Sunday, March 14 ranks as my least favorite day of the year.

Now, I have nothing against Sunday. Any day you’re supposed to rest wins my approval.

Nor do I object to the actual date. Why on earth would you not celebrate Albert Einstein’s birthday or mark the anniversary of Eli Whitney securing his patent by wearing all-cotton clothing?

My problem stems from the time change. Aside from its uselessness, I not only detest springing forward to lose an hour, but also being told which hour to lose.

Granted, they’ve already trained my appliances to make the jump from 1:59 a.m. to 3 a.m. without a flux capacitor.

And others seized the moment to train me to check my batteries, smoke detectors and first-aid kits. However, I one-upped them. Instead of changing my light bulbs, I searched Kudzu.com for a local electrician and found one with a high rating. Might as well make the most of a lost hour. Next year I plan to check his reviews to ensure he’s still in good standing. Or find a plumber.

So why can’t I decide what hour I want to lose? I definitely wouldn’t surrender one where I’m asleep. I cherish those. How about I give back one where I’m stuck in traffic? I’d even toss in a draft pick to sweeten that deal. Or how about those few minutes with Kaylee that seemed like an hour?

But don’t make me return any that include dreaming. Unless it’s the one where I’m in my fighter jet pajamas, eluding the asylum guards before plunging into quicksand. That one’s all yours.

Maybe I should recover my lost hour by searching for a psychiatrist.

I’m headed to Las Vegas on Monday for the 26th Annual International Pizza Expo. I go every year — it’s part of my job since my company owns the show and, well, I have to go.

This year, however, the show falls on my birthday (March 3rd). On the one hand, I’m in Vegas on my birthday. On the other hand, I’m working all night on my birthday since we a big party that night (don’t worry about me. I’m pretending it’s my birthday party and everyone is there for me).

I’ve been tasked with trying to find a restaurant to celebrate my birthday dinner on Monday night. Our staff stays at the Las Vegas Hilton, which has a great steakhouse, but we ate there last year.

My search took me online. Man, there are a lot of restaurants in Las Vegas. This will be my fifth time to Sin City, and I haven’t even scratched the culinary surface. I’ve scoured Kudzu and Trip Advisor and I’m more confused than ever. I don’t want Italian (I’m headed to a pizza convention, for Pete’s sake!), and my crew doesn’t do Chinese or sushi. We’re looking for middle-of-the-road pricing, since we’re on a per diem, and I hate making my mates spend their gambling … er… dinner cash celebrating the awesomeness that was my birth 34 years ago.

How do you go about finding a restaurant in unfamiliar territory? I eventually put a call out on Facebook and ended up choosing Mon Ami Gabi at the Paris Las Vegas (escargot! brie! steak! Yum!)

But… I’m always open to other options …

(Photo courtesy of Creative Commons)

If a stranger were to ask me to describe myself, I would probably mention in the first couple of sentences that my mother died when I was a teenager. I would say this not in any misguided attempt at sympathy (because there have been a lot of years between that time and now) but because, more than anything else in my life, my mother’s dying shaped who I am today, in both good and bad ways.

I won’t go on and on about the mother-child bond. Poets and psychologists have covered that pretty thoroughly. But I will say that my connection to my mother was primal and unconscious and having that pulled away early forced me to develop an independence I wasn’t ready for and that part of me still doesn’t think I’m “qualified for. ”

When I was little and fell down and got hurt, hers was the first face that came to my mind; she was the one I cried for. I can tell you from experience that that instinct never goes away, especially when the hurts get bigger and more profound.

My husband and my dad were there to ease some of my fears when my son was born. But in some deep recess of my brain and my heart, I needed my mom. Some part of me made me think that only she could make the pain go away. That, of course, isn’t true. (Although I do believe that she could have gotten the darned obstetrician to the hospital earlier even if she had to drag him there by his ears.)

There are other lifelong repercussions of my mom dying early. Because she died suddenly without warning, I am always harboring the fear that someone else I love will go that way, before I’ve had a chance to say goodbye. I try not to walk away from a loved one after having harsh words because my biggest fear is that those will be the last words I speak to that person. Because of that, I tend to cave early on arguments.

In raising my own child, I may have been lax on discipline. They say you want for your own kids what you didn’t have. Perhaps this is because I want my son to have the gift of unconditional love from another human being. I want my son to have the security of taking me for granted even when he’s old and off with his own family.

But if I am honest, I’ll have to admit that losing my mom made me, in some ways, a better person. Not having her to turn to forced me to face obstacles by myself that I normally wouldn’t have. The fact of her loss alone—happening at a time when I didn’t have the perspective that years give you—made me realize that I could handle just about anything the world threw at me. If I could pick myself up after that, then there wasn’t much else that could hold me down.

In some ways, my mom has never left me. In times of stress, I’ll hear her voice in my head: “Are you going to put up with that?” or “Go for it. I’ll be right here for you.” And if I don’t have her to hold, that’s the next best thing.

Dear Mother Nature:

Can we talk, woman to woman? Really, I like snow as much as the next born-and-bred Southerner, but this is ridiculous. You dumped another six inches of snow today on top of the eight inches you left us last week. (Luckily, I was in Pensacola, Florida, and miss it. Ha! In your FACE, Mother Nature!)

I currently have a six-year-old in the throes of boredom and we’ve all just about had it. Still, she was excited that school have been called off tomorrow?

“Tomorrow is a snow day,” I said. “No school.”

“I know,” she replied. “Isn’t that great?”

“What? you were bored to tears today!” I exclaimed.

“Well, today was bored day. Tomorrow is awesome day!” she explained.

Sigh. Tomorrow is going to be a LONG day.

So, Mother Nature, I am writing you to humbly ask you to let up. I ordered a pair of $69 bib overall snowpants for my daughter today, and if past precedence holds, that means we won’t get another inch for the rest of the year, right?

Respectfully yours,

MD

My husband restores old cars as a hobby. One of the things I’ve learned is that the paint jobs for cars can run from expensive to outrageously expensive depending on the kind of result you want. The process involves a lot of sanding and the use of expensive high-speed air guns. No one who desired good results would ever paint their car with a brush.

It looks like make-up application is going in that direction now. Recently I saw an infomerical for an airspray kit for makeup foundation. I’d heard for years about magazine models being “airbrushed” but I thought it referred to the photographic process. They are actually sprayed with foundation by artists using the smae kind of tools tee shirts are airbrushed with.

 Now the process is open to the general public–if the general public is independently wealthy, that is. These kits are mighty costly–running about $400.

I know about make-up sponges are recommended by make-up artists as well. They add a smoother appearance than you can get by using your fingers to blend. But I always found that process to be time-consuming and the results can be uneven unless you’re patient and know what you’re doing.

So what’s a girl to do when I’d like that painted-on look but I’m not about to fork over $400 for it? I got my answer the other day when I was walking through the makeup aisle at Walgreens. There, on a shelf by itself, was a new makeup by Loreal. (I’d already become a fan of the Loreal True Match foundation because of its coverage and the fact that one of the shades perfectly matches my own.)

But this foundation? Had a roller applicator?! How cool is that? There’s this teeny little roller (about two inches wide) that looks just like the one you used to paint your house walls. You just roll that little thing over the creamy foundation, then over your face. The coverage is uniform, it evens out your skin tone, and covers all those little flaws. Plus, it’s not as tediously time-consuming as using a little sponge wedge or your fingers.

 I’m still hoping that the price comes down on the foundation airbrush kits, but until then the little paint roller is a good compromise.

I’ve been out of town for a week, and when my husband, Bill, asked (via telephone while on assignment in Florida) if I wanted to do something “special” for Valentine’s Day, I said … no. I am physically and mentally beat, so my ideal day is not taking off my pajamas, watching “Snapped” and “Cheaters” marathons on TV and eating chili from the crock pot.

In my defense, I spent five days last week in Orlando touring theme parks with friends I only see once a year and another three in Pensacola doing interviews for the magazine I work for. In retrospect, I should have worked first and played after. File that little nugget under “Bad Idea #1429.”

Still, I don’t seem to be the only one who doesn’t make special plans for Valentine’s Day. We have in the past but, well, after nearly nine years of marriage, there’s so much more to a relationship. Scrolling my Facebook friends’ statuses, it’s pretty much the same. My sister-in-law spent the day with my nephew watching the Olympics and playing with the toys he got yesterday for his birthday. An old co-worker watched the Daytona 500 with her fiance. A girlfriend’s husband told her to “Get off her butt and fold the clothes.” And here’s my favorite from a high school friend: “choke on your candy, suffocate in your flowers, and cut an artery with your greeting cards.” Reality doesn’t just live in this household! …CONTINUE READING »

You always hear people saying that one of the best things about having kids is that you get to see the world through their eyes. It may sound cliche but it’s true in a lot of different ways.

For one, children are infinitely fascinated with things that adults have long gotten used to, and bored with. Take a kid on an elevator and see if he isn’t instantly infatuated with pushing the floor buttons. Take two kids on there and you have to learn how to negotiate this “honor” — “Billy can press the button on the way up, and Sally can press it on the way down.”

And I don’t know why but kids are inordinately fond of those rinky-dink little carousel rides you see outside of places like Walmart. You know the ones–they have little cars or horses that kids can “ride” around and around on, creaking all the way. Next time you pass one of those and see a kid on it, take a look at her face. She will be either wearing an expression of pure joy or pure terror, both of which are inexplicable on a ride that goes .0005 miles per hour. But in their limited life experience, that ride is a thrill.

Even the things that adults grow to think of as drudgery have some kind of strange “brass ring” quality for kids.

Like driving. I was standing in line the first thing in the morning on my 16th birthday waiting to take my driver’s test. For the first few months after I got it, I would jump at the chance to run errands for my mother. “Need a loaf of bread from the store? I’m your girl!” Now? It’s like torture to have run out to the store and pick something up. I have a long work commute as well, so now I’ve come to see my car as a little prison cell.

And I cannot believe there was a day when I begged my mother to let me shave my legs. As a young teen, I lacked the perspective to know that that would merely become an act of physical maintenance that I would grow to dread.

Speaking of shaving and children’s perspective, when my son was about 10, I found him shaving his face in front of the bathroom mirror just like his dad. Horrified that he could have beheaded himself, I chastised him and said, “If you shave, the hair will just grow back darker! Do you want to be the only boy in third grade with a beard?” He looked at me like I was crazy and asked, “Why wouldn’t I?!”

So I guess it’s all about the impatient desire to grow up much too soon. If only they realized how good they had it now.

Month 1
I am someone’s mom. Wow. Am I ready for this responsibility?

Hey, this kid sleeps all the time, what’s the big deal? Who are all these people who say having a baby is so tough? This is a breeze! Except for that whole “feeding” thing – that’s kind of difficult.

OK, seriously, OUCH. Does he really HAVE to eat 8-12 times a day? Yes? Hmph, all right…(sob)

Wait a sec, all of a sudden he isn’t sleeping so much anymore. And what’s with all this crying? His diaper’s clean, he just ate (ouch) and he doesn’t appear to be being pricked by any sharp objects at the moment. WHY DOES MY CHILD HATE ME??

My mother and mother-in-law are wonderful people. What would I do without them?

Whoa, what time is it? Is that AM or PM? I wonder if I took a shower recently. Let’s see…today is…Wednesday maybe? so Tuesday, Monday…hmmm, I better try to take a shower today. Then it’s back into my jammies and robe of course!

First outing with the kiddo – only running about 45 minutes late. Not too shabby!

Month 2
Hey, you know what would be a huge confidence booster!? I am just going to slip on these cute little pre-pregnancy jeans and zip them right u…oh, wow. Nevermind.

So…sleepy…

Went to a “Mom and Me” class today and recently started walking with a group of moms on Wednesdays. Love this – we get to talk and talk about our little ones and their milestones – boring conversation for the other 96% of the population sans babies. Then when I am with a friend without a baby, I can pretend like he isn’t the only thing I ever think about.

Hey, I think he just smiled at me. I mean maybe it was gas, or just a funny quizzical expression but it sure seemed like a smile.

Yep, he definitely just smiled at me! (SWOON)

I feel lonely. I feel buried under laundry, dishes, and a baby who refuses to nap if he’s not on my lap. I feel frustrated with my lumpy figure and lack of time and energy to exercise. I feel annoyed at daytime television, in particular The Doctors which is really just one big product placement showcase. This is hard. I wonder if our lives will ever feel normal again?

Month 3
Wow, Baby D is so fun lately! He’s really been sleeping better at night too. I have had one or two 6-7 hour stretches of sleep. I feel so refreshed!

I love nursing – what a special bonding time for Baby D and me. My favorite part is when he is done eating and looks up at me with a little smile, rosy cheeks and bright eyes that seem to say “love you, momma!”

How will I feel about leaving my baby at daycare? How am I going to be apart from him for so many hours every day? Will he even know me anymore?

OK, so there’s a muffin top, but they zip! Gotta love bulky winter clothing.

I think I see a glimpse of our “new normal.” And it’s a pretty nice normal, actually.

Merry Christmas to our sweet little guy. It may not mean anything to you this year monkey, but someday this holiday will be magical to you, just as it was (and is) to me.

Happy New Year! This year won’t be as life-altering as last year for sure, but I am sure it holds wonderful things for our new little family.

Back to work…yet another “normal” to find, and just when we got a pretty good rhythm going.

Thank goodness for maternity leave. I think I lost my mind and regained it (just in time for me to lose it again once work and daycare started) all in the span of 3 months. I feel so lucky to have had that time with our little man. He won’t remember it but it will always be a special memory to me – the good (those first smiles), the bad (NO sleep) and the ugly (aforementioned muffin top).