Closet Country Music Fan

Okay, I admit it.  I like country music.  Sugarland, Rascal Flatts, Taylor Swift, Keith Urban, JoDee Mesina, Janie Feliz, George Canyon. 

It is unlikely you’ve heard of the last two on the list.  My children are big fans of Janie Feliz.  She is a young woman who has overcome severe rheumatoid arthritis to achieve her dreams.  I worked on a documentary about her and two other people with immune disorders.  In the process, I became a fan.

The other singer is George Canyon.  George came in second on last season’s Nashville Star and is an amazing talent.  He also has type 1 diabetes and wears an Animas pump. I started working at Animas a few months ago.  If you are my friend on Facebook, you have seen a picture of me with him at a George Canyon concert.  He’s a very nice man who spends lots of his time helping kids along their journey with diabetes.

I work hard and I am proud to introduce my kids to these inspirational people who influence so many in positive ways. 

Just thought I would share the truth about me and country music.  Now I have to go get a new dog, put him in the back of a pick up and go hunting.

Cody and Me

I’m not a dog person.  I met this guy and was trying to impress him 14 years ago, so I pretended to like his dog.  Let me tell you, this canine wasn’t too in to me either.  I was interrupting time with his “person” and he was not thrilled. 

He was pretty cute.  Huge ears that flopped over, enormous paws.  So smart.  It wasn’t until we, his “parents” sent him to puppy school that things turned around for Cody and me.  I was the one to pick him up.  He was SO happy to see me that we immediately formed a bond.  

Apparently my diversionary tactics worked, because I impressed the guy and somehow tricked him into proposing marriage (12 years, two kids and several countries later, he still claims I’m trying to “trap” him).  So this was our little family.  Brad, Cody and me (in that order).

This dog was smart. He was disciplined.  He never got people food and he never had accidents.  He didn’t jump on people and he, years later, took all the crap my human offspring could dish out.  He moved to Belgium and back and his life-long best friend was a fat orange tabby cat named Voltaire.  Their favorite game was wrestling.  Voltaire’s head in Cody’s mouth and his paws securing him around Cody’s neck.  When we lost Voltaire to spinal cancer, Cody was lonely. 

Thanks to all his friends, Mary, Jack, Arielle, Andy over the years, Cody lived to be 14 years old.  Almost unheard of for a German Shepherd.  Not being a dog person, I was incredibly cavalier about his last day.  I didn’t think it would have an impact.  I won’t recount the drama and the tears of holding him at the vet at the end. 

I still don’t know if I can count myself as a dog person, but there is no question in my mind, that I am and will always be, a Cody-person.

Miss ya, buddy.

 

Time Makes You Bolder, Even Children Get Older and I’m Gettin Older, Too (Landslide)

Okay, as Facebook “outs” me, I have to blog about my birthday tomorrow.  I always get kind of strange (stranger) around my birthday.  We all love our birthdays as kids, as we get older, we see the grave getting closer, everything is drooping and all that.  But I take it as my opportunity to take an annual inventory.  I actually like to be in Cleveland on our around my birthday in order to do this with complete context for reflection, but the fates did not allow this year.  So I thought I would reflect on my own about some of the more memorable birthdays I’ve lived through:

5 – Ground Round in St. Louis, MO

10 – Sleepover at house in Pepper Pike (not to be confused with the Halloween party I had that Eric Hochman came to as the incredible hulk)

16 – Amy Goldberg’s woods with wine coolers (first time I had a drink)

20 – I was so depressed.  My boyfriend at the time sent me 20 dozen roses and a singing telegram (a mortician) to my cousin Sharon’s house.

21 – in Lancaster, England (didn’t mean much as the drinking age there was 18).  Got drunk at the County College pub.

24 – Brad threw me a surprise party at Camden Yards and then we went out in Baltimore with Bill and Bethke and woke on on a friend of theirs parents’ living room floor the next morning (I swear this is not a theme)

30 – had just given birth a week before and had to leave the sushi place because I was “leaking”

34 – my “friends” at the office did a party with cake for our friend Brian (his birthday is July 8) and then they removed everything from my office while I was out buying them Starbucks.  good times.

35- another surprise party at Hollyhedge, lots of cosmos

…and that brings us up to present day.  A few weeks ago, we lost Derek’s brother Dave very suddenly.  Dave’s mom Pat told me not to waste this lesson. Every trial, every tribulation is a gift.  Every birthday is a milestone.  Is a marker of everything I’ve done and everything I’ve learned and each year of another demonstration of my survival.  Savor it.  And be grateful. 

So as my life changes and my viewpoint changes, I guess my perspective on my birthday does as well.  Happy birthday?  I guess that’s up to me.

The Haunting

I’m too lazy to check and see if I’ve blogged too much about Facebook, but I have a few things to say.

If you ever thought the past would not come back to haunt you, the 80s are stalking me like Fatal Attraction. I never thought my hair looked good, but I didn’t realize it was actually capable of causing harm. The worst part is that the pictures floating around of me as a teenager only emphasize how freaking old I look now.

In addition to my multiple fashion offenses, I had nicknames.  Man, I could be untraceable if only I were, as a friend recently told me, “physically incapable of not keeping in touch.”  Missy Saunders is a fairly well known one, but less well-known and making a comeback (thank you Larry Goldstein) is Moose (after the girl from You Can’t Do that on Television) anyone?  I must have a totally warped perception of what I look like or very dirty mirrors because I never thought I resembled her or the Irish girl from American Idol this season (Carly Smithson).

If you tell me I look (and act) like my 4 year old, then I think you’d have a case… 

Seven Heaven

Seven years ago tomorrow at 9:50 in the morning my life actual meant something for the first time.  He came screaming into existence and turned mine from a narcissistic indulgence into something that actually mattered.  To raise him, I thought all it would take was love.  I had no idea… Parents never do.  Or else, we wouldn’t reproduce.  My cousin Sharon once described motherhood as having your heart walk around outside your body – you have no idea how to care for it, but you know you can’t live without it and now it is exposed to the world and you would give anything to protect it.

This little boy amazes me every day.  I am so proud of who he is as if I had something to do with it.  I think he is this remarkable despite of our preposterous mistakes.  He has a way of bringing his innocence into my world like the light of perspective I was always missing. 

Growing up I spent time as “Missy  Saunders” or “Moose.” Eventually, I became “Mrs. Katz” and later even “Mel”.  But there’s nothing I love more than going to my boy’s school or camp or birthday party and hearing someone call me by the name that identifies me more than almost any other when they call, “Micah’s mom!!”

Happy Birthday, Micah.  Mommy loves you, Mommy loves you…

Business Trips

Okay, bad blogger.  I have not written in way too long.  But here I am.  New job, new outlook, same bad attitude.  But you wouldn’t read me any other way, right?

I could not be more ambivalent about traveling for business.  I texted my sister from the plane about missing my kids and hating to leave them.  She wrote back that she would gladly switch places as she was at the doctor with her two boys having warts removed from their feet (note to self: buy flip flops for visit to sister’s house). 

 

She’s right!  My own remote, not having to cut anyone else’s food or have them sit in my lap for a meal or climbing in my bed in the middle of the night (my husband and I don’t have business trips together).  I can have a few moments to myself in between the meetings and maybe even a drink in the evening.  Not bad!

 

But they send me to a Disney property (we will not go there right now) and I am surrounded by little thumb-sucking reminders of what I miss from home.  I want to snuggle each one.  I am helping other moms around me on the plane or in the hotel.  They think I’m a nut, but I get a kid fix so it’s worth it.  I’ve also been them.

 

So a few days away isn’t bad.  Sometimes I even bring my stay-at-home mom friends with me so they can get a night off, too for free.  They can’t have the remote, though…

Why not me?

So the author of a wordpress blog called “Stuff White People Like” just got offered $350k for a book deal.  It’s a really funny blog.  It just had an idea that was marketable.  Here is my latest plan for a million dollar blog.  Check it out.  www.outofthemouthsofbabes.wordpress.com

Roll Over

OMG!  My children climb in my bed every night.  As a working mom, I don’t get enough time with them and I like the snuggles, but the little buggers keep getting bigger!  There just isn’t enough room in our king size bed for all those people (one blessing of the German Shepherd getting too old to climb the stairs is that he can’t sleep in there, too).  Our parent coach gave us some great tips on how to get the children out of our bed and they work, but we are not consistent about it.  It’s also hard, because sometimes I don’t have the energy to discipline.  After a full day of work (and G-d forbid, a workout), I do the bedtime routine:  brush, tinkle, read, snuggle, water, kiss, threaten, yell, ignore, give up, try again, cajole and finally relent.  EVEN if I win and they got to sleep in their own beds, they crawl in to mine in the middle of the night when I am too tired to argue – these are very clever children).  Listen, they go on sleepovers and deal with it (even the 4 year old).  My coach would yell at me, but what can I say?  I’m a slave to the snuggles.

Facebook…Seriously

Okay, I am totally confused and have no idea how this happened, but thanks to Jill Besnoy, I now have a Facebook page and within 24 hours I have 41 “friends.”  There are pictures of me from the ’80s (thank you Stacey Trombold – remember, payback is a b*tch – I’m digging tonight).  I am a bit disturbed by the number of people who have facebook pages and what they put on them (I have to call my sister because I had no idea what my brother-in-law is thinking with his).  It will be a great way to plan my 20th high school reunion  now that I can find people and have friends to help.  If you haven’t checked it out, you should.  It’s a mind blow. 

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=600594348

Your Turn

Next time I complain about my husband, you have my permission to smack me.  I am so tired today.  Feeling whatever popular virus has taken over my body.  Last night was the night from hell.  One had a fever, the other one wet the bed.  The one with the fever kept waking up and would not be consoled.  We kept rolling over to one another saying, “Your turn.”  When we realized that all four of us were up at 4 a.m., we gave up and got up. 

I can’t sleep when my husband is away.  I can’t imagine trying to raise these two kids on my own.  I pick on him because of his ever-presence, but that’s what I love most about him.  My worst nightmare would be waking up, rolling over to say, “Your turn” to no one.