Because I have some issues with masses of humanity, I have to admit that it’s been years since my last trip to the Trail of Lights. The thought of losing sight of my little kids, as they darted off in the direction of sparkly things, filled me with dread.

Due to my (mostly unfounded) skittishness, I missed out on an Austin tradition for years. I grew up in Austin – I know, it’s weird, since none of the other 742 million people who live here are from here – and we always visited the trail when I was a child. I have happy memories of twirling under the Zilker Tree, riding the Zephyr in the dark, and driving through the Trail of Lights.

This year I was invited to attend a Trail of Lights preview with the Austin Bloggers group, and I jumped at the chance. The year 2015 is my year to get over silly aversions to things like crowds.** The year 2015 is my year to introduce a new generation of Austinites to one of our treasured traditions.

Some things have changed in the three-plus decades since my last visit. For example, now you walk through the trail instead of driving. Hooray for fewer emissions! The trail looks a bit different, and the corporate sponsors are new, but in many ways I was heralded directly back to my childhood.

It was a perfect night, clear and chilly, just as I always remember it being (back before our freakish climate change was so apparent in our temps). The Austin skyline glittered in the background, making me happy to be alive and living in Austin. Who isn’t, really?

Check out some pictures, below, and please excuse the poor quality. I forgot my camera, and my iPhone is, according to my nine year old, “super old and out of date.” He asked Santa to bring me a new phone. I would love to think it’s altruistic on his part, but I know he thinks a new phone for mom equals a hand-me-down phone for kid. He is wrong. Still, I hope Santa heeds his request and brings me a phone with a decent camera.

So. Photos. And… a chance to win a ZiP Fast Pass, presented by HomeAway, that gets you into the Trail of Lights one hour before it opens to the public. Details after the photos.

Family selfie at the trail’s rainbow entrance.

This display is called “Three Trees,” though as a kid I overheard pointed out, there are actually closer to 20 trees.

Covering their heads. In case of bats. This is my favorite display on the trail: the Austin Bat Cave.

The stars at night are big and bright, deep in the heart of Texas.

That blurry business is the Austin skyline behind the Trail of Lights.

If you’re going to the trail, you should also visit the Zilker Tree, erected on one of Austin’s famous Moontowers. If you’re feeling crazy, spin in circles while staring up into the center of the tree. (Do this before eating beignets, kettle corn, and funnel cakes.)

I know you want to go see it all for yourself now. If you also happen to have enochlophobia (fear of large crowds and gatherings of people), you need this ZiP Fast Pass. The pass is worth $15, and gets you and any children under five in at 6 p.m., one hour before the trail opens. Read more details about ZiP on the Trail of Lights ticket information page.

With the ZiP you’ll avoid long lines, see one of Austin’s best holiday sights, and make lasting family memories. The 6 p.m. entry allows you to do all of that, and get the kids home, snug in their beds, on time.

All the details you need about the Trail of Lights, like location, parking, activities, and more can be found here. The trail is open December 8-22, with free admission until the 15th. Admission costs $3 (for 12 and over) from the 16th – 22nd.

How do you win the ZiP Fast Pass? Easy, peasy. Leave a comment below telling me your favorite, holiday-season family activity or tradition.

Fine print: The winner will be picked at random, using Random.org. This giveaway is open until 8 a.m., Thursday, December 10, 2015. The winner will be notified by noon CST on Thursday, December 10. If the winner cannot be contacted, another entrant will be chosen.

*Also: mean people, intolerant people, and fear-mongering.
** Will not be getting over the things listed in the first asterisk.

‘Tis the season.

No, not that season. It will be that season soon enough, so you should probably start making your list and checking it twice.

Take a deep breath.

You have, like, 128 days until Christmas. Your kids will likely be in school for around 80 of those days, factoring in for weekends, other holidays, and the inevitable sick days. Your job and miscellaneous volunteer responsibilities will eat up 90 or so days. Most of those days – school days and work days – overlap, of course.

The math is getting complicated, but the point is, you have roughly one month to get ready for the holidays. Not one consecutive month, but still. Stop panicking about Christmas.

What you should be panicking about is school.

Take another deep breath. There is, in fact, nothing about which to panic. This is all you need to do between now and the first day of school, in no particular order:

1. Fill out the registration paperwork (Bonus time if your district now has an online option, as mine does. Heaven, I tell you. I gained hours of non-form-filling-out life.)
2. Fill out the Tell Me About Your Child forms.
3. Realize you don’t know the answers to all of the questions on the Tell Me About Your Child forms. How is this possible? What is his favorite subject? Minecraft?
4. Buy backpacks.
5. Return backpacks, because they were the wrong colors.
6. Buy more backpacks.
7. Buy new lunch containers.
8. Decide what to put in the lunch containers. No, children, fruit strips are not, in fact, fruit. Yes, they have fruit in them, but no, they don’t count. I’m not having this discussion again.
9. Sign up for PTA.
10. Regret signing up for PTA.
11. Renew your commitment to PTA and being an involved, active parent.
12. (Those last three items occurred over a 37-second time span.)
13. Buy spirit gear.
14. Exchange spirit gear for new sizes, because they may live at your house, but it’s hard to get a handle on how quickly the kids grow.
15. Buy new pants for the kids. See above, re: quick growth.
16. Buy new pants for yourself. See: summer indulgences.
17. Assess the pencil situation in your house. You have 783 pencils. Two of them are sharpened. One has a working eraser.
18. Remedy the pencil situation. (Bonus: sharpening pencils kills a couple hours during those last, dog days of summer.)
19. Set up the homework station.
20. Realize the kids will never recall where pencils, paper, hole punchers, staplers, erasers, glue, etc. live, even though you worked together to set up the homework station.
21. Make a daily game plan to help with the morning rush and the after school insanity.
22. Now is a great time to organize your recipes and plan a month of meals in advance, making dinner a snap.
23. Hahahahaha.
24. Organize the sports calendar, the piano calendar, the play date calendar.
25. Realize you may not be doing as well “fighting the over-scheduling of our children” as you once believed you were.
26. Meet the teachers. Pray you do a convincing on-the-ball parent act.
27. Just pray. Period. For the teachers, the kids, the staff, your family’s sanity.

See? Nothing to it.

Maybe we should all take one more deep breath.

We’re on week two of a stomach bug at my house. Three-quarters of us have been hit, one person every three or four days. My fourth grader, who we’ll call Patient Zero, had a mild case. No big deal, I thought. Four days later, I nearly died, followed in three days by the first grader getting slammed.

Only Mark has escaped the bug. I lie awake every night waiting for him to fall victim, even though he claims a super immunity. I won’t relax until he makes it a full two weeks from Sunday without barfing. I know this is a waste of my energy, to worry about Mark catching the bug. I know I should close my eyes and get some sleep. I know.

So here we are, three weeks of summer left, and the past 10 days lost to a never-ending loop of sickness, cleaning, washing, disinfecting. I started thinking about the best way to use these last few weeks, and decided now would be a good time to update you on how well we managed summer expectations this year.

(I assume you’ve all spent a good deal of your summers wondering about mine. No? Okay. I’m still forging ahead with this update.)

You may recall that I had expectations going into the summer, and concerns that all would devolve into chaos. You can revisit that post here if you need a refresher – I’m not wasting space by pasting it in this post, so go ahead and commit the unrealistic schedule to memory before you pop back over. Got it memorized?

Now, let’s see how reality looked.

Most mornings – not every morning, let’s not be crazy – I was up before the boys, walked the dog, and ate a real breakfast. This is a breakthrough for me. Mornings are not my favorite. Or, they weren’t my favorite. I embraced them, and we’re getting chummy, me and the a.m. hours.

The kids still ate their fair share of cereal (organic, but still, cereal) and frozen waffles. As for the pleasant conversation, does “he’s looking at me!” and “why are you so gross when you eat?” and “this yogurt looks weird!” count?

We did do “school,” but we didn’t do it well. There was some math fact practicing, some reading and writing practice. I doubt anyone made big leaps in their grasp of basic educational concepts, but perhaps their brains aren’t entirely atrophied. If knowledge of every American Ninja Warrior counts for anything, the boys are going to be fine in school this year.

The kids actually did their chores every day. I may have donned my crazy mom face, and announced, through gritted teeth, that “I will not tolerate any whining or complaining about chores, under penalty of… well, something awful, I promise.” For once, it worked. They even earned enough Stevens Bucks to buy a new Xbox game they wanted.

They did not, however, do a quality job on all of their chores. I decided to let this go. For now. When school starts, I’ll put on the hazmat suit and tackle things; until then, there are worse things than sub-par dusting by elementary school students.

We did not excel at enriching fun time! activities. We did some stuff, sure. A lot of days we did… nothing of significance. It rained frequently during the first half of summer, so we hung out inside. There was more screen time than I wanted, especially during our recent plague.

The screen usage will likely result in residual mush-brain. If the number of times I heard “Boom Beach” or “Disney Infinity Marvel” or “can I get that app?” or “why do I have parental controls? I’m not a baby!” is any indication, then good luck, teachers. Re-programming their little brains to focus on school is going to take some effort.

I tried. I did. And I also gave up a few times. Summer is hard work, screens make it easier sometimes.

There was, at least, a lot of reading for all of us. Maybe I’ll do a What I Read post soon. Yet, the first grader still tells people he can’t read at all. That’s always a proud moment for me. He can read, but he cannot tackle Harry Potter or War and Peace yet, so in his mind, he cannot read. At all.

We ate dinner every night! That’s all I have to say about that.

Mark and I did a 21-day elimination diet (more on that another time), so we did, in fact, eat a clean diet most of the summer. Even now we primarily stick to our clean eating plan. Primarily, but not entirely.

As for bedtime and teeth brushing, I’m kind of dreading the pediatric dentist appointment in a couple weeks. They brushed. Didn’t they? I’m sure they did. And that school bedtime schedule is going to hurt us all, for sure.

My personal goals for the summer were lofty. Drum roll, please… I did not finish the book. I barely worked on the book. But I made some progress, and some progress is better than no progress. I did, however, exercise most days. By exercise, I mean “took a walk.” Better than nothing? I’m saying yes.

That’s going to be title of my memoir: Better Than Nothing! (I hope the cover looks like the Jeb! logo.)

The photos are still a mess. Not a bit of headway made there.

We – mainly Mark, honestly – have made a big dent on the home improvement front. There’s a lot still to do, but I can see the end. I can also see ladders and tools everywhere. Soon, I’ll have an office (I’m sitting in it now!), though at the moment it’s serving as storage for all of the displaced items we packed up until construction and painting end. Mark has built bookcases, installed wainscoting, built a bar, and more. He’s a rock star.

It wasn’t all chores, screen time, and halfhearted educational efforts. We took a family trip to Chicago, where the boys learned how to hail a cab and hop on the L. I learned that they might as well lick the floor of every cab, because they touched the entire city… and then touched their faces. Repeatedly.

The boys spent a week at Pine Cove Camp in the City, which they loved. We had a fantastic swim season, and a lot of fun at VBS one week. Only one person went to the ER for a head wound. We call that winning around here.

There you have it, our summer in a rather large nutshell. Like a Brazil nut-sized shell. But we still have three weeks to go, including one, last summer hurrah at the beach. There’s still time to cram in more memories, and maybe practice a few more math facts.

I bet I’ll even get those photos organized, scanned, framed, and album-ed.*

*No. Probably not.

In the summer of 2005 I was pregnant, but didn’t know it yet. I was in Minneapolis-St. Paul for a family wedding, and all I could think about was taking a nap. And then another nap. I assumed I was dying, though in the back of my mind I knew I could be growing a person.

The Twin Cities were in the middle of a heat wave. Mark and I left hot, humid Houston, where the air conditioner was our best friend, for are-you-kidding-me-it’s-hotter Minnesota, where the air conditioners could not handle the heat. I take heat waves with me everywhere I go, by the way. I’ve melted snow in Denver, and suffered a sunburn in Seattle. If you’re looking to escape the Texas heat, you probably should not plan a trip with me.

In between showering off the sweat and napping, I was on a mission. I heard that the cast of the upcoming A Prairie Home Companion movie was staying in our hotel. I was obsessed. I’m a huge Garrison Keillor fan, not to mention that the movie cast was worth a bit of stalking. If you aren’t familiar with the movie, go take a look at the cast. I mean. It’s a good one.

I’d met Tommy Lee Jones before, and he did not buy me a drink or regale me with stories of his life and career, so I didn’t really care if I saw him again. But the rest of them? I wanted a look. And yes, I wanted them to buy me a drink (maybe a ginger ale, just in case it was a baby and not impending death making me sleepy?), and regale me with stories… and possibly exchange email addresses.

While I, like almost every other woman in the world, love Meryl Streep, the person I most wanted to become BFFs with was Lily Tomlin. When I was a little girl and saw Edith Ann in that giant chair, I was smitten, and remained a fan all of my life.

I don’t know why I was watching Edith Ann when I was a small child, because she may be five-and-a-half years old, but she is not for children. This was the seventies, though, and cartoons were only on once a week, so the rest of the time we watched what the adults watched. Once, in the eighties (not that different from the 1970s where parenting is concerned, just with bigger hair and shoulder pads), when it snowed three times in one winter – in Austin, Texas, where it does not snow – my parents rented Stripes. They said if we would just lie down and be quiet for 117 minutes we could watch the inappropriate movie. And thus, my love affair with Bill Murray began, but that’s another story.

So there I was in 2005, sweating profusely and puffy-faced from my most recent nap. It had been a doozy, too, the kind of nap that leaves you unsure of your name, the date, or who the president is. I think it’s important for you to know that the nap occurred about 1.32 hours after waking up from a night of sleep. I basically ate breakfast, attempted to take a walk in the sweltering heat, and went back to bed. I was thinking if this exhaustion is not due to pregnancy, I will certainly be dead by lunch. If it is pregnancy, I’m going to have to quit my job, because I don’t think I can nap for the next nine months and still get paid. (True story: I had to quit my job in month seven.)

Back to our story. In case you have already forgotten, it’s 2005, and napping has reduced my eyes to slits. Mark, concerned about my cat-like sleep schedule, and I, not even pretending to be all the way awake, were waiting for the hotel valet to bring our car around when I heard her. Behind me, waiting for her car, was Lily Tomlin. She was wearing sunglasses and talking on her cell phone. I don’t want to betray her confidence – you know, the unspoken bond we created as I stared at her, jaw agape, dried nap drool on my chin – and tell you what she was saying. It was clearly a personal conversation and not a business call.

Lily – I don’t call her Ms. Tomlin anymore, after our moment under the portico – was talking to a friend, and offering advice. She was warm and no-nonsense, exactly as I expected her to be. It was a long conversation and Lily was completely focused on the person at the other end of the call. I considered that she could have been faking the whole thing, to keep sleep-goop-eyed strangers from approaching her. Either way, she sounded like a good friend, imaginary or otherwise.

I kept one eye and ear on Lily, waiting for my opportunity to stand before her and mutter nonsense like, “Fan… Edith Ann… Laugh In… Funny… You… All of Me… Nice lady…”

Our car arrived before her call ended, so Mark took my elbow, gently but with a grip that said move along now, crazy lady. He installed me inside the car and whispered, “You’re kind of staring.” Minutes later, we drove away and I never saw Lily Tomlin again. I did not get her email address or even have the chance to smile and nod at her, what with her honed ability to ignore potentially insane fans.

I think about that one-sided encounter every now and then, and I wonder what I might have done if she were not on the phone. Would I really have spoken to her? I don’t know. I’m of the mind that famous people deserve to be outside without being hassled, so I suspect a smile and a nod would have been it. Possibly a smile and nod accompanied by a nervous giggle, and me silently mouthing, I love you, while Ms. Lily Tomlin ducked back inside the hotel to request a security presence outside.

Still, this was a missed opportunity to tell someone I value her work. What a shame. The odds that we will run into each other again some day are not in my favor (lucky for Lily), so she will never know how fabulous I think she is.

When I remember the hot, Minnesota day that I spent alternately drooling on myself during dreamless sleep, and (not so subtly) eye-balling Lily Tomlin, I think about missed opportunities. I should not be so guarded with the people in my life. While most people will have the good fortune to see me – I mean, while I will have the good fortune to see most people in my life – over and over again, we never know when an encounter will be our last. I don’t always do a good job of this, but thinking about the time I didn’t meet Lily reminds me to tell people how great they are, and how much I appreciate them.

Thinking about Lily also reminds me of the most epic naps of my life, and the dear life that was just beginning to grow in me. I may need to lie down for a bit. After a short nap, let’s all wipe the drool off of our chins and say a silent thank you to Lily Tomlin, while we promise some out-loud “you rocks” to everyone else we love.

Lately, I feel raw, like my emotions are all sitting on top of my skin. A suit made of human emotions, if you will. (It puts the lotion in the basket, but with feelings rather than skin?)

Joking aside, since I’m not feeling especially jokey at the moment, when this rawness comes over me I succumb to inertia. When this happens, I can’t decide if I want to watch the news or boycott it forever, read the Internets or shut off my wifi for eternity, scroll Facebook and Twitter or run the other way. We are bombarded with hate, and thanks to our constant connectivity it’s hard to avoid the vitriol.

My natural inclination is to see the good in everyone. I automatically assume everyone I encounter is a decent human, and consequently, sometimes I’m shocked and dismayed to discover otherwise. I’m a bizarre-o combination of Pollyanna and a realist. I’m the first one to say, “That project is too big, we’ll never finish it.” I’m also the first one to say, “I bet that guy driving like a jerk is just having a terrible day. Maybe he’s on his way to an emergency at the hospital.”

When I feel the rawness, however, I go beyond realist, straight to Eeyore territory. With the sting of tears constantly threatening behind my eyes, I feel defeated. Our world is full of hurt. It’s full of people who are angry, racist, and homophobic. It’s full of people committing acts of terror in the name of their beliefs.

What are we supposed to do about this? What can we do? Anything? I feel hopeless, frustrated, scared.

Then the still, quiet voice nudges me. Sometimes it’s through the words in a book I’m reading. Sometimes it’s through my mother or a girlfriend. Sometimes it’s an earworm that appears without bidding, the song lyrics telling me exactly what I need to hear.

The still, quiet voice nudges me to move. To act, in love. And when I say, “But I’m just one person,” the voice says, “That’s okay. Move. Act. Love.”

So I tell inertia to take a hike. I tell my children that we have to be the good. The light. The salt. We don’t abide hatred and judgment based on beliefs or skin color or whom someone loves. We don’t. We can’t. We will not.

As for me and my house, we will move and act in love. But what does that look like? My fervent prayer is that it looks like meeting needs when we see them, and showing kindness to everyone we meet. I pray that it looks like putting my money, my mouth, my hands, and my feet all in the same place, which is to say we will share what we have. We will give of our time and our resources and our hearts. Freely.

Lip service is easy. I can say that we don’t support hatred, but we need to show it. My kids are old enough to start experiencing life outside of our happy, suburban bubble, so I’m looking into service options we can do as a family. I will also be looking for opportunities to stand alongside those who are mistreated, neglected, and marginalized.

My fervent prayer is that we are able to take action, locally and globally. We sponsor children through Help One Now (check them out – it’s a great organization, striving to end the cycle of poverty). We also recently joined Legacy Collective, a group committed to sustainable solutions for systemic problems, both in the U.S. and abroad. We look forward to serving the Central Texas homeless population through this group, as well as tackling issues like human trafficking and poverty, both at home and overseas.

We can do more, though. We can start taking small actions in our city, school, and neighborhood. We have to get started and continue moving, acting, loving wherever we see a need.

We will never limit our love to people who look like us, or share our beliefs. I will not be the one to set limits and boundaries on worth. It’s not my place to place a value on human life. It’s my place to embrace life, and those living it.

Now, I’m aware it’s not that simple. The issues of our world are legion, they are layered deep, and spread wide. But this is a start. It’s a step toward taking the raw, emotional energy and creating something good.

If all of us – all of you who are not angry, racist, homophobic terrorists – do one act of service, make one donation, offer one hand out to pull up someone in need, that’s a really good start.

What could happen if all of us pick one direction to move, one path of action, one marginalized person to love?

Let’s talk summer. It’s my very favorite season… until about June 27 when my enthusiasm for being Super Summer Mom flags, my to-do list remains undone, and the thermometer hovers in the high nineties by mid-morning snack time.

Summer quickly becomes my second-favorite season behind any season during which I have five minutes of quiet, thinking time to myself while not sweating.

This is what I want summer to look like (a rough outline, since our educational activities will vary by day, of course):

8:00 – A healthy, no sugar breakfast, and pleasant conversation about our day. Breakfast is followed by a short educational enrichment task, just to keep our skills sharp and prepare for the upcoming year
9:00-Noon – Swim team, park time with optional nature observation, and a healthy, veggie-and-fruit-packed lunch (We spend hours at swim team due to practice schedules. It’s sort of crazy and I sort of love it.)
12:30 – Clean up from swim team, regroup, plan our afternoon activities
1:30 – Chores done happily and without incessant questioning or whining
2:00 – Fun time! Options include, but are not limited to, museums, community service, movies, swimming
5:00 – Quiet reading time, followed by electronics time
6:00 – Dinner, homemade and full of fresh, healthy ingredients, obviously
7:00 – Family fun time! Options include an evening walk or trip to the pool, or maybe a play date with friends.
9:00 – Bedtime, accomplished in an orderly manner with no reminders to brush teeth

Not on the above list:

• My writing and exercise time from 5-8 a.m., a total snap for me since I am, by nature, a morning person.*
• My project time when I will work on the ongoing, never-flipping-ending photo organization and home improvement projects. I anticipate doing this from 5-6 p.m., and then again after my angelic children are in bed, from approximately 9-11 p.m. This will be a snap for me, as well, since I’m a fully functional being at night, and I’m never so tired that stare into space for hours at a time.**

This is what summer will look like:

7:00 – “Mom, Mom! Are you awake? Can we play electronics yet?”
7:30 – “Mom, Mom! Wake up! We’re playing electronics and we’re hungry!”
9:00 – Finish your sugary cereal and grab your swim stuff! We’ll be late if we don’t leave NOW! [Mom sits on a lounge chair at the pool, talks with other parents, and sends non-swimming children to the park where she can see them, but not hear them. Feeds children lunch cobbled together at the last minute – crackers, cheese sticks, maybe an apple or some strawberries? Still loves swim team time.]
12:30 – Drop all swim-related stuff in the laundry room to deal with later, and flop down in the air conditioning.
1:30 – “Mom! Mom! Can we play electronics?” Threaten children with no more electronics, ever, ever, in their whole lives, if they don’t do their chores RIGHT NOW.
2:00 – Chores still not done. Fun time delayed indefinitely.
3:30 – Get out the door to go somewhere, like the library or the movies. Anywhere with air conditioning or a large body of water will do.
5:00 – Flop down in the air conditioning, because just going from car to house is toasty.
5:15 – Remind children to do their chores and Oh, crap, do your summer educational enrichment, too, so you don’t forget how to add numbers and stuff!
5:21 – “Mom! Mom! We did all that stuff you force us to do. Can we play electronics?”
6:30 – Unsure of where the last hour went, throw dinner on the table. It will include some vegetables and whatnot, but it’s barely passable as a meal.
6:48 – Send children outside – or anywhere – with Dad. Watch DVR’d trash TV.
9:00 – Bedtime. It’s chaos. People lie about brushing their teeth. People haven’t bathed in days, but, eh, they swam.

That about sums it up.

Reality falls somewhere between these two scenarios. After the initial adjustment period, during which we’re all shocked to have so much unstructured time together, we usually fall into a workable rhythm. Some days are a lost cause, but most days we manage fun time and productive time. Most days we eat well, but some days it’s fend-for-yourself. Most days we even do our chores and educational enrichment, but some days we play Minecraft and pretend we can’t see the dust.

Even though we inevitably achieve manageable chaos every summer, I never accomplish everything. The summer flies by, leaving me with more unsorted piles of photos. I’m up to 2005, pre-kids, in case you’re wondering. August always sneaks up on me, like a child who should be in bed but is suddenly standing next to you asking why the man on TV is all bloody and dead looking (uh, because he got out of bed when he wasn’t supposed to, kid).

About the time I get all the beach sand out of my car and my shoes and the refrigerator (I don’t even know), the kids are back in school, and you know what? All of that quiet, peaceful, me-time is just as hard to get used to as summer is. Thinking about them going back to school makes me miss them already. (That’s motherhood, right there.)

So I think I’ll just roll with it this year. I’ll set goals and attempt a schedule, but overall I want to enjoy what I can, and ignore what I can’t. Oh, and I’d like to sweat as little as possible. Is that too much to ask?

*Yeah, I’m not a morning person. But I want to be, so I’m really making an effort this summer. I’ll report back in a couple months.

**Yeah, I’m not a night person, either. I can do fun stuff, like drink wine with friends and binge watch TV, but I can’t do anything productive. I’d like to change this, as well. Stay tuned for reports.

But we are also all stupid.

We do things that make our lives harder than they need to be. I blame Pinterest for some of this phenomenon, but one social media platform can’t be the fall guy for all the madness. Pinterest didn’t start the fire, as Billy Joel might say.

Somewhere along the way, we got horribly lost. If we have to point a finger, let’s point it at fear.

Fear of failing
Fear of not being liked
Fear of looking lazy
Fear of missing out (that even has a common acronym – FOMO)
Fear of looking like a fool
Fear of what others might say
Fear that we’re not good enough at [insert your own crap here: work, marriage, parenting, balance…]

I’m not healthy or strong enough to say to hell with you, fear! in every area of my life. I’m just as stupid as the next guy or gal most of the time. I’m working on it, but I still operate out of a place of fear more than I’d like. See: the time I agreed to be lead homeroom parent (which isn’t so bad, but I totally agreed to it out of fear that I was somehow failing my child and my school if I didn’t do it this year).

As the holidays sneak attack us – next week is Thanksgiving, did you know that? – I’m aware that ’tis the season for agreeing to a whole bunch of stuff you’d rather not do. And honestly, some things are not a fear issue. A lot of what we do to make the holidays special comes down to doing the right thing, for others and for our families. I’m not talking about those right things. I’m talking about the optional stuff.

What I’m talking about is blowing the budget to please someone else. Or blowing your schedule, even if it means the holidays are a blur and you don’t enjoy a second of it. Or blowing your health, because you forgot to eat at least one vegetable and exercise.

This year, I’m not doing some of that optional stuff, even if it means dealing out a little disappointment here and there. I have to stand my ground. I’m not going to be so mired in fear hat I forget to feel joy.

This year, I will not:

Buy a hamster, or any rodent, or a snake, or any reptile. Sorry kids, that wish list item isn’t happening, because guess who will have to feed the creature and clean the creature’s cage? I learned my lesson in the Sea Monkey Debacle of 2013.

Attend a cookie exchange. I don’t need that many cookies, ever. Even at the holidays.

Make homemade wrapping paper. I’m all about reducing, reusing, and recycling, but I’m also all about getting the gifts wrapped without adding 23 steps to the process.

Stress about the theme of my Christmas trees. If you enjoy that type of thing, then I think themed trees are awesome. I do not want to spend my time or money on that this year (or ever).

Speaking of trees, I’m not going to agonize over the lights. This issue may be unique to me, but I spend a crapload of time fussing with Christmas tree lights to make sure the tree is evenly lit, with no dark spots. This year, I’m going to embrace the dark spots.

Schedule an event or activity every night and all day on weekends. I’m not saying we’re not going out and about at all, merely that we are going to make sure there’s some downtime, too. We are making time to stay home in our pj’s and enjoy our theme-less, spottily-lit trees.

Get my cards in the mail right after Thanksgiving. I’m toying with not doing cards at all. You heard me. I love to receive them, though, and therefore feel that I should reciprocate. But I always kill myself to get them out the first week of December. If I’m later, I berate myself for not being more organized. Not this year.

Make my own decorations. I’m not anti-craft project, but I’m not going to put unrealistic homemade holiday expectations on myself.

Say yes, when my heart and mind are screaming, no! Who knows what kinds of invitations, obligations, and requests are going to come our way during this holiday season. I vow to trust myself, and consider the option of saying, “no, thanks, not this year.”

Lest you think I’m all bah-humbug (see, I still fear your poor opinion of me), let me tell you that I will be incorporating a lot of Yes! this season:

Yes, we’ll destroy the kitchen by covering every surface with flower and sprinkles when we make sugar cookies.

Yes, we can stay up late and play games by the fire.

Yes, we will gather with friends and family to celebrate the season.

Yes, you can watch Elf for the 753rd time this week.

Yes, while we’re on the subject of elves, we will embrace The Elf on the Shelf, because Bingle Jingle Snevets might be a little creepy, but he’s a lot of sweet fun for the kids.

Yes, you can make – and eat for breakfast – a gingerbread house if you want to.

Yes, we will remember why we celebrate Christmas and talk about our faith.

Yes, we will count our blessings and share them, too.

I wonder…

:: What will you say no to this year?
:: What kinds of yeses to you have in store?

Hold on. My husband, Mark, just read that sentence and he can’t stop laughing. It’s distracting me, and I can’t write. Okay, that’s enough laughing, Mark. Stop it. Really. Stop, NOW.

As I was saying, I’m super patient. Really. Incompetence bothers me, so I don’t love waiting around an extra long time due to ineptitude. If something genuinely takes time, however, I’m good with it. Have you ever rushed Julia Child’s beef bourguignon? It’s a travesty. Or so I’ve heard. Fine, I’ve never made beef bourguignon. It takes so long.

I try to model this exceptional patience to my children. I want them to know that the world doesn’t revolve around them. It revolves around me. No, that’s not right. I mean to say, putting others first is more important than our own immediate gratification. Good things come to those who wait, and all that.

This is not an easy lesson for any of us. Apparently, Mark thinks I’m still working on it. Excuse any typos; I can’t think, because he’s still standing behind me, reading over my shoulder and snort-laughing.

My kids are doing okay in the patience department. Mostly. We’re still working on not having urgent requests when I’m on the phone.

This was over a year ago, but could have easily been yesterday. Or five minutes ago.

In general, however, they’re learning. I say a lot of things along these lines, all of them met with grudging acceptance:

The plane can’t take off just because you want it to. There’s an order to these things, and the pilot waits his turn so we don’t die.

No, I can’t just drop the hammer and race through this stoplight. I have to wait my turn.

Well, I know you really want to ride that roller coaster, but so do the 732 people in front of us. (Yes, we vacationed at Disney this year. Talk about a lesson in patience.)

There is one time, however, that a gentle reminder to practice patience, or as I like to say, Put on Your Patience Pants Right This Very Second, Young Man, doesn’t work. That time? Meal time.

Both of my kids want to eat when they want to eat, which is always. (That’s a whole different post on the question of how people afford to feed teenagers.) My third grader, however, is never hungry. He’s hangry. He is fine one second and threatening to pass out from hunger the next.

I’m failing to meet a key parenting responsibility, the one in which we agree to raise decent humans who know how to function in the world. I’m failing, because I can’t seem to teach this otherwise bright kid how food works. Somehow we’ve mislead him; he believes food prep is akin to magic.

The kid thinks that all he has to do is announce, “When we get to the eating establishment, I will have a cheeseburger with tomatoes, and nothing else. Just cheese, meat, tomato, bun. I will have a side of fruit, or french fries if you let me. I will drink a Sprite.”

Two side notes here. One, this child is mildly obsessed with The Cosby Show right now, so go back and read the last quote in your best Bill Cosby. Two, my son also thinks he’s a Jedi master, and tries the Sprite thing daily. He rarely asks if he can have one of the cans-o-sugar. Instead, he announces that he will have a Sprite. His Jedi skills only work on the special-est of occasions, but a kid’s gotta try.

Back to ordering food. Declaring his order to nobody in particular, in my child’s mind, should result in the immediate delivery of a cheeseburger. Poof! Dinner is served! Prep time and cooking time make him weepy. Seriously. With watery eyes, he plaintively cries, “When is our food going to get here?” I don’t know, dude, maybe after they kill the e.coli by COOKING THE MEAT.

No matter how we explain this to him, no matter how we reason with him, no matter how much pleading we do, he can’t seem to hold it together when he’s hungry.

It’s no different at home. “What are we having for dinner?” really means, “Hey, why is there no food in front of me?! I’m DYING of hunger.”

I regularly wonder if there’s a strange force at play that warps my words when I speak.

I say: “I’m making dinner right now. It will be ready in about 10 minutes.”

They hear: “I have planted the vegetables, so your salad should be ready in about three months. I’m not sure if we’re going to have meat this year, though, because I haven’t managed to start raising livestock.”

I’ve been there, of course. I’ve been taking care of life, checking things off my list, when I realize I’m woozy and need food. Immediately. I understand feeling peckish. But you know what I do? I obtain food, with the understanding that my food choice will impact the overall time between need food and have food.

We’re a blessed people, a people who have never gone hungry. My kids have never missed a meal. They get three squares a day and one or two snacks. They are offered balanced, organic choices (most of the time), and occasionally they even Jedi-up themselves a treat, like Sprite.

It all leaves me to wonder…

:: Why, why, why the drama when hunger strikes?
:: From where does this impatience stem? Any thoughts?

My college girlfriends and I recently went on an early Spring Break trip to New York City. We took a cupcake tour with a guide who was 23, if that. Along the way we realized that, in our tour guide’s eyes, we probably looked like old ladies.

Twenty years ago we thought 40-somethings were ancient. Twenty years ago we were counting shots at a swim-up bar in Mexico, and now we’re counting steps on our FitBits, wondering how many more we have to take to balance out all of that frosting.

When I’m with my college friends I feel like I did 20 years ago, even if the lines around my eyes tell another story. Our lives, however, have changed. A lot. This Spring Break does not look like my 1994 break…

Spring Break 1994: Dance on a bar in Mexico, rocking some Ace of Base.
Spring Break 2014: Dance on the kitchen floor, to an endless loop of Let It Go.

Spring Break 1994: Briefly consider running away with Pablo, the Carlos ‘N Charlie’s waiter.
Spring Break 2014: Briefly consider running away.

Spring Break 1994: Blurry vision from tequila shots.
Spring Break 2014: Blurry vision from playing Farm Heroes Saga. Lining up produce is hard.

Spring Break 1994: Make out with a mysterious boy named Bear. (See: tequila shots.)
Spring Break 2014: Tear apart the house looking for a missing stuffed bear named… Bear.

Spring Break 1994: Pray I don’t get tangled in the ropes as I para-sail over a Mexican beach, barely attached to a speed boat that is older than I am.
Spring Break 2014: Pray my sheets don’t end up in a tangled, wadded mess in the dryer again. What is going on in the dryer to create that sheet burrito?

Spring Break 1994: Watch shirtless boys toss a Nerf ball on the beach.
Spring Break 2014: Watch my own shirtless boys have a Nerf battle in the back yard.

Spring Break 1994: Skimp on the sunscreen just enough to get a tan, or in my case, for my freckles to morph together.
Spring Break 2014: Wish I had not skimped on the sunscreen 20 years ago.

Spring Break 1994: Wake up around noon, discuss plans for the rest of the day over a poolside margarita.
Spring Break 2014: At the matinee of Mr. Peabody & Sherman by noon, after pre-purchasing the tickets 48 hours in advance.

Spring Break 1994: The smell of Coppertone and ocean air.
Spring Break 2014: The smell of… what is that smell in the play room?

Spring Break 1994: So much fun, I pray my children never, ever do anything so ridiculous.
Spring Break 2014: A whole different kind of fun that I pray my children remember with fondness, kind of like the fondness I feel for Pablo.

This post is dedicated to girlfriends everywhere, whether you’re partying in Mexico or walking off cupcakes in New York City. May your ever changing, ever evolving lives be filled with sweet memories, like the ones I have of Pablo. And of my friends and family. Them, too, of course.

*Photo Credit

I know it was 6 days ago, but I’m only now ready to kick off the vacation blanket I’ve been under since December 20. It’s not a literal blanket, except for some of every day when it is absolutely a literal blanket and a cup of coffee (or glass of wine) and a Breaking Bad marathon.

Mostly, however, it’s the figurative blanket of Christmas, family, no school, and little-to-no schedule. I am having a hard – nearly impossible – time peeling off this blankie, but it desperately needs to go in the washing machine, and I suppose it’s time to get back to real life.

I planned to write a wrap-up or resolutions post, but then there was that Breaking Bad marathon. And queso.

Regarding the queso, our four main food groups over the holidays looked a little like this: Tortillas (flour, corn, chips), Dips (guacamole, queso, black eyed pea), Chocolate, and Cocktails. The children did not have cocktails; please don’t call the authorities. No, the children had hot chocolate. Good lord, our diets were not pretty over the break. (I promise we ate some healthy stuff every day, but there was an abundance of the not as healthy… an abundance.)

Because we ate like college kids for over two weeks, Mark and I are now on an herbal cleanse. If I see you out somewhere and don’t acknowledge you, it’s because everything and everyone I look at resembles a tortilla chip. All I can see is delicious, fried tortillas, dipped in delicious, melted cheese and fresh salsa. I may be struggling a bit with this cleanse and the return to our healthier ways.

There are not enough calories traveling to my brain to write a sufficient summary of 2013, but I’ll tell you, it was a good year. Sure, there are some things I’d rather forget, like the 827 times I got sick. Come to think of it, I ate healthily all year and got sick repeatedly. Then I ate craptastically over the holidays and wasn’t sick at all. Coincidence? Honey, throw out that herbal crap and order us up some tacos!

Anyway, as with any year, there were ups and downs. When I look back through the filter of time (a whole 6 days now) I see happy kids, a marriage of nearly 17* years, the adoption of the most ridiculous mystery dog, improv classes, a half marathon, time with extended family and dear friends. And more.

It was a full year, one in which I caught a glimpse of my life to come, which is to say I will eventually have wheels on my rear end from driving kids to activities. I hate the schedule juggling and the driving, but I love watching my kids play or sing or whatever it is we’ve driven to on any given day.

I also caught glimpses of the older, independent people my boys will soon be. I hated that a little bit, as well. But I’m not going to lie, it’s a thrill to be less intimately involved with the daily bathing, dressing, and other hygeinic needs. A thrill. I will never miss wiping behinds. I will miss four-year-old hugs and declarations of, “I’m going to marry you, Mommmy, because you are the BEST mommy ever!” I will miss seven-year-old knock-knock jokes and verbatim recountings of Lego Chima episodes. But I will not miss daily battles to get small people clean and dressed. Well, I won’t miss it much.

So here’s to 2014. It’s the year I turn 40, so I think it’s going to be a-okay, this year. May you and yours be blessed enormously in 2014, and as always, thanks for stopping by to read.

Hope your holidays were magical. Merry, merry… just a few weeks late.

*That marriage has now hit 17 years, but not until January 4, 2014.