Turtle Champions!

I just love summer.  So far, we have saved no less than four painted turtles making their ways across Minnesota highways.  I am not brave enough to pick them up, which dismays my son a great deal, but I can act like a sheepdog, forcing them out of danger.  They scramble surprisingly fast.  We saw a large snapping turtle at Boy Scout camp.  His prehistoric looks were marred by the fact that he seemed only able to heave up his back legs.  There was no way to help him, however, without risking our fingers.  Finn says we need to keep a pail in our car to save any more critters we find in trouble.  I imagine he thinks I spend my nights riding my bike over the trails and saving turtles everywhere!

Aha! Moment or Duh! What Failure Can Tell Us

I had a friend just share this story with me when I was going through a particularly bad week.  Her mother Betty, who is always impeccably dressed, keeps a beautiful house, never gains a pound and never is late, joined a yoga class.  My friend received no less than fifteen calls from her in the first week. Betty explained that she was being unfairly singled out by the yoga teacher, who seemed only to come over and correct her.  "I couldn't believe she kept coming over to adjust my downward dog!"her mother wailed. My friend replied that the teacher was only being helpful.  To which her mother answered, "I will show her!"  And so she did. She went home and Googled all she could about the yoga poses and practiced in front of a mirror until she could do the moves perfectly. By the end of the week, she called my friend in triumph.  "The teacher complemented me on my well executed plank!"  When telling me about this, my friend had to chuckle, "I don't think my mom got any relaxation benefits out of yoga!" 

And that is the problem with the emphasis on winning in our culture: sometimes failure can stir us to do something better, but sometimes we get so focused on winning, on "nailing it" that we miss the point of the class, of the exercise, of the school, of the job.  Sometimes, we need to listen to failure.  I was once told by a professor that I should exit a program because of my poor math skills.  Instead of listening to her, I pounded away harder until the program exited me-- and then the full extent of my failure laid me out for two months.  But I was struggling to succeed at something I was not good at and that I did not want to do.  The saddest thing was, I was afraid to try (and fail) and what I really wanted to do.  The irony is that while I may not have been the absolute best at what I enjoyed, I would not have failed at it, simply because I loved doing it.    This is my Duh! moment.  Something I wished I had realized way back when.  The challenge as mothers is to not let our children have these Duh! moments, but to turn them into Aha! moments--moments to make grand changes in the way their lives are headed.   Teaching them to persevere is important, but teaching them to abandon a hopeless dream or the wrong dream is of equal consequence.

Look Good Naked

This week I won five free sessions at a new workout facility called Look Good Naked.  At first, I was very excited.  This could possibly give me the jumpstart I needed to get a little toned for summer.   But after the owner shot me an email about my fitness goals,  I got a little worried; looking good naked was not really what I had in mind.  How hard was I going to have to work?  Would there be any kind of check on the progress I was making?  Would this entail an entire personality change?  (If I could wear turtlenecks in the summer without heatstroke, I would.)  Couldn't I just aim for Look Good in Skinny Jeans?  Or better yet, Look Reasonably Okay in My Capris? What would that entail-- brisk walking and a few stretches?  That sounds good-- let's shoot for that!

Squirrel Chronicles Continued

Squirrels are not just rabidly weird in Minnesota.  The kiddos fed squirrels by hand in California.  Imagine if my husband had brought his gun!  Yet another reason it is hard to be an uprooted coastal gal in the Midwest.  I have developed strange hybrid values.  I don't want to kill the poor things, neither do I want to give them a velvet pillow and carry them around in a purse like some new breed of Chihuahua.

Cougar hat

Yesterday, while looking for a ladies' baseball hat to wear this summer, I saw a pink hat with the word "Cougar" boldly announced on the front.  I looked at it carefully; it was an attractive hat.  I imagined the looks I would get if I wore that around town this season, and it made me wonder what kind of woman would wear such a hat?  She'd have to be over a "certain age," and she would have to look hot. I couldn't imagine wearing such a hat in your fat pants.  I envisioned a subtly highlighted ponytail coming out of the back.  But wait, such a woman might have too much taste to buy that head gear.  She would have to be a woman with a good sense of humor, and she would have to be single-- or would some husband buy it as a gag gift?  Oh, no, I am going down the entirely wrong alleyway here-- she would have to be a woman who thought she was hot.  Yes, that makes sense-- and that is an interesting image.

So I didn't buy the Cougar hat, but I did think about what animal labeled hat my friends and I might buy that would more accurately describe the average woman.  The leaf-cutter ant, perhaps?  Intent on being busy and productive?  The Bluejay?  Always yelling at someone to put their shoes on and constantly feeding a chirping young one?  The orangutan for sure.  A child always crawling all over a patient and quiet momma.  Some of my more elegant friends could easily be gazelles-- graceful and sleek, and my artistic friends could have spider written on their caps.  The nomenclature I would most like is the one that fits my youngest daughter: house cat.  She loves to stretch out and lounge in the sun, and when you pet her, she purrs!

My son asked me, "Mom, why do you read so many books, and you never read the directions on the medicine?"  I think he pegged me pretty well.  I don't think I am alone-- here's to being distracted!

Confessions of an Absent Minded Mother

My husband keeps asking me if we could have another baby.  Finally, I just turned to him and said, “Look, we have three of them, and I haven’t lost one of them yet.  Why would you want to push our luck?”

Seriously, I forget my keys, my wallet, my purse.  I head to the store to get chickpeas for  chickpea salad and come out with all the ingredients except the chickpeas. I forget to pick up my children from school, and I forget to turn in permission slips.  I might get the date of the party correct, but forget the location or the time.  One well-meaning mother pulled me aside and said, “You can sync all of those dates on a calendar if you just get a smart phone.  I have all of my boys schedules color coded.  I never miss a thing.”  I didn’t want to tell her that I have a smart phone-- it just isn’t smart enough. You have to look at it, you have to want to know the details.  My husband says I am not ADD, but there has to be some explanation for my complete inability to go a whole week without some absent-minded disaster.  The alzheimer’s home is not going to be very different for me. “Oh, you lost your way in the supermarket, and you don’t know the name of your cat, Mabel?  I haven’t known I even had a cat for years.  Just embrace it-- forgetfulness makes life so much more exciting!”