MissMeInTheMiddle

Dog Parts

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 21:47:00 +0000

Gibby got herself snipped on Monday.

She had to be there by 8:00am and she had to spend the night. We picked her up on Tuesday afternoon at 3:00.

It was a long time to go without having a crazy puppy running around the house, especially with it being the first week of summer.

When I mentioned this to the boys on Monday - that it would probably feel weird not having her around for so long - I got some very insightful and revealing comments from each of them:

Miles - Who will I play with?

Calvin - Who will I snuggle?

Isaac - Who will I make-out with?

Its going to be a loooong-funny-terrifying summer.

Gooooooooal!

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Wed, 16 Jun 2010 19:05:00 +0000

The World is cup crazy.

We're crazy for the World Cup.

Or, the World Cup is crazy.

Any way you slice it, everybody in the entire world is going bananas for soccer right now.

That is, everybody but Americans.

Oh sure, we all like to pretend that we are getting into it a little bit more every time the big tournament rolls around. And I would say that is true. However, getting a little bit more into it each time doesn't really mean that much if we never really were that into it in the first place.

Yes, its progress. But when progress is this darn small, how can anyone even count it?

Its sold as a global event: Everybody's Doing It!
And as a chance for peace: Nation and Relation-Building At Its Best!

But I think at the heart of our people, The American People, neither of these ways of selling a soccer tournament are going to work.

We need to see how its going to benefit us personally. Is our team better than every other team so that we can brag about it to the rest of the world? Can't we just drag it out into a tournament that occurs every year for weeks and weeks on end so that we can sell as much television commercial time as possible? Can we get The Hoff and Simon Cowell to be the broadcasters of every match?

I think the more it fits into our way of doing things, the more it moves away from why the World Cup appeals to everybody else in the first place.

Its quite a booted soccer catch-22.

However, a couple of things popped into my head over the past couple of days that makes me think there might be a glimmer of hope.

One is an amazing commercial (more like a mini-film) that Nikeh as put out to be played during World Cup matches as well as news recaps, game analysis, etc. Its stunningly beautiful. Enough to make me actually want to watch some country that I've never heard of play against some other country that I'm not supposed to 'like' in a game that I totally don't get. Check it:

http://www.examiner.com/x-24394-Kobe-Bryant-Examiner~y2010m5d20-2010-FIFA-World-Cup-Nike-Write-the-Future-commercial-featuring-Kobe-Bryant

Nike is headquartered in my hometown. But that's not why I love this commercial. I think its a brilliant mix of how the rest of the world loves soccer with things Americans can relate to such as Kobe and Homer.

Plus, its got hot guys.

And that's the other way World Cup soccer is going to finally click in America.

Somebody's going to make it trendy. And that's going to make it hot. And then that's going to make it cool.

And I think that's all its going to take. I know you're asking...but who is the trendsetting group of people who will get this ball rolling (pun intended)? Think about it. It should be so obvious to you. Especially in 2010 America where this group has gone through the same exact transformation to coolness.

I'll let Samantha take this one (since she so rightfully points this out on the TV version of Sex and the City:

First its the gays. Then its the girls.

Watch out Ronaldo.

Here They Come Round Again

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 19:14:00 +0000

Just saw Hanson on "The Today Show".

I forgot that the oldest is named Isaac. Hoping that I didn't subliminally pull that name out for my Isaac because of how much I loved the song 'Mmm Bop'.

Uh-oh. I should have never written down the name of that song. Its made it automatically go straight to the turntable in my head which will now proceed to play it for the next five hours. It is a good song. I just don't want it in my head from now until "Oprah".

Snark aside, they were very gracious and I think really kind of cute when I saw them on tv this morning. And my main point of bringing them up in the first place is that their new song was good.

Really good.

And with a bit of internet digging, I found out that the whole new album is getting great reviews.

So once you get 'Mmm Bop' out of your head (the best way to do this is by uttering 'MaMaMaPokerFace' several times to yourself, that should just about do it...no haters, its the lesser of two evils), go and download their newest. Its impressive and you won't be disappointed.

Hey Jo Bros! You payin' attention?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TmG0DqhfDbY

http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/36606816/vp/37684161#37684161

Really, Dude?

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Thu, 20 May 2010 22:45:00 +0000

When Miles was in grade school, one of his best friends in the world was a girl named Alice.

We all love Alice. She's super-smart and doesn't take any crap from anyone. Just the kind of girl I always pictured with Miles. Of course they both insisted (and why wouldn't they, this all happened during their ages of 9-11) that they were just friends. He would go to her house after school and they'd watch 'Sponge Bob' and trade Pokemon cards, or she would come over here after school and they would trade books to read, etc.

It was a great friendship.

Last May, when they were still in grade school, Alice's birthday party was on the same exact day and time as his buddy Nathan's. And Miles chose to go to Alice's.

This was a quite shock to everyone in our family.

Not only was Nathan a good friend to Miles, but he also bridged the gap to Calvin, managing to be great friends with him, too. Even at the same time as Miles. This is an impressive accomplishment that their little brother hasn't even managed to achieve. Heck, I'm not sure I've even pulled it off.

Our entire family loves Nathan. He's sweet-natured and hilarious. I went to high school with his parents. And, he lives just around the corner. Nathan is our family's version of Eddie Haskell, but without everything coming out of his mouth sounding like it has a double meaning.

He's Eddie Haskell without the kiss-assiness.

There was a three-year time-span, when they were all in grade school, when the boys would get off the bus and seven minutes later, exactly seven minutes - I literally could have counted by seconds until it hit the precise seven minute mark - there'd be a knock, knock, knock on the door by Nathan. And he'd come in, take off his shoes, pet the dog, and head for the phone to call his Mom to tell her he had gotten here safely.

And while he was doing that ritual, either Rod or I would ask him - every time - "What's up, Nathan?" To which he would reply, shyly in the beginning and with knowing amusement after a year or so, "Goooood."

Me: "What's up, Nathan?"
Him: "Goooood."

It was awesome. It, for lack of a better word, tickled us. All of us.

But apparently not enough for Miles to choose Nathan's birthday party over Alice's party that year. But this was also during the last six weeks of grade school. I wondered at the time if things with Alice would start to feel a little funky to Miles once they got into Middle School.

I got a good preview of this worry at the end of the summer. Alice went on vacation with her family to Hawaii. And, according to her Mom, she spent a good chunk of her time and spending-money looking for a specific shell-type necklace for him with his name on it.

Which, of course, when you are looking for anything with the name 'Miles' on it, you are in for a pretty serious/disappointing shopping trip (unless you plan on stealing a mph traffic sign, which I'm pretty sure they would not have allowed on the airplane for the trip home). So, she settled for one with a cool wooden surf board on it which she gave to Miles with sincere satisfaction.

And which he received in the same exact manner. He wore it for weeks (which is saying something for him). He wore it to Middle School Orientation. And on the first day of school.

Then he just stopped. I haven't seen him wear it since.

And so, as so many boy-girl childhood 'friendships' go, Miles and Alice grew apart during this first year of Middle School. I think she was all-for still hanging out with him. But Miles is like any boy his age: he only wants to hang out with the guys. Or, he wants it to look like he only wants to hang out with the guys.

It totally reminds me of that part in 'Grease' when Danny and Sandy spend all summer together at the beach and then when they see each other unexpectedly at school several weeks later, John Travolta acts all cool and dickish to her in front of his buddies after she gets SO happy and excited to see him.

Danny: That's cool baby, you know how it is, rockin' and rollin' and what not.
Sandy: Danny?
Danny: That's my name, don't wear it out.
Sandy: What's the matter with you?
Danny: What's the matter with me, baby, what's the matter with you?
Sandy: What happened to the Danny Zuko I met at the beach?
Danny: Well I do not know. Maybe there's two of us. Why don't you take out a missing person's ad? Or try the yellow pages, I don't know.
Sandy: You're a fake and a phony and I wish I never laid eyes on you!

I personally like to repeat that last line of Sandy's whenever I'm feeling particularly dramatic. Its especially effective if I have a pair of pom poms to throw down on the ground as I say it. But, I digress...

The bottom line is that Miles spent this year having his free time being all about dudes. The only time he spent hanging out with a girl was the time I think he went on his first date. I wrote a post about it which you can read here:

http://www.missmeinthemiddle.com/2010/03/moms-protect-yourselves-mshb-is-serious.html

Everything else was dude-time. And not a minute with Alice.

So, I wasn't too surprised this year when we once again got two birthday party invitations with the dates and times being exactly the same, that Miles immediately chose to go to Nathan's party instead of Alice's.

The whole thing prompted me to sit him down to have a little chat (which was totally premeditated by me, a fact that I hope I didn't let on to him, otherwise he would have never done it...you Moms know what its like). We talked about appropriate ways to cool-off a friendship, and ways to get your point across without hurting people's feelings, and the different ways that girls feel and react to situations than boys do, etc.

Basically, I reiterated something I always encourage all the boys to do. And this is to try and handle all situations with grace.

I say it at least once a day. In my opinion, if you don't do something with grace then what you do doesn't matter. And I've been saying this to them since they were babies. So you can imagine my surprise when, at the end of this little learning moment/conversation with Miles, he said something really shocking.

And yet also quite self-explanatory.

I asked him what exactly made him decide to go to Nathan's party this year instead of Alice's. And his answer totally threw me. I didn't know whether to smack him in the head, or to do a coffee spit-take from laughing so hard...

"Mom, its really simple. Middle School is all about Bros Before Hos."

He immediately assured me afterwards that he doesn't generally call girls hos. He just said it this way because he knew I would think it was funny and because it gets his point across. And the thing is, he's right. I trust him. I know he feels comfortable enough with me to say that kind of thing to crack me up. Considering some of the notes, comments and awards he's been getting from Middle School, I do trust him to know his audience and to make good decisions.
I trust him enough to let him be himself.

So, I chose the spit-take. And then I laughed for about five straight minutes.

Plus, even though the word-choice is a little off, the bottom line of what he's saying is right. When you are a twelve-year-old boy, it IS bros before hos. And considering how fast that statement is totally going to flip and be the other way around, I'll take it for as long as I can.

So, you can think about him having fun tomorrow night at Nathan's birthday party, hanging with the bros.

Thankfully without a ho in sight. And hopefully when they all get back to school on Monday, Miles won't be using his new, updated Dany Zuko line so that Alice won't have to yell that he's fake and phony, wishing she'd never laid eyes on him.

Here Comes Summer...

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Tue, 18 May 2010 15:40:00 +0000

Isaac was the only child potty-trained in this house, not our old one.

So, considering the low-flow and (I want to say 'crappy' but it just seems too obvious) horrible toilets we have here, he spent a lot of time learning to pee outside.

He would just rip off his diaper or his training pants and let it flow out in the back off of our deck. And considering the fact that one or more of our toilets are clogged at one time or another, it just seemed like the easiest solution at the time.

Oh, what I have created.

Lately he has been getting off the bus, crossing the street, throwing his backpack and jacket over the fence into our backyard, and then walking around the house to go through the gate to get his stuff and then come into the house through the back door.

All of which he finds terribly hilarious since I am usually in the kitchen right where he walks in through the back door and therefore I usually get a terrible little jolt of surprise/terror when he pops unexpectedly through the wrong door.

He doesn't do it every day.

Oh, no no. He's too diabolical for that...I would then start to expect him to pop in through that door and therefore he wouldn't be able to scare me when it happens.

He keeps his options open. He's no normal, sweet, six-year-old.

Yesterday he attempted to pull-off this little trick on me. However, a couple of variables were different than the usual day, and so things just got thrown totally off. So we then got an outcome that was even more unexpected and therefore not good. Not at all good.

The two older boys, however, were thrilled.

First of all, when he got off the bus, I was in the TV room, not the kitchen, as per usual. Also, the dogs were in the backyard when he came in through the gate. They are usually in the house. Finally, the back door he usually pops through was locked.

So he was bombarded by dogs the minute he went into the yard. And he saw me sitting there, watching the news, the minute he got onto the deck, so he knew he wasn't going to get to scare me. And with the door being locked, he couldn't run right into the house and do the thing he normally does when he first gets home.

OK, wait...it looks like I forgot to mention one important thing about his routine. Isaac has to pee. Every single day when he finally gets into the house, that's the first thing he does. Big pee. Like he's been drinking Gatorade all afternoon, holding-it since lunch, and having Calvin step repeatedly on his bladder on the way home on the bus. Big pee.

So, these changes all led to one thing. And I hope you see where I'm headed here...

That's right. I looked out the window from our TV room just in time to see him standing there with his pants and underwear dropped to his feet, peeing off our deck.

Which, OK, its not the best thing in the world, but, like I mentioned, that's how he learned to pee without a diaper, so its not the worst thing in the world, either. Plus it looked like it was going to rain soon.

But what didn't fit in with this excuse, or anything else I've described here was this: not only was he half-naked and peeing in full-view off our deck, he also just-so happened to be peeing on the dog.

You heard right: Isaac peed on the dog.

Can you imagine how many times I heard that sentence yesterday? I can't believe Isaac peed on the dog. Do you remember when I peed on the dog? I can't wait to tell people at school that Isaac peed on the dog. Its like that time Isaac peed on the dog.

Which all would be funny if it weren't so soon. Just too soon.

But what's even possibly more reprehensible is the fact that after I saw Isaac pee on the dog, I had a very serious choice to make. I could immediately grab her and run her up to the bathtub and clean her up (and make Isaac help me, natch). OR I could wait until this morning when I miraculously had her first-ever grooming appointment scheduled, but which would mean that we would have to keep her overnight knowing that she had been peed on.

Guess which one I picked?

That's right. During the trip to get to Aqua Dog, I will not only be holding my breath for the three minute drive it takes to get there, but I will also be holding my head down in shame.

And later on today, when he is walking from the bus stop to the front door of our house, Isaac will also, hopefully, be holding his pee.

New Edition To The MissMe Must List

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Wed, 28 Apr 2010 17:52:00 +0000

I am absolutely loving the show on Tuesday nights at 10:00pm on NBC called 'Parenthood'.

Its good. Really good.

It is pitch-perfect when it comes to kids and not only their behavior but also how they are in relation to their parents. This goes even for adult kids with their own parents.

Plus I'll watch pretty-much anything with Lauren Graham. She is just naturally funny. Last night as she was watching her sister-in-law try on some of her old work clothes that she wore before she had kids, Graham's character looked at her hugely shoulder-padded jacket and said, "is that from the David Byrne collection, or were you once on 'Dynasty'?" The writing is great but her delivery is better.

And I'm totally crushing on Peter Krause. I never watched 'Six Feet Under' and I'm thinking I missed a great opportunity. I'm going to have to queue it up on the Netflix list.

Last night he was trying to show his nephew how to dance and not only did he put on Run DMC's 'Its Tricky' which makes me automatically love him, but he also busted out some serious old-school moves. And they were baaaad. Bad as in bad, not bad as in good.

Not since Will Smith had to try and teach Kevin James how to dance for a date in "Hitch" have I seen such a funny Hollywood dance scene.

You can watch the entire clip here (it starts with the jokes about her jackets - which also has a funny little bit about why daughters are so hard to manage - and it goes through the dancing, which starts at the 11:47 mark...do NOT stop watching until you get to that part):

http://popwatch.ew.com/2010/04/28/parenthood-pete-krause-dances/

Here is what's a little nutty about the love I have for this show: I also am now loving 'The Good Wife' which just-so happens to be on CBS at 10:00pm on Tuesday nights.

My DVR/OnDemand capabilities are very busy.

And it actually started with three shows being on at that exact time slot.

I had to give up watching "V". It wasn't too hard for me to do, but it sincerely t'd-off Miles. He and I started watching that show together in the fall, and after it took such a long break in the winter, I just couldn't go back to it. Especially not with the other shows I had going on that day and time.

So now he watches "V" alone, which is just sad for many reasons.

But I'm only one girl. I can only love so much television.

'The Good Wife' is kind of the anti-'Parenthood'. Its not funny. Or relatable. And the characters aren't even very likable.

Stay with me, here. What IS good about it is Juliana Margulis. Her performance is amazing and worth tuning in just for itself. In fact, its so good that it makes me almost understand the women behind slimy politicians who get caught at doing whatever they get caught doing. She makes me see that side of the story.

Plus she has some serious chemistry with the character Will, played by Josh Charles.

And that's what brings me to my entry to The MissMe Must List.

The last time I watched Josh Charles on television, was when he was in a show with....Peter Krause. The show was called 'Sports Night'.

And it was so damn good.

It was written by Aaron Sorkin way before he ever was creating 'The West Wing'. It was a show loosely based on the early days of ESPN's 'SportsCenter'.

But that doesn't really matter. Sorkin could have been putting on a show about any general work environment. It was the writing that made it amazing. That and the combination of Charles, Krause, and a then-unknown actress and future Desperate Housewife, Felicity Huffman.

It aired for only two years starting in 1998 and it introduced America to several then-unheard of television techniques. One was the drier non-sitcom humor that was said in extreme fast-paced deliveries. And it fought, and eventually won, a battle with the network on not having a laugh track. It also was one of the first half-hour dramedies, and it christened Sorkin's signature 'walk and talk' style of dialog.

All of which are now standard in successful half-hour network television shows.

We loved it so much that I actually bought the entire series dvd set for my brother one year for Christmas. Scott, if you are reading this, you might want to wrap that baby back up and re-gift it for me for Mother's Day or something.

So, 'Sports Night' gets the honorary space on The MissMe Must List. And while you are waiting for Netflix to send you your dvd, fill your time watching 'Parenthood' and 'The Good Wife'.

At the very least, you'll learn some bitchin' dance moves.

Love Her As You Do Your Own

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Thu, 22 Apr 2010 21:39:00 +0000

Several things came together today that pointed me towards writing about Earth Day.

Apparently, Earth Day is 40 years old today.

Which is very odd to me because I am also 40 years old. And I'm not sure I look and feel as shiny and new as Earth Day. It seems like a recent phenomena. In fact, I don't even remember hearing about Earth Day until I saw Oprah speak about it on her show several years ago.

Nothing like a little Oprah to get me to be socially conscious about something. Actually this doesn't jibe. I'm supposed to watch Oprah to see why Jennifer Aniston can't seem to stay in a relationship, or to see which pajamas Oprah is loving this year. Not why drilling for oil off Alaska is a danger to our oceans' Eco systems.

Do you remember that Earth Day episode of Oprah that I'm talking about? The one when she opened her show by saying she was going to finally settle the epic debate about how you should answer the question of "paper or plastic" at the grocery store? Of course, at the end of the show, she informed us that the big answer was...*drum roll please*..."Neither!" All we really needed was to log onto her website to purchase - natch - the Oprah cloth reusable 'green bags' and use them instead of paper OR plastic.

I had never used or even seen those reusable grocery bags until that very minute. Not even at the farmer's markets where I had been working for seven years. So, in that moment, I knew that 'Going Green' was for sure simultaneously 'Going Mainstream'.

In other words, it was the start of The Green Movement as corporate America's new Marketing Plan.

And not since the mainlining of Breast Cancer Awareness's pink ribbon have I seen a social cause get such a Middle American treatment.

I knew the pink ribbon had officially jumped the marketing shark this year when I was in the grocery store - with my reusable bag, of course - and I saw pink ribbon cupcake sprinkles for sale. You know the kind, they are in the little clear-plastic containers with holes in the top that you can use to shake little colored sugar-dots onto your favorite cupcake.

But instead of these being little dots, they were instead tiny sugar pink ribbons. This was kind of the final straw for me with that whole movement. Especially when Isaac then looked at them and excitedly said, "Look, Mom...Grandma's breast cancer is in cupcakes now!"

That's all it took for me. My Mom had just bravely fought her second round of breast cancer, in a fight that included a double mastectomy, as well as two other surgeries, months of recovery, and a couple of infections.

How could pink ribbon cupcake sprinkles possibly have made that year for her better? I know the inclination is to say that it raises funds and awareness, which I'm sure it does. But it also pisses me off. I don't like that ribbon being used to show that a certain company has a heart. It seems heavy-handed and insincere to me.

And now, similarly, companies are doing the same exact thing for Going Green.

It is being used to sell everything from potato chips (the new biodegradable bags used for Sun Chips) to t-shirts (Hanes' new polyester fiber is made out of recycled plastic bottles). Don't get me wrong. I would probably be more irritated if they weren't making the attempt to do this kind of thing. I'm just waiting for the day when they've pushed it just one step too far.

Like on the day when I'll go to the store and see little green and blue planet Earths as ice cream toppers.

We have a book that I have been reading to the boys over the past couple of Earth Days that I think does the necessary amount of awareness to this day. Its called 'On The Day You Were Born'.

We received it as a baby gift when Miles was born and it was one of those books that bridged the gap between books that kids love and are entranced by, and those that parents find interesting to read out loud, as well.

It actually made me cry the first time I read it.

It was written by Debra Frasier in 1991, when Earth Day was just a twinkle in the world's eye. It is written directly to a baby and it connects the birth of that baby to everything else that is going on in our Earth's systems on that very same day. Its opening page says:

On the eve of your birth

word of your coming

passed from animal to animal.

The reindeer told the Arctic terns,

who told the humpback whales,

who told the Pacific salmon,

who told the monarch butterflies,

who told the green turtles,

who told the European eel,

who told the busy garden warblers,

and the marvelous news migrated worldwide.

It then goes on to show, on each and every page, the other things that are going on in the world as the baby is being born. Everything from how gravity will hold the baby to the Earth, how the Sun will light its sky, how the moon will pull the ocean over the beaches where the baby will someday make his footprints, and how tall trees will silently and mysteriously make oxygen for the baby to breathe.

And then, most importantly, at the end of the book it states how the Earth has a circle of people waiting for that baby to be born so it can surround him, welcome him, and tell him how glad they are that he's here.

Its so simple. And yet its so huge. How it makes a baby being born into being part of Earth's bigger picture of daily, natural, and amazing achievements.

OK, that's an exaggeration...but I do buy a lot of them) to give as baby gifts. What could be better than giving a gift about Mother Earth to the new Mama in your own life? I repeated this idea last month when I bought two copies of 'On The Day You Were Born' for our neighbor who is having twins any day now.

I am also using my tradition as a great suggestion for you.

Buy several copies of this book to use as your go-to baby gift. When you give it as a gift, write something directly to the baby one of the inside pages. Make sure to write the date and also include your last name when you sign it (you want to be sure that the baby will know who it is when he's a grown up and/or when he passes it on to his own kids, as this is the goal of giving the book as a gift in the first place).

I like to tell the Mom who is opening the book as a gift that she can use it as something to have visitors sign when they come to visit the baby (or babies, as the case may be). I think it will be a treasure for a child to look at and to see all the people that encircled him to welcome him into the world when he was born.

The other suggestion I give the new Mom is to save the book and take it out once a year on the child's birthday to write something meaningful to him every year and then give it to him as a gift when they turn 18, or when they graduate high school, or get married, etc.

Its another great way for the 'baby' to have the book as a keepsake.

Here's the link to use to purchase the book. I hope you will appreciate it every day that you read it, but especially on Earth Day. Its really all you need to share with your kids in order for them understand how everything is connected and how they really should take time, every day, to love their Mother:
http://www.amazon.com/Day-You-Were-Born/dp/B001DUK7YK/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271971258&sr=1-4

Also, as an example of advertising that occurred during the run-up to this year's Earth Day, here are the links to the two cases of companies using this day as a marketing technique. Both, I have to admit, are extremely clever. I know this because my kids now have an empty bag of Sun Chips out on our deck waiting to see how long it will take to fully disintegrate, and they all have pointed-out the funny kids in the Hanes commercial (especially the little girl at the very end.

I never said that Earth Day marketing doesn't work.

I am just saying that its irritating that it does...

Sun Chips:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XOraijjCHLA

Hanes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gy7ZtDV0mO4

One last thought: if you go to Hanes' mainpage of their website you will also notice that they have a link to HanesPink which is, you guessed it, all the info on their breast cancer awareness programs.

See how I brought that all full-circle?

Just Shut Up and Dance

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 18:46:00 +0000

Dear Happy Pills, Please start working better. Love, Melissa.

This is the little letter I silently wrote to a bottle sitting on my kitchen counter this morning. Its a little crazy, I realize. But its also the perfect representation of where my head has been lately. Plus, don't they say that thinking you are crazy is the first sign of knowing that your aren't?

Aren't crazy, I mean?

It really is amazing to me how just a couple of things can completely throw my every day life into what I refer to as a 'funk'. Its better known as 'The Bluuuues' (I like to picture BB King saying those last two words as I write them...it makes them seem more credible and emotional).

First of all, I got an extremely thoughtful, positive, and supportive message from somebody in my 'former life' last week. And instead of it lifting me up and brightening my day (like I think would happen for normal people), it has totally made me take pause as to where I've been in my life and even to why I'm going the way I'm going.

In other words, it totally threw me off.

I am way off.

I mean, I know I am still going to head in the same direction I have been for the past nine months or so. I just feel like its leading me away from a place that I thought I knew better than maybe I really did.

And I like knowing things.

I like that I'm able to evaluate the road I've traveled with no regret in order to settle down and move on to my next destination. Things were perfectly sorted out in my head before, but it all just seems jumbled and confusing to me now.

And I don't do well with jumbled and confusing.

It makes me not be able to concentrate. And writing is the first activity that suffers. So this funk has made writing the blog take a back seat. Which also bugs me because writing really is the main thing I do that makes me feel like a real person. Which in turn, only increases my funk.

Its a vicious cycle of 'The Blues'.

There is a song in there somewhere.

And the funk grew exponentially towards the end of last week when I found out that this blog had also lost its Google sponsorship.

Apparently I unknowingly left out a required 'compliance statement' on the main page of the site and so just when I thought I was going to get my first paycheck from Google, I not only lost that pay, but I also lost all possible future advertising from them as well.

Blech.

All of it just makes me mad and pissed and disappointed and frustrated and like everything will be seemingly, endlessly bad.

Then, just for kicks, I got to throw a very mean and aggressive collections company (going after money I owe from being in the hospital, for G's sakes) on top of it all.

I'm ready to stick my head in the sand for the next month or so.

Or maybe, less dramatically, what I really need is a good pity party. A bag of double-stuffs and the season three finale of 'Mad Men' would normally do the trick.

But this is not a normal funk.

In the mean time, I heard a song on the radio a few minutes ago that actually might be the perfect kick-off to my pity party. So then I looked-up the matching YouTube video, and the party was off to a perfect start.

I'll let you know how it goes.

After all, life isn't some cheesetastic dance movie. And I'm not Lady Gaga. I can't just hear a song and watch a video and start dancing my way out of my funk.

Or...

Can I? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3xY_HSqyCs

It Is - Like Beauty - In the Eye of the Beholder...

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Sun, 11 Apr 2010 12:02:00 +0000

Last Sunday ~~I gave~~ the Easter Bunny gave Isaac an extra-fancy set of water colors from the art supply store. The kind that real artists use.

Which he received with indifferent silence.

And I know the indifference was directed towards me because he has been told - and totally believes - that the Easter Bunny has to elicit help from Moms and/or Dads because 'he just doesn't have the set up that Santa has'.

I mean, who does?

Today we got the paints out again and they went over a lot better than they did when he first opened them. He actually used them and I think he really liked them. Especially when I let him mix the colors around and he got to get a little messy. And then extra especially when I let him go get a random big chunk of wood from the backyard so he could paint all over it.

That's really tying his sensibilities into the whole concept of art.

Whatever works.

I guess not everyone likes to get good art supplies as much as I do. If the Easter Bunny would have given me something like that when I was young I would have....well, I maybe would have enjoyed the idea of the Easter Bunny a little more.

I mean, he just doesn't have the set up that Santa has, you know?

When we first moved into this house, I put my wannabe-inner-artist to work on something that I'm going to share with you here because its a quick, easy, and most importantly, inexpensive way to cover a large space.

There is a wall in my dining room that was a little problematic. I couldn't figure out what to place there. It is a space that is for sure not right for a piece of furniture. Its oddly sized and there is a weird little window in the corner. And its wainscoated. I also knew I didn't want some big, framed art piece because I, first of all, wanted the dining room table to be the focal-point (something you will truly appreciate later), plus I didn't have a lot of money to spend on that kind of thing anyway.

I had a greeting card I had saved for a long time (and have since tossed) that had a pattern and color palette that I really liked and that I thought I could use as an influence on something. Someday. And then I knew it was perfect for the dilemma I was having in the space in my dining room.

Oh, technology, you never fail to amaze me: I just Googled 'painting with many circles inside squares' and the exact card I had been carrying around with me was the first thing that popped up. Apparently its actually a painting called 'Colour Studies', by Kandinsky. So now you have a visual for what I used to get started. But I still didn't know how I would incorporate it into the space.

***Ok, I'm just going to interject here and state, officially, that I am not going to continue to use the word 'space' in relation to houses. Or rooms. Or parts of rooms. Or decorating in any way from here going forward.

Me typing and using it, as I have so far, has started to sound-off the BS-bells that I have in the back of my head. They tend to ring when I start to write a little too big for my britches. And that is sayin'. somethin'. When I hear them ring every time I use the word 'space' for something other than the big, vast place that my kids ask me scientific questions about that I usually can't answer, then I know its time to make a change.

And not to belabor the point (ha), it just feels a tad pretentious. I don't know, like some Muffy or Mitsy discussing (with their bottom jaws sticking out, natch) why they had put their Tiffany lamp on that end table because 'it just brings out the muted colors in the spaaaace'. Or like the overly-perky people competing on 'Design Star' on HGTV spouting-off on how they are going to use a 'Neo-Victorian yet totally modern influence during the challenge of decorating their spaccccce'.

Don't you just want them to simply say I love this Tiffany lamp or Neo-Victorian style so I'm going to use it in the room I'm decorating right over there? I do. So I will.***

Back to my wall. I grabbed the card and I went to one of my favorite places in the world, a store called Art Medium. This is the store to go to if you are a serious artist, or just an artist, or an art student, or anyone who knows what they are doing in relation to art.

And its also for people like me.

Who are none of those things.

Who bring in a greeting card and hope for the best.

The first thing that caught my eye was their section on canvasses. They have canvasses already pre-stretched and mounted on simple wood frames in every size and shape imaginable. So I thought about my wall, took a good look at my inspiration and picked four semi-large square canvasses.

Then I went to the paint. Which is so damn exciting for me that its just not normal. I'm getting a little sweaty just thinking about it right now. Anyway, I got eight different colors of acrylic paint that are made to look and apply just like oil paint. Then a couple of brushes (also strangely exciting) and some spray-finish, so that my art would be smudge- and dirt-proof, and then I was done.

The entire purchase was $26.40.

And that was really exciting.

But none of that shopping-happiness matched how I felt when I got home and I unpacked and unwrapped all my supplies.

And started painting.

It was so fun, oh my God, just so fun. And happy and weird and kind of intimidating, but in a good way, and liberating, and fun. Just really, really fun. When I was all done and had hung them on the wall - also made easy with the bare wood frames behind the canvas - I got the same feeling I had when I was in school and I would finish and turn in a test that I knew I knew all the answers for. Its just that self-satisfied feeling that is really great but that doesn't seem to happen very often in adulthood.

One of the many great things about art (and an essential thing when it comes to my art) is that if you do something you don't like, you just paint over it and start again. Plus, sometimes if you mess up on something it actually somehow ends up looking like a totally different thing or idea or technique that you like. That you will want to try and replicate.

So, short story shorter: I ended up painting four squares within the squares of the canvas frames. And I loved every single minute of it. Obviously.

I thought maybe they were a little simplistic (although I love the color and overall look of them), until Calvin - the true artist of the family - took a look at them and remarked that it was "good that I was going to hang them in the dining room because each one looks like a certain kind of food."

Something I totally didn't see until he pointed it out. And that right there, in a nutshell (pun intended), is the beauty of art.

Here is the finished product. And before you get all judge-y, not that I think you will, just remember how much joy I got - and still get - from it, and that its $26.40-worth of art. Supplies. $26.40-worth of art supplies. The worth of the art itself is...priceless.

Calvin, who, as I said above is my serious artist, interpreted each painting like this: the top-left picture is a piece of toast with raspberry jam, the bottom-left is a fried egg, the top-right is a slice of kiwi, and the bottom-right is a piece of green apple with peanut butter.

All of which he also helpfully likes to point out would go together to make a good, healthy breakfast.

So, go forth, you budding artists and/or decorators.

You can totally do this.

Find something that catches your eye - it could be wrapping paper, or a magazine ad, or a pair of socks for all I know. And then figure out how you could incorporate its essence and color into an abstract painting that you will love telling people that you painted yourself.

Its pretty darn fun to say. I'm not gonna lie.

And now I'm going to leave you with one final notion, lest you are coming away from this post thinking I am some overly-organized-craft-crazed-fastidious-freakin'-Martha-Mama who lives in perfection.

The next picture is of the dining room table that sits in front of these personal and pride-inducing paintings. Please note that I mentioned above that I wanted to make sure that the table itself was the focal part of the whole dining room decor.

All the 'decorating' I've done to the table-top represents my style and essence so perfectly that I've left it this way for a loooong time. And there is no way someone could leave this room without knowing that the dining room table is undoubtedly the focal point. In fact, its what they are going to remember about the room the most, if not the whole darn house itself:

The fact that all of these piles on top of the dining room table are of the boys' art supplies that I've been meaning to sort out, and reorganize, and then add in the ones that they just-so happened to get for Easter, which is what inspired me to write this post about doing art on my own in the first place, is not lost on me.

I just never knew that focal points - especially unintended ones - could be filled with so much irony.

Oh Boy

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:13:00 +0000

I've often joked about The Third Baby.

Like its more than just a person or a birth order.

Its an actual state of being. The Thiiiiird Babyyyyy... (pictured as said by an over-excited sports announcer or a gravelly-voiced narrator of a scary movie commercial).

Every once in a while it hits me how much differently I've done things with The Third Baby.

How he never had a schedule. How I never followed-through with anything with him. Never made him learn the right thing. Heck, I never even made him do the right thing.

How I would just throw him a couple of Tupperware containers and hope for the best. Hope he would entertain himself. How I let him sleep in the bed with me from about the age of 2 through the age of 5.

How he would say certain things when he was really little that instead of correcting or steering him towards saying more age-appropriate things, I would instead laugh my head off.

Not good.

Like the time he was around three years old and he was in the backseat singing his little heart out in his car seat and when I turned down the radio to hear what he was singing I heard a singsong-y melody with him singing the words, "Yoooou buuug me. Ooooh, yesss, youuuu buuuug meeeee eeee."

And I wasn't devastated. I almost spit out my coffee from laughing. I knew he was singing about me. And yet I thought it was downright hi-larious.

He was the only child I ever had to call poison control for. I caught him eating Comet. That would have never happened with the first two. Or if it had, I would have been devastated.

But when I caught The Third Baby with the Comet-circle around his lips? I just wiped it off and gave his tum a little pat. It was the husband that made me call poison control.

Poor Third Baby.

The Third Baby was mad at me once when he was four-years-old. So he said he was going to call the police on me. And, of course, I laughed it off.

That was, until a cop knocked on my door about ten minutes later.

I wouldn't have done this stuff with the first two for anything. So I didn't have the same results and behavior when they were little. They had rules and stimulating toys and watched only PBS (with the closed-caption turned on, natch, so that they could learn how to read as they were watching 'Sesame Street' to learn how to read).

And classes at the library and Mommy-and-Me swimming lessons. I read to them for hours before bed.

Not only did I hardly ever read to The Third Baby during his bed time routine, he didn't even really have a bed time routine in the first place. Who am I kidding? He didn't even have a bed time. The older two had a routine that included all that reading. They went to bed every night at the same time.

Not The Third Baby.

He's up until ten on school nights. And always has been. He was watching PG13 movies and playing non-educational video games by the time he was a toddler. He just got to watch and do what everybody else was watching and doing by that time.

I did no classes with him.

Nothing.

I remember a good family friend telling me - when I was pregnant with him - that I needed to make sure to get a lot of pictures of him.

"Melissa, make sure to take a ton of pictures. I was The Third Baby and there are virtually no pictures of me before the age of five. And we only have those pictures because I was in kindergarten and the school took them."

Ok, ok. I get you. I'm on it.

But I don't have any pictures of him from when he was a baby. In fact, its so bad that one year that's what I asked my Mom for my Christmas present: please just give me baby pictures of Isaac that you might have. Since I have none.

Since I took none.

I went to see a friend from high school once when The Third Baby was a toddler. She kept taking pictures of him out in her Mom's backyard and he was like some dazed robot following her all around. Every time her camera flash would go off he would just walk stiffly towards her like Frankenstein. He had never seen a camera flash in his face before. Or even a camera, for that matter.

I also remember having a friend - another Third Baby - at my baby shower tell me that her Mom was feeding her peanut butter and jelly sandwiches by the time she was six months old because that's what her older siblings were eating. To which her Mom screamed from the kitchen...

"But I cut the crusts off yours first!!".

A comment at which I was totally disgusted by at the time. That was until later, when I realized I had done basically the same thing on one of the many days I told my Third Baby to just go grab himself a yogurt and a banana and we'd call it dinner for that day.

But just when I would start to really freak out and/or start to feel guilty about it all, I could always get comfort in the fact that he was a good kid in general.

He had no problems in preschool and, so far, none in kindergarten. I've never gotten called in for him making the other kids eat glue or anything (although it was such a worry for me that I wrote a novel-length dissertation on both the preschool and kindergarten paperwork about how much I was concerned about the possibility of this kind of behavior, which all of his teachers have kind of laughed at during parent-teacher conferences because he does do such a good job at school).

So, ok, I always thought to myself. He's doing great in school. I've at least taught him to make good decisions and to be a good citizen.

Something I can say I've pounded into all three of them.

Just make good decisions and be a good person. If all of you can do that, I've done my job. And, so far, that's pretty-much been the case.

Even with The Third Baby.

At least that's what I thought until I got up this morning.

And that was just in time to catch The Third Baby at the front door window flipping-off all the middle-schoolers as they were walking by our house to go to the bus stop.

That's right, you read it correctly: he was standing at the window in his pajamas (because he had convinced me that he needed to stay home from school because he didn't feel well) flipping off a bunch of 12 and 13-year-olds. Which they were then laughing at hysterically. And then hitting each other on the arm as they were saying - way too loudly but who am I to say that they are the problem - "Look at Isaac...he's flipping us off!"

Maybe that 'at least he's a good person and he makes good decisions' sentiment might need to be reworked a little.

Knowing me, I'll calm myself down by how I trick my brain to excuse a lot of things about him by remembering that he was a toddler right when I first started getting sick and how he's now going through his parents divorce.

Plus, after all, he is The Third Baby.

And anything else I can come up with to make this fact not so terrifying.

But the bottom line is that he just had a different experience than the other two. I'm not going to beat myself up for it. Even when he flips-off the neighbors.

Because when I sat him down to talk to him about this horrifying incident, whom do you think he told me that he learned such a gesture?

That's right, you guessed it: his two older brothers.

So maybe its not just about how his life was different. Maybe its more about his life as a preschooler and then a kindergartner with two older brothers.

The ones that think its funny to teach him all sorts of inappropriate things.

The ones with whom I supposedly did everything 'right'...

---------

If you would like to read a post I wrote over a year ago about all the 'funny little things' I had caught The Third Baby saying up until that point, click the following link:

http://www.missmeinthemiddle.com/2009/03/number-thirty-six-comment-y-gold-31909.html

What's the Emoticon for Not Wanting to Cooperate?

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 18:50:00 +0000

The first time I was ever asked to put my pain-level on a 'scale' was when I was in labor with my first baby.

It was, as I'm sure many of you know, a terrifying scenario.

And even when my first inclination was to not be terrified, this all changed quickly due to the people running around my room whom I'd never seen before (plus one who with my luck I actually did know, but I'll get to that in a minute) who obviously had important medical things to do.

And they all had something medical to do with me and that tiny person I was waiting so - not - very patiently to meet.

And then, on top of the people creating terror by running all around, and witnessing it all, was my Mom, and Dad and his wife, not to mention the husband, and my brother, and my sister-in-law, and the chick who used to be my fill-in person at my first job right out of college when I decided that answering phones at an insurance company with a degree in Communications made perfect sense.

Wait. What the heck is she doing here?

OK. Hold on. I was just seeing things. She wasn't really there. Its because of the pain. The pain. That's what I'm talking about here. Pain.

So in that moment, one of the people running around stopped to ask me if I was in pain. Which, if she knew anything about anything, she would not ask me that question when I was most obviously in the God-fearing-worst ever-lovin' get-out-my-wooden-spoon-so-I-can-beat-her-with-it pain in all my life.

The only thing that was worse than that stupid question for me was when, after they broke my water with a big plastic hook that I think they had randomly grabbed from one of the many Granny-type hospital volunteers who quite-plainly needed it back because she was down in the lobby busily crocheting some booties for my soon-to-be very cold-toed baby boy, I was then actually asked to stand up so that all the fluid (on my list of least-favorite words of all time) could drain.

And as I was standing there draining the fluid, there was a nurse 'down below' with a huge sponge cleaning me up. From all the fluid.

And I knew her from high school.

But it wasn't like I knew-her, knew her. We just had some of the same friends. So I knew her enough to not be able to pull-off pretending that I didn't know her, but I didn't know her enough to joke about the fact that I hadn't seen her since I was seventeen and yet there she was, sponging-up my hugely naked pregnant body from all the fluid.

All while helpfully commenting on how she had never seen so much fluid.

But this isn't the main part of my story. That was all before. Before the important pain part which is what I am really talking about here.

The pain (just try and not picture Tattoo from 'Fantasy Island' while reading that part).

The pain. The pain.

So, the nurse asked me to put my pain on a scale from 1-10. And, just so I had something to picture in my head - in case I was one of those 'visual learners' I guess - there was a little happy face (or not happy, depending on the pain-level) that accompanied every-other number up the scale.

A super-happy 'hey let's forget this baby-having stuff and go have a picnic instead' happy face went with the number zero. First of all, how could they assume there were women in labor who actually needed the number zero on their pain scale? Who are these women?

Then there was a slight variation of the look of pain in each emotion on the face that went with every-other number. This went until all the way up to a super-sad 'hey let's forget this baby-having stuff and go lay down and cry and scream until the vein in our neck pops instead' sad face that went with the number ten.

And there is always a picture of it hanging on the wall of the hospital room.

Every hospital room.

When the nurse (a different one than the one from high school, thank goodness) asked me this question for the first time that day (and my first time ever), my answer made her belt out a laugh. Unintentionally I can assure you. It was like her entire body lunged forward as all the air was coughed-out at the same exact moment she decided to laugh.

I think it was part amusement and part dread.

"Melissa, if you were to put your pain on a scale from 0-10 with ten being the worse pain imaginable, what number would you give?"

Uhhh. Hmmm. Well... (I was sincerely scared to fail at my very first-ever test at motherhood...) Hmmm... I...

I think I would say that my labor pain is at a six. point. three. ...

And cue the before-mentioned gut-laugh.

She promptly then told me that she had been a nurse for over 20 years, and nobody, ever, had ever given her a number at a random decibel point. Ever.

She obviously had never been my nurse before.

That experience set the tone for my not-so-great relationship with that darn pain scale. Because in that moment, there was no way I could know that I would - later in life - be asked that question in a non-labor-related way on a very regular basis.

That is to say, that I would be in pain so regularly that I would have to relay a number on that pain scale all the time.

Ten years (and two more ten-pound baby boys) after giving birth to that baby, I was diagnosed with a rare auto-immune disease called Behcet's Disease. And I won't go into all the gory details and symptoms other than to say that it 'presents' - as I've learned to copy from how all of my 12 doctors say - very similarly to a combination of Lupus and Rheumatoid Arthritis.

So pain is a big part of it.

And wouldn't you know, every time I go to an appointment (which is a lot), or to the ER (which isn't a lot, but enough), or stay in the hospital (which is more than enough) that pain scale with the silly little faces on it is hanging there on the wall.

Mocking me.

Waiting for me to make a decision.

Waiting for me to pick an arbitrary number to describe how damn miserable I am. When it would all just be so much easier for me if I could just say that I'm damn miserable.

But, I have to pick a number, so I do. And after the gut-laughter of that first labor nurse, I always make sure to pick a whole number. Sometimes its really hard. Sometimes the numbers don't mean the same thing to me. Sometimes I pick a 3 when I feel really bad, when I'd picked a 3 several months before when I felt pretty good.

Yesterday the number scale once again got the best of me.

I go every four weeks up to the Oregon Health and Sciences University hospital to get an infusion. The medicine they give me is in the chemo family and it does make me feel better, after a few days. That it costs over $300k per year for my insurance company - which they then pass-on a percentage of that cost to me - is a fact from which I'm just going to mention and then move forward.

Because it does enough for me that its almost worth that much, even though nobody offers me a scale to ask how much it hurts when I get those bills.

I can feel my body needing the med for several days before my infusion appointments. Like my system knows that the med has been all used up from the infusion the month before, and that its time to go and re-fill my tank. So by the time I get to my monthly infusion, I'm pretty miserable.

Which means I'm in pain.

And so the first thing the infusion nurses ask me is...you guessed it...what my pain level is and of course they have the handy scale hanging on the wall there for me to use in picking the proper number.

Yesterday I told Heather - one of two of my favorite nurses - that I was totally miserable. That my pain was at a five. To which she gave her usual, "Oooh, Honey" response.

And then about a half-hour later, another patient came into the infusion clinic. She was asked the same question, with the same scale. Her answer was, "I feel pretty good today, so I would put it at a five."

Which made me smile to myself.

But when the third person came in - he was about an hour later - and answered with the same number, "I was really bad this morning, but its improving a little, so I'd say I am at a five," I wanted to rip that thing off the wall and very dramatically throw it into the paper shredder.

And I bet the other two patients sitting there with me would want to do the same thing.

But peoples' charts are made with those numbers. Records are kept. Medical decisions are made. It all just seems a little silly that we have to make such an important choice based upon stick drawings that my six-year-old could do.

No offense to the six-year-old.

But I will keep doing it. I'll keep giving them a number with the hope that it doesn't effect anything too important in my medical care.

But I don't like the rule at all.

In fact, I'd give it an 8.6.

So Burned

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 23:00:00 +0000

I added a little section to my Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup entry from yesterday about one of my Mom's many special talents (and, yes, you are sensing things correctly, because it is sincerely possible that I'm kissing up). You can read the whole excerpt here...

Grab all of the following non-edible vegetables left in your fridge that you think you should have thrown-away - but haven't - but know you will never eat:

Super-rubbery celery
Kind-of brownish white onion
Non-crunchy carrots

This is where I should mention/admit a trait that I possess that I know I got from my Mother. She is an absolute expert at spending $10 on gas to drive across town in order to use a 20%-off coupon on an item in a specific store that will ultimately save her all of $1.22 on a pair of shoes she will wear 3 times.

But I've somehow applied this logic to food. Because I will go to the grocery store to spend $5.99 on a deli-roasted chicken in order to save the money I would have wasted by throwing away $.44 worth of old celery.

And even with being totally conscious of this phenomena, its still exciting for me to use up that celery. Thank you, Lois.

And then, to make it just a little more eye-catching, I put a notice up on FaceBook about it (it has occurred to me in this moment that I did spend a lot of time trying to get attention from my Mommy today about this. Yes, I'm 40 years old...):

Melissa Meddock Larson Hey Lois! I woke up and just HAD to add a little ditty about YOU to my recipe/story about my recipe, in my latest blog entry. Can't figure out why I didn't think of it in the first place. See if you can notice which part I added...

Apparently all of these attempts ruffled a feather or two in her Special Easter Bonnet of Good Cooking. But in a good way. I think.

First she responded to my comment on FaceBook by saying:

Lois Meddock
Probably the part about using gas to save $1.99 with a coupon....I don't do that any more:)

And then she added her two cents (pun intended) in the comments section after the blog entry as shown here:

Lois said...: The part about spending $5.99 on the chicken to save 44 cents worth of celery makes me think of freezing 20 cents worth of old bananas to make banana bread that no one really liked but I sure didn't want to waste those bananas....seems like I have seen some frozen bananas in your freezer....I guess I taught you well:)

And it was that last one that hit home.

She is right.

In fact she is so right that I have decided to take the semi-embarrassing step of showing you just how right she is. Who am I kidding? There is nothing semi about it...

The following picture is of the inside door to my freezer. See if you can figure out what all those black things are.

And, I'll give you a little hint: no, they are not dead birds.

Yes, I have been saving overripe bananas for about 18 months now. The entire top shelf of the freezer door is full of them. And, just for good measure, because God forbid I'd run out of them, I also have a big bunch shoved into the middle of the bottom shelf of the freezer door.

I love how she wrote it, however, in her comment as 'seems I have seen some frozen bananas in your freezer'. Yes, there are some bananas in my freezer.

Have I ever used these bananas for anything? No. Maybe there was one loaf of banana bread back in October of last year or something, if my memory serves me right.

But will I throw any of them away? Again, that's a no.

I am sure there is a special word for people who share this affliction with me. If anybody out there knows what it is, Releasalottabanana Phobia or something, please be sure to inform me so that I can get the proper treatment that I so obviously need.

In the mean time, touche, Lois.

Touche.

Not only have you taught me well, but you also know me well.

--------

Here's the link to read the entire Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup blog entry:

http://www.missmeinthemiddle.com/2010/03/theres-more-than-one-way-to-skin.html

There's More Than One Way To Skin A Chicken

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 16:59:00 +0000

Ok, so that's not exactly how the saying goes.

But, we had one of those grocery-store deli chickens last night for dinner which means that tonight's dinner will be Round 2.

And Round 2 of those pre-roasted store-bought chickens is much more exciting for me than the first night we enjoy them, also known as Round 1. Its because this is the day I use it to make homemade chicken noodle soup.

I guess I can take the credit and say that this is my recipe. But, if I'm being totally honest, which...you know, I guess is important here, this recipe is actually a mash-up of two different recipes.

One from my Mom, natch.

And one from my friend and neighbor, Tricia, who has been so kind as to bring me homemade chicken noodle soup on more than one occasion.

Not sure what I ever did to deserve such a nice gesture, but I am not going to question it to the point of never having some delivered again.

Because, oh, how I love that damn soup.

So, here's my version. And T, if you are reading this...thank you and I'm sorry.

Thank you for all the times you have brought me that soup (which Calvin is never afraid to say out loud is better than mine and I don't get mad because I agree with him). And I'm sorry that I am putting something out there that does not live up to your version. I'm just doing what I can to make the world a better place.

One bowl of soup at a time.

To everyone else, if you are going to actually make this recipe - and not just read about it - just you wait until you see all the things you can use-up from your kitchen. If you are anything like me, it will be oddly exciting for you to stretch a meal out of what will feel like absolutely nothing.

Because we are in a recession, you know...

Melissa's Homemade Chicken Noodle Soup

***One quick side-note/warning: I write recipes like I write blog entries - as I'm sure you have already gathered at this point - really long and with a lot of not-so-necessary side information. Like the words you are reading right this very second: not really imperative to the overall recipe, but just kind of necessary for me in order to get through the actual writing the recipe part. Bear with me, it will be worth it. Think of the children. And the soup.***

To make the chicken stock:

1 leftover roasted chicken

Like I said above, I always use the grocery store's deli-version of a roasted chicken. This is mainly because its easy and then I feel really excited and accomplished for using one chicken for two meals. But, if you want to roast your own darn chicken, please, don't let me stop you. I'm just not going to tell you how to do it.

Grab all of the following non-edible vegetables left in your fridge that you think you should have thrown-away - but haven't - but know you will never eat:

Super-rubbery celery
Kind-of brownish white onion
Non-crunchy carrots

This is where I should mention/admit a trait that I possess that I know I got from my Mother. She is an absolute expert at spending $10 on gas to drive across town in order to use a 20%-off coupon on an item in a specific store that will ultimately save her all of $1.22 on a pair of shoes she will wear 3 times.

But I've somehow applied this logic to food. Because I will go to the grocery store to spend $5.99 on a deli-roasted chicken in order to save the money I would have wasted by throwing away $.44 worth of old celery.

And even with being totally conscious of this phenomena, its still exciting for me to use up that celery. Thank you, Lois.

But if you have actual edible versions of the above veggies, then, by all means, you can use them, too. Just set some of each aside to use in the actual soup part of the recipe.

Salt and pepper to taste

I like to use kosher salt, but I'm not too picky about pepper other than it has to be black. Like my men. C'mon...you KNOW I can't resist saying this, even though its not technically true. At least not always. I'm just seeing if you are paying attention.

Also, I kind of like a lot of salt, but that's just me. Don't forget that the celery will add natural salt to the stock (just as the onion will give it a little spice and the carrots will give it a little sweetness). If you want to just add a little salt here for the stock and then add more later for the soup, that's a good plan. If not, that's ok, too.

Put the chicken and all the veggies (you don't even need to cut them up) and the S and P in a big pot. Fill the pot with water until everything inside is submerged.

Bring to a boil and then turn the heat down until it stays simmering. You will want to leave it on the stove top simmering until all the meat has cooked off the chicken.

This will make your chicken stock.

Now a few words about this stock.

First, if you are going to be home all day on the day you make this soup, start your stock in the morning. There are a couple of advantages to this. One is that your house will then smell like Thanksgiving dinner all day, which, if its raining outside, will make everything feel especially warm and snuggly. See how I'm creating ambiance for you? Its because I care.

Also, if you let it cook all day, the water will cook down, so you will need to add more as you go. It will just make the chicken stock that much more savory and yummy.

Once you have enough stock for your soup (it should have simmered for a minimum of two hours), its time for what Calvin, my assistant chef, calls the cool yet gross part of the recipe.

Put the biggest mixing bowl you have on your counter top. Then place a strainer inside of it. Very carefully pour your stock through the strainer and into the mixing bowl.

Let this sit until the ingredients left in the strainer have cooled enough to touch.

Take the strainer with all that leftover chicken, bones, and cooked-down veggies and set it aside. Pour all the stock that went into the mixing bowl back into the pot on the stove.

If, at this point you are just sick and tired of the whole process, feel free to freeze the stock instead of putting it back on the stove top. Chicken stock - especially good, homemade stock like this - is amazing for use all in all sorts of dishes. Its why grocery stores sell the inferior version of it in those cardboard cartons.

But if you are ready to soldier-on and finish your soup, take the strainer over to the sink, get out a bowl and start pulling all the bits of meat from the chicken that you can get.

This is the most time-consuming part of the process. But the more chicken you pull, the more hearty your soup will be, so buck-up. Pull up a stool if you have to.

Also, this is where you want to make sure you don't have ANY chicken bones mixed in with the meat. Because unless you want to put your Heimlich Maneuver skills to practice in the middle of dinner, there really isn't any other point in having bones end up in your soup.

Once you have gone through every part of the items left in the strainer and have pulled all the chicken meat out of it, you should have a nice-sized bowl of chicken meat leftover. Put all of that meat back into your chicken stock in the pot and bring it to a boil. Throw away everything else left in the strainer.

Add 1.5 cups (or more or less, however you think you might like it) of each of the same three vegetables you used to flavor your stock, sliced to your desired size and shape:

celery
white onion
carrots

Now comes the secret ingredient. And, no, the secret ingredient isn't 'love'. There is obviously plenty of that in this soup, its just not so much a secret.

I found out about these noodles from Tricia. She grew up in Ohio and so that is where she learned to cook with them. And since, thanks to The Cooking Gods, we have been able to find them here in Oregon, my Mom has even officially switched to using them. She says they are the closest thing to the homemade noodles her Mom used to make.

1 Package of Reames Frozen Noodles

If you don't have these specific noodles - and every store has them, you just might have to search the frozen-food department - then don't bother to finish making the soup. Just freeze everything for another day.

Because it won't be the same without the Reames noodles and it just will make you sad. Or...me. It will just make me sad.

I suppose you can try and use those disgusting dried swirly egg noodles but please don't ever tell me about it because I will be sincerely disappointed in you.

Add the package and cook them in the stock, following the directions on the package for the amount of time they should be cooked.

This is also when you will want to make sure your soup is seasoned with the salt and pepper to your taste.

Once the noodles are cooked, the veggies should also be done.

I like my veggies like I like my men - just a little crunchy, a little soft in the middle, but not mushy.

Serve your soup with bread and salad or grilled cheese sandwiches or however you think will satisfy the hungry people in your life. And like I said in my post about my chocolate chip cookie recipe, I have absolutely no clue on how much this recipe yields. Its different every time and so you will just have to work it out for yourself.

Also, you can freeze your leftovers. The soup tastes ok after its been thawed, but the noodles are a little on the blouckchkl side, texture-wise.

Finally, if you DO make it, please make sure to let me know how it goes.

And by the way, I like my recipe reviews like I like my men: highly complimentary, if not always entirely honest.

Remember, a recipe like this is made with love and that's most definitely what you should feel when you are eating - and most importantly - sharing it. So make an extra-big batch if you have to and then go and give some to a person in your life.

Trust me. They will like the gesture. And they will love the soup.

The Mommy-Back Guarantee

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 13:28:00 +0000

I am one lucky lady. I start each and every day in a win-win situation.

You see, I have this rule. It takes place in the morning. Every morning. And its been the same since my oldest son started riding the bus...

As the boys are on their way out the door, they have to stop and give me a kiss goodbye before they leave.

It seems simple enough.

However, there are many days when they just don't feel like doing this. Or they've been dilly-dallying around and think they don't have time for it. Or they just forget altogether.

But this is where my Mommy-Back Guarantee comes in. If any of these things happen and they somehow don't come back to give their Mommy a kiss, I've told them that I will follow them to the bus stop and make them give me one there. In front of everyone.

Thus embarrassing them from that day forward until the end of school. Amen.

Like I said, its win-win.

There are many factors each day that lead to whether they feel they can push their luck on this subject with me or not.

First, I know they make a judgment based on how I look each morning. If I'm in a cami with no bra, cutoff sweats that I should have thrown away four years ago, and I haven't washed my hair in a couple of days?

Those suckers are coming at me with their lips puckered from ten feet away.

Also, if they have focused on the clock, making sure that they have plenty of time to stop and give me a kiss, their mornings seem to go a lot smoother. They don't hurry their way through some fake L.A. air-kiss which would in turn make them worry that it wasn't enough of a kiss to keep me from showing up at their bus stop, calling them out.

My attitude seems to also effect their desire to push their luck with me. If I'm Cranky McSpanky (as we call people in our house who need to have an attitude adjustment) on a particular morning, they know better than to try and skip their kiss because they can picture me using the moment of truth, kissing them at the bus stop, to snap myself out of my funky mood.

Because they think nothing would make me happier. And they are totally right.

So, when Calvin and Isaac tried to run out the door without living up to their end of the deal this morning, I did my first warning. This is when I very calmly remind them (and, by 'very calmly remind them' I mean I scream out the door as they are heading down the driveway) that they had better get back and give me a smooch or I am going to get it from them in front of their friends at the bus stop.

If that doesn't work, I sometimes have to move on to warning number two which is when I do an imitation of my own self. Its when I elevate and escalate my voice in order to say, "Hooooney! I'm coming over to see you at the buuuuus stop! Your Mooooommy wants to give you a little kiiiiissy before you go to school! I want to make sure you don't forget me and get saaaaad while you are gone today!"

If you know me personally, I'm sure you can totally picture me doing these techniques. One way or the other always works.

I know this because I will hear what sounds like the cartoon version of car breaks screeching under their heels as they abruptly stop, slump their shoulders, slowly turn, and waa-waa-waaaaa their way back to the door to kiss their Mom.

As it should be.

And then I had Miles leaving for school about 40 minutes later. He's a savvy middle-schooler so he has it down. He saw his buddies walking up the street to come and get him to walk to the bus stop. And then he ducked behind a wall in the kitchen and said, "hurry up, Mom...my friends are almost here so kiss me and get it over with."

I wrote a little bit about this exact thing with Miles last month. Maybe this is why he is so good about doing it the right way now:

http://www.missmeinthemiddle.com/2010/02/oh-no-he-di-int.html

Ah, the oldest child. The only one I've trained properly so far. And it only took me threatening him all the way through grade school to do it.

But here's what I love the most about this whole thing (even more than the prospect of embarrassing them at the bus stop). And its what NONE of them have ever stopped to consider.

Even if they have, at some point, escaped without their morning kiss, I have never followed them to the bus stop. I have never kissed them in front of their friends. And the truth is, I never would.

But, oh how putting a little fear in their hearts is fun for me.

And when I start to worry that this is a really weird thing to do to my own kids, I just think about my Mom and her own Mommy-Back Guarantee.

Because I'm actually carrying on a proud family tradition.

My younger brother, Scott, played baseball as far back as I can remember, what seems to be my entire childhood and teenage years. I think it even went as far back as first grade. And he played all the way through his senior year.

That's a lot of watched baseball games.

My Mom and I would leave to go to the ball field in time to watch the first inning. But my Dad and brother, like so many other kids who play sports, would always leave really early to get to the field in plenty of time for warming up before the game.

They would go out the door and my brother would say the same exact thing every single time "ok, Mom, see you up there."

And then this is when she would employ her own Mommy-Back Guarantee. Which, if you know Lois personally, is something you can completely picture her doing:

"Ok, honey. See you there. Good luck. And, don't forget, I'll be wearing MY RAAAALLY OUTFIIIIT."

She was a cheerleader in high school (it was the 60s and they were actually called 'yell queens') and she had saved all of the outfits and uniforms. And, oh how she loved to yell that as he was walking out the door. That last part of her threat - my raaaally outfiiit - would always come out in the weirdest, non-my-mom, sing-songy voice that normally would never come out of her mouth.

It actually sounded a lot like the voice I use when I remind the boys that their Mommy is coming over to kiss them at the bus stop.

Oh. Its all making so much sense to me now.

And bless him, my brother spent 1st through 12th grade thinking that each time she said that line would be the time that she was actually going to follow through on it.

The poor kid lived in terror about it for his entire amateur baseball career.

He'd be out there practicing catching fly balls or something and he'd see my Mom and I pull into the parking lot and the thought would temporarily paralyze his warm-ups...

Oh God, she's going to be wearing her rally outfit. This is the day she's actually going to do it. And the fear would hit him hard until he would catch a glimpse of us, and she would, of course, be dressed like a normal Mom.

It was this way every single time. For twelve years. And, just like me and the bus-stop kissing, she never showed up to a game wearing one of those rally outfits. She never really planned on doing it and she never did do it. But still, he never lost the fear that it was going to happen.

Apparently this is something that goes back even further than I knew.

I was mentioning to my Mom today that it really is weird, how much satisfaction I get - and I know she got - out of just threatening to embarrass them. Not even doing the actual embarrassing part. Just the threatening of the embarrassing part was all we needed.

I spent some serious time today wondering if the whole thing is truly abnormal. Just totally off. And this is when she told me something that made us seem ok.

Normal even.

My Granny, Leona, her Mom, would employ a little Mommy-Back Guarantee of her own. And it was all about how loud - and how bad - she was going to sing at church every Sunday.

On the way, in the car, each and every Sunday, she would make sure to tell my Mom's two older brothers that she was excited to sing that day in church. That that was the day that she felt like really belting one out for The Lord.

And then she would proceed to practice this singing - this really really bad singing (which, if you knew Granny personally, this wouldn't have been too much of a stretch for her) - all the way to church.

And those two boys would live in fear that she was going to sit next to them that morning and sing really horribly in order to draw all sorts of attention - bad attention - over to where they were. That she was going to feel the spirit so much that day that she'd have to just sing out loud about it.

But, of course, it never happened. She would say this on her way to church every week, but she would never actually do it when they got there. She never even planned on doing it.

She would just sing quietly along with everybody else in the pews.

And yet, just like my boys and my brother, it never occurred to my uncles that she wasn't going to do it. They lived in total terror of it every single week.

This makes me so happy.

Not just because I know that I am enjoying some somewhat normal parenting fun. At least normal for my family. No, this mostly makes me happy because I love that I sometimes just automatically do the same kinds of things that my Mom and Granny did. Sometimes without even knowing it.

Because Granny was - and my Mom is - amazingly funny women to be around.

So the next time I'm standing on my front porch, in my worn and too-short bathrobe, getting ready to remind the boys to come back and kiss their Mommy, I'm going to picture my own Mom in her blue and white 1960s-era high school rally outfit, cheering and yelling her way through nine innings of 1980s baseball.

And I'm going to picture Granny, sitting in church, singin' her little heart out. As loud and as bad as she could.

But this time I'm also going to picture every one of those boys who seem to live in fear all too easily - my three sons, my little brother, and my two uncles - all sitting around her, listening to her sing.

And not being embarrassed about it at all.

You're One, Too, And I Bet You Don't Even Know It...

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 08:47:00 +0000

You know how a certain subject or thing will pop into your life a bunch of times out of nowhere? Like that item has decided to become your personal theme for the week or month? Usually its something that you haven't given any thought to in a loooong time, but then, out of the blue, it will be everywhere you look...

Like when you think you might want to buy a red minivan and then, all of a sudden, you see nothing but red minivans everywhere you go.

The theme, this week, for me, was poetry.

You heard me right: poetry.

It started when I read that HarperCollins announced on Monday that they will be releasing a book of previously unpublished poetry from Shel Silverstein in the fall of 2011.

That little tidbit stopped me in my tracks and made me think about the book we had when I was little that's an anthology of his poetry called 'Where the Sidewalk Ends'. I love that book. I remember reading the poetry in the book and then seeing his picture on the back cover. The two things never seemed to quite match to me.

Plus, who among us doesn't love Silverstein's 'The Giving Tree'? In my opinion, that book is a classic. That's the book of his that The Johnson's had. I remember I would grab it off Monica's coffee table in the living room, sit down in her big brown leather chair and cry my eyes out every single time.

The fact that 'The Giving Tree' was first published in 1964 is astounding to me because its still so current and appropriate. It should be read to all children to teach them about life and death and the meaning of it all.

Actually, maybe even all non-children should be reading that book to learn about life and death and the meaning of it all.

To extend my poetry theme, a couple of days ago Isaac decided to step over the line that represents when a child moves from taking time to look, sound, and figure-out words, to just full-on reading.

Like he went from crawling to sprinting with nothing in-between. And I felt like I could see the exact moment when it all clicked.

The first book he picked up to sit down and read to himself, cover to cover was "A Cat In The Hat' by Dr. Seuss. The kid has good taste. Plus he loves to rhyme.

And he and Dr. Seuss share their March 2nd birthday together.

It reminded me of how much rhyming we do at our house. And its A LOT. Actually, I do most of it. And it usually surrounds all the 'little 'commands' I find myself saying over and over every day.

I am sure it doesn't qualify as poetry. But I think the rhyming part makes the repetition part more bearable. Its also very useful because when I use these commands I don't actually have to come up with any of their names first, a problem I've had since there was more than one of them.

Here is a select-few of the lines I know I say on an at least once-a-day basis:

Have a seat, Pete.
You're a sweaty-head-Ted.
Scoot your boot, Cutie-Cute.
Let's go, Joe.
You are funny, Snuggle Bunny.
Eat your snack, Jack.
Bottoms-up, Buttercup (is also be used when I need a smooch by saying 'Pucker-up, Buttercup').
Ready, Freddie?
That's not your best bet, Chet.
Take a chill pill, Phil.
Don't you sass me, Mister Sister (they especially love that one).
What's your plan, Stan?

OK, now that I've written that last one, I think I might have come up with a new version of Paul Simon's '50 Ways To Leave Your Lover'. But mine would be a poem or a song about how to get your kids to actually. do. something.

'50 Ways to Boss Your Kids'.

I had absolutely NO idea how much I say these little phrases. That was, until I threw the subject out there to the boys: "Hey, you guys? I feel like I say a bunch of one-line rhyming phrases when I'm trying to get you to do something, but now I can't think of any of them."

They then proceeded to rattle-off that list in ten seconds flat, all three of them listing them off at the same time.

Poetry also played a part for me in all of the hoping and praying that was done for our dear friend, Raelyn, and the battle with cancer that she fought and lost this week. I found myself thinking about John Donne's poem 'No Man Is An Island'.

If my memory from high school serves me correctly, that poem is not only about how we are all connected, but also about how if one person passes, the rest of us pass on a little bit as well.

I can't think of a better poem to think about in relation to Raelyn at the end of her struggle.

No Man Is An Island

No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.

If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends`s or of thine own were.

Any man`s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

Finally, on a bit of a lighter note, I saw today that next week marks the start of National Poetry Month. Something I'm sure you've all had on your April calendars for a long, anticipated time.

In honor of that, as well as in keeping with this theme I seem to have gotten myself into, I'm going to use the opportunity to include a piece here that I've been working on for a while:

Captcha The Raptcha

Emergent. He,
low-paying and smearing.

Studying Leverett.
Canning Burdwan.

Oil jadda in lenroot.

Zincing was
scaling the medical.

Our Nitrates were
eulogizing before
weeping Connecticut.

And Botswana South.

Bedded in 1980.

I am really glad that National Poetry Month's first official day is April 1st.

April Fool's Day.

I love it because this 'Captcha The Raptcha' poem that I wrote is actually just the words I've been saving every time I post a link on FaceBook.

You know, when you write a status update and you want to include a link to some website and before FaceBook will post it on the screen, their software asks you to type random words (called Captchas) into a little box so that they know its a person doing the posting and not some crazy spammer or spyware?

Well, those are the words that became my poem.

Every time I posted a link and had to type two of those words, I would add them to a list I was keeping.

What you read above is exactly the captchas I got, and in the same exact order (I only added punctuation, italics, and conjunctions) that I got them. Even the capitalization was the same.

John Donne its not. Obviously.

But I bet I had you thinking, for a second or two while you first read it, that it was an ok, maybe even an interesting, poem. Of course now that you know how I 'wrote' it, I'm sure the whole thing will seem like serious mumbo-jumbo.

But I do wonder if I've tapped into something here. I should just keep saving those captchas and keep stringing them together for poetry. I could become a new-media poetry sensation.

Actually, now that I just read it one more time, maybe not.

Its probably not my best bet. Chet.

Have It All? Then For Goodness Sakes, Sit Down For A Minute...

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 23:14:00 +0000

I ran across a contest today that, if I won, would give me a trip for 2 to a women's conference in California. Which, ok, I guess that's some motivation for me to spend a little time on it.

But I wasn't fully convinced.

That was, not until I read through the entire 'prize list' and saw that the winner would also be given a one-on-one meeting with financial guru Suze Orman.

Sold!

You would only need to see the details of my current financial life to know why this little bit of information gave me the kick in the bootie I needed to sit down and start writing. I think a meeting with Suze Orman would give me the tough-love, if not the b-slap, I probably need in this department.

To enter the contest, I was required to register on the conference's website and then answer 'one simple question':

What does 'having it all' mean to a woman in 2010?

I was actually at a bit of a loss to come up with an answer to such a broad question (no pun intended). I had to put some serious thought into it, on a day when I really wasn't planning on doing much thinking.

And then, to make it even worse, the answer had to be in 200 words or less.

They obviously don't know me at all (or read any of my entries here...). But, I finally was able to come up with a - I think - respectable answer and then I edited and edited until I got it down to 200 words.

Exactly 200 words.

I am posting my answer here. I'm sincerely curious to know what you would say as your own answer to this question. So, when you are done reading mine, I would LOVE it if you could put your answer in the comments section at the bottom of this post.

In addition, I've provided the link if you want to also enter the contest. But just think, if you only put your answer here in the comments section, and not on the entry-form on the contest website, you can use as many words as your little heart desires. Yes, yes, I'm trying to eliminate the competition.

What does having it all mean to a woman in 2010?

When I was 23 I saw Governor Ann Richards speak.

Somebody asked her this same question. Her answer rocked me and changed the trajectory of my life: "Of course you can have it all. You just don't have to have it all at the same exact time."
Its that simple.
Women don't realize how much time we DO have to do what's necessary to 'have it all'. We think it all has to be happening at once.
It doesn't.
If you want to focus on babies, do it. If you're headed up the ladder and want to wait, then wait. Pick one or two things at a time and be good at them.
Don't put so much pressure on yourself.
Step back. Somethings we push for don't mean anything. If you think you DON'T 'have it all', you might think otherwise if you took a minute to realize what you DO have.
I bet its more than enough.
We are blessed with choices. Now its a matter of making those choices.
So, don't panic. Take time to figure out what's right for you right now. Once this happens, others around you - children, co-workers, or friends - will benefit as well.
Melissa Larson
I'm 40 and I live in Portland, Oregon. I write a blog: http://www.missmeinthemiddle.com/ Also, I'm a fairly happy, nearly divorced, totally broke, auto-immune-sick mom to 3 boys. And I take it NICE and easy...

One kind-of weird/annoying offshoot of doing this today: I cannot get the Whitney Houston song, "Didn't We Almost Have It All?" out of my head. Which is bad enough itself. But what makes it even worse, as the song implies, is that its a song about them not quite having it all. They only almost had it all. But they didn't have it all. It bugs me.

Why did that song pop into my head? Why not "Looks Like We Made It" by Barry Manilow? That song at least gives the impression that they had it all. Or that they made it all. Or...whatever.

Also, I think its kind of incredible that during this very past weekend I took the time to change the wording in my 'About Me' section on the homepage of this blog to include the words, "I also don't do much hippy-trippy angels are looking over women-power stuff (not that I don't like that kind of thing, I just don't write about it)."

I then promptly spent this entire week, so far, doing just that exact thing. Its almost become something of a theme for the week. Self-fulfilling? Uh, yes. The subconscious mind is a hippy-trippy thing, after all.

I wonder what Suze Orman would say about it...

-----------

Here's the link to enter the contest:

http://www.womensconference.org/the-great-giveaway/

Also, this is a website I use a lot - today probably more than on any other day - that let's you cut and paste anything you are writing and then it will count and tell you the exact number of words that are in it:

http://www.wordcounttool.com/

And finally, just for fun and to end on a positive:

http://www.manilow.com/

The World Is Small Enough For Us To Be Connected...

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:41:00 +0000

...I think you just have to be open to recognizing those connections.

Which is exactly what I spent my morning doing.

I wrote yesterday's post about my dear friend Raelyn and the battle she is fighting right now with cancer.

Please take a minute or two to read it:

http://www.missmeinthemiddle.com/2010/03/you-know-to-shower-them-now-its-matter.html

Part of the post was about how a couple of her friends (thank you Alicia and Liz), with the blessing of her husband, had asked many of us who know Raelyn to write letters to her. Letters that not only could be read to her over the time that she has, but also could be stored and read to her children in the future.

So I wrote my letter directly to Raelyn's son, Jayden, hoping he would get something out of it when he gets a bit older.

But this is where the 'we are all connected' part has jumped out of my computer screen and smacked me right between the eyes.

I wrote in Jayden's letter about a former basketball player of my Dad's named Tim O'Byrne. I used him as an example of someone who had had his own tough times as a young person but who still was able to become a standout student and athlete. I wanted to use somebody that I thought Jayden could relate to, especially since he's such a good athlete as well.

And this is the kind of spooky-cool part.

Before I started writing that letter, I hadn't thought about, seen, or talked to Tim O'Byrne since I was a kid. But after the letter had been sent, I heard from my Mom that Tim has been going through something since last summer that is eerily close to what Raelyn's family is dealing with.

You see, Tim O'Byrne's son, Chase, much like I picture an older version of Jayden, is a standout athlete. He's loved by many and is a really good student at San Diego State University. Last August, he fell down on his way down some stairs.

And he almost died.

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin/index.ssf/2009/08/the_vigils_for_chase_obyrne.html

In fact, he was supposed to die. Tim and Chase's Mom, Kristin, were told this on numerous occasions. But people rallied. Positive energy and prayers were given. Vigils were held.

And after a coma and weeks in the hospital and numerous surgeries, Chase is back at college.

They got their miracle.

http://www.lakeoswegoreview.com/news/story.php?story_id=124950984748632900

So, of all the basketball players that my Dad has ever coached, what are the chances that I would pick the one guy who had received the same exact kind of joyous ending to a horrible situation that Raelyn is waiting for as we speak?

That there is this boy, Jayden, who is suffering for his parent and then when I write him a letter I mention a person who is a parent, not knowing that he's suffering for his boy?

And that it all ended ok.

I'm thinking that I was shown this story to shift my way of thinking about Raelyn. To shake me up a little. That maybe I need to move my emotions from 'saying goodbye' to, 'just maybe...'.

And I might be grasping for straws here, I know this. But I cannot describe to you how good it felt to read about this miracle today. To know that I had a choice to think about Raelyn in a different way. That her miracle could happen too.

Because it could happen.

Because it did happen.

http://www.caringbridge.org/visit/chaseobyrne/mystory

**Update**
I wanted to let you know that Raelyn's battle ended this evening at 5:47. I am grateful for her peace and heartbroken for her children.

You KNOW To Shower Them. Now Its A Matter Of Actually Doing It.

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 06:13:00 +0000

Raelyn is valiantly fighting cancer.

Its not the first time she's done it but I think everyone who knows her and/or her situation would say that this time its different. This time it might, as much as I hate to write it, be getting the best of her.

Raelyn is one of those people. Naturally loved by everyone. Always sunny. Not a snarky or sarcastic bone in her body. Beautiful on the inside and out. Open and honest. Possessed with the ability to show grace in an unthinkable situation.

The kind of person that when they get sick, people come from all over to help.

But after all the help in decorating for Christmas, and cleaning up decorations from Christmas, and signing up for meals, and driving her three young children here and there, holding prayer vigils and/or meditating on her behalf, and anything else that is needed, I know that there is a need to do more.

We all just want to do more.

Because although these things are, I can imagine, invaluably helpful to her family, they don't really do enough to cover our levels of helplessness.

I've said it before, but in a way, its a selfish notion, this need we have to make her understand how much we love her. As if her truly knowing how we feel will somehow make us feel better about a situation that otherwise makes us feel powerless. And defeated. And just really, really sad.

But a couple of her friends, with the blessing from her husband, came up with an idea that I think brilliantly bridges both needs: it connects her receiving love from her friends with our need to have her know it.

And its all in the simple form of writing stuff down.

An email went out last week asking us all for a letter. Something she could be read so that she could hear our thoughts, feelings and love we feel for her.

And something that we could do to say goodbye to her.

Its a bit daunting, really, and I'm sure everybody has their own process. But, for me, I just started writing down stories about her and how each one made me feel at the time. And, before I knew it, I had words that I hope will mean something not only to her in these next few days or weeks, but also to her children at a later time.

Its why also, as you will see, that I wrote the letter to her son, Jayden, instead of just to Raelyn herself. I wanted her to know, as it was being read to her, that people will talk about her to her kids. That they will be able to tap into all of our memories in order to know as much as they can about her.

I should say, also, that the reasons I'm posting the letter here are simple. First, if it can bring one little bit more of the positive energy, mojo, prayers, thoughts, or feelings towards her today, its worth it. I hope anybody who reads it will take the time afterwards to think about this special woman and to send her as much of yourself as you can. I've included a picture of her son so that you can have a mental picture as you do this.

Also, I want it to be sort of an example of how anybody can write such a thing. All you have to do is think about a specific occurrence about that person and then write how it made you feel. That's all it takes. Nothing fancy or hifalutin'. Just an event and then a feeling. Anybody can do it.

One more thing, before you read it: I learned something life-changing as I wrote this letter. Why wait until this situation to write stuff like this? Why not, as a gift to your best friend, your Sister, your child, why not write down the funny/moving/embarrassing things that happened at the actual time it happened? And then write how it then made you feel during and afterwards?

I can't think of a better present to give or receive.

March 19, 2010

Dear Jayden,

As I'm sitting here thinking about how much I admire and love your Mom, and wanting to express it to her at this time, I'm realizing that its you that I'm thinking so much about.

I'm going to just write some stuff down about her to you so that you will know some little things that I've learned in the short time I've known her. And I'm writing it to you, as opposed to your sisters or to all of you, because you are the one I know.

I first met your Mom a couple of months after we moved into the Oak Hills school district in 2005 when Miles was in your second grade class with Miss Rowley.

Actually, first I should say that the first time I ever heard of you was that year on the first day of school. Miles came home from all the excitement of a brand-new school and people and buses, etc., but all he could talk about was how this really cool kid named Jayden had puked his guts out in class.

And I, as a Mom, kept saying..."Oooh, the poor kid." But Miles wouldn't have any of that nonsense. He just kept saying how cool it was to throw up on the very first day of school and how you took it without any embarrassment. You just puked and went home. He loved it.

Ok, so back to meeting your Mom. As you may or may not remember, Miles's birthday is on Christmas day. So that year for his birthday, as we always did, we had the party on the Saturday or Sunday before Christmas. But on that day we got a really crazy, random snowstorm that came out of nowhere.

Some of the kids cancelled because of it. But not you guys. Your Mom blew through our front door with all three of you kids with her, amidst wild boys going crazy about the snow - throwing hats and boots on and off, and other parents standing around, and my one-year-old and my dog freaking out, and she was completely unfazed by all of it. So for my very first impression of her, she was just her funny, happy, friendly self in the middle of total chaos.

In short, she was awesome.

As I'm sure you will hear from many of her friends around this time, that as the years rolled by, she just further cemented that awesome attitude to me: she was a good hugger. She was super-friendly - like going-out-of-her-way friendly. She was a talker (but in a good way).

I was having some of my own, way smaller, health issues then and even through all the stuff she was going through, or how she felt, she always remembered to ask me every little detail about my treatments, or my doctor's appointments. It was incredible.

And she always just had this amazing positive spirit. No matter what.

And, like I said, I know that these are all traits that you obviously know on your own, but also will be told to you by everyone else who knew her. So what I want to tell you about is how all of this lives on through you.

Because Jayden, you are awesome too, and a huge reason for that is your Mom.

For example, when I think back to that day I was describing before, of Miles's birthday party with the snow, my first impression of you that day was how nice you were to Isaac. And, as I said, he was only 1 at the time. Still a baby. The age where they sort of get into everything and who wants to be with the big kids all the time.

Something that as his older brothers, both Miles and Calvin, can attest, was an incredibly annoying time in his life. But you weren't annoyed by him at all. In fact, you went out of your way to get down on his level and to pat him on the head and to talk to him. Amidst that before-described chaos. And that was it for Isaac. He was completely 'sold' on Jayden from then on out.

And bless you, you were totally consistent with him. Every single time that I saw you up at school, or at game or party, if I had Isaac with me, you always stopped to say hi to him and to talk to him. Its not something one sees out of boys very often. But I saw it in you.

Second, this kindness towards little kids was evident towards animals as well. At Miles's birthday party four years later, at Christmastime in 2009, we had a slumber party a couple of days after Santa had brought the boys our little puppy, Gibby.

And, once again, our house was an utter chaos of boys (this time of middle school-aged boys). But, just as you had always done with Isaac, you were so sweet and gentle with that dog. Every time I came to check on things, you were always the one holding her and making sure she wasn't going to get trampled. Or getting fed birthday cake or bubble gum.

It was the same exact sweetness I had seen before in you. And I think that you and I can both agree that your Mom had everything to do with that. Her showing thoughtfulness, caring, and sweetness towards other people has obviously rubbed off on you. She modeled behavior that you now can count on for the rest of your life. You are so lucky because its a truly special, stand-out personality.

And its because of your Mom.

Finally, the first time you and Miles ever played on the same team was when you guys played basketball in 4th grade. Like your Dad, my Dad is a BIG sports guy. In fact, I grew up watching him as the head-coach of the men's varsity basketball team at Aloha High School.

By the time you and Miles were on that 4th grade team (which, I should add, was named 'The Evil Leprechauns' because of your bright green uniforms...and if I remember right it was YOU who came up with the name, which was especially fun to hear at the end of the games when the other team would have to huddle and then mumble their way through "Good...game...Evil...Leprechauns?...it never failed to crack me up), my Dad was retired. So he had these little 'side practices' that whole season where kids could go if they wanted to have him teach some extra basketball fundamentals. And you went with us a couple of times.

Now, I could start talking here about what an awesome athlete you are and how much my Dad loved your natural basketball - and physical - skills, which he did. He still talks about it. But what he truly was impressed about was your work ethic and your attitude.

Mind you, he has coached some seriously good athletes in his life. Kids who went on to excel in both college and professional sports. He even coached a guy who later became a full-on war hero in Iraq.

But none of these kids were his favorite player. That honor went to Tim O'Byrne. He was the only player my Dad ever brought over to our house. And it was for Thanksgiving dinner, no less.

Tim O'Byrne wasn't his best player as far as basketball skills or natural athletic ability went. He just was this really great kid, with an exceptional attitude and as my Dad would say, he was a "hustler"...a compliment of the highest order from him.

And, if I remember correctly, Tim O'Byrne had less than a perfect homelife. There weren't parents who came and watched him play ball. Or who wanted to spend Thanksgiving dinner with him. But he found enough within himself to go forward and to become this standout person, among the hundreds, if not thousands, of athletes my Dad had ever come across.

So when you go on to receive great attention and accolades for your athletics, which I am 100% sure you will, I hope that you remember that not only did you learn all your skills from your Dad, but you also learned sportsmanship, leadership, and a positive attitude from your Mom. And that those traits will always serve you well.

I hope all of these examples bring you some added connection to her. I know that I look forward to admiring her amazingness live on through you and I know as we all sit back and watch you grow into a young man, I will always find comfort in recognizing her in you.

We love you very much.

The Larsons
Melissa, Miles, Calvin, and Isaac

So, here's to you writing your own letter. I really hope you will feel inspired to do so.

One Footnote: When I was writing the letter, I called my Mom to confirm the spelling of Tim O'Byrne's name. When she found out why I needed it, she got a little freaked out...

Apparently last summer, Tim O'Byrne's teenage son, Chase, was in his own battle for his life. The connectedness of this fact is almost unbelievable to me. You can read more about it here:

http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/steve_duin /index.ssf/2009/08/the_vigils_for_chase_obyrne.html

Now its time for you to send all you can of yourself to our dear friend.

For me its all about one thing. Raelyn: I love you.

**Update**
I wanted to let you know that Raelyn's battle ended this evening at 5:47. I am grateful for her peace and heartbroken for her children.

Moms, Protect Yourselves. MSHB is a Serious Condition...

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 06:31:00 +0000

Like many single moms with three boys - or with any children for that matter - Garbage Day is one day in the week that we can count on a little help from our kids.

And that's actually true with me.

So on garbage day this week Miles and Calvin were splitting up duties...Cal going and grabbing little bags from the upstairs bedrooms and bathrooms and Miles getting the big one in the kitchen and bringing the outside can to the curb.

And while this process was happening, quite a little mystery occurred.

The garbage in the kitchen is the canister kind with an outer stainless steel base and an inner hard plastic liner that can be lifted in or out and is where the garbage bags are attached. The garbage bag was SO full (God forbid someone would take it out BEFORE it was due for garbage day) that Miles had to take the can's entire inner liner part out with him to dump out. The bag itself was too full to be able to be pulled out of the liner.

But as he was out doing this, and as Calvin was right behind him with the other garbage, the puppy got out the front door.

This was our - and by 'our' I mean 'their' - first major thinking breakdown of the night. That darn dog has been a runner since the second Santa graced us with her presence this Christmas. We all know that she can't be anywhere near an open front door or we are going to be spending a good 10 minutes looking like idiots trying to outwit, outlast and outrun a fluffy, five-pound dog.

So Miles set down the garbage can liner on the driveway to take part in the chase. They finally were able to wrangle her - with the help of their own newly-developed tag-team method - and then he and Calvin got the rest of the garbage put out. And then we all went about our evening business.

That was, until about a half-hour later, when I was in the kitchen and went to throw something into the garbage. And the liner wasn't in the can. Its not the type of garbage can where you can plop and tighten a plastic bag into the stainless steel outer base and then just make do. The liner part is the essential piece of the whole set-up in order for the plastic garbage bag to be secured.

Plus, its an expensive garbage can. It was something we bought when we moved into the house. The thought of the whole thing not being functional makes me crazy. I'm getting sweaty just thinking about it.

So as I was getting out a bag, all I could think about was, where the heck is the liner? How am I going to put my garbage bag in it without the liner? Sometimes something as simple as being able to throw a paper towel into the garbage as you are standing at your kitchen counter becomes something else entirely. Something you can count on. A part of the routine process of running your household.

So when it gets thrown off, I get thrown off.

For the time being, I had to just put my garbage...

**Let me interject right here to say - and I kid you not - that as I was writing this I had to take a quick break because there were two girls just now at the door for Miles. He had NO interest in coming out to talk to them - or he did and didn't want to admit it in front of me - so they were just hanging out on the sidewalk being entertained by Isaac and petting the puppy. A fact that is not only important because of the terror it causes me, and because of how it increases the chances of the puppy running again, but also because of how it relates to the part of this story that is coming up**

...into the bag and then I just had to set the whole thing on the floor. Something I soon regretted because of how accessible it was to the dogs. And then I immediately yelled up to Miles to ask where the garbage can liner was.

And this is when it happened...when I saw the first and true example of my whole point here. What my Mom keeps telling me hit my little bro at the same exact age that Miles is right now (sorry, Scott) and what other Mothers keep telling me about their own sons at this age: I've decided to call it Middle School Hormone Brain. MSHB for short.

MSHB is a frightening and serious condition whereby normally very smart, responsible, and capable boys all of the sudden can't find the backpacks that they are wearing on their own backs at the time they are wearing them. Other signs of this terrible disease are when they will know about an important homework assignment and yet leave the book in their locker that they need in order to do it. Or when they will walk in the door after school in 42-degree pouring down rain and have no idea where their coats are.

Or they will take the garbage out and then have no clue where the garbage can liner is afterwards.

Miles displayed symptoms of MSHB when, as I said above, I called him down to ask about the garbage can liner. And then, instead of being worried or concerned about the fact that he was the last person to touch the garbage can liner, he instead showed an often-seen side effect of MSHB which is when humor is applied to the situation where an MSHB outbreak has occurred.

I know this because after I asked him about the garbage can liner his only answer was, "Maybe a hobo stole it and is now using it as a hat."

I should say right here that I actually do know the cause of this disease, even though its hard to treat. MSHB is directly related to how close a boy has gotten in proximity to a girl within a week of showing signs of the disease.

So it was no coincidence that Miles had just gone on his first-ever "date" two days before-hand. With a girl.

I'm not going to say who she is (although she sang a solo at their school talent show a couple of weeks ago of a song by a new, young semi-country singer who had a very good year in 2009, and she shares the same first name as the actress who played Lois Lane in the 'Superman' movies in the late 70's) but I will say that, according to him, she asked him out.

Which is how things are going to go now. They went to the movies by themselves (with, for his first time ever, no parents tagging along...her Mom dropped them off and was waiting when it was over), and he bought her some popcorn. It was a date. Maybe not-so-much to him. But most-certainly to me.

There is one good part, something that cushions the blow for me a little and will always make me love the girl's Mom (even though I just met her): she made them take the girl's ten-year-old brother with them. That part was awesome. But it wasn't enough to prevent the case of MSHB that was about to happen two days later.

And so it went for almost the rest of the week. Him never figuring out what he did with that darn garbage can liner, and me trying to function with just a bag balanced on an outer garbage canister. Which, as I mentioned, I had to move up because of the dogs, and which wasn't that big of a deal until it got really full and nobody emptied it - again - and then it eventually tipped and fell off and landed upside-down (naturally) onto our kitchen floor, spilling garbage everywhere.

The exact moment I was trying to scoop day-old cantaloupe guts off the floor before the dogs ate them was the same exact moment I decided that I'd had had it. And so I yelled out, "I've had it!" And I decided that I truly wasn't going to let MSHB take over my household and therefore be the cause of future garbage stress in my life.

And so I went looking, futilely, for the damn garbage can liner. Digging through the disgusting outside can. Walking through the mud to look around on the side of the house. Searching in the garage. And around the back yard. And on the deck.

No garbage can liner.

And just as I was semi-quietly cursing MSHB and how its messed up my whole garbage system, not to mention my oldest son, I worked my way back into the kitchen - mumbling like Fred Flintstone the entire way - to look at the garbage can base to see if I could somehow get the plastic bag to connect to it in some way so that I could try and live without the liner...

...when I saw it.

The Liner. It was just sitting there inside the base, semi-camouflaged by the fact that a bag hadn't been put back into it after it had been emptied. Evidently it had been there the entire time.

And this is when I discovered another side-effect of MSHB. Apparently its contagious. Highly contagious. Because was it Miles that was so distracted and freaked out by his first-ever date that it kicked-in a serious bout with MSHB which caused him to lose our garbage can liner and then not give a damn about it?

Or was it me, The Mom, who was so subconsciously thrown-off about her son starting his dating life that I was wholly unable to see a fairly large piece of round black plastic as it was sitting inside a canister right in front of my very face for three days?

I think we all know the answer to that.

So, to all the Moms out there with boys in Middle School: consider yourself warned. It won't be enough for you to protect your sons and possibly inoculate them by limiting their time and closeness to girls in order to prevent MSHB.

No. You will also have to protect yourselves. Because I can attest that nothing can be more distracting and disengaging than the idea of my 12-year-old boy sitting in a dark room watching a pulse-raising 3-D movie all while sitting abnormally close to a 12-year-old girl.

And to think, I still have two more to go...

**Update** What are the chances...? The same week I wrote and posted this entry also was the same exact week that Time Magazine printed an article that show scientific evidence to prove my theory. Amazing. Check it out and thanks to Malia for bringing it to my attention:

http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1973532,00.html?hpt=T2

MissMe-Musts - Send A Laugh For A Buck

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 06:51:00 +0000

I watched '500 Days of Summer' today. Again. Actually, I've only seen it twice; once in the theater last summer and then my Netflixed version just now. I guess it just feels like I've seen it more because I recommend it so often.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt's character, Tom Hansen, has an interesting job in that movie. He writes greeting cards. I kind of had forgotten about that.

What a weird way to make a living. I mean I know its just a movie, but people really do that. They write the words that are pre-printed inside cards. Which, if you think about it, and they point this out in the movie, is really getting paid to put words in people's mouths. People who maybe can't find their own words to express their congratulations, sympathy, or love.

Not being able to find words has never really been a problem for me (if you don't believe me, check out what I've written on the main page's sidebar in my 'About Me' section...I had to work for days to get the words down small enough to fit into the template for that sucker).

No wonder every single card I have for use in my house right now are ALL the kinds with blank insides.

Plus, with all the ways there are now to express ourselves technologically, its kind of a little miracle that cards even exist anymore. Something I touched-on a little in my post earlier this week:

http://www.missmeinthemiddle.com/2010/03/age-of-innocence.html

Coincidentally, my cousin turned 30 today. And I did send her a card. But I sent her an e-card. A Hallmark e-card, even. And they let me link the card directly to her FaceBook page. Talk about keeping up with the times.

Not sure I would have ever picked Hallmark as a company that would be so 'with-it'. For goodness sakes, you can go into one of their stores and still buy those old, 'collectible', resin, Barbie Christmas tree ornaments.

Year-round.

Not to mention their cheese-tastic television channel.

But Hallmark is a 100-year-old company. That speaks to me. Especially these days.

And I somehow discovered some characters on their site that are featured on the e-cards that are my 'go-to' cards.

The characters are called Hoops & YoYo. And they are funny. Laugh-out-loud funny. To me, at least. They tend to find one funny idea and then expand it into amusing levels of rambling-never-ended-ness that land it in a totally random place.

Like if someone was going to make Ellen Degeneres split into two cartoon characters. In greeting cards.

So Hoops & YoYo have been added to my MissMe-Musts List. It costs $.99 per e-card. Its totally worth it.

Actually, Hallmark's entire website is surprisingly good, charming, and useful. I'm oddly entertained by it. Like how I love Michael Buble's latest song, 'Just Haven't Met You Yet'. Its so close to crossing the 'corny line' that I can't really explain why I like it. I just really like it. It tickles me. So will you. Like it, I mean...not tickle me.

You can share your favorite Hallmark moment - whether it be a card you got or gave, or your favorite one of those tear-and-goose-bump-inducing - especially when pregnant or pms-ing - commercials they have.

You can read about their first 100 years and view all of the cards throughout all that time. They call that page 'Cards Reflect Our Culture' and they are totally right. Its like a little American history lesson. I love it.

So, check out Hoops and YoYo first at:

http://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ECardPersonalizeView?eo=true&topNav=false&personalizePage=true&categoryId=183072&URL=ECardPersonalizeView&partNumber=npg6239_DK&SignIn=Y&s=npg6239&r=&p=&ssd=No+Ordinary+%27Hi%27!&n=DEFAULT&st=%2Fproducts%2Fecards%2Fnpg6239_120.jpg&productId=127103&tabOn=ecards&catalogId=10051&sn=No+Ordinary+%27Hi%27!&cardType=premium&e=DEFAULT&storeId=10001&date=DEFAULT&mid=7000000000000000051&isComboCall=false&nv=true&template=n&CatIDsList=147551%3B-102001%3B11443%3B-102034%3B183072

And after you are done being entertained - which I really think you will - take some time to look over Hallmark's overall website. I think it will be something you appreciate and even use on a regular basis.

http://www.hallmark.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/home|10001|10051|-1|unHallmarkHome

Who's Zooming Who?

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 18:22:00 +0000

I was snuggling with Isaac yesterday and I called him one of the many luuuv names I have for him. Its practically impossible not to when we are like that. He seems still so little and he talks about anything that pops into his head without worrying about his big brothers bugging him about it and/or holding it against him later.

Plus he's warm. Really warm. And soft. Its like being next to a cuddly puppy who doesn't wiggle, who can talk, and, for the most part, doesn't pee on the bed.

Last night I think I called him 'Biggie', which is something I've called him since I was pregnant with him. Its automatic at this point.

And his sincere response, as it has been consistently since he turned 6 a couple of weeks ago, was:

"Mom, my name is Isaac. Call me Isaac."

I reminded him that he and I had already talked about this - ten times - and that I will for sure call him 'Isaac' when other kids were around. I assured him that I especially wouldn't call him love-names when there were big boys who could hear me, as he was SO serious about that point.

But, the agreement was, if nobody else was around, I was still free to call him all the little baby names that I wanted to. Like Biggs or Biggie or Love Bug or Boo Boo.

I knew at that moment he was going to try and back out of that last part of our agreement. I could see the wheels turning as he sat there trying to figure out his best strategy. Then he grudgingly thought over the plan once again. And he agreed to it. Once again. For about four minutes. And then he said, sitting up straight:

"Actually, I just want you call me Isaac. No matter who is around. I stopped sucking my thumb and I'm not using my Ni-Night anymore. Its nothing but Isaac now, Mom."

First I started sobbing (internally...I wasn't going to let him get me that quick). Then I started scheming. And I saw an opening. So I said:

"OK. I'll call you Isaac all the time. But only on one condition: you have to make a deal with me and only call me what I want to be called, too."

This totally threw him off. Just as I had planned. I figured it bought me a little time to leverage how to keep this one small - but important - thing going that reminds me of when they all were little. When they were all nice on a fairly consistent basis. Which is exactly what he must have been thinking I was thinking because he started to catch-on and he asked:

"I already call you Mom. What else would you ever want me to call you?" (I'm sure there were several choice-names running through his head of what he'd like to call me as he was saying this).

So I gave him The Look. The one they all know. The one that makes the realization that I'm winning sloooowly creep over them. The Look is basically the same as The Stink Eye (which is what they get when the sass reaches a certain level), but they haven't really figured out that they are the same. Yet. And as I gave it, I said:

"Well, **sigh** , if you want me to call you only Isaac from here on out, I want you to only call me Mommy. Like you did when you were little."

See how I did that? Flipped it right it front of him. And bless him, he seemed so defeated. He knew at that moment that I didn't want him to be 6. I wanted him to be my tiny snuggle-bug still. But he's a worthy opponent. He's been training his whole life for this moment.

And so he pulled out all the stops, he proved he was a man, and he went there:

"Actually. I think I'll start calling you Melissa."

It was awesome. A mother's pride is a beautiful thing. So I controlled my urge to burst out laughing and said, serious and nodding:

"Touche, Isaac. Touche."

And this is where my favorite part happened. I thought - right then - that he knew we were having a conversation that was more than just about what we call each other. He was asserting himself and telling me that he's no longer my baby. But, just as I was realizing this and fretting about the fact that not only did he pull a fast one on me, he also did it about something so emotional and essential to motherhood, he flinched.

It was small, but I saw it. There was just a slight movement in his eyes. I'd got him, but I had no idea how. Not until he looked at me with total exasperation and he blurted out (in a very confused and troubled tone):

"Ok! You can call me Touche. Sheesh."

And then, just like that. He was my little guy again.

The Age of Innocence

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 01:21:00 +0000

I wish that I was 41 when 'Friends' first went on the air, instead of 21, which was how old I really was when it debuted. That way I think I could thoroughly enjoy it for what is and not watch it while sitting and cursing myself.

I think the ten years that 'Friends' was on the air was also the same exact ten-year span that I started my traditional weekly diet kick-off days on Fridays (the morning after the show aired) instead of on Mondays.

These are the thoughts I was working out for myself today as I was standing in the middle of my kitchen.

Eating cheese.

But, alas, 'Friends' actually did start when I was 21. And although I loved every minute of it, I also spent a good chunk of every show comparing myself to the hot-little-numbers that appeared there each week.

And usually I'd be eating something really bad as I was doing this, like popcorn with Parmesan cheese or cookie-dough ice cream, so that I could fully have the ammunition available to make the joy of the show and the self-loathing happen in total unison.

I don't think I would do that now. Oh, I would still watch it while having a treat, trust me on that. No, I'm talking about the beating myself up part.

Back then I thought Rachael was as cool and as funny as hell. And don't even get me started on how much I loved her clothes. Do you remember the short-in-front but long-in-back black skirt she bought with the money she got from returning the present Monica got her for her birthday?

But with all that emulation and admiration also came the fact that I would sit there while watching it and just be pissed at myself for the fact that my bod and hers were not at all alike and that my hair couldn't have done 'The Rachel' for all the tea in China. Or for all the relaxation products in the greater Beaverton-Metro area.

It never occurred to me until now that I'm five inches taller than Jennifer Aniston and that if I'd had a better body-image I may have been able to see that at that time we weren't that far off shape-wise (all boobs and butt). Or that, considering my Diana-Ross-as-white-girl curly hair, my hair just isn't meant for that 'do.

And I'm not trying to psychoanalyze myself as a young woman. I really just wish that show was starting now, so that I could watch it and laugh my ass off and not even think about all that other stuff.

Because, at 40, I'm totally able to do that now.

This has also gotten me thinking that there are other events in history that I wasn't the right age at the time they happened to properly enjoy them. You know, like those people who always insist that they weren't born in the right 'time'?

OK, actually, those people spend a lot of time attending Civil War reenactments and Renaissance Fairs.

No, I'm talking more about me just not being in the right mode, maturity, and experience-level at the same time specific things were happening in American pop-culture.

So of course I have come up with some examples, other than my not being emotionally developed enough to enjoy 'Friends' for what it was.

**One quick note: let me stop you before the inevitable "but everything happens for a reason" thought pops in your head and ruins my flow. Because even if I thought this were true, which sometimes I do, I also think that things actually also can work themselves out by just having really bad timing. It goes both ways.**

For example:

I wish I were 27 the year Old Navy came out with maternity clothes instead of how old I really was, which was 33. The difference in what I wore during my first pregnancy at 27 (flowered jumpers and tent-sized navy blue coordinates), and what I wore during my last one, at 33 (kicky boot-cut jeans and figure-hugging black turtlenecks) was the difference between...well, between flowered jumpers and kicky jeans.

Speaking of having babies at a different time: if I had been 30 in 1966, that would have made Miles 12, Calvin 10, and Isaac 6 in 1976. Which would have meant they would have seen the original 'Star Wars' in the movie theater, at the exact ages they are right now.

This would have been beneficial to me for a couple of reasons. First, they would know and appreciate what I meant when I tell them that we stood in line for hours, around blocks and buildings, to see that movie. Instead of what I get now when I tell them this fact, which is bemused disbelief and raised eyebrows.

Also, it would have the added benefit of the boys not rolling their eyes every time I tell them that we really were blown away by how they made all those planets and spaceships look big and real (what they would now call 'good graphics') in that movie, without computers, and that they just don't get it because of all the CGI crap they have to endure in their version of the Star Wars movies.

Plus this would have the side benefit of shifting when I was pregnant with Calvin - and therefore I could have celebrated more traditionally (cute new clothes and lots of drinks) - during my 30th birthday in 1999 and the big Y2K New Year's Eve later that year. This would have replaced how I really ended up celebrating both of those two huge events in my life which was by eating steak in my pajamas.

I was 38 in 2007. If I had turned 19 during that year, I would have gone all the way through college with all the tech gadgets, social networking, Internet searching, and cell-phone revealing that kids get to enjoy and use now during their college experience.

Can you imagine it? Never having to wait to run into somebody on campus just so you could try and talk to them. Never mind the waiting-to-run-into-them-part...the bad part was the actually having to talk to them part. Now students never have to be intimidated to be 'friends' with someone or to contact them since nothing is ever done in person.

Or imagine being able to be open and free with what you say without having to drink a shorty first? Screw tech courage...we had to do things the old-fashioned way. With liquid courage.

The benefits of this would have been many and obvious. But I can break it down very simply: I'll just say that if I'd had all that stuff, I probably wouldn't have been the drunk, smart-ass virgin that I was when I was in college. Nope. I'd have been WAY too armed with all that stuff to get me through school the right way.

I'm sure my grades would have been exactly the same though.

Finally, Oprah has decided to end her show next year. It started in syndication back in 1988, when I actually was 19. If I were 20 and it was just starting next year, instead of ending, I would still have all these years ahead of me to actually get on that show.

I don't know what the hell I've been doing for the past 21 years, but I certainly didn't get it together enough to land my laudatory moment on the stage with her when she realizes that I should be her best friend, not Gayle.

Well, there's always Tyra. Or maybe not...

They Say Its Instant and That Its Gonna Getcha...

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 01:02:00 +0000

I did something today I've never really done before...

I parked in a parking space that was clearly labeled 'Parking for Hospital Clergy Only'. I've never parked in that kind of space, or any restricted - disabled, loading zone, etc. - kind of space before. Ever.

I didn't see the sign until I had already pulled all the way into the space. And before you judge, let me backtrack a little...

First of all, the reason I had to go up to the hospital was to pick up a prescription. I usually follow the old people to the valet parking area where the cute retired men volunteer. They park my car, give me a wink, and I don't have to find a spot, which, if you've ever been to St. Vincent's in Portland, you will know is not easy.

But today that lot was full. And it was pouring down rain. And I was cutting it really close to getting back to my house in time for my kids to get home.

And I'm justifying and justifying. And justifying.

I was only gone a total of twelve minutes.

I know this because I was worried and I watched the time. The last thing I wanted to happen was to have some family in the hospital getting ready to say goodbye to their sick loved one, only to be waiting for their clergy person (be it Catholic, Buddhist, Pagan, or whatever) who was late because their damn parking spot was taken.

Yes, I worked this frenzy all up in my head in those twelve minutes it took me to get back to the car.

And when I got back, nobody was waiting to chew me out, to give me a ticket, or worse, to make me feel guilty. Nope, I was free to get into my car and speed away.

But, here's the thing. As I was getting into the car, I jammed my shin bone on the edge of the driver's door. Like I really hit it...I saw stars and everything. There's a golf-ball-sized bump on my shin as I'm typing this.

If you could have seen the restraint I used in NOT calling out to specific deities and/or swearing like a pirate while pulling out of the 'clergy parking spot' you would really know that I took that hit with purpose.

So, see? It all worked itself out. And I was able to drive away feeling like I could refrain from feeling guilty because whatever it is that's out there that evens-out the Universe had its own way with me.

Thank God. Or Whomever.

MissMeMusts, 3rd Edition

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 05:59:00 +0000

Just finished watching "Away We Go" with John Krasinski and Maya Rudolph.

Loved it.

Funny. Sad. Cute. Imaginative.

If you can get through the 'wedding scene' on the trampoline in Miami without shedding some tears, then you have a cold, cold heart.

Had NO idea when I started watching it that Sam Mendes - big-time director of 'American Beauty', 'Road to Perdition', and 'Revolutionary Road' - is the director. He also just-so happens to be married to Kate Winslet (which makes me automatically love him).

I also didn't know that it was co-written by Dave Eggers. He wrote one of my favorite books, 'A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius'. If you haven't read it, go get it tomorrow.

Anyway, had I known the movie's pedigree I probably would have net-flixed it many moons ago. Its been on my radar since last summer when it first came out. I had to wait a while before I saw it, however, since it came out the same month my husband moved out.

I knew that seeing it right away would just make me feel bad. Or more bad. That was a good call on my part.

Soooo....rent it, request it, onDemand it. Totally worth it.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1176740/

One Year Ago Today

noreply@blogger.com (Melissa Larson. Pacific NW, US.) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 17:19:00 +0000

I just read through some of the things I was writing about last year.

I came across this little nugget I wrote exactly one year ago.

Crazy.

Its also interesting to me to think about the fact that when I was writing that post we didn't know my Mom was about to get diagnosed with her second round of breast cancer.

I didn't know (or I consciously didn't know) that I was going to split with my husband three months later.

But I also didn't know that, one year later, I would have as much peace with my decisions and so much love for all of those who've shown my family so much caring, help, and support.

Perspective. Thank goodness it goes both ways.

So I'm attaching the link. I'm hoping you will take a moment to read (or re-read) it. I think it says a lot about both me at that time, and also about what I've learned since then.

http://missmelissainthemiddle.blogspot.com/2009/03/looking-at-my-moms-collection-of-old.html