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Memoris of the Non House Wife type

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bad housewife

1. I am not a good cook!
Every recipe I try either ends up tasting horrible or ending up on the floor.
True story! I can follow a recipe to the absolute “t”, and it will end up that something is wrong with it. I remember one time my grandmother decided she was going to put an end to my horrible cooking omen. It was the day of my son’s birthday party and my grandmother had shown up at my house with what she called, “the easiest recipe in the world!” She was determined to teach me how to own that recipe like it was nobodies business. She watched very carefully over me as I measured out the ingredients, then she would check, double check, and then triple check. We whipped those ingredients into submission and poured the batter into the pan. We loving stuck my masterpiece into the oven as Grandma looked over at me and said, “There now wasn’t that easy?” You know what, Grandma, it was! We waited the allotted time as we sipped on some tea and chatted and giggled like we so often did. As the buzzer went off, we grabbed the “perfect” cake out of the oven. It was such an exciting moment for me as I knew that when everyone arrived for my son’s birthday party, they were going to be so very proud of me when I told them that the very cake they were eating was baked by ‘yours truly’. We opened the oven up and pulled out that chocolate cake, suddenly our smiles turned into looks of shock. That cake was not a cake, it was some sort of something, but we were not sure what that something was. We stared at the cake for awhile as my Grandma mumbled something about not knowing what went wrong. Then we both burst out laughing as it suddenly hit us, THERE WAS NO HOPE FOR ME. So the moral of the story here is that you know there is no saving you when even you’re Grandmother tells you, “I guess you really are a bad cook!” I told you so Grandma!!! This of course is not the only bad cooking experience I have had. There has been cookies spilled on the floor, ingredients forgotten, a whole heap of too much salt used, a million burnt things, and the list could go on. Don’t judge me because I am a bad cook!bad food

2. I don’t know how to iron
One time I was with my father and he was about to get up to speak on stage at a very big conference, he asked me to iron his pants. I remember thinking that it couldn’t be that hard. Well, 10 minutes before we were to leave, I decided to go ‘artistic’ on those pants and imprint of the shape of the iron right onto the front leg of his dress pants. Let me just take this story one step higher, it was his birthday as well. Geesh! We had to stop at a men’s clothing store on the way to the conference to pick up my Dad some pants. To his credit, he never even reacted at the sight of his scorched, iron imprinted pants.

3. I have no clue how to bleach clothes

I am not even going to touch on this. It’s that bad!

4. I am a horrible gardener
I love a well landscaped yard like the rest of us. I have tried planting flowers. I have even been given flowers, a whole whack load of them, for free. I have a problem though. I HATE BEES, WASPS, and HORNETS!!! Therefore, I am on edge while I am outside. I tried doing my gardening in the dark while those pesky critters were sleeping, but picking weeds at night is not the easiest of jobs.
I have, however, had success with one plant. It was this beautiful perennial that was in my flower garden. It must have been from the previous owners as it suddenly appeared one summer and grew like crazy. I was so proud of that plant. It never produced any flowers but it was a beautiful big bush that seemed to be growing at an alarming rate. I had many conversations with my Grandmother via phone and she would try to get me to explain this plant to her so she could tell me how to care for it. She could not figure out what kind of a plant I was referring too. Finally, when she came to visit, I took her out to my flower garden to show her my beloved plant. I remember the walk to the garden, I was so excited for her to see it, and finally I had a bit of a green thumb. My Grandmother took one look at the plant and looked at me, and by the look on her face I could tell she was trying to hold back fits of laughter and said, “That’s a weed!” Well, OMG of course, only I would take extra special care of a weed!! I could tell you many more stories that include digging up perennial bulbs and thinking they were onions, and being so proud of myself for ridding my flower garden of those pesky onions, only to find out that those were tiger lily bulbs. Well, that was another epic fail! So, now if you drive by my house (please don’t) you will see my front yard full of beautiful flowers. I am sure you are thinking my husband planted them, but you are so very wrong. I planted them all by myself. They are all fake plants, yep I said it, and every last one of them is fake as fake gets. I have reason for this though. One, they don’t die! Two, they smell like nothing so bees will leave them and me alone. I know what your thinking, “Man, this girl is unbelievably smart” or you are laughing at me and planning your next family outing around a drive by my house. Don’t judge me because I am a bad gardener!

5. I don’t know how to sew (not even a button on)

Clean! I do know how to clean. That has to count for something, right? Sigh, or maybe not. Maybe, we should all just take a moment and say a prayer for my husband and children.

Dear God, please don’t let my daughter grow up learning and perfecting MY horrifying ways of cooking. Please don’t let my son grow up thinking that fake flowers are real flowers. Please God let my husband just survive this crazy life he lives with me and every once in awhile just give him something good to eat, I think he deserves it! Amen.

Mother’s Day with some laughter and some tears

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I have to admit, I get spoiled on Mothers Day. My husband and children always do their very best to make sure I am treated like a queen that day. I love it and am very grateful that I have such a wonderful man in my life who teaches his children to honor their mother. It’s an incredible blessing. I know that there are many mothers that don’t get that special treatment and Mothers Day turns out being a very hard day for you. If that is you, and you are reading this, I want to say ‘thank you.’ Thank you for your selfless life you live, for your endless nights of worrying, for your prayers, for your tears, for your hardships. Mom’s everywhere… THANK YOU!!!

As I sit down to write today, I am accompanied by a cup of coffee, a chocolate that I received at church today, and a box of kleenex.

The coffee is because I have some insane addiction to it and even though it is 9:00 at night, my body is craving a cup of its steamy goodness. The chocolate is because its Mothers Day and I think its okay that I indulge a little. After all, it was a gift, it just wouldn’t be right if I let it go to waste, right? RIGHT???
The Kleenex is because I have decided to open my heart up a little bit and I know it will be followed by a Noah’s Ark-like flood of tears.

I always have a ‘moment’ on Mothers Day where I sneak away as emotion takes over and I think about my mom. I lost her 15 years ago to a battle with cancer. I was 15 years old (almost 16) and was my mothers only child. I remember sitting next to her on the couch where she laid dying and holding her hand pleading with her not to go. I remember telling her that I could not be by myself without her and she just simply had to stay. She then looked at me with the look only a mother can give and said, “You’ll be fine, I know you will be. Your dad loves you and he will take good care of you.” What’s a daughter to do without her mother?

It was so hard to think of life without my mom. She was my best friend, and I mean that. I didn’t really have any close friends, she was my close friend. I would rather spend all my time with her than be with anyone. I am not sure if that was healthy or not, but maybe God knew she would be leaving early so He made sure we spent as much time together to make up for the time that would be lost.

She was there for everything, always in the background smiling and cheering me on. I used to sing and I remember before I would go on stage I would say to my mom, “Please try not to cry this time, Mom.” I would be standing on stage singing my song and I would glance at my mom and there she was just bawling like a baby… it never failed!
We would drive around the city listening to music, go for coffee every morning before school and then again after school, go for walks and have snowball fights, Saturdays we would go for ice cream. The list could go on. She was full of life and laughter.

Everything seemed to flow like clockwork until that day. I remember her standing in the bathroom where we would get ready together in the morning and she looked over at me and told me she thought maybe something was seriously wrong with her physically. As, I listened to her explain the symptoms, I knew that something was seriously wrong. I wasn’t scared, I thought she would live. I never once imagined her dying. What followed next was many tests, doctors appointments, and so on. It was a quick couple of months before the sight that became normal to see was my mom lying on the living room couch on a 24 hour basis. It was my father, my grandmother, and I that would take turns caring for her. My father would research countless remedies to help save her life. We juiced our meals, we all took vitamins, we sanitized everything in a particular way. Life was put on hold as we scrambled around trying to save her life.

Then came the Saturday morning I will never forget. I was standing in the kitchen making “juice” for all of us. Dad came into the living room and sat down by my mom’s side and began to talk to her. He called me in to come sit with them. I stopped what I was doing and moved into the living room and sat at my mom’s feet at the end of the couch. My dad began to tell her that if she was fighting to stay alive for us, she didn’t have to do that. If she was tired of fighting we would let her go. Then she proceeded to tell us that she was so tired of fighting and that she just wanted to go home to Heaven. My father and I told her we loved her and that we would miss her terribly but we would release her from the fight.

You know as I write this and look back at that moment, and I remember how I felt there are no other words to describe it, except “GRACE.” God’s grace making it possible for us to walk through that moment of time, to be able to have the conversation, and to be strengthened for the days that would be ahead of us. Peace would be what would lead the way up until her death. Grace and peace came down at that moment and surrounded us so that we would be able to walk through what was to come.

Her decision was made. She called for her friends and family to come so she could say goodbye to them. This was all very surreal, as I am sure it was for everyone. Her pain suddenly began to increase and it was very hard watching her become very weak at a rapid pace.

As I prepared myself for my mother passing, I recalled that every time she left the house she would write me a note. It didn’t matter the length of time she would be gone for, I always got a note. If she was going to the grocery store, I got a note. If she was going for a walk, I got a note. If she was leaving for a week on business, I got a note. In my school lunches, I got a note. These notes always ended in, “I love you kiddo!” You know, I still have every one of those notes! I decided that it was only fitting that she leave me a note before she left this earth.

I went and sat with her and told her that I would miss her like crazy and this was the most indescribable feeling to realize that I would be losing her, but I asked that she leave me a note before she died. It was then she told me, “Of course, I am already working on it, you know I never go anywhere without leaving you a note.” Okay, now the Noah’s Ark tears have begun.

It was two weeks from the day she decided to give up the fight, that she passed away. My father, my grandmother, and I sat with her for most of the night as she slept. We decided it was bedtime, and said our ‘goodnight’s.’ We headed to our bedrooms, except for my grandma who was going to do the ‘night shift’ with mom. We all crawled into bed for about 10 minutes when we instinctively got back out of bed to sit back with mom. It was as if we knew that this would be ‘the night.’

I sat by mom on one side and began to sing to her every song that I had ever sang to which she would usually have been in the crowd bawling like a baby. This time she was my audience and I was singing to her. She passed away that night.

It was a very hard couple of years for me, as I was 15 and I needed my mom. I missed her. I remember I was 17 years old and I was living on my own. I was laying in bed in my apartment, it was probably 3:00 in the morning and I had awoken in tears like I usually did every night. This week in particular had been different though, I would awake to hear this verse ring in my head, “Isaiah 60:20.” At this particular point in time, I was so mad at God, I wanted nothing to do with Him. Still, every night I would hear that same verse. I finally looked for a Bible, and when I opened it up to the verse I would find this: I will be your everlasting light, and your days of mourning will be no more. I knew at that exact moment that God was real. That only He could see my tears and only He could feel just how much I hurt. That moment changed everything for me, to know I had someone who was hurting right along with me. That He felt a need to wake me up every single night just to show me that He saw, that he felt, and that He hurt too.

I think if there was any moment in time that I look back to the most, it’s that time. The moment I knew I had the Father of the Universe watching over my heart. It’s what changed everything for me. I know that my day-to-day trials, my big trials, my hurts, and my wounds, I have Him watching over me and caring for the big issues and the small.

I miss my mom like crazy. Sometimes I really need to talk to her. There are just some things that I need to ask her, like when did I walk as a baby? What was I like? Did you breast feed? How the heck do I cook this chicken? What’s beautiful is God sends you this group of amazing women to surround you and help fill that void. To help teach you how to cook, how to raise your children, how to love your husband, how to get through life, and all the other ‘how’s’ that are out there. I have many women I could send a million thank you’s too.

So to the Mom’s who were never able to have children, You’re needed! To the Mom’s who selflessly gave up their children, You’re needed! To the Mom’s whose babies have grown up and moved away, You’re needed! To the Grandma’s, Aunties, and Stepmom’s, You’re needed.

To all the ‘Mom’s’ who God sent my way to help fill that void in my life, THANK YOU and Happy Mother’s Day to you all.

Stressing about this “first” blog post thing

/ doingitmayerstyle / 1 Comment

Ok so this is my first blog and this is my first post. Has anyone been in the same boat as I have, or did you all know right from the get go, what you were going to say and how you would start your blog?

Geez Louise, I have researched, read blogs, started writing, then quickly erased, and now writing again (which I may erase this too.. stay tuned). So after all that, I decided that I should write about what I am stressing about which is writing the VERY FIRST POST on my blog. I know it shouldn’t be that big of a deal but for me… it is.

My husband has tried to be very helpful as he seems to think I should ‘spill the beans’ about every skeleton in my closet. “That will bring people to your blog” he says to me. “Yes, hunny I am sure it will!” is my reply. It’s not that I don’t agree with him, because I do! I have lots of juicy gossip, crazy stories that would make you gasp out loud or spit out your coffee, but I live in a small city. If you live in a small city and you are reading this, Enough said, right? You already know exactly what I mean.

If you don’t live in a small city,WELL, let me tell you. First, let me start by saying, everyone knows your great great great grandfathers sisters mothers cousins wife.. and it will always end up that you are related somehow, I repeat ALWAYS. When you meet someone who is 50 years or older, the second question they will ask you after asking your name is, “Who is your mother or father and what is their last names and who is their parents?”
Now on the off-chance that you are not originally from this city, after they have asked you these questions and you proceed to tell them that you are not from here, the conversation will be brought to an abrupt awkward halt. In most cases they will not even ask you where you are from or continue any kind of chit-chat.. that convo my dear, is just plain over.

So, that’s just a little glimpse to growing up in a small city. Now onto what would happen if I aired all my dirty laundry on here. It would go something like this:
From the moment I hit “Publish” it would be like a ‘sitting duck’ just waiting for 1 of the 40,000 people who live here to get word of my published blog. Once someone heard of it, it would take all of 10 minutes before they were searching for it. It would then take another ten minutes for it to go viral (and by viral I mean .. in my little city). I would then either receive a text in the next 15 minutes, a phone call, or I would show up for work the next day and have my first client begin to talk to me about what she had heard about me.
Things spread so fast in a small city when you know practically everyone. I swear, people know stuff about me that I don’t even know about me.

Then what would happen is my story would be stretched way out of proportion and the gossip would begin. If I were to liken it to something, I would liken it to the game ‘Telephone‘. Do you remember that game? Where you all sat around in a circle and someone told the first person a secret and by the time it got to the last person it was not even close to what the first person had originally said. Yes, well, imagine playing that game with 40,000 people.
I know you are probably thinking, “Ok you’re not that important, I’m sure not everyone is interested in your life!” True, I am not that important, but in a small city.. Yes, yes my friend, EVERYONE IS INTERESTED IN EVERYONE’S LIFE!!! I know things about people, I shouldn’t even know, and I have never even met them.. and so goes it in my small city.
So that being said and as I bring my DREADED first post to an end. I will eventually end up writing about some ‘skeletons’ because I think ts important to share where we have come from and how we have come through certain situations in our life. I want this blog to be journey for me in my life as I relive past years events and todays treasures, but also maybe, just maybe, I could share an experience with someone who needed to hear what I had to say at that moment. After all, we go through things in life so that we can be better people, but the real joy is when we can help others by sharing our life with them.

Cheers!

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