MY MOTHER

     Recently I wast thinking about my mother.  I was the youngest of seven kids and rumor has it that my mother only wanted two.  My oldest sibling was almost 18 years old by the time I came along.  I wonder what that feeling must be like. I would not want to start over with a little baby at that point in my life so I can imagine my mother had some sadness.  Maybe it was a lot of sadness and quite possibly some anger as well.  I was not exactly a mistake because rumor also has it my father wanted a dozen kids.  My mother was trying to be a good wife, a good Catholic and do what she thought was right.  She was trying the best she could but I think it turned out to be too much.  She could have been happier with less kids.  It is cliche for people to say that they can't wait for their children to have kids of their own because then they will see.  Yes, I see.  I see it is hard to be a "good" mother.
     My mother said and did some pretty mean things to her children but I think her spirit had been beaten down by life.  People say that you forgive other people for yourself.  I don't think it is so much forgiveness that I feel, it is just a feeling of understanding.  It is also said that when you point a finger at someone else there are three pointing back at you.  I have always understood that philosophy even though I haven't always heeded it.  I don't want to judge her so harshly as I have in the past, not for her but because I am judging myself.
     Fortunately before my mother died I had come to some sort of peace with out relationship.  I think she was relatively happy with it and I was too.  I wouldn't describe it as loving but I had accepted that.  To me she was just an older person who I treated kindly and with respect.  I just didn't think about how she was actually my mother.  I am glad that I felt like I had resolved my feelings before she passed away because I have no regrets.  Even with the understanding I have now, it wouldn't have changed our relationship. The understanding does give me a kind of peace.  Life is not always fun but my mother stuck it out doing what she thought was right even when she didn't want to.  It is hard to be nice all the time and I understand how hard it would be to be nice after having five extra kids.        

THE PURPLE ROOM

     I just redid one of the rooms in my house.  I suppose you would call it a family room but we called it the red room since the carpet was red.  That carpet was 29 years old and was overdue for being replaced but I loved that carpet.  About a dozen years ago I redid that room but the carpet stayed.  It is a large room and my new carpet that I just installed cost $1,500 so that played a big factor in why it took me so long to replace it but the other reason is, it is now very hard to find red carpet.  When I say red, I mean fire engine red!  Even when I got it installed in 1987 it was a color that needed to be special ordered.
     One would think that if I am a kind of person who can jump right in with a red carpet, I would be a person who is not afraid of bright colors.  Sometimes there is moment in a person's life where they realize that they have lived trying to make people happy and they have lost their true selves.  I had that epiphany a few years ago.  That red carpet was the one bright spot in my home but I really was just copying the red carpet in my mother in laws family room.  That made it acceptable.  Later on before my son was born I didn't find out if he was a boy or girl ahead of time so I did have a yellow room for him.  It was a wonderful bright yellow but I always knew that I was going against what my in laws thought was acceptable.  I had been decorating my house with muted colors for years and I got more and more nervous about branching out.
     As my two girls got older they wanted to have a say in what colors we would use.  We have a summer home and it needed to have the walls painted and they wanted their room to be orange...bright orange.  I complied because after all, it was their room and I should let them have a say.  They think that I am unhappy with the orange but in reality I am thrilled with it.  I probably wouldn't pick orange but it does look good to me and more importantly they have not been influenced by outside opinions!  Maybe I am living vicariously through them.
     It is not a good feeling to know that I allowed myself to worry so much about pleasing other people.  It is hard to realize that in the past I have decorated my house to try to get people to like me but that is exactly what I did.  It was a slow process because first, many years ago, I took down a lot of decorations that were considered "arts and crafts."  If you walk into my in laws houses that is what you will see and that is what I did in order to fit in.  When I realized that I didn't really like it and it was becoming old fashioned, I got rid of it all.  For many years I had hardly anything on the walls until my kids came home with artwork and I hung that up.
     What was really brewing in my mind was that epiphany that I needed to be myself.  It probably seems silly to other people but it is exceedingly difficult to override that sense of being judged.  For other reasons, I have chosen to stop having a relationship with my in laws.  I guess this issue is symbolic of my reasons.  I tried to be acceptable by changing myself but it never worked.  Once I gave up trying to please them, it has been hard to figure out who I am.  It makes me more sensitive to other people's judgement as well.  For me that is a lot to overcome.
     My favorite color is purple so it made sense to paint the room purple.  In my mind it would be a glaring color that no one would like but me.  It seems rather ridiculous now to have worried about that but it was important to me to overcome those feelings and I did it!  It really is just a lavender that is peaceful seeming.  I love my purple room, not only because it is my favorite color but also because people don't paint their family rooms purple...but I DO!

LIFE

     There are a lot of things we are told in life that I think make us feel like failures.  We are told that if we work hard enough that we can do anything we want to do or be anything we want to be.  I don't think that is true.  Our talents and capabilities are indeed limited.  However, I do believe that many of us don't reach our full potential.  So maybe when people say that we can do anything we set our minds to, they really mean that we should always be striving.  Without striving and pushing ourselves, we won't know how far we can actually go.  But if we tell ourselves that we can do anything and we get to that point where we can't go any farther, we can end up feeling like failures.  In my way of thinking there is a point where we can simply say "enough" and legitimately have a feeling of satisfaction with ourselves.  We can find that balance but it will be different for each person.
     On the flip side of this are all those people who don't reach their full potential.  Those represent the average person.  That is who I am and actually who I strive to be in a not striving kind of way.  We need a lot of average people in order to make the wheels of society go around.  I'm suggesting that maybe it is okay to be one of those people.  A person who doesn't get accolades.  A person who works hard but also takes the time to be lazy.  A person who doesn't strive every day to be the best that they can be but who is not a burden on society because they fill a societal need in a small way or maybe even a tiny way.  Just a middle of the road kind of person.
     In the past I have described one of my good qualities as being the kind of person who can keep going in the face of failure.  I can fail at something and pick myself up and try again, hence why I keep gardening.  Maybe now I am just tired of feeling that way.  At 52 years old I am just looking back and thinking how I struggled so much to try to be something that I could never be.  In the end what I have as a success is that I am a person who can keep going through failure.  Is that enough?  Close friends feel bad for me and reassure me that I am not a failure but I really don't want that kind of comfort.  I just want to be okay with not striving anymore.  And I think I am okay with that.
     If I had thought all this when I was young I would have been living in a basement apartment, working at a Milwaukee brewery with a friend named Shirley and I would have changed my name to Laverne...well actually my friend's name was Christine but maybe she would have changed it to Shirley.  

 

AND AGAIN?

It's January 2, 2017 and do I say I am starting to write again?  Seems kind of absurd since the last time I wrote that was a year and a half ago.  So I won't say it.  I will say that the older I get the more I try to limit how many things cause me pressure.  I refuse to let this cause me pressure.  Somethings we can't avoid like going to our job every day.  I don't know if other people have found their bliss and love going to their job every day but I can say I am one person that does not.  I strive for acceptance and having at least parts of my job that I enjoy.  I do like to work but I don't know if that is because I have worked for so long.  I like to believe that even "perfect" jobs have their days where they are not enjoyable.

Since I have not written for so long, my life is now in a completely different phase.  I am considered an "empty nester" and I think people assume that I am pining for the good old days of having my kids at home.  I just don't feel that way.  Maybe I should.  I think I mostly feel relief that the bulk of the work is over but I also have that feeling of "what now?"  It's an odd feeling to me when I am confronted with people who think I should feel that way since I was so close to my kids and they have always been such a big part of my life.  I'm sure that there are other mothers out there that feel the same.

It's always been hard to voice opinions or feelings that other people don't think I should have.  I went back to work when my youngest was in her last couple of years of high school so my life is definitely full.  I guess maybe it's too full to be able to think about being an empty nester.

So here I am, 52 years old and wondering how I will fill the next 20 years.

Elise      

ONCE AGAIN!

Last night I was skimming through the channels on TV. I stopped briefly on OWN and saw a famous singer talking on "Master Class." I could not continue to watch because once again, it appeared that there was an emphasis on following your bliss. This singer didn't seem to understand that everyone can't be famous or even make a decent living at singing. He seemed to be criticizing parents that don't fully support their kids dreams. It would be easy for him to support his kids' dreams since he knows that he has plenty of money to give them if they fail. He said that he would rather have tried and failed than not try at all. That sounds all fine and dandy until a person actually fails. And, what IF he had failed? Would he still have been so happy about trying? What if he found himself at fifty years old, struggling to make ends meet, with no other skills to support himself? Would he simply be happy that his parents had supported his dreams or would he be angry that his parents hadn't pushed him to develop backup skills? As parents, we want to ensure that our kids will live a happy life but at the same time we are well aware that they will have to earn a living. Why criticize a parent that is worried that their kid won't be that one in a million who will become famous and earn as much as this particular singer? He seemed to think, that kind of parent was being mean by crushing their kid's dreams. Maybe he should realize, that parent actually loves their kid so much that they are trying to protect them from a failure that might make their entire life a struggle. Think about how many people had dreams to become famous singers but never fulfilled those dreams. Do we really believe that is because the parent didn't support them enough? If only they had more parental support, would they have become famous? Why should a parent be criticized for trying to help their kids make realistic goals in life? Why should a parent be criticized for thinking that maybe their kid won't be that one in a million famous person? For telling them honestly, you can try singing but make a backup plan, go to college, have skills that you can depend on. Tell me, what is wrong with that?

INTERESTING THOUGHT

I think there are some adults who have confused having high expectations for kids with simply being mean. Yesterday my daughters were home from school because they had a snow day and Erin's AP Biology teacher sent an email out to the kids to assign them a whole bunch of work to do on their surprise day off. At the end she made a sarcastic joke about how they should enjoy their day off. She more than likely would disguise her request as having high expectations for her AP students. None of the other AP teachers sent out emails. I have high expectations for my kids and they have been very successful so far...but I am not mean. I wonder if this teacher will ever mature enough to learn there is a difference?

WEARY

I feel weary. Weary of people. Lately I am left wondering why people have so much trouble interacting with each other. Why is it that simple things seem to become so difficult? Why is it that people seem to want to cause other people anguish? Sometimes I am just in a position to be observing people hurting each other and other times it seems that people want to hurt me. Even the nicest people sometimes hurt others in an attempt to make themselves feel better.

Often times I am able to understand why people say the things that they do but sometimes I am just dumbfounded. I question why, what benefit is there in putting others down. Some people have the trait of wanting to watch others squirm. I have sometimes been put into the situation where someone has made me squirm. Once I am over the uncomfortable situation I look back and wonder what kind of person finds satisfaction in that kind of torture. How does that make them feel better about themselves?

Whenever I am trying to understand these kinds of things I analyze myself to see if I have ever done something similar. I am pretty sure that I do not purposely try to make anyone squirm. Doing this would mean that the other person would act embarrassed. I find it very uncomfortable if I have made someone else embarrassed so I do not think that I purposely try to make people squirm.

I often call this mean teasing. I come from a family that has a tendency to tease others in a nasty kind of way. In the past when I have been around them I admit that I have been guilty of joining in on the torture. It's almost as if I was compelled to take a side and I knew I didn't want to be on the losing side! However, I can say that I have never gotten enjoyment out of it. I would always come away from the interaction with a shameful unhappy feeling. I wonder if the others feel this as well.

For me, I think one thing that is difficult is that I often times laugh at myself and then I assume that others will laugh at themselves as well. A simple example is that I am one of those people who loves to talk. I can joke about myself talking someone's ear off. I would assume that the other talkers out there could laugh at themselves as well, so I would assume that teasing them about it would not fall under the mean teasing category. But maybe it would. This is a gray area where I find that I need to watch others' reactions to make sure I haven't offended anyone. I can say for sure, I do not enjoy making people squirm!

MORE ON DRAMA

I would love to report that I have successfully avoided the drama I mentioned in the previous post but I haven't... However, I can report that I have learned some things. I have often heard that to stop a bad habit, replace it with a good one. I am learning to expand on this philosophy and have figured out that replacing drama with good interactions with other people may be my saving grace. I can't be sucked into drama if I am always talking to people who don't stress me out. Sometimes it is even enough to be engrossed in a fun activity instead of hanging around with the drama queens.

This is easier said than done but I think I am up to the challenge. It is easier to follow my own advice when the drama queen in question is not my friend. I am still figuring out what to do when the drama queens are my friends. Even further, what do I do when there is only one true drama queen in a group of friends? I don't want to avoid a group of friends because of one bad apple.

Another dilemma is being able to recognize when there is drama just for the sake of drama and when it falls under the category of supporting a friend through a difficult situation. I am starting to have to consider this with one particular friend. I don't mind listening to a friend's problems but then I need to be careful that "friend" does not monopolize every interaction. In this case I am thinking of a person who is part of a group of friends. I am noticing that approximately two thirds of our time together is spent listening to her problems and being supportive of her. Then once someone else starts talking, her eyes glaze over. This week when we all got together I sat back and observed this phenomenon. Hmmm. Now I realize that this has been bothering me for quite awhile. I guess last year I should have had a clue when I saw a couple of eye rolls when I tried to interject something into the conversation. At the time I tried to be careful that I was not interrupting her. It was obvious that she had no patience for what someone else had to say.

So, I am making progress in recognizing areas that have a high drama level and I am even figuring out ways of dealing with this but I still need to try and implement my ideas. Some ideas work and some don't...that seems to be part of the process.

FIGHTING MY OWN HUMAN NATURE

It seems to me that part of human nature is to be attracted to drama. I wonder why this seems to be the case. What purpose does it serve to allow ourselves to be sucked into problems? It certainly is not pleasant. Like almost all people, I am guilty of allowing myself to be put into situations that make me unhappy. This is true regardless of the fact that I don't need to be part of the drama. I'm not forced into these situations. If I allow myself to honestly analyze these moments, I am allowing myself to be in them. I would like to believe that I am not actively seeking out problems but I have no hesitation in admitting that I find it difficult to walk away once I am embroiled in stressful interactions.

One recent occurrence happened even after I told myself that I refused to allow this activity to cause me undo stress. I am involved in my kids cross country team. I have always taken pictures of the team and in the past couple of years I have helped organize the end of season, pot luck banquet. Both of these things do not cause me stress, truthfully, they cause me happiness. However, two years ago, one of the mothers decided that we needed to start a booster club. She enlisted the help of one other mother and they filled out the initial paperwork and opened a bank account. The original purpose of the club was to raise money for an enclosed canopy. I agreed whole heartily and had planned to support whatever fundraising activities that they organized without officially being an officer of the club. However the next year I decided it would be okay to be an officer... co president or something like that. It doesn't really matter what I was called. The point is, I was more "official" and with that came difficulties. This is where I became embroiled in stress. Gone was the happiness of picture taking and banquet planning....sigh.

The lesson I tried to learn was that I need to become better at recognizing situations that cause me stress and then walk away from them. I made a firm plan for this year and I am working hard at sticking with it. At the heart of the plan is my insistence that I refuse to allow my activities with the team to cause me stress. I really have no need to end my role officially but I do need to be thoughtful in what I enjoy and what makes me unhappy. I plan on taking pictures and planning the banquet. Period. Both of those things make me happy. Then the period becomes a comma....sigh. This is my difficulty.

Recently I found myself in an uncomfortable discussion. Not only did I feel tense from this discussion, it also put me behind in errands that I was planning to run that day. That put me behind as far as getting home and making supper...which screwed up my kids life as well. They wanted to eat and start homework.

Why, oh why, do I let this happen? Now THAT is the question! Hah! I do realize that the answer to this question is irrelevant because the real accomplishment would be to learn to recognize these situations quickly and simply walk away. No analyzing, just action. So there you have it, I am trying to fight my own human nature of getting sucked into drama....

HAPPINESS...OR NOT

Lately I have been reading a lot about happiness. It is definitely the new buzz word. It seems to be everyone's goal. As with anything that seems to be overworked, I am getting a bit sick of it. I think that we all should try to find a life that we can be happy with but it seems that too many people are taking this idea to the extreme. I get the feeling that many people think that they need to wake up happy and go to bed happy every day. This is not possible and I think that the danger in feeling this way may result in feeling like a failure when we feel unhappy. Life is full of unhappy moments as well as happy moments. Whatever happened to grinning and bearing it? For me, some days just seem to go wrong. I'm okay with this and I just try to survive those days and hope for a better day tomorrow. There are phases in everyone's lives that are not happy. I am no exception. We can go months or sometimes years where we have bad times. The goal is to find joy once again but we certainly should not feel like failures. Only when we accept difficult circumstances as part of life can we move on. With this new push on happiness, I wonder how many people are feeling worse thinking "why can't I be happy?"

I'm sure that there are people who can wake up and feel joy and happiness every day. I am not one of them. My goals in life are to feel many moments of joy and happiness, to experience as few moments of unhappiness as possible and all the other days? Those other days, I want to LIKE what I am doing...or at least not DISLIKE it.

A LITTLE BIT MORE ABOUT FEAR

This post really has nothing to do with Irene or the fear people feel about this storm. It is about fear in general. Not long ago me and Thomas were going to a dinner for a scholarship he received. There were a few kids that had gotten it so on the way in, we met another mother and girl we know. It had been raining cats and dogs on the drive there. It was coming down harder than I've ever experienced and it caused some temporary flooding. There is an underpass with train tracks above on the way to the restaurant and it was filled with water. The only choice was to park on "the wrong side of the tracks." This mother saw us make the turn and since she didn't know the area well, she followed us. We ran through the rain to the restaurant that was pretty close by. After chatting with the mother, I found she was quite stressed out because she "didn't know what was going on." When we left, it was not quite dark but she was quite worried anyway. I guess she felt we were literally heading to the "wrong side of the tracks." What struck me was how fearful she was to have to walk back to her car. I felt it was not scary at all and fear didn't even enter my mind. All I could think was how awful it must be to live with that kind of fear. I am not sure why I am not a fearful person but I definitely appreciate this fact. Fear does not keep a person safe, it only inhibits a persons enjoyment of life.

FEAR

Yesterday Tom went to our beach house at the Jersey shore to bring in the grill and lawn furniture so they wouldn't get blown away by hurricane Irene. Maybe it's because my middle name is Irene but I don't feel scared by her at all. I hoped that Tom would not get turned away when he tried to drive onto the barrier island where our house is located. He will leave this morning before the storm hits. As I watched the reporters on TV, I wondered why they are working people into a frenzy. I think it's sad that our news people have turned into entertainers and not actual reporters. In this case they are "entertaining" by trying to scare people. People are watching with rapt attention. Don't get me wrong, I would not be one of those people who tried to ride the storm out and stay in a dangerous location. Also, I would be very upset if my house gets destroyed but I just can't understand the fear people have. I have heard people compare this to 9/11. What? Will that be the thing that people do now, compare everything bad to 9/11? I think it's quite possible that the media has put this idea into people's minds. I feel it's sort of like brain washing. When I was watching the news channels last night trying to see where the mandatory evacuations were, I started to understand how the brain washing is done. The longer I watched, the more I wondered how serious this storm was going to be. I thought, how the leaders in our area would not require evacuation unless it was serious. Then I started to wonder if they too were falling prey to the hype. I have not doubt that the mandatory evacuations are a good idea but I was annoyed when Mayor Bloomberg talked about the possible "tragedies" that could occur. Maybe my annoyance lies with the wrong people. Maybe the leaders understand that if they don't scare people, people will not listen and do the right things to stay safe.

I have a sister-in-law who lives in a house that has been flooded many times. She doesn't panic. She just gets out when the time comes. She does get frustrated and sad that once again she will have to hire contractors to come in and fix the mess. She is probably worried right now just wondering if this will happen again. Is she afraid" No. Will my husband heed the warnings and evacuate our beach house? Yes. Will he have any fear? No.

HOW I GOT TO BE "RICH"

The biggest thing on my mind lately is how we will pay for our kids to go to college. We are in that category of parents that are told that we are "rich" enough to pay the full freight but in reality we really can't. When filling out the FAFSA (free financial aid form), I learned that we would be expected to pay up to $50K per year for our kids college education. I have three kids and if they knuckle down and graduate in the "normal" four years, I will have one or two kids in college for a period of eight years. Using simple math I calculate that I will be expected to come up with $400K! Hah! So, since Thomas just headed off to college I can't help but think quite a bit about all of this.

I spend some time complaining and more time facing the reality and thinking of ways to pay for college. I've learned that one of my "friends" has no sympathy at all for me. She is of the belief that I am just lucky that I have the money and other assets that are keeping our family from getting the need based aid. I can't seem to get this off my mind. For me, the bottom line is that Tom and I have really sacrificed more than others to get into the position we are in. After our kids are off to college, not only will all our savings be gone but we will also have a substantial amount of debt. It is true that others who do get free aid will have debt and they won't have any savings either. This bothers me because after years of working hard and sacrificing we won't be any better off than people who sacrificed less than us.

The fact that bothers me is that my friend thinks that it is some sort of luck that put us in our position. She totally disregards what I had to do to get to this point. I grew up in a poor family where my mother sewed all my clothes and we drank powdered milk because we couldn't afford regular milk. My parents were not supportive of my decision to go to college and in fact told me that they would do everything they could to stop me. Regardless, I went anyway and often times woke up to temperatures in my apartment that were barely above 50 degrees because I couldn't afford to turn on the heat. While I was struggling to graduate to be able to get a job, Tom was living with his parents, working and saving as much as he could so we would be able to buy a house. We could not afford a house in NJ so we moved an hour away from his job to Pennsylvania. We bought the cheapest house we could find and put so much "sweat equity" into our house we sometimes would come home after working an eight hour day and be working outside on building a garage by spotlight until 9:00 pm. We dug a foundation hole for our garage by hand and I overcame my fear of heights when I had to be working all the way at the peak of the roof. I wonder if my friend has made any similar sacrifices. Since our kids have been born (18 years) we have only been on three "big" vacations. I only mention this because I had to listen to my friend tell me she is planning a trip to Switzerland for her 25th anniversary. We will also be celebrating our 25th wedding anniversary the same year as her. We could not afford to go to a foreign country on vacation. For our anniversary I probably will be making a special meal to be eaten on our 29 year old dinner plates.

HEADED OFF TO RPI

Today we bring Thomas to college. He is my first so it is kind of weird. What's even more weird is I no longer have those sad feelings of knowing I will miss him. I am still worried that he will be experiencing home sickness and all those usual unhappy freshman year feelings but I feel peaceful otherwise. I know along with the unhappy feelings he will also experience all the happy feelings. I think I realize that this is just a natural progression and I can sit back and enjoy it. I also see that he is happy. He seemed to be getting really excited last night. It's nice to see, when it comes down to the wire, he has joyful feelings. It seems as if the anxiety has been pushed to the side for now. He never really seemed super worried; I think because he is pretty independent about a lot of things. Through high school he has learned to handle the day to day tasks and decisions. He still lets me pamper him by doing his laundry and making him Koolaid but he takes care of the big stuff, mostly having to do with school. He doesn't need his parents to organize and plan his day at school. Other than helping with proof reading he doesn't ask us for help.

When we went to RPI for orientation, we were told that we know our own children. If we feel that in general they make good decisions and were generally responsible, we didn't have to worry about them. Chances are, they would be fine. If we were worried about them, chances are we needed to worry about them! I'm not worried about Thomas. I also felt really good when they asked all the parents to raise their hands if their kids did at least an hour of homework each night. There were few parents that raised their hands. They explained that was because these kids were the smart kids and good grades came easy to them so they would just coast through high school. Although many things do come easy to Thomas he has always studied a lot and done a lot of homework. It was comforting to know that he would not be one of those kids that had a rude awakening in college as far as the time commitment. I cannot really tell what will happen with his grades. Will he be able to keep all those A's? I have warned him that there may be times that he is disappointed with the result of his hard work. Only time will tell.

DEATH AND FAMILY

I reread my post about the chaos surrounding my family because of the deaths last year and thought I should update on that as well. I really feel much better about it in general. I realize that it really didn't have much to do with the deaths but it had to do with family relationships and how I handle them. I think the biggest problem comes from the fact that I would PREFER to have a somewhat close relationship with both sides of the family. Even if this means that I would have to grin and bear some imperfections in people. My problem comes when I don't know how much I should be grinning and bearing! It really bothers me when I see family members being mean to each other to the point that they end up not speaking to each other. In the past I have not wanted to be one of these people so I tended to put up with a lot. During this past year, I have realized that I am putting up with too much. I have distanced myself from family members and I am much happier living that way. I am realizing that I am much better off avoiding contact. I have not had any big fight. I still have a cordial relationship with all family members. I just have not made any effort to be nice and keep in touch unless I feel like it. I have not forced myself to visit or talk with people. I realize how much happier I can be when I live like this. In reality, I don't think people care that much. At most I picture them making note of it, thinking I am wrong and then moving on. I can deal with that. I don't need my family members to like me. I have finally realized when they "like" me, I am often times less happy.

GOAL UPDATE

Unfortunately I did not meet my goal of climbing Mt. Wittenberg this summer. It was a combination of the fact that my iron seemed to be low and Thomas didn't seem that interested in the training. He would have been able to hike it anyway but I would have had to train on my own. I did not have my iron checked but I was starting to huff and puff and get extra tired when hiking. I have made a special effort to increase my consumption of iron rich foods for at least a month now and I feel better. I will continue to work hard to eat the right stuff but it gets annoying because I do not love meat like some people do. It's not that I have an ethical dilemma but it's purely a matter of taste. Carbs taste better to me! Also, when my iron is low it is not a case of just eating more meat or vegetables like spinach and legumes, it's that I have to eat a lot of red meat and even liver. I am not a person that hates liver but I certainly don't love it. I don't spend a lot of time discussing this with people because in general I am experienced at raising my iron and the average person does not understand just how much I have to work at it. It's foolish for a person to suggest to me that I can raise my iron by eating such simple things as spinach. I do love and eat a lot of spinach to help but it's always in conjunction with a red meat. Meat makes the iron in vegetables absorb better. Enough about iron....

DONATING, VOLUNTEERING AND BEING GENEROUS

My daughter is on the local Relay for Life of the American Cancer Society. Her and her friend have started a team and because they needed a chaperone, I am also on the team. Sarah and Thomas have joined as well. Each teammate needs to raise $100 with a goal of at least $1,000 for the team. I am pretty good at fundraising and have raised almost the entire $400 for our family. My approach is to ask people who I feel are generous but in a no pressure kind of way. I have been pleasantly surprised that almost all the people I've asked have donated. Many of them have donated $25 or $50! This has not only given me a sense that people are good at heart but it's also made me want to be more generous as well. It's made me feel even better about offering my time and effort for this event. My observation has been that the people who are generous, are also happier people. Being happier is always a good thing! I'm glad to be sharing in that happiness.

WOW WHEE! WHERE THE HECK HAVE I BEEN!

I have just been sort of preoccupied with life. This past year has been a lot of ups and downs through no fault of my own. Well, I guess I can blame myself in the sense that I had some rough times that I could have handled better. My father-in-law died in May and my mother died in September. My father-in-law had been in poor health for at least a couple years but my mother's only problem had been that she was starting to have more and more memory problems. Other than my annoyance at other people's behavior surrounding my father-in-law's death it didn't have any profound effect on me.

In contrast to my father-in-laws death, my mother's forgetfulness and subsequent death caused a lot of upheaval. Upheaval that I wish that I had handled differently because I feel as if it caused me to waste a lot of energy. Therefore causing six months of my life to be stressed. I really don't want to write about the details a whole lot mostly because it would mean reliving it and I'm done wasting my life on it....or at least I hope I am done. I will make a few brief points though.

The first thing that started all the stress was that because of her increasing forgetfulness there were people in the family that began discussing "what will we do if..." In a nutshell, my stress surrounded the fact that I felt that I would not and had no obligation to do anything. I felt my opinion put me on a very lonely island.

Although the family knew something was awry with my mother, her death was actually quite sudden. She died in her home without so much as one doctor visit. Hooray for her, what a way to go at 84 years old! I really didn't want to travel to NH to attend her funeral so I certainly didn't act appropriately when I was there. It's sort of ironic because I went only because I didn't want to look bad and cause stress in my family relationships. I would have done less damage by staying home.

The fallout from her funeral really stressed me out. Being judged for my uncaring attitude. Family scavenging through her belongings but then insinuating that I was scavenging as well. Me being quite surprised about the greed and wanting of others. Realizing certain relationships would change, one for the better but the rest for the worse.

Ultimately, it is now done. I've come full circle and feel that I am once again back to where I started. I am happy to be here and some might tell themselves that the journey helped them. I don't. As I said, only one relationship got better and I don't really think it was necessary to go through all that stress to get that relationship to that point. What I really learned from all this is that in order to protect myself emotionally, I need to be more cynical and less open with others. That part is going to continue to be hard for me.

SOMETIMES IT'S HARD TO GO TO WORK EVERYDAY

I always get annoyed when a celebrity claims that if you find a job you love then you won't feel like you are going to "work" everyday. They make it sound like people can spend their lives in constant happiness and work will just be pure bliss. What they don't say is that no job will make you happy everyday. That sometimes it's hard to make yourself get up and go to work even when most times you enjoy your job. There will always be those days that you are going to work purely for the paycheck. If we teach our kids that work should always be fun, then we are doing them a disservice. I teach my children that although they should enjoy their job overall, they have to also accept that they may be sick of it sometimes. This is not to say that I am teaching them to settle for a career that they don't ever enjoy. When they complain that they are sick of school I listen but I also point out the alternative....not being able to go to school....and they agree that school is mostly a positive thing but they are just sick of it for that time period (like the end of the year).

I do think that there are people who are happy with their jobs everyday but I think that it's more about their personality. Some people are just pure optimists. I consider myself an optimist...most times but not always. I think that most people in the world have their bad days, some more than others. One of the celebrities that I hear talking about "finding your bliss" has a name that starts with "O". I find it annoying that she acts like she just loves every day of her job but at the same time says that she is overweight because she eats out of unhappiness. If her job is truly pure bliss and she spends so much time working, why is she overweight....does all her unhappiness come as soon as she get's home? Maybe she should work more to keep her mind off her problems. My real point is that even "O" must have bad days and by acting like she doesn't she will make others feel as if something is wrong with their jobs because they are not in pure bliss. It would just be nice if she would emphasize the point that a person can sometimes complain about their job and still be happy.

Where would the world be if people only worked at jobs that made them happy everyday? I dare say that society would collapse. How many people love being cashiers, garbage men, sewage treatment facility workers and field workers? I'm not saying that these workers go to work unhappy everyday but that it's possible they could be happier in a job that wasn't so demanding. I think it was on the Jon Stewart show that I saw an activist that had started a "Take our jobs" program for the migrant workers. The basic premise was they would automatically offer a job to any American that wants to work in the fields. Although Americans fear that migrant workers are stealing American jobs, Americans don't want to do the work of a migrant worker! I guess we are just looking for that "job that we love". Maybe some of those migrant workers would much rather be working in an air conditioned office but then what would we all eat? Would we be happy growing our own food? I love to garden but I'd probably go hungry since I get too lazy to water and weed sometimes!

ARE WE HAVING FUN YET?

I realized right from the moment I considered climbing Mt. Washington with the family that it was going to take a lot of work to get into shape. After all, I've spent the last couple of years working very hard at getting out of shape. All that laying around watching TV was quite a job! I've been impressed with how long the family has been willing to put up with my constant suggestions for various hikes. Until recently, they agreed without much objection. Now however, they groan every time I say "we need to go on a hike!"

When we went to Knoebel's for a few days this week I was nice enough to let Erin and Sarah forgo the hike that Thomas and I had planned. They happily pranced off to the amusement park while Thomas and I went zipping in the the van over hill and dale. We arrived at Nescopeck State Park about 45 minutes later. Leaving the parking lot, we looked for the entrance to the "Mountain Loop" trail. We should have known that things would not go well when we spied it off through a tangle of prickers! About half of our hike was through gawd awful, leg grabbing weeds, bushes and more prickers! Looking on the bright side, we found a few wild raspberries that tasted good and we hiked an incline that Thomas said was similar to a portion of Mt. Washington (pant, pant, huff, puff). We won't mention the fact that the raspberries were right beside the parking lot and we didn't really need to go on the hike to find them.... Not surprisingly, the incline was not located on the Mountain Loop but instead it was on the Oak Trail. The Oak Trail had very few oaks. A good portion of our time I complained about the upkeep of the trails. "They have that big beautiful visitor center.....THAT ISN'T OPEN!!" "All they would have to do is drive an ATV over these trails a few times and it would take care of all these bushes!" "Did the people who named these trails even hike them??" Even Thomas chimed in with "How hard is it to paint a few colored squares on the trees?!"

(Pause to get ice and ibuprofen for Thomas's finger that he slammed down while tripping on the stairs - broken or not broken that is the question of the day...)

We emerged from the undergrowth battered and bleeding and wondering if any ticks had reached our underwear. Well, at least I was bleeding, Thomas was unscathed. After Thomas made a trip to the well appointed porta potty (meaning it had plenty of toilet paper) we collapsed into the comfort of the van's air conditioning. In regards to our hike I said "I'm glad I did that!", without any sarcasm. I guess I am a glutton for punishment.