Not for boys or the easily grossed out

I was just over at the Mama Bird Diaries reading a short, but sweet tampon story. And it got me thinking, I have not had to worry about any of that crap in over 5 years!!! See, after my son was born, I had to look into different birth control methods and knew I lacked the discipline for pill taking and didn't like my previous experience with the Depo shot. So, I opted for the Mirena IUD. And it's been wonderful. No weight gain, no mood swings, and best of all, no periods! But it's only good for 5 years and I'm within a couple of weeks of hitting that deadline.

I just don't know what to do. I know that I should allow my body to return to its nature cycling which means I'll be back into all that pad, 'pon stuff which really doesn't rock my boat. I'm not too pumped about putting even more paper products into use and am looking into alternatives. One is this little reusable cup that collects the shed uterine lining (trying to not be too gross here). I like this idea, not sure how good it will work, but from a disgustingly 'granola' stand-point, I could then pass the 'cup' to our baby trees that we're trying to grow! All those nutrients are sure to help make them beautiful!

Hey, some people make placenta soup after birth. Others dig holes and plant trees along with their placentas. So this idea isn't that bad, is it?

It's not about me

With a few hours having elapsed since Miss Moira's recital, I've had time to digest this whole 'dance' thing. Honestly, I'm so damn happy dance is done. I have deeply, overwhelmingly dreaded Mondays for the past 8 months. The crazy get-off-work-early-to-get-Moira-out-of-school-early-and-drive-30-miles-to-the-studio-and-hurry-up-and-change-into-tights-and-leotards-and-then-DANCE chaos fried me every friggin' week! I hated it! But I kept doing it because she said she wanted to, and Mo hasn't had the easiest of times in her short 8 years.

Being born with a cleft lip and palate, she's suffered through a few surgeries and has another big one coming up in June. So dance was something special and extra, just for her. But dance wasn't something I would have chosen for her. As previously indicated, I was hoping for the more outdoorsy kind of team stuff like the soccer and t-ball she tried and didn't like. If you knew me, you'd know I'm not a tutu kinda mom. Unless of course my son's wearing it, that's a different story. (Go with your cross-dressin' bad self, Mac Daddy!)

But whether she dances or doesn't, it's not about me. Rather, it's about giving my kids the chance to try different things. I'd hope that through some of this trial and error, my kids will find things they have passions for, but if they don't, who gives. Again, if people want to judge me, the line starts with the crack of my ass. And speaking of ass, there's a lot of it out there, especially in the parenting world.

I am so lucky to live in the time of reality tv. "Lucky?" you question. Yes, because I get to see just how whack many parents are over their children's entertainment futures. There was the horrible Bravo show, "Showbiz Moms & Dads," Vh1's really mental, "I Know My Kid's a Star," and most recently, on Bravo's "The Real Housewives of New York City," there was the absurdly ignorant Ramona who pushed her lovely Avery into modeling and acting when the kid said she valued school above all that. (Talk about taking a hint from our youth!) These are individuals who really need to not have children.

What I gain from watching these train wrecks, however, is how much my children's successes and failures are NOT ABOUT ME! Do I want my daughter and son to excel and achieve and succeed and be tops in whatever they do? You bet your ass! But I know from my own experience that life doesn't come with a rewind button, my parents could not have done anything different to effect the way I turned out. That means they get just as much credit for the good stuff I've done (and I've done well) as for the many fuckups I've incurred (we lost count long ago).

So while I continue to trudge the road of parenthood, I know that at any given moment, I'm doing the best I can and my children suffer those consequences. Sometimes my best is pretty damn good. Sometimes it's piss poor. But so far, I've got two fabulous kids who contribute through friendships to the world around them. And is that my doing? Some would argue, "Yes," but I reason that even at ages 8 and 5, they are continually taking on more responsibility for who they are becoming. I simply allow opportunities for their growth.

So was dance an opportunity for growth? I don't know, I think more time needs to pass before that verdict becomes clear. I know it's something I'm still not too fond of and Moira, admittedly, isn't that crazy over, either. As of today, she does not want to take dance again. (Cool!)

I laughed! I cried! I'd pay another $828!

I'm still frazzled. Today was my 8-year-old daughter's first dance recital. And she did so well that I'm getting a little sniffly just thinking about it! I am so proud of her. Miss Moira is an independent soul, known for her free-spirit, her devil-may-care spunk. Her typical speed is Mach 10, but put her on a soccer or t-ball field and you might as well have slipped her a Xanax. In general, the world just doesn't go fast enough for Miss Moira. She's a busy little bee. (Yes, there are loads of parents who think their child is the inspiration for that pink, drum-beating bunny, but they've never met Moira. She's that wabbit's muse.)

Which is why a few years ago when we tried kiddie soccer, I was truly baffled at her lack of interest. All her buddies (along with the ball) would be at one end of the field while Moira would be laying in the grass at the other end, counting the blades or staring at the clouds, or simply running for the sidelines groaning, "I'm tired." WHAT?!?! So we tried t-ball, and again, kicking in the dirt, picking her nose, wearing her glove on her head, waving to fans. She simply couldn't be bothered with this sports business.

So after she finished last summer's t-ball season, I asked if she'd like to try dance. Yup. So, since September, every Monday we'd travel to dance class where I'd sit in the observation hallway and cringe as Miss Moira would float off and press her mug against the two-sided mirrors to make faces at me. Cute, initially, but soon got old.

I love my daughter, more than any word or phrase could express, and I would never want her to be anyone, but her crazy, nutso self, but I can't lie. It's not fun sitting on the sidelines and watching your kid shoot off into la-la land EVERY class/practice/match/game. I hate that I get so frustrated. I am a believer in wanting my children to be whoever THEY want to be, and if people are going to judge me according to my childrens' successes or failures, they can bite me!

I don't need Moira to be some superstar, I'd just like her to participate. And she struggled to pay attention in dance and I could see how her frenetic pace grated on the instructor (a whole different story), but a shift occurred. Some time in February, Moira started to appear interested in dance and I saw her gain focus.

And when she took the stage, first for the ballet routine, and later, for the tap, she did a really nice job. I totally started crying. Were the routines memorized to perfection? Heck, no! But it was beautiful and worth all the driving and time and money involved. It makes me think of those schmaltzy Master Card commercials:

8 months of tuition=$224
1,920 miles of driving=$300

Tap shoes, ballet slippers, leotards, tights, and a costume=$160

Professional photos and a DVD copy of the show=$60

Recital tickets for 12=$84

Watching your daughter tap and arabesque her heart out=Priceless

My dinosaur's growing!

So last week, as I'm getting ready for work, I yelled downstairs to my 5-year-old son, "You okay, Honey?" He yelled back something that I mistook for, "My dinosaur's growing!" I assumed that he was just fine and continued to get dressed. Only after I got downstairs did I realize what he really said . . . "Mommy! My penis growed!"

Jesus . . . Mary . . . And Joseph . . .

Being the oldest of 4 GIRLS (my brother grew up with my dad and step-mom) I know all there is to know about boobies and bras, cycles and pads, Aqua Net and crimp irons. Heck, I even did a stint as a sex-ed teacher, educating 4th and 5th graders about the changes they can expect with puberty. "Can you believe that all these changes start in the BRAIN?!"

Anyway, I always believed I was destined to have 3 daughters. See, my mother was the oldest of 5 girls, I was the oldest of 4, so naturally I would have 3. But after my first-born daughter, a boy. Um. Whoa. Don't mistake this for crestfallen, however. My son has been an unexpected riot since birth when his big, giant melon got hung up in the pelvis. This nearly 10 pound behemoth came out of the womb carrying a kindergarten satchel. Word around my hospital room was, "He doesn't look like a newborn!"

And as he grew, he proved to me that some things are just innately 'boy.' Like, say, crash sounds. I always wondered how my male classmates made such cool crash sounds. Turns out they didn't know either, they were just born with the talent. And guns? I was the mom who judged other moms (sorry) for ignorantly allowing toy guns in their homes. Then my son started building guns out of Legos, pushing his spoon handle between the tynes of his fork and saying 'boom.' Where did this come from?! But I've grown accustomed. That is, until IT 'growed.'

See, the penis has always seemed a very odd, comical organ. One that really didn't concern me until puberty at which point I found it slightly scary. I will always remember my grandmother telling me, "I loved your grandfather with his clothes on." Turns out she thought it a little strange, too. Now, don't get me wrong, I'm pretty fond of my husband's, but I must admit, I'm not that jiggy with others.

So when Big Mac came into the world, I needed to put on the Big Girl panties and deal. Especially given the uncircumcised nature of things, my husband and I decided we'd let our son make that decision himself. The uncircumcised penis needs more cleaning then your average 'helmeted' version, but it actually helped me take a very low-key attitude toward our son's member--it's just another part of the body, like your toes, your fingers, your elbows. And I believe in calling a spade, a spade. There was/is no "wiener" talk, no "donger" dialogue, no "wanker" wagging, no "pee pee" posturing.

So how I mistook the word dinosaur for penis, I'll never know, but when I walked around the couch and saw my son half naked, his first erection standing tall, I about fell over. Craaaaap! How do I handle this one? How do I stay positive, respectful, non-shaming? Averting my gaze by focusing on the dog, I said, "Wow, that's pretty cool! Now, let's get dressed and get going!"

Of course, that failed once he started to get dressed and discovered, "It won't go down!" Um. "Give it time, Sweetheart," I said with a bit of a chuckle. Fortunately, the hustle and bustle of getting out the door helped me to evade further discussion.

Oh Lord, I feel so inept.

Nature's cacophony

It's not very often that I get to use that big ol' word, but last night, the frogs and bugs and whatevers were singing their hearts out! It's fabulous! We've gone from one long, bleak winter to neon green grass, trees all fuzzy with new buds, frogs croaking and baby birds chirping! The sound was so intense, the entire night through, that at one point, I thought my alarm had gone off and the dial was stuck on static. Nope, just the whatevers down by the creek and over at the ponds. (Where the hell I picked up the term 'whatevers,' I do not know. I may sound like Daisy May this morning, but I'm not from Dog Patch, honest.)

And now the peach-colored sun is popping up, ooooh along with some hosta!!! I may have a dirty house with loads of family expected in 2 days, but who gives? Not me . . . though I am curious about Hillary's margin of victory in Pennsylvania, hopefully small enough to keep my man a movin' on!

Good dog gone

I came home from work Friday afternoon to find my meatball Zeke along the side of the road. Living on a farm, he would have been considered the very best of farm dogs except for one little flaw: his love for chasing milk trucks and stock trailers. And he apparently finally caught one. Fortunately he looked as if he was sleeping, just a little watery pink dripping from his nose. It was a rainy, grey day. My husband was lovely enough to rush home and get him off the shoulder of the road and into the corn crib.

So after my husband returned to work, I began the task of digging Zeke's grave next to Tuttle's, my husband's 11-year-old black lab who we had to put down in January. My back continues to ache, but not so much as my heart. I was sad with Tuttle, more because she was such a pain in my ass and knew it, that I regretted how cold I was to her. But with Zeke, he was my dawg! And he knew I loved him even when I was scolding him for weaseling his way up from the basement and onto the couch.

He was a meathead and I loved him and I'm just really sad. . .

Holy Ghost or Ghost Rider?

I must profess a significant degree of ignorance. During Pope John Paul's early years, I was a wee lass of 9 when my catechism teacher gave each member of my 3rd grade class ginormous copies of a simple pencil sketch of this guy, telling us to keep it safe. Why? Who knows, this was a dark period of silence about the abominable behavior of our priest, so nobody really talked much. Today, the church is only marginally improving on its communication front. (Why, suddenly, is the South Park ditty, "Uncle Fucker," blaring through my brain?)

The bull and the shit

A couple nights ago I went cyber with my pain over my dad and finally started searching the net for info on esophageal cancer. I joined a chat group and found the following links:

http://www.mayoclinic.org/esophageal-cancer/

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/esophageal-cancer/DS00500/

http://www.cancer.gov/cancertopics/types/esophageal/

http://www.cancerfightingstrategies.com/index.html

http://www.breathing.com/tests.htm

http://www.cancer-connection.org/links.shtml

http://www.ecaware.org/

http://www.eccafe.org/

http://esophagealcancer.org/

http://www.thecancerblog.com/category/esophageal-cancer/

http://groups.msn.com/EsophgealCancerChatandSupport

But now I'm thinking those links are bullshit. Not that I'm a believer in rolling over and dying, not really. I'm simply looking at reality. The cancer that my dad's got is BAD. Recovery's not too promising. But that doesn't mean I'm planning funerals. I'm trying to believe in the laws of nature. . .

This winter felt like it would never fucking end, at least here in Iowa. I remember about a month ago seeing a commercial for the Masters, those luscious green fairways of Augusta taunting me in my misery of dirty snow and below zero temps. But no matter how miserable I was, I knew without a doubt, without question that spring would come. It just would, as surely as the sun will rise tomorrow morning. While this particular winter season felt longer and harder than recent ones, I knew it would pass, and it did.

And the leaves? As I listened to a friend coach me through a freakout today, I looked out at the trees and their tiny buds beginning to create that promising soft fuzz. I KNOW that the leaves themselves will come, and that they will mature throughout the spring and summer. And come fall? They'll change color, and they'll dry out, and they'll blow from their tree homes, and they'll fall to the browning grass beneath, and they'll crunch under feet, and they'll breakdown into little pieces, and they'll get soggy and melt into the Earth.

None of this is questionable. It's such a common, regular occurrence that it's practically unseen, seldom pondered, at least by me. And yet now that I'm looking at my father's mortality, I find myself searching for acceptance in such cycles. I understand on an intellectual plane that what my father's going through is simply the cycle of human life. We're born, we grow, we die. But I'm incapable of looking at this with the same faith and trust with which I know that the sun will rise tomorrow morning. I can't.

I'm scared to death of what's coming. I don't know what it is. I don't know the form it will take or the demands it will make. The one person who I would most love to talk to about this died last year. She was sick, and I couldn't handle the fear of losing her, so I simply drifted backwards to a safe distance, putting in an appearance now and then, but ultimately letting others love her through her last years, months, and days. I don't want to abandon my dad that way.

Hardly partyin'

Damn sobriety! I'm usually ok with being sober, almost always preferring it to the alternative! But come party time it can be a little, um, rough. But I did bust a little move last night. Up in the Mpls. area for a wedding, my family and extends were all drinkin' down the free beer, the damn sons a bitches!

I'd been looking forward to this wedding for weeks, but some shit hit the fan a few hours before departure and I've been distracted ever since. So I bought a pack of smokes. Screws to you for any judgement. Cancer of the lungs beats me drinking any day!!!

And the wedding didn't suck. There was good obscenity, a group moon, and some really bad dancing! And my son in a Spiderman sweatband and my daughter in light-up hot pink cowboy boots! Sober, I'm self-conscious of my dancing, but break out the Tommy Tutone and I'm on that dance floor like Oprah on a canned ham!

Cheers, Archibald Bareasshole!

Hope springs eternal . . .

To vulch upon words coined by

Barack "our next president" Obama

I give you . . .

"The Audacity of Hope: Rural Roots"

PODCASTS!

I just found a huge rock of crack in the form of PODCASTS! I can't believe what I've been missing! There's sweet PRI programs I love, excellent spiritual downloads, all sorts of stuff of which I have been completely and totally ignorant. I am so fucked! I'm never going to get anything done!

I think it was the Liberal Redneck that blogged a yonder ways back on all the shizzle that we swear we'll never buy, but then buckle to cultural pressure and then question how we ever lived without it. Yah, I was feeling that one. Take the digital camera. For years I professed my commitment to film. I would not abandon my SLR for some little diskette! I was a Fuji Film girl, through and through. But then my parents loaned me their digital, and never really asked for it back. So now I'm like, "Film? WTF!" I love that I can just shoot the shit outta anything and not be stuck with 32 crap shots out of a 36 exposure roll.

But going even further back, in the late 90's, I swore I would not allow the Internet near my home, thus negating the need for a computer. Screw Big Brother! Well, ten years later and I now have a laptop in addition to a desktop so that I can ebay in bed and blog from the kitchen! And those cute little mp3 players? The iPod was just a silly little gizmo on my self-indulgent wish list. Certainly not a need. So when my husband gifted me an 8oGig for Christmas I about shat! Especially since my desktop OS was Windows ME and iPods won't work with anything less than XP. Which was the final push to get that aforementioned laptop.

But I refuse to completely cave. I remain stalwart in my aversion to video games and swear I shall not have a Wii or PS2 or anything similar invade my home (I might miss Best Week Ever). I never bought the PalmPilot with that little stylus I'm sure people lost at lightning speed. Nor shall I get a Crackberry! And I can say with pride that I have neva 'texted'.

I'm such an oak.