No One Else But You

Last Friday, some friends and I teamed up to surprise our friend Heather for her birthday.  We successfully convinced her that she had “guessed” that the surprise activity before dinner in Bellingham was a pole dancing class.  Can you even imagine?  We are all moms.  We can’t drink heavily enough to do that.  Instead, we did something a bit scarier, a bit more serious: we climbed the highest climbing wall in Washington State.

And by “we” I mean Heather.  The rest of us attempted to climb the highest climbing wall in Washington State, but did not make it very far. 

We all summited (does that word work for climbing walls as well as mountains?) the weenie wall and then gave Heather the first spot on the gigantic wall. 

 

Me at the top of the weenie wall, which my son summited FOUR(!) times at camp the next week

She just kept going, making it look easy.  Since there were four-year-olds scaling the humungous wall at the same time (though none of them made it to the top), we all thought it was easy.  Turns out: no.

Spider-Woman

Super hard, in fact.  Two days later, when soreness in my muscles generally sets in, my fingers and forearms HURT.  Think about that: my fingers were sore from gripping the wall. 

This is as high as I got 

Man, we were so proud of her!  She looked so awesome up there, so strong and powerful and in control.  It was breathtaking.

 

 So fucking high.

Once we were all back safely on the ground, alcoholic beverages in front of us at a bar down the street, , we toasted Heather and her climbing feat.

“Heather, that was SO AWESOME!”  (Like most women, we are good at high-pitched hyperbole.)

“Well, but did you see me?  I wanted to give up.  I tried to give up but no one heard me.”

“Ha!  No, we totally didn’t – you were too far away!”

“Still, that was amazing!  I can’t believe you made it to the top!  It was so hard!”

“Yes, but… I couldn’t do it.  I wanted to give up.”

“But you DID do it.”

“Yes, but…”

Heather, my dear, strong friend who is a great mom, was having trouble owning it.  And here’s the thing: I totally understand.

I have trouble owning it, too.  I have trouble owning my achievements in life, partly because they don’t seem like achievements and partly because of that American/Protestant/humble legacy I have. 

I have accomplished many things in my life, but they don’t feel like accomplishments.  I graduated high school and college and grad school at the top of my classes; I have a successful, stable, happy marriage; I have three beautiful children; I run a profitable business that supports seven families; I give back to the community… all of these things are my ongoing lifestyle, however.  I certainly didn’t begin work in my business thinking that it would fail.  I began work in my business with the intent to build it into a strong company that could support many employees for years to come.  We have so much growing left to do.  I haven’t safely ushered my children to adulthood yet.  I don’t really know if my marriage is a success because I’m not dead yet.  I don’t really know if my life is a success yet.  How can I brag about my accomplishments?  How can I NOT point out the gaps in any compliment of me and my life?  “Yes, but…”

So I don’t often brag, but when I do, I feel terrible about it.  Case in point: I ran a 5k a few weeks ago and crossed the finish line in 23:45, including a wrong turn and while running in 90-degree heat.  I received hearty congratulations from everyone I told, but I began to feel worse and worse about telling them.  I kept trying to find a way to minimize the brag after it had escaped my mouth – “I ran an amazing race!  But really it wasn’t amazing because, um…”  Nope, it was amazing.  And I was proud of myself because, you know what?  I had a baby a year ago and even before then, I’d never run anywhere close to a sub-eight-minute-mile in a race or in practice.  My legs were on fire!  But pride is a deadly sin, after all, and no one wants to be the boastful girl who won’t shut up about her fantastic race.  So I did, I shut up.  I didn’t post it to FaceBook, I’m only mentioning it now after three weeks to illustrate a point, and I mentally slap myself every time I reference it in conversation.

I’m a good mom, but I screw up sometimes (a lot).

I’m pretty fit, but I still need to lose fifteen pounds.

I have nice clothes, but I didn’t pay very much for them (does anyone really care where I shop?  Why, when I get a compliment on a dress or shirt, do I immediately say something like, “Thanks!  I got it at Goodwill!”?  Isn’t this a form of pride, perhaps worse than just internalizing the compliment?).

My children are well-behaved in public and at school, but can be little monsters at home.

I cook well, but I have to because we don’t have time/money/patience to eat out all the time with three wee monsters in tow.

What’s wrong with me?  What’s wrong with us?  I hear women, moms especially, self-deprecating all the time.  No one else but me ran that race at such a fast pace.  I walked a little bit, I sort of felt like throwing up at one point, I DEFINITELY felt like passing out from the heat, but I pushed myself and I did it.  I did it.  I will always have that, even if, three weeks, three birthday celebrations complete with loads of cake, and a terrible chest cold later I couldn’t run a nine-minute-mile to save my life.

And Heather, even though she wanted to quit, even though she doubted herself, rang the bell at the top of the highest climbing wall in Washington State on her birthday, having never, ever climbed anything ever before.  Ever.  She did it.  With her doubts and her fears.  No one else but her. 
 

I tell my children to take pride in their work, to set goals and feel good about meeting those goals, to enjoy the hard work it takes to accomplish something of note.  Time to model that behavior, I think.

We Camp; We Are Campers

We took our brood camping last weekend, and conned five other families with young children into joining us.  Oh, we didn’t go far: just 45 minutes away to Deception Pass State Park.  But it was far enough to completely remove ourselves from the stress of running businesses and households.

 

    

I want my boys to grow up camping.  My family camped when I was young (my kids’ age), but it was not something we continued to do when we moved to Washington.  The family reunion was held in our hometown and my parents had a job (owning and managing a 50—room hotel) that kept them extremely busy.  When we did vacation, it was often to conferences so that they could learn how to improve their businesses and we could visit Disneyland.  As far as I know, Tony and his family never camped.

 

 

Let me be clear: I am not complaining.  Those trips my parents took us on as kids were great, even when they were horrible (Hwy 1 in California will make you sick, every time, and sullen teenagers are THE WORST).  But the way Tony and I have structured our careers means that we can take more time off than our parents did.  My hope is that we will do the hotel trips to Disneyland, Williamsburg, D.C., Boston, New York, etc, and that we will also camp frequently.

 

 

Camping is less expensive than the hotel trips and, to me, more relaxing.  When we “do” stuff camping, we go to the beach, hike, kayak, make s’mores, and spend hours talking with friends.  When we vacation to a destination like New York City, we spend our time going from place to place, tourist site to tourist site.

 

 

It is a lot of work.  Packing, unpacking, cleaning, realizing halfway home that, no, you shouldn’t stop at Starbucks because you haven’t showered in three days and you couldn’t smell yourself back at the campsite, but now you can and, hoo boy, you stink.  However, I think it’s worth it for the time spent with friends, relaxing outside, and s’mores.  Damn, I love s’mores.

 

 

Camping teaches us to make the best of things without all the sanitized conveniences of home (dropped your hotdog on the ground?  Give it another turn over the fire and eat it anyway).  You get dirty and there are no TVs, so you’re forced to hold conversations.  It’s a great opportunity for kids to learn new games and explore nature, even if it’s “state park nature.”  And I just LOVE group camping with friends.  Not much makes me happier in this life than a big group of people all hanging out together, sharing food and stories.  And s’mores.

 

 

Come camping with us, for real.  We’re going again as soon as I can talk everyone into it.

Getting Away

The weather around here has been nuts.  Last month we had “Juneuary,” this month… Febru-summer?  Februly?  At any rate, it’s been nice.  Not actually “summer nice,” but “spring nice.”  A couple of weekends ago, I rounded up all the boys and told them to get in the car, we were going for a drive.

 

     

They would have been happy to stay home and tear up the  house and yard, but mama was going stir-crazy.

 

 

We hot-footed it down to Deception Pass and Rosario Beach for some rock throwing and stick hauling.

 

 

You would have thought that we never let Charles and Jamie out of their cages before.  They ran and jumped and threw and climbed and generally behaved like escaped prisoners seeing sunlight for the first time in ten years.

 

 

Winter gets you down, I guess, even when it’s an especially mild one.  That, and we don’t ever go on little day trips like this.  We should totally do it much more often.

 

 

A good reminder to me that getting out of the house, crawling out of our normal routine, is good and good for us.

Classical Music Kids

A few months ago, we got an upright piano.  The piano was free, the tuning was not.  Bottom line, “music” is now played in our house every day.

 

Both Charles and Jamie claim they want to play the drum set when they get older, so I told them that they have to learn to play the piano first.  Like, as a prerequisite.  Like, if you talk to them, the party line is that one CANNOT learn to play the drums without first learning to play the piano.

  

Music is a big deal in our family.  Tony and I both played instruments in our youth and Tony still plays around on guitar when he has time.  We listen to music all the time.  Jazz during dinner, oldies for dancing, alt-rock for cooking, 80s for more dancing, and classical in the car.  I donate regularly to KING FM and my hope is that my children don’t think opera is weird until someone tells them it is, much later in life.  We also listen to kids’ songs (mostly Sandra Boynton) when they are allowed to choose.  That, and “Yoda” by Weird Al.  Because Star Wars.

 

A few weeks ago, I took Jamie to the family concert given by the Skagit Symphony.  We had a wonderful time.  The only real problem was that Jamie did not understand why he wasn’t allowed to dance in the aisles.

 

 

Is this one of those things?  You know, those things you force your children to do that they resent at the time but then later appreciate that they immediately recognize the difference between Mozart and Beethoven?  My hope is that they will love classical music at some point in their lives, even if we have to subsist on a steady diet of Peter and the Wolf and 1812 Overture for now (any song with cannon, you know).

 

 

It helps to bribe the wee ones with frozen yogurt.

 

And it helps to hold onto memories like these, perfect days of music and cuddling and frozen treats, when my Jamie is being a total jerk.  Like today, when he punched me in the nose as I was trying to help him brush his teeth.  Quick: choose one word to describe your children!  I choose “exasperating.”

New Year’s Day

Merry New Year!  We didn’t stay up, no surprise.  The dog slept in our room, though, which was a surprise.  He never does that.  I think he really hates fireworks, though.

 

On New Year’s Day, we decided to pack the kids and the snow gear into the truck and head up to Mount Baker for some sledding.  The fresh, mountain air did me a world of good, but I almost vomited on those windy roads both on the way there and the way back.  Worth it for the fun we had.

 

  Snowball fight!  I endured many a projectile flung at me from small hands.

The biggest grins.

 

Sledding, though, is serious business.

 

Yum!

 

  Happy as a snowman on New Year’s Day (that’s totally a saying now)

 

*****

After a particularly terrible Monday night, I haven’t been plagued with quite the same level of nausea as before.  Perhaps this means that things are getting better?  Please?  Whatever it is, it was nice to feel like the new year meant a new start to pregnancy sickness.

 

I don’t really have specific resolutions this year.  I’m going to gain a bunch of weight and become less active, so the usual “lose 5 pounds, run a 10k in under an hour” resolutions are out.  And how can you resolve things about a person you’ve never met before?  I would love to have another natural childbirth, but maybe this kid will get stuck or something.  I would love to not gain 50+ pounds this pregnancy, but maybe that’s just what I do.  I would love to get enough sleep this summer, but maybe this child will have colic like Charles did.  I would love to get back to running by late autumn, but maybe I’ll have a huge tear from pushing out a giant baby and be unable to bounce for a sustained period of time. 

 

Instead, I am planning to just chill out about things.  No stress: that’s my New Year Resolution.  My Christmas lights and tree are still up.  Who cares?  I haven’t cooked a meal in months.  Who cares?  The only time my house gets vacuumed is when the housekeeper comes, every two weeks.  Who cares?  I got so sick after my last workout that I am taking a break for awhile, and yes, my thighs are getting bigger as a result.  Who cares?  We aren’t planning on any trips this year or major activities and we are actively saying “no” to invitations that feel like they would be more difficult at this stage in life than they will in, say, a year or two.  Who cares?  My friends and family know that we love them, we just can’t do everything, or even anything, right now.

 

Let’s just all be happy, anyway, okay?

Getaway

I went on a little shopping trip this weekend.  Nothing big, nothing blowout, just some early Christmas shopping with some girlfriends.

 

I had to leave this behind:

 

 

but they got a day with daddy, playing basketball, eating at McDonald’s, and going fishing.  Daddy is awesome.

 

Shopping with friends is pretty great, too.  We went to downtown Snohomish, which is filled with adorable shops selling cutesy gift-type stuff and also horrible antique stores that made me sneeze and really got me worried about the past.  I mean, if these are your treasures of yesteryear, what does that say about yesteryear?

 

Creepy mummy statue

Weird Indian statues

 

We made beeswax candles at a convent in Stanwood, had a rich and heavy lunch at a restaurant in Woodinville, and spent the last of our money on books at Barnes & Noble.  Frankly, it was exhausting, but I did acquire several Christmas gifts for family and friends and collected even more ideas for Christmas gifts.  I guess this means that the season has really started, hmm?  Someone get me an eggnog. 

Skating Party

On Saturday morning, the boys and I got up and went to Baby Boot Camp, where I nearly vomited from working so hard.  I was feeling pretty weak until I heard a couple of the other moms say things like, “my breakfast is right here (gesturing to her throat)” and “I’m going to barf.”  So at least it wasn’t just me.  We sprinted.  We jump-squatted.  We did push-ups. 

 

My legs and arms were Jell-O. 

 

So, of course, I ice-skated for two hours in the afternoon.

 

Charles’s party was wonderful.  I didn’t have to set up or clean up (the real advantages to paying for a party) and all of the kids (and adults, I think) had a wonderful time.

 

The only mishap of the day was when I didn’t have enough whipped cream to finish the frosting on the rainbow cake, so I sent Tony to the store.  He came back with half-and-half.  I was a little behind in getting to the party, but we made it, and the cookies and cupcakes were awesome, if I do say so myself.

 

He refused to let me push him, Mr. Independent.

 

Red cheeks from ice skating non-stop

Rainbow cake before baking and icing 

 

Rainbow cake after partial consumption

 

Presents!  We have such generous friends and family.

   Charles went a full lap around the ice without the helper (I stepped in as part-time helper)

My sore legs and hyped-up metabolism prompted me to eat two-and-a-half slices of Costco pizza that night.  Which is only one more slice than my five-year-old.  He’s catching up!

Boo!

It’s my favorite holiday… and yet, I don’t celebrate it nearly as much as I used to, or as much as I want to now.  Kids, man.  They change everything.

 

While they are adorable and enjoying Halloween in their own fantastic ways, Tony and I no longer attend several Halloween parties.  I don’t do as much decorating because we have STUFF ALL OVER anyway, and the cool decorations would just get trampled.  Costumes must be kid-friendly (Charles has begged me to be a princess for three years in a row… basically, since he could talk).  All Hallow’s Eve ends by 8 PM when small people must be in bed.

 

Someday, I will host a large, crazy Halloween party.  Someday when my kids are old enough to be embarrassed by their parents dressing up and having fun, so they hole up in their rooms with cookie dough, several friends, and a Ouija board to celebrate Halloween.  Until then, we will host, as we have for a couple of years now, a potluck dinner night of trick-or-treating.  I will break out my hot drink mixer (a very strange Christmas gift from Tony a few years back), give the kids the job of answering the door and handing out candy, and pour wine for other frazzled parents.  It might not be a wild and crazy party, but it is a nice tradition.

 

My complacency with Halloween has not gotten so far that I didn’t dress up (God forbid it ever does!), but I went for the least-scary costume I could imagine: a cat burglar.  Mostly I have dropped the “cat” part of the description because I have not yet successfully explained to Charles that it is called a cat burglar not because I am actually a cat, but rather because I move silently and am dressed in black and am sneaky. 

 

Do not underestimate the sneakiness.

 

The boys, well, I’ll get some good photos today and show you tomorrow.  Charles and Tony make a pretty great team as Curious George and The Man with the Yellow Hat.

 

Happy Halloween, everyone!  Here’s hoping that nobody notices that ALL of the mini Butterfingers in our candy mix are missing.

Let’s Do It Again! TOMORROW!

Runners are crazy, there’s no two ways about it.  And I can now count myself firmly in the category of “runner.”

 

Ragnar was amazing, and if you have ever thought about doing a race like this, I highly encourage you.  It was a challenge, to be sure, but not an insurmountable one, and I’ll tell you what: by hour 30 and your third running leg, EVERYTHING is hilarious.  I haven’t felt that giddy since college when I was… hmm… sleep-deprived and hanging out with a bunch of other sleep-deprived nutjobs.  Yeah, Ragnar is basically like college.

 

 

Friday morning dawned overcast and cool, perfect running weather.  Tony and I were in Van 1, and got to Blaine and decorated our van and began to see that, while we had all dressed up to fit our theme, we were totally outclassed by the really crazy runners.

 

 

 

We ran as nerds, and I got plenty of high-fives for wearing suspenders and a bow tie (I thought the Carl Sagan shirt was pretty nerdy, too, but apparently not so recognizable), but we passed storybook princesses, jail inmates, and  this guy wearing nothing but an adult diaper and fairy wings:

 

 

And this guy, wearing a spandex Santa suit and crocheted hat (in 90-degree weather):

 

 

And a whole lot of other, totally committed, costumed runners.

 

 

My runs went really well – even though we didn’t mark “kills” on our van like some of the teams did, I passed a total of 25 people on my three legs.  Tony developed plantar fasciitis somewhere along his first leg of 8.3 miles, but toughed it out until the end, and was fine for his later runs. 

 

 

By the time we met up with Van 2 in Bellingham, it was hot, hot, hot, and we were happy to go home to shower and sleep for awhile.

 

 

We picked back up in Burlington at about 8 pm and ran until 1 am, then crashed at one of our runner’s houses in Anacortes for another three hours of sleep.  This was lucky for us, as I think Van 2 didn’t sleep AT ALL.  Then we ran our third legs really quickly and ended up about 40 minutes ahead of schedule, really screwing Van 2 out of some potential sleep.  They were not so pleased by this.

 

 

You don’t just run, hand off, run, hand off at Ragnar.  You cheer on your runner and the other runners and you blast music and silly string and squirt guns and the more delirious you are, the more fun you have.

 

 

And then, as Van 1, you get to the finish line and wait for the rest of your team to complete the last legs of the relay.  If you’re Tony, you spray sunscreen on your chest in a haphazard manner and get a really wonky sunburn.

 

 

And you spend some of those hours at the end checking out all the other crazy teams: Team Colonel Angus offering mustache rides; the kilted team blasting a bagpipe version of the Star Wars theme from their van; Escape from the 80s featuring a Ghostbuster, Indiana Jones, Richard Simmons; the Gagnam Style dancing team; and so many more.

 

 

I’d do it again in a heartbeat.  You know an activity was worth the pain when your face is as sore from laughing as your legs are from running.