Mommy! My uncle is here!

So my daughter and I were waiting in line to check out and JCPenny last Saturday, and she said something that quite surprised me.
"Mommy! My uncle is here!"
I tried to explain that, no, he wasn't.
"Yes he is Mommy!" She insisted, while shaking her butt and throwing her hand on her tiny hip.
I looked around nervously, because she was being quite loud. Again, I tried to gently state that her uncle, was not indeed in the store.
"Yes he IS Mommy! I smell him!"
I nearly fell on the floor.
Nearby was a woman who was obviously a smoker.

The kids don't know about their uncle's habit. He had visited our house the night before and as always, he needed to step outside to "make a few cell phone calls" during his visit.

Why do I think it won't be a secret for long

Two pieces

I just set down the latest issue of Real Simple, my favorite magazine. Inside is the question "What is your favorite outfit?" Several readers talk about dresses and suits, even their gardening clothes.

As of late, mine is my two piece swimsuit.

You read that correctly. For the first time in nearly 30 years, I own a two piece swimming suit, and I like it.

Don't get your hopes up gentleman. It's not a bikini. It's a tankini. A bikini bottom underneath a cute little skirt. A top with a wild print that covers the girls and my tummy. The whole top is supported by strings that tie behind my neck.

I don't know many women for whom a swimming suit isn't a big deal. For years, I tried to find a one piece that appropriately covered me, preferably while holding, balancing and sucking in all of those wobbly bits.

I hadn't bought a new suit in a long time. The last one cost way more than it should have, in order to suck in my stomach, only to leave my German-Belgian legs hanging out in all their pasty white girl glory. Seriously? It was enough to make my husband take the kids to the pool alone.

My new suit doesn't hold everything in perfectly, but it directs your eyes away from the pasty white girlness, and the print is such that you don't really notice my tummy. I feel confident in it. Confident enough to run around the pool or splash pad, playing with my kids, and not freaking out when my husband's coworkers show up with their families.

It only took thirty years, but I finally found a suit I like.

Huh? What? What did you say? A PHOTO?

ROFL!

I may feel confident, but I have given birth to multiple children. Don't hold your breath.

My reunion is coming up...

My high school reunion is this fall. Due to a scheduling conflict, I doubt I’ll be attending.

I’m trying to fill out the profile information. The address, spouse, kids and where I work are pretty straightforward. It’s the memories section that I’m struggling with.

What does it mean that I can’t easily answer the question “Favorite High School Memory?”

My friend Dan and often compare notes about our lives. We have come to a conclusion: the best time of his youth was high school, mine was college. He tells stories about high school, I about college. He hangs out with friends from high school, I from college.

So, what does that mean?

I remember the day I graduated. I wasn’t excited. I was… embarrassed? I didn’t end up in the top of my class as I was expected to (looking back, I know the top 12% of my class wasn’t bad) I remember sitting in my cap and gown at the ceremony and feeling... so disconnected. I wasn’t part of the group of people sitting around me.

I have never figured out exactly what that disconnection meant.

One of my classmates once said that you forget the bad things and remember only the good. What does it say if I can’t remember the good? Was there really none, or have I just not thought hard enough?

I’ll ponder. Maybe I’ll share when I figure it out.

In the meantime, have fun at the reunion y’all. Have one for me.

A death in the family

Five years ago tomorrow, my pre-bedtime ritual was interrupted. I remember very clearly stopping short in my bedroom, and feeling my heart drop into my stomach.

Peter Jennings was dead.

I realize that to most people, his passing was just another footnote on the celebrity pages.

To me, Peter Jennings was a strong voice that I had listened to and believed for as long as I could remember. He took the reigns at ABC News when I was 6 or 7. He was the only anchor I knew from the time I was old enough to pay attention until I had a baby of my own. That’s a long time.

He wasn’t just a celebrity, or a journalist. To me, a news junkie who thought it was romantic to watch the news with her boyfriend, fiancée and then husband, Peter Jennings was someone I spent time with nearly every day for 20 years.

His voice is part of the soundtrack of the scariest times in my life. The first war (or conflict) I’d ever lived through, September 11 and eventually, his explanation of his lung cancer.

When I listened to his voice crack in that explanation, I saw the first and only sign of weakness I’d ever seen in him. I teared up in the way you do when you find out your uncle has a terminal disease.

It wasn’t long after that that I was standing in my bedroom, calling for my husband to come to the TV.

Hey, that's MY steak!

My daughter is a carnivore.

To those of you who aren’t sure and don’t feel like Googling, that means she’s a meat eater.

Tonight, my husband grilled some awesome t-bone steaks for us, and hot dogs for the kids. Considering all of my children are under the age of 6, that would seem to be a logical idea.

Yeah… I was lucky to get part of my steak.

My daughter doesn’t like her hot dogs in a bun, so I dutifully cut up her hot dog, squirted the ketchup on her plate and started eating my salad.

I think the salad was my mistake. It takes a long time to eat.

When she finished eating her hot dog, she fidgeted for a little while, and then when I finished my salad, and started cutting up my steak, she slowly slid her chair closer to mine.

“Mommy, can I have just one piece?” I obliged, putting a piece or two of steak onto her plate, and kept cutting.

She slid a little closer, again asking “Mommy, can I have just one piece?” I put three or four pieces on her plate, and she pushed two of them away. “Just one piece Mommy!”

Why she said that I don’t know, since what she did next made me laugh out loud.

She scooted her chair right next to mine, and began eating from my plate.

I suppose as a parent I should have discouraged this behavior, but I decided not to. We ate the rest of the steak together.

And then dug into the next one :)

Taking care of our chlidren

Two days ago in Minnesota, a father filled a washtub in his basement with water, took his six month old son and held him under the water until he stopped thrashing.

His son is dead. My six month old is sleeping soundly in my room.

I want to cuddle with him now, but instead, I’m sitting here, writing, haunted at the thought of that other little boy.

You see, I haven’t been a perfect parent. I know that as a young mom, sleep deprived and stressed with my first crying baby, I shook my son harder than I should have. I yelled at him. I squeezed him more than I should have. I was scared. I was upset. I thought that babies should always be good and should always be quiet. I thought I was supposed to be able to fix everything.

I was wrong.

In my case, nothing I did in frustration ever hurt him. No bruises nor broken bones. Over time though, I learned what I hope my youngest readers will take to heart. For the most part, a baby crying in a crib is safe. A baby is the arms of a stressed, angry, frustrated adult sometimes is not.

As a parent or caregiver, you need to know yourself. When you reach your breaking point you must put the baby in a safe place and walk away. It’s ok if the baby cries.

I don’t know what happened to this father to make him snap. I hope we never know so all of us: parents, grandparents, babysitters, aunts and uncles don't dismiss this issue has "his" problem and instead think about how we take care of our children.

And I pray that God has taken that little boy into his loving arms, and his Mommy too.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go kiss my babies goodnight.

Hair do + glasses = issues

Two weeks ago, I couldn't stand it anymore - my hair had gotten too long. It needed to be cut. Anna, my stylist said that for a cut and highlight, the soonest appointment she had was two weeks away.
I pouted, but since I refuse to schedule an appointment for hair that might not be too long yet, I waited.
When I got to the salon, I got the question I dread "What are we gonna do?" 
Ugh.
I can look through all the hair publications, websites and magazines I want, but very few look like me.
No, no, there are tons of white women with brown hair - tons. 
But very few of the women with the ravishing hair wear glasses.
Every publication is full of page after page of women with bangs that drape dramatically over one eye, or gently curve around the face to frame it. With glasses, the bangs look like the giant slide at the county fair. The curve? It kinda gets a kink in it.
I've tried going to websites for women with glasses. It's quite funny. They're covered in words. As if women who wear glasses are too smart to appreciate a picture or two. 
And so, I look, and hope, attempting to do what I'm not very good at - visualizing my own hair.
Seriously?
Thanks for the help Anna. It looks good.

When I became a Minnesotan

 I got my Minnesota Driver’s License in 1999 – just after I graduated from St. Cloud State University.

I married a Minnesotan in 2000, but I wasn’t one myself. My “con” in Wisconsin hadn’t shortened enough. The “o” in my Minnesota hadn’t gotten long enough. 

No. I knew without a doubt that I was a Minnesotan on August 1, 2007. When the 35W Bridge collapsed, I knew Minnesota was my home because I hurt. 

There’s an ache in your heart when someone (or something) injures your home. I felt that ache for the first time that I can remember on that day.

 I felt the terror that my brother-in-law (my kids beloved uncle) might have been on the bridge. I sent the emails to my girlfriends in the Twin Cities that I struggled to write. I mean, you can’t say “Are you ok?,” directly.  

I got the email from my girlfriend in New York City (the former Assistant Deputy Director in charge of World Trade Center Cases for the Medical Examiner’s Office of NYC) that read “Are you ok?” 

I wish I was. Something had happened to my home.