a-to-z blog challenge – beauty girls mom

April 25, 2014

P is for Perfect – a-to-z blog challenge

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A child walked into a house today and made the declaration, “Oh my gosh, whatever you’re cooking smells amazing!”

It was my house. This was one of my children. And she wasn’t fishing for concert tickets, car keys, or a puppy.

My house is cluttered. Currently, my railing is sporting two weeks worth of clean laundry that somehow made it through the washer and dryer, but failed to hook up with the hangers from whence they once came. I have unsorted socks on a chair in my bedroom, and while part of me thinks I really need to get them done, my cat has declared herself king of that mountain and I haven’t the heart to dethrone her.

The dresser in my bedroom has three stacks of books on it. And I have a Kindle. There may also be a package of unopened Valentine pretzels among those stacks. Don’t judge.

More often than not (and especially this week), dinner is supplied from a local takeaway restaurant. My kids are as familiar with the menus of the local Italian, Chinese, Japanese, and pizza restaurants as they are their times tables (and these are some times table smart girls).

Having a kid walk in this well loved, well worn, well lived in home and claim that anything was amazing? That’s what perfect is all about.

April 15, 2014April 15, 2014

L is for Last – a-to-z Blog Challenge

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It was the LAST thing I would have ever expected. Days before my 40th birthday, having battled infertility much of my childbearing years, the sheer exhaustion I was feeling was dismissed as an impending bug.

Seeing the two happy pink lines on the home pregnancy test? Yep, the LAST thing I would have guessed. It was Labor Day weekend, ironically, and I called my doctor in a panic. Having had so many miscarriages, I wanted to get right on a regiment IMMEDIATELY. He hesitated, but told me to come in on Labor Day and we would talk. I did. We did. And he agreed to try the protocol that I know helped bring me Eilis.

And after spending 7 months hoping for the best, and another month in the hospital on complete bed rest, at 36 weeks, my LAST baby was born.

I’ve heard that they save the best for last. I will never say that about my children – I love them all so much. But this was the best last I have ever experienced.

Happy Birthday, Granuaile!

April 14, 2014

K is for Knight in Shining Armor – a-to-z blog challenge

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Knights come in all shapes and sizes, and believe it or not, they don’t all wear those big, gaudy, tacky suits.

My sister is facing one of the most difficult experiences of her life in the next 24 hours. But she is an amazing woman. She is strong, she is brave, and she faces things head on. And that’s why this excruciatingly painful day is coming now instead of months ago. My sister is a true knight in shining armor, and she battled against a death sentence for her best buddy, Marlee, her 12 year old yellow Lab.

She may not think at this moment that she won, but she did. When vets were telling her it might be time to say goodbye, she Googled and web searched and found something that might help Marlee battle the cancer diagnosis she had been given. She took Mar for laser treatments, fed her a healthy diet, and gave her every opportunity to live well beyond the number of days the vets thought would be possible – with a quality of life they could not have imagined.

Marlee played, she got to enjoy another beach season and another snow season, she visited Dram’s house, where those bad for you foods get passed under the table as freely for granddogs as for grandchildren, and got cuddled by my kids, who love her almost as much as Meg does. She got to go to sleep in her own bed and wake up to her favorite people, smells, and activities. She got to wake up – way more mornings than she might have had she not been Megan’s dog.

No, not all knights sit at round tables, carry battleaxes, and rust if they play out in the rain. Some carry a wine glass, sit on the floor so they can cuddle better, and even the flow of tears that I know is falling tonight at Meg’s house will not cause her to rust.

She’s a true knight in shining armor – Marlee’s knight. And I think, if I’m honest, Marlee might have been Megan’s a time or two, too.

April 12, 2014

K is for Killer Bees – and Other Scary Things a-to-z blog challenge

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I cannot remember when I first heard of killer bees, but I know I was young – a little kid – and I was terrified. I remember hearing that they were coming to the United States from wherever killer bees lived at the time, and I had visions of armies of bees, rowing tiny bee boats across great oceans to get to the shores of the US, where they would turn us all into zombies. Scared spitless.

But killer bees are not the only thing that terrified me. I sat through the movie The Exorcist and felt nothing. The movie Carrie? I couldn’t go to bed. My bed and Bean’s bed were in the same room, and at the time, they were pushed together to make one giant bed. I was convinced in my sleep that Carrie’s cold, dead hand would come up between the crack where my bed and Bean’s bed connected and kill me in my sleep.

I’m lucky after seeing the movie Jaws that I could even sit on a toilet. I was never a huge fan of swimming in the ocean, but once I saw Jaws (which I did see, in the theater, six times), I was much more content to watch the waves roll from afar. I still am.

As a grown up, the things I’m most afraid of involve my kids. Terrified of bad things happening to them. It’s an enormous fear when they start driving, when they go out on a bike ride, when they go into a school where someone else’s child may have a violent agenda. Mom fears are the worst.

But, I’m still afraid of Killer Bees.

April 12, 2014April 12, 2014

J is for Jelly – a-to-z blog challenge

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My family has some weird food tendencies. The first weird food thing I can remember was my sister, Bean, who would skip tomato sauce on her pasta in favor of Russian dressing – which she also put on steak. Blech.

Then there was Brighid, who for the first nine years of school took a peanut butter sandwich – no jelly – for lunch. She wouldn’t eat lunch meat, and claimed a thermos didn’t keep things hot enough to eat by lunch time. I thought her teachers would think I was a crummy parent, so one day I decided to switch it up and send her with cream cheese on crackers as her lunch. She ate that for snack and then had chips and an apple for lunch. Mother of the year went to someone else that year.

Eilis doesn’t like soup – unless it’s smokey portobello from Artist Point at Disney’s Wilderness Lodge.

Granuaile doesn’t eat potatoes, unless they are mashed. No, you cannot bake them, take the “potato” out of the skin, and mash it – apparently, it tastes like dog turd sprinkled with used cat litter that way.

But the weirdest food phenomena in my house is Jim and his jelly. He has eaten jelly omelettes (not in my house, because I can’t make an omelette). He likes his toast with butter and jelly. And while we’re on the subject of butter – he puts butter and cream cheese on his bagels.

I’m not immune to flavor oddities – I like pretzels with my ice cream; cream cheese with my potato chips; and raisin gravy on ham (even though I hate raisins in every other way imaginable).

And I despise jelly. Except on peanut butter. But it has to be on the opposite side of the bread and spread thinly with the back of a spoon.

What are your weird food favorites?

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