My Happy Place

It's my birthday this month - my 35th for anyone who's keeping count - and my darling husband and children are taking me to one of my favorite places on earth: Disneyland. :)

Did you know that Disney is offering free park admission on your birthday? Check it out!

(On the way home, we will stop at one of my favorite stores: Ikea. I will likely overspend in both places. Ah, well. There are worse addictions, I suppose. ) :)

I love Disney. Always have. Always will. If I have to explain why, you probably wouldn't understand anyway.

I have no idea how many times I've been to Disneyland (one of the many benefits of living in California), but I never get tired of it.

Of course, the experience is even better with kids.

I think we took Minion 1 for the first time when he was about a year and half. And I know Minion 2's first trip was in utero, followed by another when he was just shy of 1, as well.

This week, we go with a 4-year-old and a not-quite-2-year-old. Ought to be a blast. :) Minion 1 is already making a list of which attractions he wants to do first ... and Minion 2 is at that age where he will start to recognize familiar faces and sites.

Some folks think we're a little crazy to take kids "so young" to Disneyland - muttering about meltdowns and being old enough to appreciate it.

Meh.

The key to a great time is simple: Don't have too many expectations, and go with the flow.

I don't "expect" this trip to be the end-all be-all event of a lifetime. I don't "expect" to go on every ride. I don't "expect" to have perfectly happy children all day long.

Kids getting tired? Take a break. The line for a picture with Mickey too long for little tummies to wait for lunch? Skip that experience this time. Kids want to ride Buzz Lightyear three times? Why not? Minion 2 thinks the Pirates are too scary? Take advantage of the rider-swap. (You DO know about rider-swap, don't you? Second-best Disney invention ever. Right after the FastPass.)

I'm looking forward to this birthday present from and with my family very much. But I'm not going to pile so many expectations on it that I bury any chance of enjoying every moment for exactly what it is.

I expect to turn 35 Wednesday. Everything else is chocolate sauce. :)

"Why do we have to grow up? I know more adults who have the children's approach to life. They're people who don't give a hang what the Joneses do. You see them at Disneyland every time you go there. They are not afraid to be delighted with simple pleasures, and they have a degree of contentment with what life has brought - sometimes it isn't much, either."
~ Walt Disney

"So I go right straight out for the adult -- as I say for the honest adult, not these sophisticates, not these characters that think they know everything and you can’t thrill them anymore. I go for those people that retain that something that no matter how old they are, that little spirit of adventure, that appreciation of fantasy, of the world of fantasy and things like that. I go for them, I play to them. There’s a lot of them. You know? These poor sort of lost souls, these sophisticates that are so bored and turn their nose up at anything and say that it’s childish. What the heck is wrong with something being childish? I think it’s equivalent of never losing your sense of humor, you know?"
~ Walt Disney

Enjoy your week. I know I will. :)

National Grammar Day

Holy verbiage Grammar Man! I missed National Grammar Day?! How the heck did that happen? I hope they don't make me give my Grammar Nazi card back.

Oh, the blogs I could have blogged in honor of this day! I have scads of material on apostrophe abuse, run-on sentences, subject-verb agreement, the poor misunderstood adverb, mangled Latin, et al!

Why, just this week, I added three new misused idioms to my collection. I mean, you could get a whole blog's worth of material from "for all intensive purposes" or "balling my eyes out" or "with baited breath". That's Grammar Nazi gold, right there!

That's not even to mention my award-winning treatise: "They're, Their, There" and its sequel, "Your stupid! My stupid what?"

Ah, well. I guess it will all have to wait until next year.

To atone for my big grammar blog FAIL ... I humbly encourage you, gentle reader, to visit the National Grammar Day Blog.

Are there grammar errors that makes you cringe? Do share!

On Remembering to s-l-o-w d-o-w-n

"If you are not happy here and how, you never will be."
~ Taisen Deshimaru

Things have been so busy and stressful at work lately that I feel like I've been stuck on fast-forward for weeks. I get to moving so fast that I can't find the brakes. Even worse, I'm not even enjoying the scenery along the way.

"Flow with whatever may happen and let your mind be free:
Stay centered by accepting whatever you are doing."
~ Chuang Tzu

I've mentioned before that there really is no such thing as multi-tasking. Yes, I know that sounds a little crazy, coming from a mom. I mean, we spend most of our lives multi-tasking right?

Not really. We can only ever, really, do one thing at a time.

So how do we cook breakfast, do dishes, help with school work, make a shopping list, do laundry, and all the million other mundane things we do all at the "same" time every day?

We don't. We switch our attention back and forth from one to the next to the next, like jugglers. We toss one ball up, catch another on the way down and then attend to the one in the other hand.

We've learned to alternate between multiple tasks very, very quickly (is it any wonder we are always so tired?) without really ever giving our full and complete attention to any one of them. But, hey, these are just boring, everyday, unimportant tasks ... right?

"Monotony is the law of nature.
Look at the monotonous manner in which the sun rises.
The monotony of necessary occupations
is exhilarating and life-giving."
~ Gandhi

I know that I sometimes feel like I couldn't possibly get through the week without being able to shuffle and juggle and bounce back and forth between all of my various tasks at work and at home.

But ...

Maybe it's better to slow down and stop trying to keep all of the balls in the air at the same time. Focus on just one task. Finish it. Move on to the next. Enjoy the moment, whatever it may be.

There is a certain happiness and peace to be found in doing just One. Thing. At. A. Time. In being fully in the moment. In doing the laundry. Washing the dishes. Making the bed. Bathing the kids. In concentrating fully on THIS task. THIS moment. The ONLY moment.

"There are no mundane things outside of Buddhism
and there is no Buddhism outside of mundane things
~ Yuan-Wu

Sometimes I need to STOP. And remind myself of this.

To remember that happiness is not to be found in scratching things off a to-do list. That happiness is not something that just happens after you're done with your mundane tasks ... later ... some day ...

That "happy" really can be found in something as simple as slowing down and giving your full attention to this very moment.

"Those who seek Dharma in the depths,
are those who leave it behind in the shallows."
~ Shido Munan

"A lifetime is not what’s between the moments of birth and death.
A lifetime is one moment between my two little breaths.
The present, the here, the now.That’s all the life I get.
I live each moment in full, in kindness, in peace, without regret."
~ Chade Meng

One of these kids is doin' her own thing

I went to Target last Sunday wearing this shirt.

Yeeeah. That probably wasn't too bright.

Might as well have been naked and riding a horse down the housewares aisle for all the freaky looks it got me.

Even better than the looks I get when I wear this one:

I think I just need to get one like this to complete the "odd-one-out" wardrobe trifecta.


Yes, I know. Everyone thinks California is one big liberal love-fest. (That, and we all surf.) But it's not true. Sorry to burst your Baywatch bubble. But California has communities that rival the Bible Belt in their conservatism.

There seems to be an inversely proportional relationship between conservatism and living distance from the ocean.

And my house is HOURS away from the ocean.

I live in a god-fearin', gun-totin', right-votin' bastion of political and social conservatism (think Mayberry circa 1950).

It's not all bad ... in fact, there are many things I really love about this little town.

But, every once in a while, something happens to drive home the reality that I do not quite fit the mold.

And that's okay, I guess. I'm not really one to worry too much about what other people think about my personal life.

I figure, live and let live, right? You don't need to "approve" of my life any more than I need to "approve" of yours. We can all just do what makes us happy, right? And leave everyone else alone to do what makes them happy. Right?

Right?

Mmmm. Wouldn't that be nice?

I don't do pink

Inspired again by Sci-Fi Dad, who had an insightful exploration of Gender Bias on his blog this week. Reminded me ...

I really wanted to get the boys a play kitchen for Christmas.

They love pretend-cooking. (Well, the four-year old likes to pretend-cook. The 19-month-old likes to bang pots and pans together and move things in and out of bowls.)

Anyway, I saw this neat, dark blue "Play Wonder" wooden kitchen at Target during the summer and thought it might work. It even had some matching plates and potholders and utensils and such. Great!

But, when I went back a couple of months later, I found this in it's place on the shelf:

Holy Pepto-Bismol, Batman! What the - ?!

Even worse, all of the kitchen accessories were pink now, too! Blech.

Yeah, yeah, I know I should be all cool and say that it doesn't matter and that boys can play with pink things just like girls can play with blue things.

But I detest pink. Hate it. Can't have it in my house. In fact, it's causing me some physical discomfort just to have this picture on my blog. *shudder*

And, really? Things just don't work that way in our society. Not yet, anyway. Even at four years old my Minion can tell you which of the toy aisles are "Boy Rows" and "Girl Rows" just from the color scheme.

And now, at Target, the Play Wonder Kitchen aisle is a "Girl Row".

Target does sell some other, neutral-colored kitchens. And, checking online, I see they once again have a blue wooden one not unlike the original one I liked last year.

But I'm still disappointed that, in the months before Christmas, Play Wonder - which, near as I can tell, is a Target-specific brand - only had the Pepto-pink version available in stores and online. (The pink is still the only one on the shelf at my local Target. Had to go online to find a blue one.)

They did, however, have the matching Play Wonder Tool Bench ... in dark blue. Only. What? No pink tool bench, Play Wonder? Just the kitchen gets the Pepto-makeover?

Why? Because girls play kitchen and boys play tools?

Well, joke's on you, Play Wonder. In my house, Daddies cook, Mommies use tools, and Boy-Minions play kitchen.

So, sorry, Target, I might still buy a play kitchen. But not your play kitchen.

So stuff that in your pink apron and bake it.

Marlin or Crush?

One of my favorite dad-bloggers, Scifi Dad over at Tales from the Dad Side wrote a post a little while back about how tough it can be as parents to balance Safe or Happy when it comes to our kids.

He got me thinking ...

As the parent of a pre-schooler, I have, of course, seen Finding Nemo about 7,000 times. In addition to learning about anemones, jellyfish and the EAC, there's a parenting lesson to be found between the reef and the bay.

There's a parenting spectrum with Marlin the Clown Fish (Nemo's Dad) at one end and Crush the Sea Turtle (Squirt's Dad) at the other.

Marlin was afraid to let "anything" happen to Nemo. But, as Dory said, that's "Not much fun for little Harpo ... Nemo."

Crush, on the other hand, gave Squirt the freedom to explore and learn and maybe even make some mistakes. Valuable lessons, there. :)

I'd like to say I'm one of those cool parents who's learned to take Crush's approach. But I have to admit that I'm more Marlin by nature.

The Husband, though, is a Crush. And he balances me out and keeps from crossing the line from "protective" to "lock-them-in-the-house-until-they're-21".

So, whenever I'm tempted to coat the Minions in bubble-wrap, I try to get in touch with my inner Crush.

While my natural instinct is "safety, first" ... I know I sometimes need to make myself relax a little bit and let them have a little freedom ... and maybe even make a mistake. (Not jumping-off-the-roof freedom, of course. More like going-on-the-slide-all-by-myself freedom).

And, oh my gawd, is that hard!

The Marlin side of my brain screams: "I need to keep my kids safe. And this is a very scary world."

And the Crush side drawls, "Duuuude. Let us chill see what the little Grommets can do."

I think it's getting a little easier. At least I hope so. If not, I think their teenage years might give me a coronary. Or at least an ulcer.

Of course, sometimes safety wins out and the answer is "No" ... but I know it's just as important to help them understand why the answer is no. Because there's a lesson in that, too.

I guess it's one of the many balancing acts we have to pull off every day as parents. And I know I make mistakes along the way. But, maybe the best anyone can do is "Just Keep Swimming."

So, who are you? Marlin or Crush?

Her Morning Elegance

This is just such a cool video. Very creative.