Over-Caffeinated

My love of coffee is deep and abiding; I would never have survived the eary years of motherhood without a steady flow of java.

But you can have too much of a good thing.

Yesterday, I had:

-> 2 cups of coffee in the morning.

(Standard Operating Procedure for me.)

-> 1 cup of coffee while selling Girl Scout cookies.

(I was outside in cold rain and boy was that a good cuppa joe.)

-> 1 Skinny Latte from Starbucks after getting my hair cut.

(Thanks to a fellow Girl Scout mom who gave me her unused Starbucks gift cards. She doesn't drink coffee and knows I am an occasional imbiber.)

-> 1 cup of hot tea when I got home yesterday afternoon.

(I was soaked from my day out in the rain and wanted to warm up.)

-> 2 cups of coffee after dinner.

(Because I was still chilly and darn if that coffee didn't taste good.)

I could do the math, but I won't because the final answer to my over-caffeinated equation is one big fat horrible night of insommnia.

I could chalk my lack of sleep up to the time change.

I could also point out that Becky, Huck and Tom decided to have a campout in her room and were giggly and goofy and noisy.

But excuses are for wussies.

I totally overdid it.

I'm on a self-imposed coffee detox today.

And tomorrow?

Those first two cups in the morning will taste soooooo good.

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For Those of You Who LOVE Free Books {Like Yours Truly}

I don't often share freebies or deals with you fine (and blessedly loyal) readers here; I have this blog where I share my deep love of coupons to satisfy that passion.

But this particular freebie might be one that would appeal to you wordy folk; there's no affiliate link involved in this, by the way. I just wanted to point you to their site in case you're interested.

If you like reading {um, YEAH} and like chatting about books {um, TOTALLY} and you don't mind blogging your review of a book, you can sign up for Book Sneeze. As long as you agree to review the books on your blog as well as write a 200 word review on a consumer webiste, you're in like flynn.

Right now, I'm reading A Century Turns by William Bennett. I'm not ready to review it yet {not quite done} but I am enjoying it, especially since it deals with recent history and events that I very well remember watching on TV and reading about in the newspapers.

Ok - so to sum up: sign up for Book Sneeze; read free books; talk about said free book honestly on your site and at a consumer site; rinse, wash, repeat.

Sound good?

I thought so. ;-)

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Wordless Wednesday | Through the Window

Spring arrived in a hurry this weekend. There was much frisbeeing, scootering, and this sweet moment that I spotted through the kitchen window as I was cooking dinner.

Huck, you are a GEM of a boy.

For more great Wordless Wednesday pictures, be sure to visit the linkup over at 5 Minutes for Mom.

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Five Things in Five Minutes

I always sometimes overthink what I'm writing here, spending too much time worrying over this word of that.

This tendency to obsess over carefully weigh each phrase infects all my writing. It's crippling, yo.

So as I bark orders gently remind my kiddos that we need to be out the door in ten minutes this morning, I'm writing this post super quick to force myself to just let go and write.

1. Spring is so close, you can taste it.

Oh my, I've seen blue skies and sunshine for three days in a row and there are buds on the trees and daffodils pushing up from the ground. I love feeling reborn and new each spring.

2. I scribbled down yet another book idea late last night as I was getting ready for bed.

Dear Lord, woman, exactly when are you going to harness your internet-addled brain and actually FINISH one of those ideas? Or so I ask myself.

3. Finding my two boys playing quietly this morning when I came down instantly set my Mom Radar on high.

It was on the mark, too. Did you know it's nearly impossible to get blue marker off a metal vent register?

4. I'm off to a group bible study and feeling nervous.

I did the work, read the readings and answered the questions, but I always feel like I'm just not Catholic enough when it comes to this stuff.

5. For the first time in years, I'm going to try to do our taxes myself.

We've used a CPA for several years now but I used to do our (and my own, when I was single) taxes back in the day. I've spent so much time looking for answers as to how I should claim my (wee) blogging income and review items that I feel like I ought to just do them myself. Expect to see me slightly frazzled and red-eyed by the end of the week.

Well, that was a bit more than five minutes, but it was real and raw which is good. Writing should be that way the first time on the page.

Have a great (and hopefully, sunshiney) day!

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I Blog Because {...}

I have a Google Reader chock full of good posts that I don't always get around to reading; like my friend Briana and I talked about as we drove up with the some of the Ohio gang to BlogHer last summer, as bloggers we often find ourselves wearing the hat of producers rather than consumers.

My time is short and it's not often I get to clean out my reader but today was sunshiney {Oh, glorious SUN!} and I had the perfect coincidence of events: spare time to wash my van plus no four year old boy in said van, ready to hit the big red FREAK OUT button when I pulled into the car wash bay.

As I sat waiting my turn and listening with half an ear to Becky's chatter (we spent HOURS together this weekend selling Girl Scout cookies on Saturday and Sunday and I was chatted out), I took advantage of the time to scroll through my reader where I found this great nugget:

My Love of Blogging

If you don't read Chris Brogan, start now.

Go on, click over and read that piece than head back here. I'll wait. ;-)

This blogging gig is hard to explain to those on the outside of the blogosphere looking in (or to those too busy watching the wind blow, never even noticing we're here). For most of us, it isn't even a paying gig, making it that much trickier to put the why we do it into words.

I honestly think everyone (and yes, Dad, I'm looking at you) should blog. Everyone has a story to tell. Everyone has a passion. Everyone has something about which they know more, sometimes much more, than the average person.

Blog because you want to leave a legacy of words behind when you die. Blog because you want to keep your sanity when the kids have driven you to the very edge of your last nerve. Blog your way through pain, finding therapy and community in the process. Blog because you want to help people.

Blog because you can.

Isn't it thrilling/empowering/revolutionary/humbling to think how the world might change, to imagine what might happen when we all have a voice?

Thanks for listening to mine.

Now go get blogging already, k?

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Unplugged

After treating myself to an hour or so getting lost watching Lost last night, I sat down with my computer and started working my way through the mail in my overflowing inboxes.

Rather than deleting endless and meaningless emails, it might have been easier to just delete my accounts and start over again. Spam, be gone! Seriously, after a solid hour of inbox tending, I quit for the night, tired of the tediousness.

While I'm usually pretty good at keeping up with my email, I fell off the wagon in February. Too much snow, too much husband traveling, too many Girl Scout cookie issues, too little time; for whatever reason, my good interwebz habits have slipped and faltered.

I've barely been on Twitter.

I haven't checked my Facebook page in weeks days.

I have a nice little blog I started here that's withering on the vine; this is probably a not-so-good omen for my gardening plans in 2010.

And while I'm blogging here and here, both are more self-serving than anything else. The math geek in me loves saving money and the word geek in me needs a place where I can run my mouth. That you fine people show up to read either (or both, God love ya), is just the cherry on top; I'm wired for writing, audience or no audience.

And writing has been much on my mind.

Big writing. Audacious writing. Throw caution to the wind and flip the world the metaphorical double eagle writing.

I always hoped and prayed I might have that kind of writing in me but I'm having a hard time finding it.

There is that blogging thing.

And random tweets about #Lost or the #Olympics.

And (on very rare occasions) visits to Facebook (and NO, I will never ever ever join your Mafia War or become a resident of Farmville so please don't ask).

And then there is the endless glut of emails in my inbox, most of them junk but a few necessary and important, thus requiring me to wade through the crap spam with a blowtorch delete button.

I love being so connected online...and I hate being so connected online.

Crazy-big writing isn't going to happen when I've got five task windows open, urgent (but truly not urgent) emails popping up like gophers, blog posts to write, and a case of internet induced ADHD.

What I need to do is simple but hard: set goals, set boundaries, and then set my rear down in a chair to just write every.damn.day.

I'll let you know how it goes.

After I finish firebombing cleaning out my inboxes.

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The Foreclosure Crisis in Ohio

I've got a post up over at Ohio Moms Blog about how the foreclosure crisis is just outside my front door.

Click here to check it out.

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It's Hard to Be Three

During a recent discussion of family size and spacing with a friend of mine, I remember saying that as hard as it was to have our first two within less than two years, I was glad in the long run that we had ended up pregnant again when our first was just a year old.

"Because, honestly?" I'd told her, "If we had waited until Becky was in her twos or even three, she'd probably be an only child."

Three for Becky was the hardest, the flat-out most challenging, demoralizing, and trying time for me as her mother. I've mentioned it before here from time to time but I've never really given full voice to what I went through with her in between her third and fourth birthdays.

Tantrums, epic ones in public made even better by the full force of her very good vocabulary.

Screaming, "I HATE YOU MOMMY!" at me when I put her in a timeout on the stairs.

Pushing her little brother, usually in a toddler-greed fueled fight over a toy.

Hitting me in anger or pulling my hair as I carried her up the stairs to her room for a timeout in her room.

What she needed more than anything was a daily nap but she had long since given up her afternoon nap. While I tried to enact a daily "quiet" time, I had two choices: be played by my very savvy three year old and her boundary pushing behavior or choose my battles wisely. After all, I had her brother Huck, still not quite two and desperately needing a nap each day, to add into the equation.  Exhausted, I finally let go of trying to enfoce "quiet time" knowing full well that three-thirty of four o'clock would likely usher in the longest, hardest hour of the day.

Three wasn't all bad; don't get me wrong. Becky was and is sweet and kind and ever so bright and all those elements of her character were in place when we struggled through those tough months. She was and is a wonderful person; she simply experienced a great deal of emotional growth during her three's and there was nothing to be done most days than to just wait the tantrum storm out.

This is why I found reading Hope Edelman's book, The Possibility of Everything, hard to do. Granted, it's a well written book an evokes the beauty of the setting as well as the history and culture of Belize, the place where she and her family ultimately journey for vacation and for the aid of a faith healer for her three year old daughter.

I read the book through the eyes of a mom who's been through life with a challenging three year old daughter (and her equally challenging youngest brother; for Tom, at least, I was well-prepared by Becky and didn't take his tantrums so seriously or personally) and I know that my experiences colored my reading. I simply couldn't step into the place of believing there was anything more to the behavior of her daughter she described in the book then just a very bad case of the threes.

But I wasn't there, I know.  That's the difference.  I wasn't that mom with that child, sick with worry just as none of you reading this weren't there the days when Becky drove me to tears with her shaking, glassy-eyed, raging tantrums.   While we can empathize and offer advice, we can never really step into the shoes of the mom next to us and live through those dark moments.  We as moms all do what we have to do to survive the worst of our children's behavior, and for each of us that takes a different shape and form.

The beauty of The Possiblity of Everything is the journey the author takes in faith, in opening her mind to the possibility of, well, everything. It takes courage to make that kind of journey and even greater bravery to share your story with others.  It's a good read and worth the trip to the library.

This post is part of the February SV Moms Book Club's reading of The Possibility of Everything by Hope Edelman.

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