Category Archives: Crazy Mama

January 22, 2013 · 1:03 pm

Dreams

Do you watch Cougar Town?  The comedy used to be on ABC but now it’s on TBS on Tuesday nights at 10/9c (in case you’re wondering what happened to it).  I like the humor on the show.  That, and they drink a lot of wine (like normal people) (okay, like me).  Courteney Cox’s character, Jules, actually has a name for her wine glass.  Big Karl, I think.  Ha!

Editor’s note:  There is such a thing as too much Botox and lip augmentation.  It really must suck to be over 40 in Hollywood.

In the first episode of the new season, Jules has a dream where Grayson (Josh Hopkins) does something bad.  We never find out what he did (in the dream), but Jules believes it to be real and insists that he apologize.  Funny, right?  Because dreams aren’t real.

I had a terrifying dream the other night that felt so real that I woke myself up.  I dreamed I was on an airplane dangling in the sky…dangling as in about to fall…fall as in about to crash.  It was nighttime and all I could see were stars outside the windows.  I had no idea if we were over land or water.  There were other people on the plane but I didn’t know them.  I was me.  In other words, I was exactly who I am in real life – a Crazy Mama who spends too much money on owl tchotchkes.  As the plane was about to drop (and just before I forced myself awake), all I thought about was myself and that I didn’t want to die.

My family is my life, my livelihood.  Aside from a few precious hours during the day when I run or write (or watch Cougar Town), almost everything I do is for my family, Dylan and Riley especially.  So, why didn’t I think about my loved ones in the harrowing moments before my (dream) death?  Why didn’t I have gorgeous flashbacks of my childhood, my wedding day, and the births of my boys?  Just like Jules, I woke up wanting to blame someone for what happened.  The difference is that she smacked Grayson and I wanted to smack myself.

I struggle every day with the intensity of love I feel for my boys and the resentment I sometimes feel about losing myself in them – about putting their wants, their needs, and their everything above mine.  It’s not their fault.  I made a series of choices that led me to the off-kilter, unbalanced world of Stay-at-Home Mama-hood.  I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else, but I sometimes wonder what I might’ve accomplished had I chosen a different path on the spectrum.

Guilty Mama alert!

I told Mike how selfish I felt about not thinking about the people I love before the (dream) crash, and he reminded me that it wasn’t real.  He also suggested that maybe the dream wasn’t about dying at all.  Maybe it was about writing the book and feeling – for the first time in a long time – that I was, in fact, doing something just for me.  He also thought it was silly that I was tormenting myself about it.  Silly, indeed, but I’m far too good at it to pass up such a rich opportunity.  He’s right.  The Book is all mine.  It’s my dream and my burden, and it’s forced me to give myself completely to the writing process, which is new, unfamiliar, not surprisingly guilt producing, and every now and then as terrifying as, for instance, being on a plane dangling in the nighttime sky.

Thankfully, it was just a dream.

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Filed under bad dreams, book, Crazy Mama, owls, Stay-at-Home Mama

September 14, 2012 · 10:32 am

Spelling B-e-e

When I was in the first grade, I was the only kid in my class who spelled “horse” correctly on a spelling test.  Everyone else spelled it like “house” so it came out like this: “hourse.”  As a result of this early (and brief) spelling brilliance, I was selected to represent my class in the school-wide spelling bee.

On the day of the spelling bee, I stood on stage in the auditorium/gym/cafeteria in front of the entire school, including students, teachers, administrators, janitors, the Mayor (well, maybe not the mayor), and the local media (well, maybe not them either).  In any case, there were a lot of people from my six-year-old vantage point.  I don’t remember if I was nervous, but if I were asked to participate in a spelling bee today I’d be petrified, so I’m guessing I had a few butterflies in my stomach.

When it was my turn, I stepped up to the microphone and the judges gave me my first word: “I.”  Yes, that’s right.  My word was “I.”  My word had one letter.  I don’t recall how they used “I” in a sentence, but it was probably something like this: “I like ice cream.”  Or, “I can spell.”

I took a deep breath and said, “I,” and then – are you sitting down? – I was eliminated from the spelling bee.  Why, you ask?  Because I didn’t say “Capital I.”  I quickly left the stage, sat down on the auditorium/gym/cafeteria floor surrounded by my “hourse” spelling classmates, and felt like a hourse’s ass for getting eliminated from a spelling bee for misspelling “I.”  It’s quite possible that this singular mortifying moment in my childhood caused the future emergence of Nervous, Anxious, Crazy Mama.

Flash forward to today.  Dylan is teetering on the edge of reading! He recognizes words!  He reads signs!  He puts easy words together in sentences!  Every time he reads a word, his eyes twinkle with pride!  I can see his confidence building right before me!  It’s amazing!

But, he’s making me spell everything.

Cat.  Hat.  Mat.  Bat.  Yogurt.  Hannah (a girl in his class…makes me want to say “Hannah Banana” every time!).  Lynn (my middle name).  Nathan (Riley’s middle name).  Purple.  Airplane.  Television.  Okay.  3D.  Ice cream.  M&M’s (not an easy word to spell!).  Nalyd (Dylan backwards).  Yelir (Riley backwards).  For the love of God, he’s making me spell backwards!  Anakin.  Obi-Wan.  Hondo.  Bumblebee. Optimus Prime.  My friends, the spelling doesn’t stop.  It’s not that any of these words are difficult to spell (except Optimus, which took me a few extra seconds), but I feel a little bit like a hourse’s ass every time I do it.

On Monday, we reached a high point (or a low point depending on your viewpoint).  “How do you spell pain?”  “P-a-i-n.”  Then, “How do you spell ass?”  Pain in the ass.  My son wanted me to spell pain in the ass.  I didn’t want to do it, I really didn’t.  But, in the end, I did, because according to dictionary.com, an ass (noun) is: a long-eared, slow, patient, sure-footed domesticated mammal related to the horse, used chiefly as a beast of burden.  And if Dylan is ever called to service as a representative of his class in a school spelling bee, I want him to be better prepared than I was when I had the great misfortune of having my hourse’s a-s-s kicked out of the spelling bee for not saying “Capital (b-l-e-e-p-i-n-g) I.”  Sigh…deep breath…sip of w-i-n-e.

Editor’s note:  After spelling this inappropriate idiom for Dylan, I told him not to say it again.  Except in a spelling b-e-e. 

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Filed under Anxious Mama, Crazy Mama, Nervous Mama, spelling