Dolphin Tale Poster

How much did everyone love Dolphin Tale?

Well good news, Dolphin Tale 2 will soon be released!

And I have the official movie poster to give away.

Want it?  Let me know.

We're Gonna Need a Bigger Boat

I had a rare treat a couple days ago.

My friend Dee and I were able to arrange a halfway meet for an overnight visit.

Dee is a fellow "Trauma Mama".

She and I have both adopted.

Both adopted older kids.

Both older kids from the other side of the world.  Older kids from the other side of the world who have trauma backgrounds.

And we have been through it.

So a few weeks ago we had arranged to run away together.

We decided to meet this past Friday night halfway between her home and mine.

We almost weren't able to pull it off, because earlier in the week she had an episode with one of her kids where it nearly ended in a 911 call.  Then the day before our planned getaway I had an episode with one of my kids that did result in a 911 call.

And I was in the ER and then the adolescent mental health facility for just shy of 24 hours.

(My child will be OK and is getting some much needed help)

Of course as all these events were unfolding and then settling down, I figured I would need to scrap the plans to get away.  But as Fred said, I would need this now more than ever.  So he scrambled to get things in place to enable me to head off to CT.

And I did.  Up the Jersey Turnpike I went, over the GW, crawling down the Cross Bronx Expressway and finally checking into the Hilton.

And it was Won. Der. Ful.

We laughed, we cried, we hugged, we shared stories.

We even indulged in a spa treatment, if you count cutting my toenails on the bed a spa treatment.

I showed her my recent bruises and she showed me hers.  It was like the scene from Jaws where they're revealing all their scars.

Including the broken heart scars.

But now our batteries are recharged.  And we have returned to our respective broods better prepared to handle the next crisis.

When I First Saw You

Becuase I'm a glutton for punishment and like to make myself cry, every now and again I like to re-post the poem James wrote for me for Mother's Day in 2011.

It goes a little something like this:




When I First Saw You








Sniff.









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Weight Loss Wednesday

OK, this is going to be hard to do, but here goes...

I've gained back my weight.  

Almost all of it.

Last May I started dieting or whatever the current politically correct term is for losing weight and getting in shape.  By November I had lost about 35 pounds and several dress sizes.  Though I still had a long way to go, I felt great and was starting to think I didn't look half bad, either.

But by the end of November, the ....

 what's a nice way of saying the sh** hit the fan?

my life began to turn on me.

Fred went into the hospital for acute renal failure.  

 In the next few months, there were three additional in-patient hospital stays for family members.

I could go into details but it would only serve to bore you and violate hippa laws and make me seem like the kid in that Shel Silverstein poem.  Only replace "! cannot go to school today" with "I cannot stress over making proper food choices and fitting in exercise today".  And replace all her symptoms with all the stressors in my life....

'I cannot go to school today, '
Said little Peggy Ann McKay.
'I have the measles and the mumps,
A gash, a rash and purple bumps.
My mouth is wet, my throat is dry,
I'm going blind in my right eye.
My tonsils are as big as rocks,
I've counted sixteen chicken pox
And there's one more-that's seventeen,
And don't you think my face looks green?
My leg is cut-my eyes are blue-
It might be instamatic flu.
I cough and sneeze and gasp and choke,
I'm sure that my left leg is broke-
My hip hurts when I move my chin,
My belly button's caving in,
My back is wrenched, my ankle's sprained,
My 'pendix pains each time it rains.
My nose is cold, my toes are numb.
I have a sliver in my thumb.
My neck is stiff, my voice is weak,
I hardly whisper when I speak.
My tongue is filling up my mouth,
I think my hair is falling out.
My elbow's bent, my spine ain't straight,
My temperature is one-o-eight.
My brain is shrunk, I cannot hear,
There is a hole inside my ear.
I have a hangnail, and my heart is-what?
What's that? What's that you say?
You say today is...Saturday?
G'bye, I'm going out to play! '

So yeah, justifying why I failed to make the right choices is neither here nor there.  The point is, I got stressed, and I stopped exercising.  And started eating.  Eating all the wrong foods for all the wrong reasons.

You ever see one of those movies where the ship is going down and they have to throw everything overboard in a last-ditch effort to keep it from sinking?  That's me.  Only instead of throwing the cannons and the biscuits overboard I threw eating right and exercising and blogging and anything else good for my body or soul.

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So here I sit, a year later, right back where I started. The only thing I have gained from it is that I am still alive and walking round outside the confines of a mental institution.  And I am now a certifiable Words With Friends and Solitaire junkie.  When all hell was raining down around my ears, I could sit in a corner with some donuts and stare at my screen and tune the world out.

But it kinda sorta got me through the worst of it.  God, I hope that was the worst of it.  No one's in the hospital right now.  I feel relatively sane.  I have plans of action for a couple heavy hitter stressors in my life right now.  And I sailed through without being pursued by men in white coats.

And here I am again in May.

Goodbye Tastykake.

Hello walking shoes.

Hello carrots.

Easter Grass

Not so many years back, our "Easter Eve", if you will, was saturated in tradition. We dyed dozens of eggs, we decorated Easter baskets, we held fantastic Easter egg hunts complete with a gaggle of children scurrying through spring grass searching high and low for what seemed like hundreds of candy-filled eggs, plus the one prized Golden Egg. Finding it was momentous enough to want to add that to a future resume.
























But sigh.  Now all our kids are teenagers.  Teenagers are poopy when it comes to childhood traditions.

Does anyone want to dye eggs?   Nahhh....

Time to get your Easter baskets down from the attic. Is anyone going to decorate theirs? Nahhhh....

And I have to admit, their lackadaisical attitude is contagious.

Did I boil the eggs and set up the cups and Paas? Nahhhh....

Did I set all the basket trimmings and supplies out for them? Nahhh....

About the only thing I insisted on was that they put SOMEthing out on the table. If it wasn't their basket, so be it, but they had to put something out. A shoebox, anything. If they didn't, I threatened to just put a 5 pound bag of Domino's sugar on the table with 6 spoons and bypass the Easter candy altogether.

And some of them kind of met my challenge.  This year a plastic cake saver graces our table, as does a green storage bin from the pantry (I'm afraid to venture into the pantry for fear of finding a bin's worth of Ramen packs or popcorn bags dumped all over the shelf and/or floor).

No one put any Easter grass into their "baskets".  And truth be told I really didn't care.  I started pulling things out of the Walmart bags I had bought only just yesterday and dumping them unceremoniously into the baskets.

No!  I couldn't do it.  I stopped mid-Peter Rabbit on the 5th basket and took everything out.  I rooted through the Easter bin on the floor and found a large plastic bag filled with an assortment of grass from Easters past.  Green, blue, pink, yellow, sparkly, papery, plasticy, iridescent.  All tangled together in a flamboyant rat's nest.  I started tearing handfuls of the stuff and shoving it into the baskets, then giving it a little fluffing.  When I was done there were bits of grass everywhere, including in my hair and down my pajama shirt.

I stood back and surveyed my handiwork..
There now, I thought.  That looks like Easter.

And with a smile on my face I went back to work filling the baskets with chocolates and jelly beans, and all was right with my world.

Although it was made just a bit righter when I popped an M&M in my mouth.



Happy Easter, everyone!!!

Inspiration Sunday

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Inspiration Sunday

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