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Waiting Is No Game

December 12, 2011 By 1 Comment

Waiting Is No Game

 

There’s a special kind of Hell experienced by those who have to wait for healthcare news.  You want an immediate answer, you crave resolution of the suspected problem, but almost always, there’s an evil “I don’t know” given.  It’s not the fault of doctors or nurses.  It’s not a malevolent desire on anyone’s part to keep information from you, although I wouldn’t rule out some “covering of one’s rump” protocol on the part of some medical personnel.  After all, these people have licenses and livelihoods which they have to protect and we live in a very litigious society.

Waiting is especially tough around Christmas.  The world is decorated for a joyous holiday, there’s music playing, and the prospect for at least one happy day in the year is almost tangible.  Then a medical test, routine perhaps, is done.  And as much as positive results are expected, as much as the doctor thinks with .99 percent certainty that they’ll be fine, they cannot be guaranteed until the test results are in.  So you wait.

If you’re like me, you flip over in your head what the possible outcomes could be.  I draw up plans for what I’ll do in the event of the possible outcomes.  I foolishly, I mean VERY foolishly, Google myself into panic mode.  That passes some of the time and not very productively.

I bug the doctors, nurses, receptionists.  I want answers and I’m paying for their services, dammit!  I’m not proud that I’m a pain, but it hasn’t always been for naught.  There was the time, years ago, when I went in for a pregnancy test and was told to call the doctor’s office at 3PM only to find out that the office had closed for the weekend.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Family, MomsCrayon Tagged With: , , ,

Better Late Than Never: November Was National Adoption Month

December 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment

I am not one to buy in to this name-a-month-after-a-cause campaigns that the government likes to buy into. I choose which causes to support not because they’re the featured one, but because I believe in them. Still, as an adoptive mom, I feel compelled to speak out, albeit late, on behalf of National Adoption month which was last month. I wish it could be renamed “Build A Family” month, because that’s what adoption is: another way to build a family.

For my husband and I, the short answer is that we wanted another child (we already had a wonderful little boy) and adoption was the method we chose to grow the family. Three years after signing the initial paperwork, my husband traveled across the world and brought home our miraculous daughter. Those three years were some of the hardest I’ve ever known. When you’re pregnant, you know the kid is going to appear somewhere in the 9-month period. With international adoption, the process is much, much longer and depends on when other people (as opposed to your own body) get things done. We had mountains of forms to fill out, have notarized, and sent to the Chinese consulate for various blessings and translations. We were investigated, fingerprinted, interviewed, visited numerous times by a social worker, and answered the maddening question “when is she coming” with the answer “we don’t know” over and over again. I’m not rendering an opinion on the process, which I understand is necessary for the protection of the child. I’m just saying that during that time I experienced an incredible range of emotions including being excited, joyous, impatient, angry, and sad. I just wanted to hold my daughter! [Read more...]

Filed Under: Family, M. B. Sanok, Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

Why Is It All About Food

November 11, 2011 By 1 Comment

I’ve been on The Bead Diet for 49 days now and lost 36 pounds (you can read all about it on my blog, Mom’s Crayon, at http://momscrayon.wordpress.com). Naturally, with Thanksgiving coming up, I’m a little worried about staying the course. Because for this holiday, more than any other, food is the centerpiece of the experience.

I cherish Thanksgiving for being a wonderful, “pause to reflect” type of holiday. I’ve taught my children to privately give thanks every day and be grateful for what they have (a supremely tough lesson to teach in today’s “GIMME!” society). But this Pilgrim/Native American celebration is a time for public recognition of what we’re thankful for. We sit around the bulging dining room table and vocally acknowledge our gratitude. And therein lies the problem: the food on the damn table.

For the older folk in our family, Thanksgiving is just about the food, specifically the amount of food. As if they don’t eat any other day of the year! The menu is pretty well set in stone, so that’s not a problem, however the mass quantity of food expected is. Apparently in our family, Moses came down and wrote in stone that there MUST be enough food left over for at least one grandma to take home several meals’ worth for herself and her cat. Oh, and the food must be served so that no effort is expended by the attendee. God forbid that any motion, other than lifting the fork to one’s mouth, be made! When I took a different approach last year (may I mention that our immediate family is expected to host each and every holiday since we’re the only ones who have a house) and made Thanksgiving a buffet, eyebrows were raised to the roof and complaints were made to management (i.e. my husband). [Read more...]

Filed Under: MomsCrayon, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , ,

Stop Grossing Little Kids Out on Halloween

October 27, 2011 By 1 Comment

With Halloween coming later this month, most kids are deciding what they’re going to be, parents are busily stocking up on candy that WE won’t be tempted to eat, and many of us are getting ready to decorate our yards.
Halloween decorations are big business. According to the National Retail Federation, Americans will be spending $6.9 BILLION on the holiday this year with about $2 BILLION of that going solely toward decorations. Not bad considering many of us are out of work and the economy is still shaky.
Pumpkins, scarecrows, spiders, vampires, witches, ghosts, monsters are very cool and, from the perspective of little kids, pretty nonthreatening. Then you have the gross, often gratuitous stuff – body parts, dummies hanging from trees, monsters with horns drooling blood out of the corners of their mouth. Decoration like that are abhorrent, to me, in their depictions of violence. Can you imagine how horrifying seeing material like that is to little kids?

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Family, MomsCrayon

What Do You Want To Be When You Grow Up

September 5, 2011 By 4 Comments

People are always asking kids what they want to be when they grow up. As a kid, I never understood why. As an adult, I know there are a few reasons: 1) We’re curious what the kid’s course of study might be. 2) We want to offer advice on how to become whatever their goal occupation is. 3) We have no idea what else to talk to the kid about. Most of the time I thinks it’s #3.

As I come to another crossroad in my life, I’m facing that question: what do I want to do now. When my kids’ schools begin, for the first time in five years, I’ll have “nothing” to do between 8:30 a.m. and 2 p.m. I put quotes around nothing, because I’ve got a list of household items a mile long, from cleaning closets to more blogging to minor but long-neglected physical check-ups I didn’t want to haul the kids to the doctor for.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: MomsCrayon, Uncategorized, Work-Money Tagged With: ,

The Universal Bond

August 22, 2011 By 2 Comments

This weekend, we took a spur-of-the-moment trip up to Lancaster, Pennsylvania. We tend to go there at least twice a year because it’s close, it gives us a change of pace, and my tween-age son is in love with smorgasbords. It’s also amazingly family-friendly and what happened to me today is a nice example of the universal bond of motherhood.

This bond is evident almost every time I foray out, whether it’s to the grocery store, to another place within America, and even out of the country. It can happen anywhere and is often acknowledged through a knowing smile, a chuckle, or a glance. I’ve given it numerous times and have been the recipient of it thousands more since I became a mother eleven years ago.

[Read more...]

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Prepping For Fun

August 1, 2011 By 4 Comments

We’re getting ready for our family vacation in August. It’s a biggie – driving down to Washington, D.C. for a few nights before heading down to South Carolina for few more. The kids are all excited. Really, they love any change of scenery. And hubby is doing is part to prepare. He’s actually had a lot to do: get the car serviced, have the mail stopped, devise a tentative itinerary (after all, we have kids so it has to be somewhat flexible). Oh, and he has to pack.

Yeah, that’s it.

As with all moms, the bulk of the preparation work is on me. Not that I’m opposed to vacations, but let’s face it. Wives tend to do more prep than the husbands. The males are responsible for one person: themselves. We handle the other living things in the house: kids, pets, even plants. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Family, MomsCrayon, Travel Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Manicure In The Wild

July 25, 2011 By 2 Comments

The older woman looked down at my 5-year old while the Fashionista eyed the gentle crone. They sized each other up, realized they were kindred in spirits, and with me looking safely on, retreated to a back table. The woman laid out the paints – blue, green, yellow, pink, orange. The soon-to-be kindergartener eyed them before carefully choosing her favorites. As my daughter sat statuesque and still, the kind woman methodically began to paint. The manicure had begun.

What made this encounter unusual was the setting. This was no nail salon. It was not in a house or beauty parlor. It was at the Lewis Morris State Park. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Mind-Body-Spirit, MomsCrayon, NJ Fun Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Gratitude Is Cool On A Hot Summer Day

July 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

The kids and I have been keeping cool this summer. Our house has central air, the car’s AC works wonderfully, we have lots of cold bottled water, and we spend quite a few afternoons lounging by the town pool. They, of course, take it for granted. And I, like all elders, bore them with tales of my childhood.

My parents, in their supreme dysfunction (my mother was mentally ill and my father felt psychiatry was just airing dirty laundry, so he did not get her treatment), did not believe in air conditioning. Consequently, our top-floor garden apartment was always hotter than outside. There was a fan in every room and my brother and I would jockey for position in front of it, hoping mom didn’t have it in the window where she swore it would “bring the outside air in and cool the room down” even if it was 99 degrees outside.

At night, we slept in as little clothing as possible, again, in front of the fan. Periodically, my brother and I would get up to get a little water on our bodies before going back to the fan (we slept in the same room). There were many nights, however, when we didn’t sleep much because the room was so hot. I even remember my brother camping out in the dry bathtub one night because the porcelain was cooler than his sheets (no one used the bathroom that night).

We had no family car so we’d walk to wherever we needed to go, even on the hottest days. Every time I see my high school graduation picture, I marvel that I didn’t look as sweaty as I felt the day it was taken since I’d had to walk at least three miles to the photography studio. My brother and I would regularly walk to movie theatres on the weekend, no matter what was playing, because the theatres were air conditioned. [Read more...]

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It Must Be Me

July 13, 2011 By 3 Comments

Our family has been catching up with friends and acquaintances this summer. These are people we like and generally respect; however, I’m flummoxed by their responses to some of their children’s behavior and by what they ask their kids to do.

Case in point: Bob and Carol are lovely people whom we’ve known for many years. They have Little Timmy, age 7. The other day, Carol told me that their sweet little boy:

• Regularly strips down naked in the house and then jumps up and down on the couch in front of a curtainless window.
• Likes to pee on the front lawn at least once a week.
• Goes around the house and finishes all the half-full wine coolers he can find.

Carol thinks this is very funny; so funny, that she posts these stories on Facebook. Bob works late and, although he hears about these antics, isn’t around to correct them.

It must be me, because I find Little Timmy’s behavior disturbing. Since Timmy is 7, he should know better and if he does, he’s obviously not being appropriately corrected. I’m just thankful I’m not the neighbors.

Here’s something else I don’t understand:  Betty Sue is 11, a fine, sweet girl who lives a few houses down from me. I recently saw her strolling up the block carrying a 6-pack of beer. She was carrying it to another neighbor’s house where Mom and Dad were partying with friends on the front lawn. Apparently the party needed more alcohol and who better to fetch it than an 11 year old. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Family, Mind-Body-Spirit, MomsCrayon Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,
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