Why?

We introduced the kids to Indiana Jones this weekend. You remember how incredibly exciting Raiders of the Lost Ark was, right? I mean the booby traps, the giant rolling ball, the snake pit; all meant to keep you on the edge of your seat.

Here's how it went...

Guy gets speared trying to escape with the idol..."Why did that guy get killed?" "He should have waited for Indy." "Why?" "Because Indy could have protected him." "Why?" Sigh.
Giant ball chases Indy..."Why is that ball chasing him?" "It's just another booby trap." "Why?" "Because people wanted to keep the idol from getting stolen." "Why?" "Because it's important to them. Just watch!"
Indiana runs for his life from the natives with the poison darts..."why is he running?" "Because the natives are trying to kill him!" "Why?" "Because they work for the bad guy." "Why?" "Um, I don't know; maybe he pays well. Just be quiet and watch!"
Indiana splashes in the water swimming to the plane waiting for him..."Are there alligators in there?" "Maybe." "Why?" "Well, it's the jungle." "Why?" "Why what?" "What?" "Please just watch the movie!"

I mean, talk about killing the moment!! And that was the first five minutes of the movie!! It got worse as the movie progressed. One asking more inane questions, another running from the room or covering his head at every scary part (or every 45 seconds) then asking what happened.

We agreed to send the movie back to Netflix and watch it again when they're in college.

~Eileen Cassidy Bishop

I have to tell you; I am very proud to be a stay-at-home mom. That actually surprises me a little bit. But it's true. I don't like the term "housewife" or "homemaker" and when those are the selections on an application or survey, I tick "other" and write in either "stay-at-home-mom" or if I'm feeling really indignant, "molder of little lives" or "wiper of runny noses" or simply, "SuperMom". Why not? If a garbage collector can call him/herself a "waste management engineer", why can't I give myself my own title as well?

It wasn't always like this. I used to be kind of ashamed that I stayed home. I was laid off from my IT consulting sales job back in January of 2003. By March or April, I was feeling guilty for not even thinking of looking for a job. When I mentioned this to my mom that "it's not like I have kids to take care of or anything", her reply was, "what's wrong with staying home and keeping the home-fires burning?" Wasn't that a great way to look at it? Seriously! It bought me a few more months of guilt free sluggishness until I found out I was pregnant with my son that Summer. Funny thing is, after trying for 10 years to have a baby, we gave up. Don't tell me stress is unrelated to infertility!!

This was the first "vacation" I'd taken in 12 years. Even when away at Martha's Vineyard or Daytona or Vail or wherever my "vacation" was at the time, I was ALWAYS checking in; email, voice mail. Hey, when you're in sales working on commission, there's no such thing as a real vacation. Add desperately trying to have a baby on top of all the professional stress, it's no wonder there was nothing to show for all our "hard work"!

Anyway, I digress. Point is, I can stand up on my kitchen stool and shout, "I'm a full-time mom with healthy, emotionally-stable, intelligent, and secure children and God-damnit, I PROUD of that!"

Howzat, Mom? :)

It was a beautiful almost-Spring day today. It was a day that reminds you that Winter doesn't last forever...just seems to. Thank God for days like these! I'm not sure how non-skiiers would survive until April without these early March "heatwaves" of 58 degrees!

The kids and I played some soccer, some monkey-in-the-middle, did some bike-riding, some dirt digging, and even some skateboarding. Skateboarding, however, was Cat riding down the driveway on her belly; quite a sight!

Kids were out like ants at a picnic. After living in what felt like a ghost-town neighborhood for the past four or five months, saying hello, watching them walk, talk, laugh, ride their Razors and bikes was wonderfully cathartic! I just kept telling myself, "one more month and we can do this everyday!" and I swear it gave me a surge of energy I've been missing.

People, I think, are like flowers; they need sunshine and warmth along with the basic nutrients. When we go without for too long, we start to droop and lose our vibrance.

I remember when I was a kid my mom read that if you put a pointsettia plant in a closet for two months or so, its leaves will change to red in time for Christmas. My mom waited anxiously for two months, ticking off days on the calendar in anticipation of a horticultural masterpiece. When she finally went to the closet and opened the door for the first time in ages, she found a brown stick with shriveled leaves that were so frail the subtle breeze caused by the door opening caused most of them to fall to the floor! My poor mom felt terrible! I think not so much that she was out one pointsettia plant left over from the previous Christmas, but that she actually killed a perfectly good plant!

Pointsettias gain their color slowly so by the time Christmas comes, they're stunning. But did you ever notice what happens after? They slowly fade and get kind of sickly looking, don't they? Just like humans! We get this great color all Summer long and man do we look good! Healthy, vibrant, glowing...by the Christmas rush though, we're struggling to find our tan lines once so difinitive we couldn't believe we were ever as white as that strap mark!

So relish these days because Mother Nature just sends them once in a while in these late days of Winter to keep us from losing our leaves. Tomorrow could be 30 degrees again.

Sometimes I sit and think about being skinny, organized, and calm. Then I get stressed out about the fact that I'm not skinny, organized, or most of all, calm. I'm sure if I were skinny and organized I'd be calmer and if I were calmer I'd be skinnier and more organized! I'm kind of stuck in a weird bog and though there are ropes close-by to help me out, I don't know which one to pick; which one will be strong enough to pull me out...all the way out without breaking when I'm just about to the edge and plunging back in. So instead of trying one, I sink deeper with each moment of indecision.

I know I just have to decide which rope to grab and maybe if it's not the strongest one, it will get me far enough out to have the confidence to grab another just as that one is about to break so even if I do slip back toward the bog, I may not fall quite as far before starting up again.

So, which one to pick? Hmmm.....think I'll pick.....this one! :)

Easy come, easy go!!

No more writing for South Jersey Mom magazine. S'okay, will see what else is out there for me! In the meantime, my blog will help me with my daily/weekly psyche cleansing!

A Plan B for Plan A

I actually wrote this July of 2008 when my son was 4 and my daughter was just 3...

It was a very hard day; a meeting at 9am with what felt like 450 kids and four mothers (which, in actuality, was probably 30 kids and 15 moms), an oil change, a car wash, lunch, naps, then a slathering of sun block on bathing suit-clad toddlers in preparation for an afternoon of wading pool and sandbox frolicking only to have said frolicking last exactly nine minutes at which time a dreaded carpenter bee was spotted. How the poor devil wasn’t immediately struck with a heart-attack from the blood-curdling screams from my children is truly beyond me.

There was NO WAY either of my kids were going back out in the wild jungle otherwise known as the backyard. Inside we marched; stripping everyone out of bathing suits, brushing sand out of crevices sand should never be, then sitting down for a mid-afternoon snack to fuel up for the sniping and sibling rivalry inevitably taking place in the not-too-distant future. Not to mention the battles that will ensue over inane objects desired only because he/she has it.

I know what you’re thinking. “Here’s another stay-at-home mother crabbing about her kids.” I’m not though. I’m crabbing about my inability to have contingency plans in place! I’ve been a mom now for over four years. I should know my best-laid plans will be thwarted by one stinkin’ carpenter bee or his distant cousin the dreaded housefly and that the big plan for a wonderful family afternoon would turn into my kids playing in the playroom and me cleaning up the house. Very sad.
I should have had a Plan B for my Plan A. Assuming some sort of trauma would take place, instead of giving up and parading everyone indoors, I could have announced we were going on a bike ride, or a walk around the neighborhood. I think if I had had that plan in place, I wouldn’t have taken the easy way out.

I tend to do that at times; kind of like when you plan on going to the grocery store and just as you’re about to walk out the door, it starts raining. “Ah, I don’t need to go that badly; I’ll have my husband pick up a few things on his way home tonight.” Did you really want to go grocery shopping with the kids in tow anyway? Nah. Thanks to the rain you can get caught up on things around the house (or even read a few pages of your book, heaven forbid) and put off shopping for another day.
Did I really want to sit in my incredibly sunny backyard baking like an Idaho potato in a 400 degree oven whilst Leo and Cat stayed cool in 20 inches of liquid heaven? Of course not, but if I had a contingency plan, guilt would have won out over laziness, I would have made us go for a bike ride (not that my kids need much arm twisting to go bike riding), and I would have had that quality time with my growing-up-way-too-fast kids and gotten some exercise to boot instead of cleaning a kitchen that would get dirty again almost immediately while my kids watched Ruby and Max.
So here’s my mission: I’m going to always make a Plan B for my Plan A. I think if I do this often enough, and give it a good effort, my Plan B’s may become so good that Plan A may become Plan B and B become A!

Eileen Cassidy Bishop

RESPECT; Find out what it means to ....them?

In becoming a parent, we assume the role of teacher. We teach our children how to walk, talk, use the potty, use a fork; none of these things are easy, to be sure! But what about teaching respect? Do you spend as many conscious hours stressing over your child being respectful as you do about bathroom accidents? I do.

I grew up that you, the child, gave respect; especially to grown-ups. Parents’ friends, teachers, clergy; it didn’t matter…if you were old enough to vote, you got respect; period. As I aged, however, I realized that not everyone deserves my respect. But until they prove that, I give them the benefit of the doubt and treat them respectfully.

Here’s how I see it; everyone should be treated with respect right from the get-go. Once you receive it, though, you must work to maintain it. I don’t think respect is like trust; you don’t trust right out of the gate...it needs to be earned where respect needs to be retained.
So having said all this, how do we incorporate what we were told as children with what we’ve learned as adults? Do we tell our children to respect straight away or do we tell them to wait to see how someone treats them before deciding how to treat that someone? Do you really want your children to be that cynical?

See, to me, there’s a difference between treating someone with respect and respecting someone. Semantics, you ask? No, reality says I! Here’s a scenario…

You and your five year old are walking along the street and a stranger is walking toward you both. You walk closer to the right of the sidewalk to in order to give that person room to get by. Maybe you even smile and nod as they pass…maybe even go so far as say hello. That is treating someone with respect. Simply allowing room on the path you’re walking or a subtle nod. That person could be the biggest jerk in the world that you would no sooner respect than sprout wings and fly to the moon. But you don’t know that when you see them on the street. Should we assume that everyone does or has done something wrong (in our opinion), divert our eyes and take a wide berth onto the lawn?

I’m going to teach my children by example. On the road, I’m going to let cars in front of me often (but not too often…after all, I have to get to where I’m going too!), I’m going to smile and say hello to passersby, I’m going to offer assistance to elderly people struggling (and respect their wishes if they graciously or ungraciously wave me off), and look people in the eye when they talk to me. I’m not going to flip anyone the bird when they cut me off on the highway or blurt out an obscenity when they flip me the bird (though Lord knows I’d never cut anyone off). I’m not going to gossip about people in front of my children. I can’t with complete honesty promise never to gossip, that would be a set up for failure, but I can curb it in front of little pitchers, to be sure!
Look, I’m not going to win a Nobel Peace Prize for my amazing charitable contributions or actions but perhaps, just maybe, my simple, everyday, subtle teachings and simple acts of respect will embed themselves into my children’s psyches and they will wind up on the stage at Stockholm! …or more realistically, grow to be well-respected adults who have gained through their giving.

Eileen Cassidy Bishop