Yosemitebear Mountain Giant Double Rainbow

http://www.yosemitebear.net/

Dear Guy in the above video,

Words cannot express the pain in my stomach muscles every time I watch this. Thanks for giving me something so special. My life is now complete. Double complete.

Heather

MY House, Was a Very Very Very Fine House

After finding out that we were not in a position to move to Texas, we set our sites on a quaint shore town in Connecticut. Is a perfect town for us and we would have private beach rights, public schools to utilize, the newly built Katherine Hepburn Theatre ('the Kate' as I would lovingly call it once I became a townie), and so much more.

We found a great house there that in the tradition of "the big house" even had a secret hiding closet and the master bedroom downstairs. Below is this perfect-house-for-us that we bid on and lost. We loved it, but the St. Joseph burried in my backyard must have had a crack or perhaps I skipped a word or rephrased part of the prayer I said over him as Christopher covered the little hole with dirt. The world may never know. Farwell little house. I hope your new owners love you as much as I would have!

http://www.raveis.com/Propdetail.asp?KEY=3180887

The Last Remaining Stay-At-Home

I would like to begin this post by stating my credentials:

1. I am an educated person having done my undergrad work at the Unviversity of North Texas in Theatre and English Lit, with a 3.4 GPA and my graduate work in education at the University of Bridgeport scoring a 4.0 GPA. I have worked as both an intern and a professional and received impressive paychecks in the fields of newspaper advertising and as a social worker for independent senior housing under the government grant for HUD.

2. I am wildly adventurous, having left my home in Dallas to move to New Mexico, Los Angeles and Connecticut with the intent of educating myself further, and from an anthropological standpoint, exploring the way people all over this great country live.

3. Furthermore, I am a FLAMING liberal. A feminist in fact; believing in the need for even more laws guaranteeing equal pay for equal work and so forth. I voted for Obama once and I will gladly do it again.

All that being said, I am a stay-at-home-mother and there are a few questions and comments I would like to respond to that I hear on a regular basis. After four years of silence, I have chosen to take this opportunity to get a few things off my chest (you condescending bitches).

I have to work because I need to be challenged everyday.

To this mom (who really said that to me) I say, being at home all day with your kids is a big challenge, and you know that because on Saturdays and Sundays you are ready to shoot yourself. You know what is LESS of a challenge?? Doing something fun and grown up all day, having people appreciate the good work you do AND getting paid for it. No one appreciates me-not you, my kids, my husband... and even though my kids are having fun being with me, I'm not having a party over here. Lunches with co-workers, errands alone and taking a shit with the door closed are all out for me! I challenge you to try it sometime...not just twice a week.

What do you do all day?

Well bitch, did you ever ask your daycare worker that? No, because you KNOW what that shmuck is doing all day, and it don't seem fun, does it? I know it doesn't because otherwise you would have chosen THAT as your career. What it seems like is a lot of feeding, organizing, cleaning, disposing, scrubbing, re-directing, comforting, and counting to ten and taking a deep breath-ing.

How do you justify staying at home all day?

REALLY BITCH? I gave birth to children I wanted to raise...how do YOU justify YOUR choice? So they can have XBOX and a pool? How do you justify spending such a HUGE chunk of that salary to daycare providers while sitting on your ass surfing the net and gossiping with your co-workers? You forget, I was once like you and I know how much time is wasted at work, by lazy workers which made up most of the work force when I was in the game.

...the America Online / Salary.com survey indicates that employees are wasting about twice as much time as their employers expect. Salary.com calculated that employers spend $759 billion per year on salaries for which real work was expected, but not actually performed.

The biggest distraction for respondents? Personal Internet use. 44.7% of the more than 10,000 people polled cited web surfing as their #1 distraction at work. Socializing with co-workers came in second at 23.4%. Conducting personal business, "spacing out," running errands, and making personal phone calls were the other popular time-wasting activities in the workplace.

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/g/a/2005/07/11/wastingtime.TMP#ixzz0n4ylOzm

Your husband must make a ton of money.

No bitch, it doesn't mean you have money. And incidentally, it doesn't mean you are on welfare. It simply means my house is smaller than yours, we cook all our meals and I buy a lot of store brand stuff. So stop acting like I'm Rockafella.

In closing, bitch, I am going to be diplomatic. And Democratic. And reluctantly admit that I admire and respect a woman who works full time and can keep the home fires burning. She is strong and impressive and rather than splitting the load she is most often doing all the traditionally "female" stuff and adding a 40 hour work week. We ladies have come such a long way in the last fifty years, and I am so proud of what we are capable of. Our choices are plentiful...and I feel complelled to remind you bitches that mine is a choice and not one made out of fear or ignorance. I am not catching a free ride and I certainly do not sit around eating bon bons...although, I do watch Y&R on my Tivo when I fold clothes. But that is beside the point. I like being with my kids all day, even though they are annoying and behave badly anytime we are in public. But don't you feel the same way about your co-workers?

This is the way my mom did it and that's exactly how I always dreamed me and my kids would be. So stop giving me dirty looks when I show up for the class party with homemade cupcakes that me and the girls made. It's just my thing. Its what I'm good at and something I like to do, like how your job is what you like to do...Bitch.

Dr Visit

It happened today just as it always does. Just as it has since her first day on this earth, when Chris and I walked the sterilized hallway, brightly lit and smelling of peroxide, to see how her testing was going. When we arrived at the nursery the nurses huffed and puffed. They seemed almost angry... at her. At the three-hour-old. "We are trying to do her hearing tests, but she won't lay still. She keeps knocking the ear buds out of her ears and she wails every time we put them back in! I don't know what else to do, she just won't cooperate!!"

We laughed on our way back to our hospital womb...I mean room. Our sanctuary from the real world. The place where two lonely people became a loving, caring family of three. How funny our little angel is that she's already getting into trouble...getting under people's skin. She will be a handful, we mused, delighted at the thought of this new brilliant life becoming anything more than an eloquent dream.

She grew up much the opposite. Always happy, always smiling. In her first two years there was never any need for discipline. No need to tell the 15 month old, more than once, not to touch the light sockets, air vents, hot burner...she understood the dangers and heeded the warnings...far before she should have been able to understand. She always went to bed happily in her crib, always at 7pm, always on her own. She would wake up an hour before we rose and would play with her stuffed animals and wait for us to come. Singing songs to herself all the while. She was a dream baby who grew into a dream four-year-old.

Although there was the one thing...ear infection after ear infection she suffered. Countless scraping and cleaning out of her ears with long skinny surgical spears. All the while being held down by nurses and doctors as she screamed, kicked and fought with all her strength. Consequently in loud arenas, memorial day parades, indoor basketball games, movie theatres...with hands covering her ears she cried big fat crocodile tears for the pain. In these moments her dark passenger would take over and she became possessed by the agony of her hypersensitivity.

Today was no different...well, sort of. We have a different doctor now. We loved the old one because he knew us, knew her, and understood her issues. The new one knows only her dark passenger. From day one I could tell she did not believe what I told her about my girl. When I began to explain her ear problems, the doctor said to me, "Well I'm sure most of her 'problems' are because of her personality." She gave me that very familiar look that most mothers have seen at least once before. The look that says, "Okay lady, you are just enabling bad behavior, but I see the forest through the trees. She isn't getting enough discipline. You don't know what you're talking about."

This morning, after the doctor, myself and two nurses spent the ten longest minutes in human history holding her down so her ears could be cleaned for the fifth time in four months, the doctor said to me, "I think you should consider counselling. She is going to be very tough. You need to be careful with her."

There are so many emotions raging through my body at this moment. Even as I type these words I am shaking with an anger I have never felt in my life. Not when my mother sent my cat to be euthanized at the pound. Not when my first boyfriend brought another girl to a party we were supposed to meet at. Not when my father abandoned my mom and baby brother. Never in my life have I felt so angry and I don't even know where to place it.

I am angry at this doctor, this woman who is making judgements and ignoring the words I am saying. I am angry at myself for not doing more to help her sooner, for not figuring out how to help her. I am angry at Chris for not taking me seriously when I would tell him something was wrong with her. Angry at that ignorant doctor for making me doubt my child's sanity. Angry at her teachers for always praising her instead of telling me how to fix her. Angry at myself for not loving her enough to accept her and to even want to fix her. Angry at the world for not accepting her. Angry at my friends and sisters who have such average kids. Angry at myself for being so weak. Angry at myself for being so emotional and passing that on to her. Angry for doubting her. Angry for not being a better mom. Angry for not teaching her how to cope better. Angry for staying home with her and giving her too much attention, that has resulted in her being soft (the exact words from this doctor). ANGRY. ANGRY! ANGRY!

I cry a little. I have a snack. I cry a little more. I pull it together and put in a call to her teacher. I write my blog. I call my mom. I do research online for anything involving hypersensitivity disorders, physical. I pray. I watch 'The View.' I peak in on her sleepin. I touch her curls and kiss her forehead. I'm sorry baby. There is nothing in this world that is more amazing than you. I will figure this out...

Then and Now

As she stares into my eyes, I am mesmerized by hers. They are the perfect almond shape, so much like her mothers, only better, because I can see her future potential in those eyes. All of her achievements, successes, relationships, careers, children, travels, etc. To me, she can accomplish anything...and everything I never had the courage to. Her eyes are strong and intelligent, and she possesses in them a severely unique beauty. Her gifts are boundless and my job is to show that to her.

She giggles, flashing me a smile and I am reminded of the rows of perfect white teeth that I have passed on to her. The first impression teeth to go along with amazing full red lips that will tell someone in the first glance if they can relate to her... future employers...her soul mate...the director of her Oscar winning movie...

Slowly she traces her finger the contours of my face. I smile at the gentle touch of her finger. Does she realize that with every line traced, she is duplicating the curves of her own oval face? I wonder in that moment if she is aware of the awesome gift of genes her mother has passed on to her. And then...

"Mommy, you are so old." she says happily, as if that were such a funny occurrence.

"Why do you say that?" I am stunned. Insulted, in this sanctuary where I have always been thought of as a goddess...was that real? Perhaps in my mind only.

"Because you have a LOT of lines on your face."

"Honey, I am older than you, but I don't have a LOT of lines on my face."

"Yes you do, like Grandma's. You have them here," she traces four lines across my forhead. "And here," two lines down the sides of my mouth, "here" a deeper line under each of my eyes, "and here and here," many tiny lines are traced along the corners of my almond shaped eyes.

Quiz

Wow Heather I didn't see that coming..... How did you do that? You really give me way too much credit for so many things but I think hero worship is cool.

My latest obsession is LA Ink- I am totally into Kat Von D and wish I could be her in my next life.

I cannot wait for the family reunion. I just hope I can get all my adult children there- maybe one will be off my payroll by then.......

So, I am going to see Phila today- it is very uncomfortable since we broke up and I came crawling back but it is very necessary. My man is at school today at UT Tyler.

MackinFest 2012

Well......Mom got the ball rolling on her much-desired family reunion. I just hope that it actually comes to fruition. We can do this, right? We can DO THIS. (I just won't get anything else done in the meantime....)

Hey SugarBear - real cute Quiz. Real. And to Kimbodini - way to BLOG, virgin! I am so proud of you. By the way, why isn't Bryan on our Blog? Or am I just reading it wrong?

Max is home sick today, but guess what? It's allergies. (fake-ergies is more like it.)

Sorry so boring.

Kelbrah