Pool Bums

   
    The idea of hanging out, half-naked, baking my pasty, white skin in the sun with both strangers and people I know, while constantly on keep-someone-from-drowning-patrol really hasn't been my idea of fun in the past. Not to mention my hellish word association with the word 'pool' after our nightmare experience in Oregon taking care of THE WORST pool of all time at the home we were renting. I thought I was damaged on pools and swimming for the rest of my life.

    But the pool in our neighborhood opened last weekend and my friend Laura convinced me not to be an idiot and go...and I have been back almost every day since. I don't mean to lay it on thick or anything, but I frequently find even more reasons to love our life in Georgia more than the day before. It just keeps on getting better; down to the little things like the neighborhood pool. I can park it in a chair and be three feet away from my two little ones in the two, kiddie pools and the two older girls can be right in front of me swimming in water they can stand in if they need to and still be close enough for me to watch without having to be in the water with them. Not to mention I don't have to dump or mix chemicals, vacuum, skim, pull dead rats out of the filter, figure out what the h*ll is wrong with the pump, take in water samples or any or that other garbage. I just show up. Blissful I tell you, just blissful. Also the neighborhood has an adult-only pool and a family pool that are completely separate. I never have to worry about annoying the weird dude, drinking a beer and working on his skin cancer next to me, because guess what, that dude is no where near me.

    In addition to my other issues, my aversion to being at the pool has stemmed from the fact that I hate wearing a swim suit. I just feel so dang naked, like the whole world can see your every flaw. But after this week, I have decided that I can be at peace with the fact that there are 13-year-olds with bigger boobs than me. And also the fact that no matter what I do, I have cellulite on the backs of my legs. Guess what, so do 98% of the other women there. Even the ones that look like they are best friends with the gym. And there we are, walking around half-naked, with our dimpled, posterior thighs and no one cares. People are so laid back, so real, so polite. I just love where we live. I may yet not be a completely lame mom this summer and happily oblige when the Little Women beg to throw on their swimsuits and head out to the pool.

I know, I'm a beast....

No, this is not my freezer. Hopefully soon, but not now. If we had to live off the contents of the freezer in my basement we would be eating strawberry freezer jam, IKEA meatballs, frozen chicken breasts and little else.

Once upon a time I had a freezer stocked full of meals and loaves of homemade bread. Once upon a time I clipped coupons, shopped sales, had a great little food storage set-up and loved menu planning. Once upon a time I only had two kids...(Motherhood is hard work regardless of how many kids you have. All I am saying was #3 and #4 sent me for a loop and it's taken awhile to recover from the sheer workload that each new child brings.)

Anyhoot, Devyn is getting a little older and Lauryn is more independent and life is settling into a groove that feels manageable. Busy still, but manageable. I decided I should start trying to get back into the swing of things and try to reclaim some of my former self. So I got on Pinterest looking for some good recipes and stuff for freezer and slow cooker meals. I came across some sites that looked good; but the cutesy, perfect Mom/cook/blogger persona on the sites got so nauseating after awhile. For instance....

"I chopped all my vegetables while precious, wonderful, perfectly behaved, little Janie sat in her really expensive learning toy next to me and we took time to talk about all the colors and textures of the vegetables...blah, blah, blah....Then I put all my ingredients (that were all organic, because organic is so great and the only way to go!)...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah....Don't forget about how lethal BPA is....blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...I stacked all of the meals the same way I did with my frozen breast milk (because breast milk is the most wonderful nectar we could ever give our wonderful children)....blah, blah, blah...I labeled my freezer meals with the cutest, most-wonderful, custom designed (by me of course!) labels...blah, blah, blah, blah, blah...."

You get the idea.

I'm thinking "Lady just shut up and give me the recipe. I don't care to read on as you pontificate about all this other peripheral crap." It was like bumper stickers for me. (I detest bumper stickers.) You're driving along, you see five million bumper stickers on the back of some car/van/truck summarizing their every like/dislike/activity/vacation destination/family member, etc... I don't need to know all that. I'm a random stranger. Why do they care for me to see all that? They know where they've been, what they do, who is in their family, etc. Why the need to advertise to people they don't even know? I just want to drive down the road without getting the lowdown on your whole life...

Again, I digress.

The point is, here I was just looking for a simple recipe and instead had to wade through this lady's commentary on every little thing. Enough already! I like organic stuff too, but I don't announce it from the rooftops so I can seem so cool and with it. I breastfed my kids too, all four of them. But I don't gain some sense of fulfillment by making sure everyone knows about it. And no, I don't croon colors and stuff with my kids as I cook. Mostly I ask them to get off my leg so I don't trip with a knife in my hand and kill both of us in one fell swoop.

I know, I'm a beast. But seriously, get real people.

Morning Tantrum

This morning Brynna came stomping into my bathroom in her uniform pants, upset that I had made her change out of her skort because it was dirty. (A little background, Brynna hates wearing the uniform pants, she only likes the skorts. But she had already worn her skorts for the week and pants were the only clean options left.) She scowled at me and said “You know what hate about my school….”

I cut her off there. Maybe it was rude, but I was in no mood for ungrateful tantrums. I said “Brynna, I am not really interested in listening to a tirade of what you hate.

Do you want to know that there are still little girls in this world who don’t even get to go to school, because their society says they are not worth it.

There are little girls who will never learn how to read because there are people that see no value in educating a girl.

There are little girls who have no say in what they do, who they marry, or what they become.

YOU are a girl born in America. YOU are a girl who is not told if she gets to learn, but you are a girl who gets to decide if you will choose to learn. YOU get to choose to be whatever you can dream or imagine and you live in a place where if you work hard enough you can make that happen. YOU get to choose the man who you will marry someday. YOU get to choose what you will do with your life. YOU live in a time in history and in a society where your thoughts as a girl are valued and matter.

If you want to waste your time pouting and crying about the fact that you didn’t get to choose your skirt today then shame on you for having such an ungrateful attitude. YOU have every choice that really matters in life, Brynna. Be grateful and quit whining.”

Maybe I was a bit heavy on her, but dang it I won't have my kids growing up like so many spoiled brats out there who's parents soothe and appease their every whim and demand in life if they cry loud enough or scowl long enough. I love my kids with all my heart and the last thing I want them suffering from in life is an ungrateful heart. I hope my kids know that I expect them to do and be their best not because I am a battle axe, stick-in-the-mud, but because I love them and want to help them be the people they were sent to this earth to be.

I hope they always know that I think that they are smart, kind, talented and beautiful. I hope they know that I am always here to assist them in all that they do. I hope that when they doubt themselves they will know they were raised to push past that doubt. I hope they will know that they are Young's and because of that they can do hard things and need to strive to have grateful hearts.

I hope in the long run a little sternness will be interpreted for what it really is...a heavy dose of love.

If you don't have anything nice to say...

...don't say anything at all, right?

But I just.can't.resist!!

I posted this to my Facebook status tonight and immediately deleted it for fear of offending some people on my friend's list who could benefit from this advice....

I get annoyed by people who refuse to grow up. If you have graduated from high school, that means it's time to stop acting like you are still 16 and let life change you in good ways. Put your boobs back in your shirt, quit taking five million posey pictures of yourself and go be a productive human being who grasps that there is a universe beyond the end of your cute, little nose. Sorry I just had to get that off my chest.

Truthfully, even if my 16-year-old acted the way some of these full grown adults act I would be embarrassed. When did it become "hot" to dress like a hooker, drink like a sailor, and be so self-absorbed that your greatest joy in life is capturing new and seductive poses of yourself?

Why would you want to seduce the entire Facebook population anyway? Doesn't that just scream "I don't think enough of myself, so I have to try and sell my sexuality and attractiveness to other people so I can be validated by a complete array of random people in my life."?

It's weird to me.

I have nothing against sexy. Sexy is good. For the right audience. Particularly the one you actually share a bed with. Grandma doesn't need to see your sex kitten. Random friend from high school doesn't need to see you getting your 30-year-old self sloshed pressed up like a lesbo against your best friend. Cousin doesn't need to see you pose with furry, kitty cat ears and that ridiculous kissy-face people make that they think makes them look "SOOOOO HAWT!!!"

Even at Costco today some chick was shopping with her boyfriend/husband and baby who had the most ENORMOUS boobs I have ever seen popping out of her tiny, spaghetti-strap tank. We are talking about unprecedented levels of cleavage here people. At least from what I have seen publicly displayed. Think longer than a butt crack... and this chick was tiny. So ridiculously unproportionate... but that's another story. Back to the point. Her husband/boyfriend apparently loved the boobage. So much so that he proudly displayed her in a seductive, ample-bosomed pose tattooed on his bicep....as they are grocery shopping with their baby.

Because nothing turns me on like shopping for toilet paper with my kid in tow. Gotta see/expose every inch possible of those sweet ta-ta's as I buy ketchup and frozen chicken. Right?!

Am I the only one that thinks this is weird? Am I the only one that thinks their grandkids are going to be seriously grossed out by grandma being preserved in ink in all her sexual glory on grandpa's arm? Am I the only one who thinks if sex kitten is out all the time, what makes it exciting when it's actually time to get down to business?

I could go on, but the moral of the story and my rant is...get your sexy on people. Just don't subject the general population to it. And also don't let it define you. Don't let the only thing you have to offer be a kissy-face and arm-length self-portrait. Because it's so played out it doesn't really impress anyone anymore. All it accomplishes is making you look like a desperate, self-absorbed fool. And really, who finds that attractive?

Rant over.