discharge the stigma that word has for yourself before you heap that on your own girls. They will read your confidence around this issue - if they sense that Mama has no baggage with this, then they will have no reasons to take on their own baggage... That's where the self esteem thing comes from. Love yourself first, your children will learn from you."

I have baggage with this word, and it shines right on through. By the time I was seven years old I "knew" that I was fat.

Dude. I wasn't fat.

I had been on at least two fad diets by the time I was twelve because I was "fat". I was a regular looking kid... not stick thin, but not fat by any far stretch.

Anyone around me that did not fall into the category of "model thin" looked fat to me, and that is a jacked-up way to live.

My brain works differently today, but I am faced with the task of raising Chaos, true and proper Chaos. The kind of Chaos that couldn't give a rat's hind end for "fat" or "thin," or any crappy labels. It's time to shed all the cringing and hiding I did growing up.

I gotta be busy raising Chaos like this!

...and this!

...and this!

* I do not wish ill for people struggling with eating disorders, I am only angry at those who would label a five year old girl as "fat."

Sunday Pic: And So It Begins...

I am frustrated. I have me a little rant, but I cannot find a way to get it out there without a pig's trough full of backstory and family dirt. So y'all are going to get the shortened, sanitized version.

There is a sweet little six year old girl who loves my Birdie, and we spend a bit of time with her, but rarely with her mother. Yesterday, in the course of the swimming fun , she dropped the bomb that her mama had said that Birdie was fat. She went on to inform me that she didn't think so, and that she was angry with her mom for saying it.

I calmly told her that I disagreed with her mother. She was satisfied and ran off to play with my darling Bird and LaLa. Not sure what my face looked like, but Grandma was there and informed me that this has been something that has been troubling Misssixyearold for a few days. She has brought it up to Grandma several times, and that Misssixyearold has said if anyone calls Birdie "fat" that she will beat them up!

Who knows what her mother said. Who knows if she said it to this little girl, or in confidence to a friend, and her daughter just happened to overhear. Perhaps her mother never said such a thing at ALL. She is six, after all, and kids don't always understand everything they hear. Whatever was said, I'm sure she never meant it to get back to me or to my little girl.

Whatever. That's not what has pulled my pin.

What matters to me, is the damage is done. The bullet is in the chamber. The arrow knocked. And in Misssixyearold's world, being accused of being "fat" is a fighting offense. To her, being accused of being "fat" is a terrible thing. She appears to be aware of every nuance of insult that comes with the labeling a girl "fat."

Frankly, I am as concerned for the poison that has been fed to this little girl, as for the poison that has been offered, and will be offered to my Bird and all of Chaos. The same poison that I grew up on.

Not all little girls are going to love my Bird, and I'm willing to bet that many of them have been schooled in the same attitude by their own mothers and society at large. These children who do not love my Bird, will be using their arrows. She will learn their definitions for "fat," and what it means to be called that, because she is not stick effing thin.

I really thought that we would have at least until first grade before this kind garbage... and I thought that it would be coming from the kids.

There will be no pictures of Chaos this week.... I had thought to post a photo of Birdie, she has lost a second tooth. But now I'll have to think about it, this world hardly deserves to be graced with such beauty.

Balance

If I could just figure out a way to want to do all the things that I need and ought to do.

Sunday Pic: Paint

So the joke is pretty much on me, and my sorry attempts to post pictures of all the hard work that has been done in Chaos in the past few days. I waited till the girls were in bed and I could pick up a bit before taking the snaps of my walls a la Tequila this evening. But you can hardly tell the difference in the before pics and the afters in the low light. Not that the color jumps out at ya in real life... but there IS a difference! The thing about this color, is it appears brown, grey, green or white as the light hits it. It ROCKS, but you have to look closely, especially in the sink photos.

The kitchen sink in it's before state, complete with dirty dishes.

The sink in it's after state... notice that the color of the walls and the sink itself now are different.
To the left of the sink.

To the right of the sink (look close, you will rarely see this much countertop).

The kitchen table. Yes, the blinds have a busted out slat in the lower left hand corner. Not replacing that thing again till it's even more beat than that.

Front room .

More front room, and I will add that the biggest pain in the patootie to paint was the freaking hallway... and it just looks white in all the photos I take. Will try in daylight tomorrow. My hands hurt. Goodnight.

Sunday Pic: Tuesday

I'm thinking it would have behooved me to take a "before" pic. I didn't. Instead, I will show you about what we had in our master bath. This is the girl's bath, right off the hallway. The space is different, but the lights and mirror are exactly the same as what we had in our bathroom. Next I will put some knobs on the drawers and cabinets, but they are just plain, brushed nickel boring... and it may take me a while to get to it. So you get the "after" picture in a somewhat "before" state. And then comes the Tequila. That's the color of the paint people, the PAINT!

Taken while standing at the foot of our bed.

Taken while standing on edge of tub.
I'm thinking we could really use a spiffy new faucet, don't you agree?

Girls/Home Improvement

Before I had kids, I had always envisioned myself as the mother of a rangy pack of boys. Instead, I got girls. I love my girls, but I think it should be said that for all they cleave unto all things princess, they like the traditional "boy" stuff as well. There is not much in this household in the way of restraint, or shy and retiring. Nothing quiet about our home.

Turns out, this works for me.

I am glad to have my girls... I am glad that they are sisters, and such good sisters to each other. I know how important having sisters is, especially as I get older. There is much to admire in my own sisters. I have three sisters and two brothers, and much as I love my brothers... it's my sisters who sustain me. These women are on my mind today.

It's really kind of classic. The things they do, and their lives kind of baffle me. I don't see how they pull everything off with such aplomb, and I guess my own Chaos has them pretty much in awe as well. I feel this way about the women I call friends as well.

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Girls. Think little girls and lots of clothes. Lots of pink, purple, green and lots of sparkles. I am in over my head with the laundry, and I am thinking that at age five and three, the two older can start to be responsible for the putting away of their own clothes. Only, the chests of drawers they have are falling to pieces from the inside out. The center bar, and rails that the drawers slide on? Sawdust and unhinged metal. The slightest tug would pull the entire drawer out and THEN... picture a particularly untidy squirrels nest. Since we have put our plans to finish the basement on hold till next year (too many medical bills), it has freed up a little bit of cash for other projects. Goodbye old chests of drawers... hello Hemnes 8 drawer dresser in white! It's big, so they will be sharing.

I would insert a little Ikea rant here... but having read the blogs of Ikea customers in the past, I suspected that my own freaky experience would ensue with the purchase of Ikea stuff. I was not disappointed. Currently I estimate that I spent about 40 hours in the driving to and from, shopping at, returning, and returning, and putting together/ installing crap from Ikea. I figure that the experience is a kind of sweat equity for the furniture world.

This time estimate does not include the time spent absorbing and slavering over their catalog and website. I suspect that Dadguy cringes to think of me and the finishing/furnishing of the basement. I am a perpetual agony of "trying to get it right the first time," when facing a house project, and not an easy woman to live with in when I am in project mode. I don't handle interruptions well, while in that mode... and my life as a mother of young kids IS interruption after distraction on top of frustration. Hoping for the best!

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Oldest sister, R, and I have made a deal to help each other paint our houses (the interior). I hope to have some pictures for y'all by next Sunday Pic time. Can't promise much though, I thought for sure I would have a lovely photo of the master bathroom and it's changes (vanity light and mirror).... but I have not yet hung the new mirror. It will end up being a Tuesday Pic this week, I guess.

The color I decided to go with is Kwal Paints "Tequila." I have seen it in two separate houses, and I lurve it! Cool and relaxing... and hopefully it'll clean up better than the builders grade, whitish paint we have now. Possibly I will have an accent wall in the front room. Looking at a slightly darker color for that. Undecided. One more example of the agony and indecision of teh mama doing home improvement.

I will be back to the bloggity soon... promise!