Long Days, Short Years, Stiff Drinks

I don't know what to say, except that it's Christmas and we're all in misery.  -Ellen Griswald Lately I’ve seen an article here or there making the case for a cozy little Christmas at home with just the immediate family gathered round.   And I totally get it. The absence of busy airports or crabby kids on a long car ride, the avoidance of days of packing to go and days unpacking to get resettled at home, the potential for sleepless nights with kiddos not tucked into their own beds, and a litany of other headache inducing drama that goes hand in hand with a Christmas that involves extended family.   Not having to deal with all that and more has big appeal.   But here’s the deal for me and mine.   Christmas just isn't Christmas without all that. We’ve committed to spending Christmas with our extended family as long as possible, even though it’s sometimes outrageously difficult.   Here’s why.   For us, part of what is fun about the holi...

Dear Reproductive System, It's been a long, exciting, and sometimes nail biting ride but like a teenager that's tapped into her second bottle of Boone's Farm, I'm sorry to say it's time to cut you off.  Before heading into surgery bright and early tomorrow morning, I wanted to take a minute to properly acknowledge your contributions.   To my ovaries, I want to say thank you for producing healthy, viable, single eggs each month with the precision of an expensive Swiss timepiece.  Two of those lucky eggs, thankfully 36 cycles apart, met up with some fantastic sperm friends and resulted in the finest baby boys a parent could dream to create.  And though you may continue dutifully to push those eggs out onto their yellow brick road to a new world, I'm afraid to say that henceforth, they will be met with a road block too perfectly engineered to subvert.   To my uterus, it's been an honor.  I felt merely a bystander as you grew to such astonishing ...

First of all, this is not a sob story.  I'm not asking for sympathy or support.  This is simply a sharing of my experiences. I find myself stunned to admit that a certain Republican presidential candidate has managed to inspire me.  Recent political bombshells have prompted thousands of women to open up and speak out.  So scratch that.  It is not him or his actions.  It's the responses of the women that are inspirational and inspiring.  I want to count myself among them and add my voice to our collective uncovering. And why shouldn't I?  If you believe the statistics, as many as 1 in 5 women experience some sort of sexual assault in their lifetime.  But how can you believe any stats on this subject when there is so much shame, retaliation, and fear wrapped up in all this?  Women don't report at all or are not taken seriously when they do and worst of all, we as an entire society do not view many of these assaults as actual crimes ...

                                                                                                          365 days, countless crying episodes, hours and hours and hours of reflection, thousands of words written and a few thousand more spoken, hundreds of hugs given, and yes, about a million beers ago, my dad died.  I can't believe it's been an entire year.  But as my brother said this morning, I can't believe it's ONLY been a year.  It seems like a different life. I expected this to be a long, emotional trip around the sun and it certainly lived up to that expectation. In a major way.  What I didn't expect were a multitude of silver linings.  As I find myself a lot less rough around the...

As I packed up our home, box by box I stayed calm.  I never felt antsy.  I never cried.  I didn't even feel particularly stressed out.   As I spent a sunny day and late night with my best friends, ladies I would no longer have at my fingertips, my eyes stayed dry and I felt at ease.  Even as we pulled away and headed north to our next chapter, not a single tear fell.   I kept telling my husband, I feel like I'm cheating.   Normally I would be crying.  Normally I would be stressing.  Normally I would be a hot steaming mess of emotions.   But I wasn’t.   Rewind about two months prior.   The scene around me was entirely different. Nothing particularly stressful would happen, but yet I would be tight chested, explosive, consumed by this panicky feeling.  I was STILL crying at the drop of a hat, very frequently, even though Dad had been gone for nine months by then. Physically I felt exhausted, desp...

When we told people that we were planning a two week adventure in Peru with our little ones we received many reactions.  All of them were strong; few of them were positive.  One person actually said, "what are you thinking?!" We knew we were taking on a challenge dragging our not yet 5 and 2 year old sons with us but we were certain we were up for it. Much like parenthood itself, a trip of this magnitude with your kids is not something you can completely prepare yourself for; you just have to jump in and figure it out as you go along.  And although we questioned our decision to bring them along (and hell, even give birth to them at all) many, many times on the trip we experienced just as many awesomely high moments that absolutely would not have happened if they weren't there with us. For all those brave (or delusional) parents out there with an itch for adventure (or those who just want to laugh at our folly) here's some totally candid advice based on what it ...

This morning I noticed that I was very short tempered.  Tiny things that wouldn't normally bother me were making me red hot mad in an instant.  After snapping at the boys for a very minor infraction I stepped myself back.  Whoa, sister.  What's up? Then it hit me.  All at once.  It started as that familiar sweeping feeling of sadness that literally takes my breath away.  Then the sort of scratchy, antsy feeling inside my chest followed.  Like I wanted to run away but couldn't and it wouldn't help anyway. Ah.  It's Father's Day.  My first without one.  A father, I mean. Last Father's Day I gave him a really great insulated water bottle to take with him to the golf course.  So he could stay hydrated and healthy.  I'd been nagging him to drink more water.  Little did we know he was already sliding into stage four by then. Has it really been nearly a year since this all began? I've been ignoring it all w...