Midlife

Adventures don’t end on the road less traveled. Midlife is an adventure on it’s own. And you never know what’s around the Bend.

Mean Mom’s

The real life adventures of a Creole Gypsy2 Comments

I read an article today, well, let’s face it, Covid times have me reading a lot of articles lately. But this one in particular hit home. With all the down time of empty nesting and quarantine, I tend to get “in my head” a bunch, like I’m sure a lot of us do lately. Sometimes that’s a dangerous place to spend too much time. Especially for those of us who have lead “colorful” lives. One of the recurring themes of self deprecation on a spin around the nucleus of my brain is parenting regret. Certainly I am not the only person who gets stuck on this particular track. It’s a doozy with many tentacles that sprawl out in so many directions. (Insert anxiety attack here.) I’m actually navigating one of these trips now. This one has me triggered pretty bad, so I’m actually writing this to center myself, help me focus, move on and frankly calm the F down!

You see, I never viewed myself as overly “maternal” I didn’t lose my shit when a baby walked into a room, or long for a family as soon as my ovaries awakened in adolescence. I mean I adore my children, but honestly I’m probably still Meh, about kids in general. I always secretly thought to myself during my child raising years, who in the Hell thought it would be a good idea to put me in charge of humans? I’m way to cynical and impatient for this. Having said this, I’m sure you can guess I was not a coddle mom. I wasn’t a fawn over them when they fell…I was the shake it off cause I told you not to do it in the first place, the I’m not taking you to the ER if you get hurt doing that, the I said NO, don’t ask me again! Yes I was a spanker, not a time out mom. Most of my child rearing years I was a single mom. (Divorced by my choice. That’s a whole other blog!) So I had to find the balance between nurture and fear…this is where the latent self doubt comes in. All the regret floods in at this weak spot. Was I present enough? Was I too hard on them, Have I completely ruined them emotionally and they don’t know it yet?

My kids are all successful and what seems well adjusted on the surface (I hope.) We have what I consider an amazing adult child parent relationship. (This was always important to me for reasons I won’t discuss.) They will tell me I was awesome and amazing and supportive. I never saw myself that way. I’m grateful they did. Still I wonder…

I was accused of being a mean mom, and picking on certain kids more than once in my parenting career. Now that they have their own families, (successfully navigating adulthood I might add.) I hope they see that parenting is hard. Some kids require a little bit of a stronger hand than others. It’s not that you don’t love them, you are harder on them because you do. Every parents ultimate goal is raise decent humans who meet their full potential in life. Sometimes that requires a Mean Mom.

So if you’re reading this and it hits home, drop me a little thumbs up of support, I could definitely use it right now. All of my “Meanie” moms (and dad’s) unite. Remember, we’re all just doing the best we can assembling these human units that came without the damn manual.

Stay mentally healthy and safe everyone.

Wash your hands.

Wear a mask.

Check on each other.

M. 😉

The enemy within.

The real life adventures of a Creole Gypsy1 Comment

I have been silent this past couple of weeks. Observing, thinking, analyzing the current state of humanity. I’m a pragmatist, that’s generally what we do, we try to figure it all out with logic, common sense and fact. So after much reflection, here’s what I’ve concluded for our current dire times…

Racism is not the issue. You cannot have a few bad apples and label the whole bushel as spoiled. Yes there will always be extremists in any situation for any subject, for any reason, Racism in our modern society is not one sided. It’s spherical. Yes I said that, it’s 3 dimensional. It’s not white vs. black, or white privilege, every race has it’s own unique form of sub conscious racism. I don’t even think racism is the correct term anymore, it’s more like racial profiling. I mean racism to me is the blatant segregation that was prevalent before the 1960’s when things were actually labeled “colored only” mostly in the South, and that was a sad time of ignorance in our country! Now, I think it’s more the subconscious kind, labels that all races have for each other, whether it be white, black, Latino, Asian, Indian, etc. If you ask any random person of any race what another race is known or famous for, I guarantee they would tell you something about each and every one, including subsets in their own race! So is that racism? According to the temperature of today’s society…yes! That’s also absolutely ridiculous! That does not make you or an entire race racist! The term is used entirely to broadly! To the point it’s lost it’s truly hateful meaning to be taken seriously anymore. I don’t see the color in the George Floyd tragedy, yes it was a fucking horrific, nauseating tragedy, and I hope every single officer within eyeshot of what was happening gets prosecuted to the full extent of the law! But what I saw was an innocent man killed by a dirty cop! That’s where our focus needs to be! If not, there will continue to be more innocent people killed by dirty cops, black or white on either side! Remember they come in all colors!

Unfortunately there are bigger forces at work in our current society. Yes they are political, elitist and evil agendas! They all know that to take down a country, you have to divide it to weaken it. This is what’s happening in our country before our very eyes. The vast majority is falling for it hook, line and sinker, and it scares me. But here’s the thing…those mysterious forces lurking that are manipulating everything with their deep pockets and secret connections are an actual foe. One we will probably never be able to control, not with our current tactics anyway. But they are not the real enemy…

This is the epiphany that finally came to me after my weeks of reflection, my A ha moment if you will.

The real enemy is EMOTION!!! Yes Emotion!

The lack of control of them, and the forces that are manipulating them for personal gain! Think about it, think about the damage one person can do to a single situation when decisions are based on emotion. That email written out of emotion, that text that gets sent, the words that are said out of emotion, the hurtful ones you can’t take back! Now, multiply it times society…300,000,000 people! You now have a powder keg! This is currently where we are. People saying and doing and reacting based solely on emotions and the evil puppeteers pulling the strings know this! If we could all take a breath, and try and gain control of our own personal emotions, we would win this battle currently raging, that’s the new tactic we need to deploy! You can’t control a society in control of the trigger! The worst thing any human can do in any situation is let their emotions get the best of them! Has that ever turned out good for anyone?

Racism is not the issue. Can you honestly look at yourself in the mirror if you’re reading this and admit to yourself you’re a racist because you’re being guilted into doing so? I know I can’t, I won’t! So you see, we have to take the control back from the puppeteers. The people using us against ourselves We do this one deep breath at a time, we have to take control of the one thing we can and it’s our own enemy within…Emotion. At some point we have to say…enough!

Deep breath…logic in…bullshit out…

M.

Enough.

The real life adventures of a Creole GypsyLeave a comment

Things we lost in the pandemic.

The real life adventures of a Creole GypsyLeave a comment

Covid-19…hmh. Where do I begin? I guess I’ll start in the beginning…

January 2020. My husband travels home from Seattle in his old role as an Area Manager for his company, about a week or so later I start with symptoms of what I brush off as “bad allergies” because honestly, that’s what it felt like! Except this was a little different, it progressed to my chest rather quickly. I went to the doctor and was treated for a respiratory infection. I eventually recovered in about 2 weeks. Then, my husband gets sick with the same thing, same symptoms, same recovery time. Little did we know at the time, Seattle was a hot spot, the antibiotics I was given were useless, and we both with absolute certainty had Covid-19. (That was the early days before it was rampant in the media) so we were not tested for it. We both recovered pretty uneventfully. (As did most)

Fast forward to the end of February. My husband only watches CNBC and the stock market news. At this point, Covid is headlines. They are talking about social distancing as a possibility, and canceling large events. I’m standing in my kitchen and thinking “for a freaking respiratory infection?” Is this for real? The flu kills more people every year than this thing! I mean it’s not freaking Ebola! At this point I’m convulsively eye rolling every time a report comes on about it.

March 2020. All major events are cancelled, stay at home orders are in effect, most “non-essential” businesses are closed, you can’t go to church, schools are closed, but you can go to Walmart and Home Depot because they are deemed essential, (oh and liquor stores) the mask/glove controversy begins. The stock market is in a nose dive tailspin…All for a respiratory infection!

April 2020. Quarantine is in full affect with no end in sight, unemployment is around 33 million, the economy is in the worst shape in history since the Great Depression, the mask/glove debate continues, the divide in our country grows stronger between the left and the right, there is no consistency to anything. Reports in the media, our local, state and federal governments can’t get it together, social media compounds everything and makes it worse. Conspiracy theories run amuck, people are trying to be compliant, but are thinking in the back of their minds, something isn’t right! They think of the flu numbers, and the logical part of their brain says “all of this for a respiratory infection?”

May 2020. I get furloughed to 4 hours a day. I have to cram a 50 hour work week into 4 hours a day. But hey, I still have a job (so far) Then, we get the news from my husbands job we dreaded hearing, “you have to go work in the field to get billable. All of the planned projects have been canceled due to Covid. The closest working project is in Utah! For at least a year!” Everything we built and we’re working for changed with one phone call. We’ve lived this life before, we thought we were done with it. This isn’t happening! But it was happening. I know we will get through it, we’ve done it before for 6 years. We are grateful to have a job to complain about. So many millions don’t. So tell me, what is the real tragedy here? Lives and livelihoods lost, our forever altered economy, small businesses that will never recover, our new normal? The even greater divide this has caused in our society? Families that are one paycheck away from being homeless actually becoming homeless? People will argue it was all necessary to save the “at risk” population (before you attack me, remember I have an autoimmune disease and technically am at risk) and to not overwhelm the healthcare system because of ventilator shortages, and to flatten the curve…but still, the logical reason part of my brain screams out… “all for a respiratory infection?”

School Supplies.

The real life adventures of a Creole Gypsy1 Comment

It’s that time again. Back to School. This was always my favorite time of year for multiple reasons. No more bored kids at home eating their way to Narnia through the refrigerator, paying for summer camp, destroyed kitchen from aforementioned foraging, structure…and the annual school supply run. If you’re like me, you love school supplies. Brand new crayons, markers, folders, notebooks, backpacks. A new beginning to be shiny new and organized. And yes, there was always those obscure hard to find items on the list that were only obtainable at some specialty store like 3 days before school started. But it was all part of the excitement of the hunt.

Now that my girls are grown, and I’m an empty nester, I no longer have the satisfaction of school supply shopping. It makes me a little sad to walk past the section in the store and not load up on new crayons and pens. But I love seeing the joy of a big 4th grader picking out a new backpack and lunch kit with their mom. I mean, 4th grade is a big deal, Paw Patrol just won’t do anymore. Time to upgrade to Fortnight.

I actually found myself justifying a purchase of crayons, notebooks and sharpies the other day, you know, for when the grandkids come to visit. I may need an intervention.

But this morning I had an epiphany, I can buy some supplies and donate them to a school or church charity. Everyone wins, I get to scratch my school supply itch, and a child in need starts school ready to go. I know there are charities that do this, but what’s the fun in just hitting “click to donate”

So, if you’re an Empty Nester in the Houston area, and are longing for the days of school supply shopping. Please contact me. We’ll find some kids in need, and get to smell fresh crayons in the meantime.

M

The Empty Nester School Supply Society