No Use Crying Over Spilled Milk . . .?

Really?!

Not even if it's one of a series of mishaps in your day?

Not even if, hypothetically, you're a stay-at-home-mom who has had a cold for almost a week and your child also has said cold. And it's raining. And you've spent the morning next to a difficult person in the name of being "helpful" and "welcoming." And THEN you drop your glass bottle of milk on the concrete - the one that is locally-bottled and organic and more expensive than the other milks that you buy to be more environmentally responsible - and it leaves a white trail on the rain-soaked sidewalk as you try to find a garbage can to dump it in before inevitably going back to the store to get another bottle. And, say, you're pushing your 1.5 year old in the stroller all this time.

Not enough to justify tears?

What if then you come home to find that your child threw up on the carpet before you had the above-stated difficult morning and you didn't notice . . . until 4 hours later . . . and now your hall stinks like throw up?

Cry on, mama, cry on.

Putting off breathing

So, I was really excited about doing my 7 minutes a day breathing app and blogging about it . . . and then life happened. I did it for 4 days then my son and I both got colds and he's been sick off and on since. But those are excuses, I still could have found 7 minutes a day to breathe, but I didn't. I'm not very disciplined and am excellent at finding reasons to get out of things, even if they are really good for me. I wonder why that is? Anyway, I've felt guilty about it and like I couldn't blog about other things because I needed to follow up on the breathing post and so I would say I'd do it the next few days then report back . . . didn't happen, so I'm coming clean.

The days I did the breathing were interesting though. The first 2 days I actually felt more anxious, which was discouraging, but I think it was just all my tension surfacing. The next 2 days helped me to let go of that tension. I definitely see why it is called a "practice" because it probably takes a long time to be able to focus on your breath in the moment and not on the laundry that needs done or the child coughing in the other room or what you'll eat for supper. I'll keep trying to practice or at least take time out to breathe during the day.

7 minutes a day to better health

I am not the healthiest person.

I don't like to exercise or eat my veggies, but I do enjoy complaining when my body isn't working to its full potential. I love to moan self-pityingly "why does this happen to me, i'm so young, i walk a lot, this is not fair. . . " Which, shockingly, doesn't help matters. It also doesn't help that every spare moment I have is spent staring at a screen of some sort or filling my ears with sound and I never actually process all the information coming into my body. SUPER helpful . . . Or not.

So I want to try something and have you 5 people who read my blog help keep me accountable.
I'm going to breathe deeply for 7 minutes a day. That's it, just breathing. I'm going to be using an app called Universal Breathing by Saagara. It has music that ebbs and flows as you inhale and exhale. I know, I know, "why do we need an app for everything?", "don't you already know how to breathe?" Truthfully, no, I don't think that I do know how to breathe. Not in a way that helps my body relax and my tense muscles let go of the stress of the day. In this busy world that's always 'on', I need help relaxing, and, yes, there's an app for that.  

P.S. This is not an ad for a certain app, just trying to document what I'm doing and hoping it will inspire others.

Domestically Disabled

Being a stay at home mom doesn't mean I have the skills of a 1950s housewife. . . and I certainly do not. I love staying home because it's great to spend my days watching my son discover the world

around him and be able to see his 'first' everythings, but along with this comes the duty of actually keeping the house in some orderly enough condition that I don't throw temper tantrums alongside my child. The cooking part I have adapted to fairly easily, learning simple recipes that keep my family fed and not pressuring myself to be Julia Child.

The cleaning part on the other hand . . .
I have a bit of a procrastination problem when it comes to keeping the house clean. While other people do not enjoy cleaning tasks yet see them as a part of life and do them anyway, I spend my time trying to think up ways I can get out of them even though I know from previous experience that it inevitably needs to be done. Like vacuuming for instance. We have a lot of stairs in our home, all of which are carpeted, and I think it's a pain in the butt to clean them. So instead, I wait until they visibly need to be done, then wait a few more days until I'm embarrassed to have people over, then wait another week for good measure. . . a perfect system? maybe not . . . perhaps I can train my son to take over the chore?

Bleak to Chic

This is often how my hair looks in the morning - lovely, I know. People often tell me that if they had my hair they would let it fly free and big in its natural glory . . . well, here it is folks and it ain't no Diana Ross afro. So what's a gal to do when she doesn't have time or, frankly, doesn't want to wash her hair?







Put a scarf on it!
A friend of mine rocks this look often and I love it. I asked her to show me how to do it, to which she replied, with an eye roll, "Jenny! It's so easy. Just flip your head over, tie it, tuck in the corners so you don't look like a cat." Ok!
So here are step by step instructions for those who want to try it.

Flip your head over and tie the scarf, folded into a triangle, at the top of your head.

 Make a bow. or a double knot. or some fancy sailing knot. whatever works.

Tuck your hair into the scarf and bring the triangle tip forward to tuck under the bow.
And don't forget to tuck in the corners so you don't look like a cat!

I also put a bobby pin on each side to ensure no slippage.

Ya gotta have skills

Of the many skills I imagined I would need as a parent, the one that seems most useful currently, that I would never have thought of, is calf-roping. Seriously.

Changing my son's diaper looks nothing like this angelic meeting of the minds and is in reality much closer to this cowboy and his calf in the rodeo ring. It is an all-out battle of the wills that has to happen up to EIGHT times a day! ( oy!)
I feel totally ill-prepared for such daily war.

If only I'd worked on a farm in my youth like my mother would have wanted . . .

a bunch of hot air

Back to obsessing about my hair . . .

As most women (I think), I feel awesome after a trip to the salon. I've been pampered and someone has spent an hour making my hair look great, which only happens when I go to the salon. My hair looks so good, in fact, that I can hardly believe it is my hair. Thus, I end every salon session begging my stylist to show me how to make my hair look like this at home, and the conversation inevitably goes like this:

me: "wow! how can I do this at home?"
stylist: "Take your diffuser - "
me: "I don't have a diffuser"
stylist: "get a diffuser"
me: "i don't even have a hair dryer. i'm not going to get a diffuser. aren't they expensive? isn't there anything else I can do?"
stylist: "you don't have a hair dryer?!"

look how great i will look upside down!

Then I forget her advice until 4-6 months later when I return to have my hair done and we have the aforementioned conversation again.

But this time was different. This time I decided I would finally cave and get a hair dryer and diffuser. SHOCKING, I know. It only took me about 15 years of refusing many stylists' recommendations and even longer of insisting that I am a 'low maintenance woman.' I still think i'm pretty low maintenance and hopefully using a hair dryer won't amp it up that much. I have yet to use it and am hoping it will up my hair confidence. I'll let you know how it goes . . .